Beautiful robot (as always) from 1983.
Can you talk a little about your decision to not shoot? I know Looking Forward alluded to a possible shooter to be added later, but why didn’t you go to Auburn-Mountainview without a shooter?
I guess I’m just curious about the strategic reasoning around prioritizing climbing over shooting.
Great robot Skunks! Are there any plans for a shooter before DCMP? Or will you be a defense and breaching specialist?
Awesome work this weekend. Proved that no shooter is needed to show a dominant performance at a district event! 
Our plan from the beginning was to breach defenses. Analyzing the game from only a points standpoint, we thought it would be faster to breach and then push a ball into the low goal than to line up and shoot. We might have been wrong, and part of the decision was the time we had, but it ended up working out alright for us.
Totally unrelated, but as operator, I think learning the other mechanics of the robot without having to learn a shooter was nice.
There are plans for a shooter in the works, it should be on by week 3
Benton beat me to the punch while I was typing this, but I’ll post anyways. YOLO.
The decision came down to the lack of protected shooting zones. While our team is quite fortunate in what we are able to design, manufacture, and control, we felt that there would have to be some level of compromise this year. It was the opinion of the design group that we were in a “pick two of three” type of scenario; solo-breach, shoot high, climb. We could execute two of these three options at a very high level, or be fairly mediocre at all.
Our analysis yielded that shooting high, compared to low goal scoring, would provide a net gain of roughly twenty-nine points over the course of a match that included an auto ball and eight more in tele-op. A climber would be able to mitigate ten of those twenty-nine points, and proper defense combined with unrefined shooting in week one would more than likely decrease the average number of high goal cycles from the baseline eight to a conservative three or four.
With solo-breaching for the extra RP the clear first priority, it came down to shooting or climbing. At this point, we felt that a climber would be a more robust and reliable mechanism. Unlike high shooting, the defense that we would face breaching and climbing would have minimal effect on cycle time.
The decision came down to the lack of protected shooting zones. … Unlike high shooting, the defense that we would face breaching and climbing would have minimal effect on cycle time.
What made you veer away from shooting from the outer works? I know you had a great key shooter in 2012.
A bigger ball and a smaller target pushed that decision, along with the profile of our robot. Very early on, the climb was prioritized as a key component, and the space it takes up leaves no room for a shooter in the center. As our shooter would be in the front of our robot, very low to the ground, any defensive robot would have a field day. This also gave low goal scoring priority because for three less points per ball, getting eight balls into the tower gives a much higher reward at the end with the ranking point or 25(?) point bonus.
We might have figured out a way to get around the defense robot problem though 
Awesome robot guys, good to know that my team followed roughly the same thought process to annual powerhouse team such as yours.
Hope I get the chance to see this in action in St. Louis.
This i really want to see. Especially in person. Great robot guys!
I might be reading your post wrong, but in the interest of preventing rule violations, are you suggesting shooting from within the outer works (i.e. shooting while on a defense)? We ruled that out based on G39.
G39
ROBOTS are prohibited from launching BOULDERS unless they are in contact with the opponent’s TOWER or carpet in the opponent’s COURTYARD, and not in contact with any other carpet.
Violation: TECH FOUL per BOULDER
It’s extremely possible to be both touching the outer works and the carpet of the courtyard. All “protected shooters” I saw this weekend would have their back wheels on the outer works ramp and their front wheels on the courtyard carpet.
If you are in contact with the Courtyard and the Outerworks while not touching any other carpet, you will not violate that rule.
I love this machine! Your drive train is extremely robust and efficient and your scaling arm is quite an engineering marvel. I loved watching you all in action this weekend. Congratulations on another great robot.
Thanks for the nod on the 2012 shooter.
Benton hit on one of the key points, the climber architecture that we were designing for made bringing the ball into the robot not feasible. As such we were looking at attempting to shoot with a mechanism packaged inside the collector arm. The position of the arm would have to be held somewhere in the middle of its travel, most likely by a PID controller, and would also have an extremely low release point. The potential for our shot to be blocked and the difficulty of precisely controlling the arm, coupled with the fact that we had decided to design for low bar compliance to aid in breaching, led us away from shooting from the outer-works.
Several sub-teams from the design group have been working on a variety of shooters since we began prototyping at the beginning of week two. One such design was manufactured, but we were not satisfied with it’s effective collection width and pushed it’s potential implementation until after week one. It is our intention to shoot for week three at Central.
Thanks Darren, this was our first year trying out a six-CIM drive and we could not be happier with how it is preforming. We’re running single speed at ~14.1 ft/s IIRC. I’ve attached a picture of our transmissions for those curious.
The climber has been fun when it is working. The control was tough for our programming team to get down but we’re happy with how it is preforming. We were running our winch at about 75% power last weekend and we intend to bump that closer to max for Central. Here’s to hoping she holds together.
So, as the offensive, shooting robot in that scenario, would you not be able to be touched by a defending robot as per G43?
G43
ROBOTS on the same half of the FIELD as their ALLIANCE TOWER may not interfere with opponent ROBOTS attempting to traverse OUTER WORKS (regardless of direction). A ROBOT is considered traversing the opponent’s OUTER WORKS if any part of its BUMPERS are within the opponent’s OUTER WORKS.
Violation: FOUL. For every five (5) seconds in which the situation is not corrected, FOUL
Shooting from the batter is always an option, and you cannot really be interfered with whilst there as you have 3 sides protected…
It’s what we did this year and it works well, because we just square off the front of the batter, and that is our aim, so we don’t have to line up out on the field or anything.
Is this how you guys are getting around defensive bots?
Woah. We have nearly the exact same climber. That wasn’t a design I was expecting to see another of.
As the rules are written, you will be protected as per G43.