It would probably be better to ask what time teams think they’ll be able to complete a Rocket. It’s still fairly early in the build season, so most teams don’t have a working robot right now. Ask again in early Feb and you’ll get some realistic answers.
I hardly believe there are teams that have already finished designing, building and programming a robot and had their drivers practice enough, to answer this question.
A better question is: do you think any team will finish a rocket solo during a match?
12 full cycles are required. At a conservative estimate of a 10 second cycle it would take 120 seconds to complete. except for the elite teams and other teams with ideal circumstances (no Defense, no drops, etc) solo rockets will not be a thing.
Now that i’ve said this, I hope many teams prove me wrong.
Also, any strong team will be doing an autonomous to score faster in the opening game, and 3 cycles (two hatches and one ball), while very hard, definitely seems possible this year if one gears for high acceleration and has a team with plenty of programming resources. In this case, it becomes 9 cycles in 135 seconds, or 15 seconds a cycle. Definitely a feat, but definitely possible with good helper functions and a little luck.
Have you done any calculations or empirical testing to back this up? While it’s really only “2.5 cycles” (you start with a game piece), that’s still an awfully quick pace in the sandstorm period for any team. Reminder that the loading and scoring objects in 2019 are further apart than they were in 2018 and that they require much more precision to score in 2018. 2018 was an ideal environment for multiple gamepiece autonomous modes, 2019 is much more demanding. ESPECIALLY if you want to score that ball in the rocket (meaning hatches placed on opposite sides of the same rocket level).
I can see an alliance prioritizing a rocket during sandstorm.
Preload the cargo ship a cargo and 3 null-hatches (lose out on 6 points but not a huge issue)
Preload the bots with hatches and all focus on one rocket. Load the 3 hatches and have two bots repeat with the 2 hatches from the loading station. That’s 5/6 hatches
The last bot focus on getting cargo to the rocket
During elims this strategy won’t mean bumpkins though
With alliance help I can see sub 120 second rocket completion times. As far as a run time to complete…definitely can not calculate it at this moment but after robot completion for sure.
Definitely reasonable to challenge my claim. I will admit that I believe to claim 3 full cycles in 15 seconds is flawed. The reason I state the above was to spark more discussion into the possibilities of auto. We can see top end team in the 2018 competition able to score their first cube, even from the far side, in under 5 seconds. (Below are two videos I pulled) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJWd9gyUAHk
This, pared with good motion profiling, good vision code, some crafty mechanism,and high acceleration rate will allow a robot to move from a hab to rocket, rocket to feeder station, and visa versa in 4 seconds paths.
In 16 seconds, one can get 2 panels to the rocket and station the robot to grab a third from the feeder as soon as the sandstorm ends.
This by far is not for a normal team, but will be accomplished before the end of the competition season by someone.
Where are they going to get the panels from? a team only has access to one they are holding and the two preloaded in the player stations. That’s a LONG way to go to get hatches in auto.
I’m not seeing an issue with what Forth said here.
He said the panel was on the station and the bot is only loading two during the sandstorm and going to collect the third.
Two panels will be doable for a fair number of teams. Maybe not at first, but a lot of teams with practice.
Since you are immediately in front of a feeder station at end of sandstorm mode, your human player can lurch forward and drop in a hatch panel. It’s not a full 3 cycles, but it definitely better than other options.
Autonomous code’s prime purpose it to help drivers by increasing their cycle time and making the robot easier to drive. It is not purely for autonomous periods. Just because sandstorm mode ends does not mean autonomous code has to. Autonomous code has made many teams much faster at their cycles.
The main reason we don’t build fully autonomous robots is that reacting to all possible situations would be too hard to code completely. Drivers are just like any other sensor on your robot. They have extremely complex code that lags a little bit. The more practice they have, the better they are “coded”. By creating a list of pros and cons, you can understand when it is best to use the fast, precise, and relatively simpleminded autonomous or the slower but sophisticated drivers. That is how a top tier team will finish a rocket by themselves.
If you had an effective ground intake, you could lean a hatch panel against a teammates bumpers and go pick it up. Could be quite a bit less distance to travel.
One thing to keep in mind is that doing a 1.5 auto this year is not the same as doing 1.5 last year. It’s not time based scoring so even picking up a second hatch and getting in position to score is still really good for cutting down on the number of cycles you need to do. I think the best teams will be able to do the rocket by themselves but honestly, they don’t need to risk that. Even just letting your partners take care of the bottom level, you are now down to 8 cycles. If you have a 1.5 or 2 hatch auto, your down to 6 cycles in teleop.