You wouldn’t have to bounce it over the bridge. If you enter it into the field at a slight angle, you would only have to make it over the 6 inch barrier.
Very true, and completely understandable. I may have initially underestimated the size of the key, but there appear to be a few safe spots for opposing robots to starve balls. For the B robot, as long as the balls get to the offensive zone, B is doing his job. As stated before, shooting into the hoop would be a 2-in-1 deal.
A defensive bot will be effective this year no matter if another bot is taller. If a bot is in the key, I don’t know how many teams would confidently put a shooting mechanism on an arm. This means that if the ball has to be lower than 60 inches, it will not matter, and of they try to put it into the basket, a defensive bot should be able to push the opponent away.
For a general scoring strategy, I was thinking of using a similar strategy to ours last year, using an encoder to put our shooter into a position so if the strength is set to a certain limit, it would hit the same spot and the have the same outcome each time. Doing this right at the hoops, will almost always give the desired results.
A reliable shooter in the key is going to be the clutch. If you could put a retriever in the lane to get balls and launch them into some sort of hopper on the shooterbot you could stay in the “no-touch” zone most of the match.
Something I see is at least one main shooter robot that can accurately fire into the top goal by sitting in the key area, one robot feeding it, and another either defending or staring the other team.
In the spirit of FIRST, I see a great strategy in cooperating with the opposing alliance to balance on the middle bridge. This “coopertition” not only gives you points to qualify, but is also a major component of Gracious Professionalism.
Besides the “coopertition” strategy, alliances going for their own bridges is a major point-scorer: 10 points for 1 robot balancing on the bridge; 20 points for 2 robots balancing on the bridge; and 40 points for 3 robots balancing on the bridge during elimination matches only. If alliances get any robots on their bridge, it will be a major advantage.
Another strategy for “Rebound Rumble” is scoring in hybrid (autonomous). If an alliance scores all of the balls they receive in hybrid (6 balls), a maximum of 36 points can be racked up. This puts said alliance in a winning position that would be very hard to catch up to.
Saying all of this, I believe the best strategy would be to score as many high pointers during hybrid, and then during the last 30 seconds of the match have two robots of the same alliance balance on their bridge while the other robot balances with an opposing team’s robot on the “coopertition” bridge. Excluding teleoperated ball scoring, that is a total of 56 points!
I hope team benefit from these strategies.
-Camron Razdar (FIRST Team 27, Team RUSH)
Message 13 provides a link to the episodes of the field tour, but it starts at episode 2. I’ve looked for episode 1 with no luck (too much search noise on utube). Is the first one worth watching? (the others were.) Where is the first one?
Steve K of 1288
I was thinking that if you had a robot that could score in the lower or middle hoops 90% to 100% of the time it could stay in position right up against the hoop, then we could have another robot picking up balls scored from the feeder and shooting them right at the collection system. If they are aimed well and they can be moved before there are 3 in possession of a robot, then we could really rack up a lot of points.
I saw a note there that said they decided not to publish the first episode, so it starts with episode 2.
Does anyone know what the first was supposed to be about, and why they decided to suddenly not release it? In the series, they say it has 6 parts, while now it only has 5. ::rtm::
Just go to episode 2 and read the note.
There is no Episode 1. While we love this whole series, we decided not to publish Episode 1 because the animated character was exasperating and seemed like a merchandising opportunity.
Based on what I’ve seen from the rules, I think a defensive strategy is not a good idea:
-
G14
: “Strategies that use Basketballs to either aid or inhibit balancing of any Bridge are not allowed.” --There goes one defensive strategy. -
G20
: “Robots in contact with the carpet on their Alliance Station end of the Court are limited to 60 in tall. Otherwise, Robots are limited to 84 in tall.” --Your Alliance Station is where your opponents score this year; a 60-inch tall robot leaves the second and third rows open for scoring. Clearly, blocking is being discouraged. -
G23
: “Robots on the same Alliance may not work together to blockade the Court in an attempt to stop the flow of the Match. This rule has no effect on individual Robot-to-Robot defense.” G24: “Intentionally falling down or tipping over to block the Court is not allowed.” G25: “Robots may not contact or otherwise interfere with the opposing Alliance Bridge. . . . If the act of Balancing is interfered with, also a Red Card and the Bridge will be counted as Balanced.” --More strategies for defense downplayed. -
G28
: “Robots may not touch an opponent Robot in contact with its Key, Alley, or Bridge.” --According to the Blue Box, “This rule applied at all times, no matter who initiates the contact, see [G44].” In other words, you can take advantage of an annoying robot in your Key, Alley, or Bridge (just don’t violate [G45]), so it’s best to stay away from those areas.
Extra balls not placed on robots will be put on the co-op bridge. An autonomous program could suck those balls up after firing the two balls already on. This will be the equivalent of the double hang this year for autonomous.
Two balls will be placed on the alliance bridges. A team with a “tipper” could gain a speed advantage by placing one ball from that robot on the co-op bridge, grabbing the balls from the alliance bridge, and then another robot (or the same, but only after firing the one ball) could take the center ball.
I’m meandering a bit, but a device to tip the balances will be useful on any team’s robot and should be incredibly easy to implement.
so is their a 84" height limit of the robot on its scoring side? And where does it say that a robot can’t touch the basketball hoops while scoring?
It doesn’t specifically say you can’t touch the hoops, but if you damage them, it will be a penalty under the safety rules, and yes, the most is 84" on the scoring half.
Also, what would be good for scoring is to not be in the key unless you have an extremely reliable shooter. A bot with 6 or 8 wheel tank drive, or even 4 wheel drive will be hard to move from the side if it has a low center of gravity, and will not move and make it easy to score quick baskets close to the hoops.
Actually, there’s a universal 84’ limit, and a 60’ limit if you’re on your opponents’ side of the Court. Also, you must begin at under 60’.::rtm::
someone on my team today said that we should calculate the Center of Mass for each robot and calculate the I value so we will be able to balance the bots in the end game efficiently!
It was shot down in our meeting, so here is my idea:
Make a robot with a ramp allowing another robot to drive on top of you, and you then solve the problem of how to get 3 robots on the bridge. Also, you can use it with your opponent’s robot so you and your opponent can easily balance on the Coop bridge together as one entity rather than two.
I see that as the “Work 100% of the time defensive robot that does not ever play offense.”
In other words, for a defensive robot would just dominate with that!
The bottom half of the robot could still pass around balls to your team mates on the other side of the field.
But since the rest of the team wanted a very offensive robot, I stood down and will love to see any other team take that on.