Wow, that looks beautiful!
It’s a shame that by itself it’s only worth 24 points.
Actually that would be 48 points.
Was there no one on your alliance that could put some containers up? Can you stack 4 then 2 and let a partner put a container on the 2 then they hoist it to the top of the 4 (for those robots that can’t top a 6 stack)?
One thing this game did (which you can praise or hate) is that it really defined a lot of what was viable when it came to strategy. The rules painted a fairly clear picture of what will get you points.
We built the robot knowing our max individual total was 60 points. With the right RC topper robot it becomes much more valuable. At buckeye, as you can see in the videos on this thread, 4269 was able to top 4 stacks.
4269’s ability to grab containers, noodle them, and cap them on 1987’s 4-stacks (along with smart assistance from 2399) almost led them to a Buckeye finals berth. In the end, they lost to the 5413/48/291 alliance by a single average point in the semifinals, which is essentially 2 more scored totes.
It took them just a bit too long in the semis to get really good at what they were doing, but at least they went out guns-a-blazin’, as evidenced by this performance in Semifinals Match 6:
Nice job! Man, if you could get paired with a team that could cap stacks of 6, you’d be set. It’s pretty hard, though. My team can cap stacks of 5, but 6 is tough.
Do you have to start on the near platform? I can see some problems if your capper can’t see and doesn’t have a camera.
It’s a really impressive problem to be dealing with.
Travis - It was priceless watching your teams reaction when you got your ticket to champs. Congratulations
We are\were hoping there are some six stack toppers out there, but they are probably not plentiful due to the engineering challenge of said task. We suspect there are many more 5 stack toppers available.
We do have a camera watching the far the side of the field (toward the step). We don’t use our driver station display for our drivers so it can be faced to alliance partners if necessary. I don’t think we used the camera in that fashion yet.
That being said, 4269’s drivers were amazing. As far as we know the only thing they could see was the top of the RCs as they were placing them. Apparently it works.
If anyone is interested you can check out our fully autonomous code check out this link https://github.com/FRCTeam1987/Robot2015
This is a thing of beauty. I so wish our robots could play together…
I’m confused why you didn’t have the “capping” team cap your stack of 4 while it was still in your robot, then finish it off to be a 6 stack.
I love your design nonetheless. I wish that it had been a more viable strategy to use as well.
Awesome work 1987! I just showed the video linked by Travis to one of the other engineers here at work and he was extremely impressed.
This video is amazing not just because of 1987 but also for the diversity of approaches that the 6 robots have for handling the game pieces.
We had very limited time to practice that with 4269 and, during our short test of that strategy, we determined that it was too unstable to be worth the risk of a stack falling (and potentially breaking the conveyor).
Very impressive! I’ve only seen one conveyor belt robot in person and it didn’t work nearly as successfully as yours.
On another note, even though the robot is fully autonomous, do you have driver operated controls in case something goes wrong?
We do! In fact, due to the complexity of the systems on the robot and the number of commands required to run it manually, we made an engraved button box with buttons and switches for each command for the driver to use.
Ours would no doubt love to do 2 tote 1 RC w/ Litter caps on top of all of those stacks! Only we’d have to cross the top 2 totes long across the short (perpendicular to the wall, and set well timed to your push out of the wall/next stack), from either side except the first -or end stack, RC’s could be laid down or upright. Let us just hope to be in the same division. Looks like the push of stacks is quite smooth enough that stuff added on top would be very stable indeed.
Add a can stealer (or 2 ;-), and a wall builder the alliance will be. Win all 4 RC’s(42X6=252cap yours+42 Stack our 1st one on the other platform, then just cap your wall out w/ 2 totes and littered RC’s+3rd bot just 6 or more points?+they help litter the cans too=300+ Points?
Of course you cannot always count on winning all or even many of the eventual nuclear powered can wars, but it would sure be fun to try once.
All I can say is … Wow, what a beautiful machine.
Very well done.