99999v Early Season Reveal

VEX V5 General Discussion VEX Robot Showcase
1

Welcome to team 99999v’s change up early season robot reveal!

Huge thanks to SCA for helping me figure out some of the details, and in general just being a great place to bounce off ideas and concepts.

Robot Details

This robot was CADded over the course of a week. It was actually the third design iteration this season, but the first to actually get constructed. Using CAD was a huge benefit, because constructing this robot was pretty smooth sailing, I didn’t run into any issues that couldn’t be fixed in a few minutes.

The robot itself is of the hoodbot variety, as most robot are. The motor distribution is as follows:

4m 333 rpm drive on 3.25" wheels
2m intakes, 300 rpm outer rollers, 200 rpm inner rollers
1m 600 rpm indexer, consisting of two 30t rubber band rollers and one 24t rubber band roller
1m 840 rpm launcher, and 600 rpm pooper
passive hoarder

3 balls/second maximum scoring speed, 3 balls/2 seconds is the average.
4 ball capacity hood, 1 ball capacity hoarder

at a glance this looks like a very standard robot, but there are a few major innovations that I believe will become meta. The first is the pooper. This is a pair of independently controlled back rollers, the top one always spins the opposite direction from the launcher, and the bottom one always spins in the opposite direction from the indexer. This means that when I spin my launcher and indexer forwards, the ball passes up like normal. but when I reverse the direction of the launcher, the ball gets sucked out the back of the robot between the two back rollers. I’ve been calling this the pooper because it lets your robot poop balls. I got the idea for this from a robot that was briefly discussed on e-vrc cast, which had a single back roller that was ratcheted from the launcher. So the idea of using back rollers to eject balls is not mine, what I did is add a second roller and do away with any ratchets to maximize efficiency. I thoroughly believe this is way better than a trapdoor because of the speed and simplicity.

The next new feature that this robot has is a hoarder. This is literally just 2 standoffs and a rubber band on the rear of the robot, that catches and holds on to a ball that gets pooped out. Then the next ball to be pooped will push the first out under the rubber band and out of the hoarder. This doesn’t do much, but it does ensure that your opponent has one less ball to work with at all times, and comes at really no sacrifice so might as well have a little hoarder.

The robot folds into sizing by having the hood start folded down on top of the indexer, and the intakes folded back to the sides of the robot.

What I've Learned

From the experiences I’ve had building this robot, I’ve come to a few conclusions about the ideal features of this kind of robot.

I think that flaps are the best type of roller for the intakes, because they have the best pickup range for the balls, have enough compression to descore, and still allow balls to fall down onto them while continuously descoring.

For the indexer, I think rubber band rollers are vastly superior to tank tread with flaps, because rubber band rollers are very good at transferring a lot of speed to an object very smoothly and uniformly, without stressing the motors. Tread with flaps on the other hand just isn’t the best at doing this, and even with fine tuning, tread indexers just seem slower than rubber band ones. Compare YNOT’s cycle speed with 1727g’s if you want to see what I’m talking about.

I can’t really say that rubber band rollers are the best for the launcher however, as I haven’t tested using anything else. But I can say it works well enough, I don’t have any issues with the launch power not being enough once I had a proper hood on.

I’d also like to suggest that a ball capacity of 4 is the perfect amount, because less than 4 and you might find yourself lacking balls when you need them, and more than 4 means you need a longer path for the balls to travel, which means it will take longer for balls to go from the ground to your launcher.

but don’t just take my word on all this, do some tests yourself, everyone has a different robot style, and whatever works best for you is what you should do.

I hope you enjoy the reveal video, and if you have any questions I’d be glad to answer them. I will probably make an explanation video after I complete all the finishing touches to the build. Have a good season!

2

Awesome robot. Rubber band rollers seem to be the way to go. I’m a little mad about that, as robots will now be even more similar to past ball games, but it is what it is. Great build quality keep it up🙂

3

Just a reminder to take into account that my conveyor having almost double the capacity definitely affected cycle times and the speed at which the conveyor could run.

4

oh absolutely. the capacity is a trade off, and imo its not worth the higher cap for sacrificed cycle times. capacity is good in skills though, and can be powerful if you use it well.

5

Cool bot. Traditional treads and flaps aren’t the best intakes this year tho :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

6

there might be a better alternative, but omni wheels aren’t them. I don’t really see another viable alternative, but I’d be happy to see one.

7

I have an idea that’s not yet developed enough to be released, but here’s a hint: Do you ever have problems with chasing a ball because the flaps moving away from the bot keep pushing it?

8

Omni wheels intakes? :face_vomiting:

9

Are you thinking like a big open v-shaped intake on the front? could be interesting to try out

10

No, that wouldn’t be able to this. Besides, it would most likely still have that issue if the flaps are too big.

11

oh yea, duh. I completely forgot about the main part of the game

12

I don’t have much practice driving around chasing balls because I only have 6 tiles atm, but from my tests the flaps generally don’t slap the ball away from the robot, they just kind of flick it in front of the bot so it actually helps. unless the ball is all the way to the very edge of the intake, but that’s just driver practice tbh. I’m sure there’s a way to have perfectly funneling intakes, but I haven’t found it yet.

13

Darn it! Beat me to the pooper design

14

I love the “pooper” design! I think it is more efficient than a traditional trap door design.

15

I see you are a man of culture as well

16

the hoarder sometimes is referred to as the diaper as well.

17

i feel rubber bands are the faster offensive route while conveyor with a huge capacity is more of a defensive bot. in that it will go around dropping on ball in the top of goals following one of the other team’s robots.

18

I can definitely see the meta splitting like that.

one half is low to mid capacity (3-5) ball hoods that specialize in speed, and larger more defensive snails that hold like 7 balls. personally I think that cycle speed is more important, because you want to get the ball from the intakes to the top as fast as possible, and a larger cap will slow that down. and there isn’t much benefit to the large cap, because you want the balls in the goals, not in your robot. if you’re holding on to 7 balls at once, you’re going to be wasting time you could be spending descoring and cycling, meanwhile your partner will be short on balls because you have them all and your opponents will have time to pull ahead.

I think the gameplay will be very similar to turning point in that the strat will be to pull ahead at the start, then stay ahead the rest of the match.
That means win auton, get a bunch of owned goals at the start, and just keep one step ahead of your opponent in terms of cycling. I just feel that a nimbler smaller capacity hood is better at this than a slower 7 ball snail.

19

I don’t think there is any reason to use tread and flaps for the indexer tbh, even with a big capacity bot, rubber band rollers will simply be more efficient.

20

Not necessarily true, the higher capacity robot won’t have to go back to field/intake balls after scoring and cycling balls in a goal. That could be more effcient depending on the placement of the balls on the field. Because of this, the success of each robot is highly dependent on strategy.