For any teams which have competed in week 1 events, how did you decide the locations to set up your alliance’s ropes and climb? It seems like many alliances are electing to have every team climb at the location directly in front of them. Did any teams prefer to climb from a different position? If so, why?
The one in front of the driver station we were at, easier to line up that way
The hardest climbing position for some teams was the middle since you had to deal with the barriers and the lift.
Yup, my observation is that station 2 always used the rope right in front of them and that the side driver’s stations always used the rope on their side of the airship.
I suppose that if the team at station 2 didn’t intend to climb you might see one of the end teams use that rope, but if all three teams intend to climb the only way all three drivers can see their robot and rope directly is if 2 uses the one in the middle and 1 and 3 use the ropes on their side of the airship.
During the playoffs the alliance had our team climb from the middle even though we were in position 3. I think this was done because of the barriers and the way the other two teams wanted to approach the rope.
This is true. The peg got in the way the first time we tried to climb, and it ended up impaling our sponser board and shattering a piece of plexi glass that we had placed on the back. But after a few matches we figured out if you drop the rope and lift up the peg then it’s a whole lot easier.
It is also a lot easier to climb in front of the station in which you’re assigned.
During quals at Tippecanoe it seemed that all of the more consistent climbers (234, 1741, 1018) used the side ropes.
The side ropes were easier to line up with and not have anything get in the way. With that said, the easiest rope was the one in front of you.
I would suggest that you practice on all of them
The middle one presents problems sometimes to teams that pick the rope off of the floor because the rope can get caught on the small barriers on either side of the peg. You can still use it … but we had to push the rope free of the barriers and then start the climb.
As an aside, last week we had one of the plates in the Red position fall down as we started to climb… it had become unfastened at the point of the small rubber fasteners. They had put it back together just before our match as it had malfunctioned the previous match too… the light immediately went on… as we climbed the plate pushed against our rope and the bottom edge of the acrylic (which is just a machined plate with no rounding) cut through our rope and dropped us… We are using 1200 lb mule tape to climb… (We later learned that another team using paracord had their rope cut on the same Davit.)
In the end, EVEN though the plate had come off one of the rubber pegs, and was hanging down enough to trigger the light, they determined that the field was still in spec and they disallowed our climb.
Initially they gave it to us… and then took it away 2 matches later.
We argued but to no avail… we discussed this with the LRI and he determined that the plate was too sharp at the bottom… and I guess he is making a report… luckily we didn’t incur any real permanent damage.
Did not mind to Bovine Intervention. It was sad. We had 0000000000 climbs. On one match the second loop around are fork burned out the CIM motor. We got 4 inches off the ground. We can see good with are cameras. Are next event will be different if my input is done. Thank you. God Bless
We always climbed on the sides as it was easier for me as a driver to see the rope and for the robot to grab the rope.
Ran some statistics from TBA data as of 2017/03/08.
Near: 1592
Middle: 1626
Far: 1630
Where “Near” is defined to be the side of the scoring table. However, I believe due to field setup differences we don’t know whether the boiler is “Near” or “Far.”
Regardless, it doesn’t like there’s a preferred position to climb that’s statistically significant.
Edit: I guess the OP was referring to the position of the driver station. Unfortunately, there’s not enough information to track that.
Middle is definitely hardest if your climber requires that you drive “through” your rope. After seven straight elimination matches climbing in the middle (and one unsuccessful middle climb) I can safely say that the easiest way to climb middle is to drive straight into the wall like you’re placing a gear. And then bend the spring out of the way on your way up. (A little extra deformation isn’t going to change anything about those springs)
Assuming your rope/climber is configured properly to climb this way. If they’re not… have fun I guess.
Could you not get the pilot to pull the carriage up and out of the way?
They definitely could have. I didn’t have them do it because it wasn’t necessary for our bot to climb. But if the lift would get in your way, pulling it up and out of the way is definitely a viable option.
To me, the “default” for all strategy sessions was to put teams on the rope right in front of their driver station, and then adjust if there was a team specific need.
The majority of conflicts that arose were teams that were less effective on the rope in the middle. If your mechanism is difficult to align, it was the hardest to see of the 3 of them. 228 eventually switched to only doing the outer ropes for Saturday. By Hartford we should be able to switch back.
With our teams mechanism (roller with spikes that snare a noose), the side ropes are the easiest, as there is the most space to drive around and grab the rope - the middle station has the peg and those annoying little barriers that make driving more of a challenge. However, we can do all three relatively quickly, the outside ones are just simpler.
Middle was definitely the most difficult for us due to the design of our climbing mechanism. I preferred the one directly in front of the driver’s station if we were team 1 or 3, and then either side with no significant preference if we were team 2. It definitely wasn’t impossible to use the middle rope, however using a side rope practically cut our line-up time in half. If possible we switched with a team that was comfortable in the middle during quals, since we had a near 100% rate (when our drivebase was working fine… glad that’s fixed) on side ropes but only like 80% on middle ropes.
We prefer to climb anywhere but center, the peg in the center gets in the way unless the pilot pulls it up as we go to climb.