Reflections on the 2009 World Championships

[721tba]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

The fact that you were overlooked in alliance selections is just a sign of how deep the talent pool was, and how hard it was to scout so many robots playing so few matches. Any alliance would have benefited having you as their partner. The good thing is that I think next year's competition is right up Gladstone's alley -- I think it might require a fiendishly complex robot that can do 20 things at once.

Our teams were working on programming and mechanical issues for weeks on end, literally with no help - leading to no extra time to create brochures, scouting programs, T-shirts, urinal posters.... Our lack of engineers is both an amazing accomplishment on our part, but at the same time a severe disadvantage. So much more could have been done throughout the year to get our robots to advance further.

As to why our teams may have been "overlooked", Gladstone's 16 student + 4 team + 1 teacher + 1 supervisor contingent at worlds was not nearly sufficient enough to
a) scout
b) "advertise"
c) not be chaotic

For those of us with hardly any scouts, assuming you get unique partners and opponents for each of the 6 matches you play, you see 18 teams in performance and get to talk with 6 of them. That's a mere 14 % of the division's talent pool you get to see in competition.

This year, most of our 3-man team (of which i'd like to think of myself as the most motivated ) were building and designing non-stop. In the lulls between ideas I had to learn to program more than limit switches and autonomous modes with waits, and another member got to my level in a matter of days. Considering the amount of work we put into our robots, obviously we were disappointed when what we considered to be a highly competitive robot (tied for fifth in robot skills =/) was not chosen for an alliance in eliminations. The upcoming year will be different for our school. We plan to have a more structured robotics program and may even have to adopt the "elite team" strategy to make all the effort worthwhile.

But, all the talk about last year's game has past and we now consider our robot to be a useless hunk of parts.. A lot can change after some orange and green balls are dumped in enclosure somewhere in Texas.. Different ball sizes are more than a little bit of a pain - 3 straight days of thinking and no leads..

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by 721tba

all the talk about last year's game has past and we now consider our robot to be a useless hunk of parts.

Old competition robots are like (most) old race cars -- kind of sad. Shortly we are going to have to have the conversation about which one gets saved for public demos. My guess is that we are going to have to pick a team number from a hat to settle it. Once the teams start needing stuff for their Clean Sweep bots, then THEY will start taking their own robots apart.

[Allan K.]

Although off topic... it seems that tank treads with zip ties might do the trick in handling both types of common balls (small + medium), although I'm not sure about that being able to handle the large one.

Now this is only one idea though... There are probably others that are bound to work... I have that feeling that I'm going to be looking at some Bridge Battle videos soon... (hint)

- Allan Kuan

[Kendalls]

Originally Posted by Allan K.

Although off topic... it seems that tank treads with zip ties might do the trick in handling both types of common balls (small + medium), although I'm not sure about that being able to handle the large one.

Now this is only one idea though... There are probably others that are bound to work... I have that feeling that I'm going to be looking at some Bridge Battle videos soon... (hint)

I don't think that 4 inch zip ties will have enough strength to grab the footballs without giving it a nice massage and I had problems with 11 inch zip ties hitting parts of the robot and causing a tremendous amount of resistance.

So I was thinking of two sets of advanced tank tread, one on top of the other, with the top one being the size for a football and the bottom one being the size for a ball, plus some zip ties for good measure and nostalgia.

[Allan K.]

Well... the size of the two common balls differ by an inch or so... which is somewhat considerable... there are a number of things that can adjust to that if you want a single conveyor belt.

From your post you seem to be saying that you want two conveyor belts? It'd work, but I think having the smallest first and then the largest at the back would help prevent "jamming" problems where the medium sized ball enters the small ball belt.

I did have that same problem of zip ties being nice resistors and slowing things down (i think they overheated motors a few times too).

Anyway, this was supposed to be a reflection thread... my bad for changing the topic = \ Perhaps we'll discuss this elsewhere? =P

- Allan Kuan

[ManicMechanic]

Originally Posted by 721tba

But, all the talk about last year's game has past and we now consider our robot to be a useless hunk of parts.

Not useless at all!! There's a lot of good learning to be had in your robot.

One thing that we've found that makes disassembling the robot less sad is deconstructing it one piece at a time, taking photos at each step of the way. When you reverse the sequence, you have a step-by-step construction guide in the format of these projects that (in theory) makes it possible to put the robot back together at any time. When the new season begins our tasks are:

Week 1: Veterans' job -- deconstruct & document the robot
Week 2: Rookies' job -- reconstruct last year's robot

That way, the rookies stand on the shoulders of the veterans, and each year, the team gets better.

[FriendlyGiant]

Okay ...
more divisions were NEEDED...
and radio frequencies are not an issue...
two of the divisions would simply use the same field.

This would have made a big difference...

More thoughts later...

I have to go to an Earthquake...

drill that is...