I was looking at some videos of multiple different robots and realized a little trend. All of the robots I was watching robots winning regionals pretty much fell under three categories:
Tunnel-Box bots (Perfected by 67, but most common design)
Scorpio-Bots (Look at 27, 33, 1114, 217, 148, etc. and you will see it)
Deflectors (Perfected by 469, but many others do)
I really enjoy watching this years game, and being one of two scouting captains, I appreciate it tremendously. Scouting was fun this year. I just hope that next year, the game allows for more diverse robot designs. I know there are a few very notable exceptions to this list (1918, 910, etc.) but a majority of the bots this year fall under those three categories. Comments?
I think most designs are the same this year, because there wasn’t a lot to do this year.
You had to score balls, and some teams wanted to elevate. Many teams just looked at scoring, and how they could do it the best. Generally, these are tunnel bots, but I have seen quite a few bump bots that score very well, even better then tunnel bots.
And then there were teams that wanted to be able to traverse the bump, because to them flexibility in position would be key to getting and scoring the balls. Some of these teams decided to go with a hanger, because it was extra points, so why not!
And then there were teams, like 469 and 2337, that completely gave up the bump and tunnel for their strategy. Both deflectors (469 obviously having it much more perfected), we (2337) decided to go where we thought the real points would be, and make a bot designed for hanging and suspending other bots. We’ve only gotten to suspend once, but I’d say our hanger is the most reliable hanger out there.
So, I agree, many bots look the same this year, but I think the game limited most of it. Many teams that wanted to go over the bumps/traverse the tunnels couldn’t be 5 ft. tall, so many of them stayed low. Mostly everyone has a kicker/ball magnet, and there are a handful of people that can hang.
2200 Built a 54 lb 4 Omnis 90deg opposed robot for Waterloo.
1075 is a wide swerver. It was ORIGINALLY an invertible wide swerver, until we determined that the weight was better spent improving our arm, however, it ran Waterloo in its invertible configuration.
I suggest a subcategory. Offensively-focused bots (subsection of tunnel bots), ones who are designed for scoring.
From what I’ve seen so far this year, 910, 2771, and 3302 are great examples (573 is pretty good at it too, but they are a little bit more well-rounded). They tend to be tunnel bots who can herd balls into the goals in the offensive zone, and can zip to the middle to grab a couple and come back.
For hangers in this years game you really have to look at two different things: how they hung, and from where on the field they hung.
I saw robots that could hang from the front of the tower, the back of the tower and even the sides by going on the bumps.
There were robots that could lift themselves up using the vertical bars (1403, 25, etc). Lifting from the top bar (by far the most common design). Or some oddballs like 1100 who extended an arm and grasped the platform and flipped their robot on to the platform & 219 who would inflate an air bag on the top of their robot and did the same thing as 1100.
254 looks and acts like a “tunnel” robot (except they much prefer to go over the bump - it’s faster) until the last 20 seconds. Then a two-jointed hanging arm (for the vertical pole) bursts dramatically out of the bot! It’s very exciting.
And then you have bots like us, who started life as a telescoping top hanger, and have changed to a vertical bar hanger with no moving parts. (except the hinge)
I know that there are tons of different arm designs, but i was referring to the basic shape of the robot. For example, 70, with their mechanism on, would fall under the Deflector Category. Without, it would fall under the Tunnel Box Bot design.
