Where are you going to hang?

Competition Rules/Strategy
1

I came up with the idea for this poll to see where teams are going to hang. I plan on having another poll later on in the season to see if people have changed their minds as they assess the difficulty of climbing.

2

2473 is considering the rungs not the corner

3

We’ll either go all the way up, or just hang at level 1.

4

Same for us…if you can get from 1 to 2 what is stopping you from getting from 2 to 3?

5

Time.

6

Working our way up from 10 point at the start of the season to 20. Doubt we will have the capacity to work up to 30.

7

We plan on climbing the Pyramid. I’d love to stick around and chat about it but I’m not sure how much detail we want to release yet.

8

same. I think the top might get crowded this year!

9

What I’ve been wondering is are most people going up via the inside of the pyramid, or the outside (side or corner)?
If a lot of people intend on going up the inside (which I’d imagine is relatively easier) it’s going to get crowded in there.

10

I think many people are underestimating the difficulty of climbing to the third level at this point in time… it’ll be interesting to see how things turn out!

11

I think many people are underestimating some of the ‘less traditional’ methods of gameplay in regards to pyramid climbing and being competitive.

For example, let’s say a team scores 5 disks in autonomous into the 3 point goal (not that hard, really) for a 30pt contribution. Then they run to the Human player at the start of teleop and load with 4 colored disks. By this point in time, they’re somewhere around 15-20 seconds into the match, and they go to the pyramid and begin their ascent…

Now they’ve got 1.5 minutes or more, to ascend the pyramid. If their climb is successful, they’re good for 30pts… If they score the 4 colored disks once they’re up there - add 20 more.

I can think of quite a few concepts that could be built by 75-80% of teams out there that would could execute this strategy… The real question is, will teams see that 80pts this way can be much easier than 80 points the ‘normal’ way…? Probably not.

12

I’m not saying this can’t be done, but this strategy includes a shooting mechanism, a pick-up from ground mechanism, a high climbing system, and a disk dumping system…it looks like a lot on paper. I don’t doubt it can be done, but feasible for the 75%-80% of teams out there I’m not sure I agree.

13

Without getting too far off the thread topic, here are a few points to think about.

  • You don’t need to “shoot”, as many are shooting, to score in the 3 point goal.

  • Autonomous disks are always in a known orientation and position at the beginning of a match.

  • A high climbing system is nothing more than a hanging mechanism that repeats at least once.

  • Upward motion can be converted into a rotation with a basic understanding of physics.

In any case, since I’m at risk of revealing too much, I’ll stop. If anyone would like to continue, please PM me.

14

so, you’re basically saying your team is going to design a system that can score 80 points (30 Auto, 30 hanging, 20 dumping), all in under a minute? In that case, the rest of us should just stop now, you’ll win champs.

Of course, if you don’t get everything finished, or it doesn’t all work well, you’re hosed for trying to take on too much…

15

No, he’s not saying that. What he’s saying is that a team with limited resources can choose to do only the pyramid + 5 pointers and be a valuable contributor to an alliance.

Let’s say that is literally all that bot does - no auton, no pickup, no teleop scoring, most basic drive train possible. Just a basket for colored disks and a hanging mechanism that has ~90 seconds to climb the pyramid. If that bot works correctly, it is worth 50 points per match.

I can guarantee you that the median team OPR this year will be well below 50. It will be well below 30 for that matter. Any 30 point climber is well above the “Minimum Competitive Concept” for 2013.

16

There’s a difference between what he is saying and what you’re saying. He starts with 5 discs scored in autonomous, you don’t.

I think focusing on climbing a dumping is a perfectly sound strategy, as is focusing on shooting and picking up disks. Doing a robot that thefro526 described in post #11 combines those two into one superbot that can do everything.

17

Jared has the advantage of knowing how I think, so to him, what he said and what I said, are the same thing.

Without spilling the beans on EXACTLY how to do what I described in post 11, imagine the following.

A Kit Bot, perhaps 32"L x 26"W or somewhere about there, with a single jointed arm. This single jointed arm has a sort of ‘bucket’ on the end of it that functions exactly like a spatula would when cooking a omelette or a pancake. Let’s say this bucket can hold some amount of discs in a lower compartment greater than two. This arm with said bucket is powered by a CIM motor or two and is very light weight. If you were to move this arm upwards at the highest speed possible with gearing and assistance designed to not draw more than 40A or so, what does it become?

A catapult.

Now lets go back to the spatula bucket… When you’re cooking an omelette or pancakes, if you hit them just right with the spatula, the omelette or pancake stays still, while the spatula moves under… So if you drive at two disks pre-placed on the field reasonably quickly, the spatula moves right under them.

Now you use you catapult again.

Since you’ve got a spatula bucket on the end of your arm, with more than one compartment, you have a place to load 4 colored disks in as well… From here, it’s just about climbing.

So you add a mechanism that allows you to retract and hold position, since you can already ‘reach’ out and up on the pyramid…

I’m fairly sure that this is no super robot.

Efficient analysis of the real challenge is the key to success with limited resources.

Edit-----

I went back and reread the posts from #12-#16 and wanted to add something:

I am more or less trying to show that an ascent to Zone 3 is not an unreasonable task to expect to be done, especially if you take in to consideration that some teams may decide to spend the better portion of the match doing so. I took this idea one step further in an attempt to validate this school of thought, showing that a robot that had been based around an ascent to zone three can actually be an upper mid tier robot with some creative thinking and a little bit of extra work.

Sometimes we get so caught up in the arms race, the quest to figure out what the Captain of the world champion alliance is going to do, that we forget about what their second pick will do, the 24th team in the draft of that division who is often the robot that can either push an alliance to the top, or drag it to the very bottom. The majority of the discussion I have seen so far focuses on hanging quickly, purely at the end game. Odds are, the captain of the world champion alliance will do this, much in the same way that champions of the past, but it isn’t a requirement for every team to be successful at a reasonably high level.

I just hope some team out there sees what I’ve said and it ‘clicks’. Odds are, if you focus on the Zone 3 ascent, and are $@#$@#$@#$@# good at it, you’ll be ahead of more than half of the pack. If you can do the ascent and a few tricks while on the way up, you’ll definitely be a force wherever you go - might not win all of the matches, but I can assure you that many of those that you win could not have been won without you.

18

To those of you (2 people as of now) who say you will not even attempt climbing. Why not?

19

One of those votes comes from 2056… very interesting. I’m extremely excited to see what they come up with this year.

20

Right now? That darn pyramid goal above the third rung. Your climbing mechanism can only stick up 7"-8" above a rung. Any more than that, and you run into the bottom of the pyramid goal.