Pick your favorite trick…
Come on, vote already!
There was not one team that auto balanced. That I saw. If they could they could only do it 1 or 2 times! If they could it took forever
What do you think?
Chris
From the autobalencing I saw, and I remember quite a few, the most reliable were the mechanicle ones. While the gyros got used a lot, they never seemed to work all that well for various reasons. I guess the bridges were all a little diffrent, the gyro signal wasn’t stable or the code was just to difficult to get right in the little time everyone had to practice it.
I still like bots that could balence off the bridge.
-Andy A.
technokats (45) could autobalance EVERY time in at their first couple of regionals if the bridge was working out. at nats and IRI they had a little trouble because they were all worn out from all the beatin and bangin.
*Originally posted by Andy A. *
While the gyros got used a lot, they never seemed to work all that well for various reasons.
Excuse me? I’ll stick up for the Technokats because Clark and Kyle haven’t yet. You should take a look at their stats for the year and at nats. I believe they attempted ~15 balances at nats, got ~12 on the first try and ~3 on the second, not counting when the bridge was off pivot (someone please correct me if i’m wrong). To me that works much better than pretty well, it’s amazing.
Mike
Of course I’m a little biased, but the “wings” on MOE were really reliable and balanced as fast as we could get half way up the ramp. I think we had a few second tries (that required us to back all the way up to get enough momentum), but for the most part, they worked out really well. My personal favorite, though, were the robots that were able to to balance off of the bridge - I don’t think that we ever took that into serious consideration. oops. Well, tomorrow is the kickoff - this will be my last night of sleep that I don’t fall asleep thinking about the game. I’m looking forward to it though.
Here are the performance stats from our gyro-based autobalancing:
33 attempts
27 successful balances (1st attempt)
2 successful balances (2nd attempt)
4 unsuccessful balances
The 4 misses were all due to the bridge being dislodged (mostly in Chicago) due to teams (us included) going too fast over the bridge.
These results were from 2 Regionals and Nationals.
At one point at Nationals, we went 13 matches in a row with a successful 1st attempt balance.
BUT…
I think that the best trick was the double-goal balance from off of the bridge, a la Beatty-Hammond (71), Walled Lake Monsters (308), Penn Robotics (135), Buzz (175), and Ford-Kingman (60) (and others?).
Andy B.
While auto-balancing from on the bridge was amazing, I agree with Andy and whoever that is that posted above him, that a single robot balancing from off the bridge was the best trick. Not only was it a very impressive feat, but strategy wise it was the most important task any team performed last year.
Mike
I’ve watched a bunch of tapes from last year, but I can’t figure out how teams manages to balance goals with all 4 big balls. Where did they put the other two balls?
Auto-balnce was cool (i never saw it live) but the BEST trick would be the one that yields the most points, balncing the bridge with the big balls. Even better, doing that off the bridge and ending up in the endzone!
Greg
*Originally posted by GregT *
**Auto-balnce was cool (i never saw it live) but the BEST trick would be the one that yields the most points, balncing the bridge with the big balls. Even better, doing that off the bridge and ending up in the endzone!Greg **
like this match. http://www.wildstang.com/2001/video/wsvideo.htm
this was the first 710pts match of the season. Beatty Hammond (71) did the best job at balancing the goals on the bridge and hitting the endzone. (click on the match at the top if your connection speed is fast enough to view it in your browser)
P.S. I still cringe every time i watch this match because i’m the one who about knocked over the goal and ruined everything. luckily everything turned out aok. 
I’ve watched a bunch of tapes from last year, but I can’t figure out how teams manages to balance goals with all 4 big balls. Where did they put the other two balls?
If you flip the goals on thier sides then all four balls can be placed on the goals
I thought that one team was going to try that, but it was made illegal.
Actually, we tried to do that, although not by putting the goals on their sides.
http://www.team188.com/features/history/blizzard2.jpg
Unfortunately for us, our balancing in-competition wasn’t as successful as in practise 
I think that the best ‘trick’ was the little robot on stilts that could step across the rail (I don’t remember the name). The best strategy without a doubt was the 2 goal off the bridge balancer. A sure sign of a truly great design is when other folks (myself included) look and say ‘Why didn’t I think of that’!