Support robots?

Competition Rules/Strategy
1

I’ve been seeing a lot of discussion on the topic of the positive feedback loop by making opposing human players dump balls out of the corral onto the field by rule 8.1.1H10, so what if a bot shoots balls to teammates that are firing on the power ports? That would dramatically lower the cycle time, and even if some balls are taken by the opposing team, that same bot can shoot more back to the teammates that are scoring, until the racks in the loading bay run out.

2

There were teams in 2012 that used a similar strategy. But:

  • You can’t shoot from one corral to the other. So your shots will have to stop before the initiation line, and the scoring robot will have to go get them
  • You now have only one robot scoring instead of two
  • It will take time for the scoring robot to intake the ball you send them. Probably a significant fraction of the time it would take them to cross the field themselves
3

But once they cross the field to get to the intake, they still have to intake. So that all washes out and you get the saving of distance traveled 2 ways.

The question then is how accurately can the support robot deliver the ball to the shooter

Again if your are out of balls, then you are moving to pick up balls. Are you moving farther to pickup random balls than delivered balls?

If your two shooters are 10+ feet out and the balls are stopping really close to them, then their travel time is effectively zero’d.
With to well separated shooters, the opponents must either sacrifice two bot to defense or leave one open to shoot. You feed the one that’s open.

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4

I think an effective “load specialist” robot will fire balls accurately into the trench. Shooters can line up fairly easily on the other side of the control panel to get the “pass”. Even if they are not there and have moved off to line up their shots, the balls will stop inside the trench and be protected for pickup later.

3 Likes
5

That seems to be a pretty common idea, but some people have been concerned with the disruption of match flow rule, so you can’t hoard the balls in the trench. I guess that’ll sort of depend on the ruling of the refs, so if you’re quick enough you can avoid getting the penalty.

6

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