Given the ongoing mad rush for vectored intake wheels, this thread seems very relevant. I’ve talked to a lot of local teams that have told me that they plan to use vectored intake wheels to center Power Cells, and intake them one by one into their robot. They plan on keeping Power Cells single file all the way through their robot with a conveyor leading into their shooter. This is how most Ri3D/CC teams have handled indexing Power Cells.
These teams have definitely demonstrated the viability of singulating Power Cells with their intakes, and keeping them single file throughout their robots.
Many teams will choose this method because it seems like an easy solution to this game’s most difficult technical challenge. It helps to ensure a high feed rate, minimizes the risk of jams inside the robot, and has been proven effective in previous games.
However, I would caution teams against blindly following these designs without doing their own testing. There are specific weaknesses of centering intake designs that make them a potentially bad choice depending on your strategic goals.
Some deficiencies that I’ve seen from centering intakes include challenges associated with intaking multiple balls at a time, and intaking effectively at high speeds, or while changing directions. These things generally reduce the overall effectiveness of your intake.
Your intake is the second most important subsystem on your robot. It should be among the most iterated subsystems on your robot. You shouldn’t choose one without seriously considering all of your options. Great intakes make great teams, and if you can’t acquire game pieces quickly and efficiently you’ll be unable to compete in Infinite Recharge at a high level.
TL;DR: Singulating Power Cells with your intake works, but you need to determine if reducing the effectiveness of your intake is worth simplifying other parts of your robot… and the only way to do that is through prototyping.
Completely agree with this. We started with a funneled single intake but since have moved to an intake that starts at 28” and reduces to 18” wide. We should be able to load two PCs at a time with it.
An excellent assessment of the problems. We’ve avoided the whole issue, since our intake is to a box designed for the low goal. The whole front is roller intake (and output) so it doesn’t have these issues. It’s designed to intake and output rapidly and at relatively high robot speeds.
Great advice. There is a reason Everybot’s effective design avoids this challenge - it’s simpler to not have to deal with it.
When we tested with vectored intake wheels we ran into some of these issues for an intake. Ultimately we felt we weren’t going to be able to get the speed and compression for consistent results so we are back to a regular intake roller and singulating inside the robot, where we can control things a little more. Still hoping to use the vectored intake wheels for the sorting internally, but if that doesn’t go well we’ll probably adapt the flying V sorter that open build teams have been showing off.
Another potential downside to singulating with your intake (opposed to some system within the robot) is it is not compatible with loading the three balls from the upper human player station. Given the focus elite teams have given to shooting quickly, I’m not sure many will be ok with loading slowly.
Thanks! The kids have been working really hard on it–mostly COTS parts, but with a CnC hood and flywheel.
Kitbot drive train, atop which we have a robot-width intake, a flywheel hood shooter on a screw drive so it’s capable of shots from the short and medium (and possibly long but I doubt it) protected zones, a climber and a Control Panel manipulator – the climb hook and Control Panel manipulator were not installed when we took this video.
It’s all under 27" tall, and the shooter is positioned in the rear of the robot so that when we have our intake down, a 45" tall robot with a 12" shot-blocker extension has to get within two inches of us to block our shots…which means, while we’re in the trench, that they’re not going to be able to block our shots. [This was a trade-off, as the killeriest of killer autonomous modes would be easier/more doable if the shooter and intake faced opposite directions; but we’re not confident we could pull that off regardless, so decided to focus on what we knew we could do].
I think the only advantage that comes with singulating with the intake is knowing how many balls you are intaking. When our team had this discussion I was pushing for a full width intake and then to singulating within the robot but the issue that kept on coming was, what if you have 4 balls and you intake 2? By leaving no margin of error with a singulated intake you can be sure you only control 5 balls. I still suggest that if you can, singulate within your robot and have a full width intake. You’ll be happy you can intake faster.
A. You can hold more than five as long as it isn’t for more than three seconds, which is a pretty big grace period.
B. You can singulate with a full-width intake, too. We prototyped and then discarded (but have seen other teams keep) a full-width intake that moves all the balls to one side before bringing them over the bumper.
Easily the best robots this year will be determined not by their shooters, but by their intakes. I definitely think we will see a lot of team say they are, “able to do everything” but will not have focused on optimizing each component, leading to sub-optimal performance in every area.
What is the optimal spacing between the bottom of the intake wheels and the ground? Basically how much should the intake be compressing the balls to enter most efficiently?
Not 100% my area of expertise, but I’ll share what I know. I’m sure others will chime in if I’m right (and especially if I’m wrong )
Intake Type
Optimal spacing is very intake/wheel dependent. This year, I’ve heard teams love and hate on vectored intake wheel. I’m guessing the stances is heavily based on whether they found the “sweet spot” of compression for the particular type of wheel they are testing.
Using a vectored intake wheel doing to be harder to find compression than a single bar roller. With vectored intake wheels, you want to determine the right amount of compression to allow the ball to both move into the intake and center. A single bar, with enough torque, can pull just about any compression of ball this year. In testing, we successfully pulled a ball through an 1 1/2 inch gap.
The Magic Number
Typically, one inch of compress on 5- 10 inch balls is a pretty good starting place. Adjust from there.
Surface speed
Compression isn’t the only thing that matters. If your intake surface speed is slower than the speed of your robot, you might find yourself batting balls away from yourself as your try to collect them.
A Question Back
What exactly do you mean by “most efficient”? There is a lot of ways to define that terminology.
If you have any questions, feel free to respond, hope this helped!
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