You will be surprised when you see our new robots at prembroke. we made a few changes…haha. And thanks for the offer. Same goes to you guys, if you need anything just give us a call.
There seems to be a real difference of opinion about side loaders versus top loaders. I wonder if we are asking the right question?
Most well built side rollers don’t have this issue. In fact i personally believe top rollers have more issues with collecting barrels when they are in their starting position. But again wither the design is a top or side roller, its all about how it is built and designed, that’s going to make it be the best. 
well…
theoretically if both these types of robots are at their “peak efficiency” (design, tweak, driver skill, programming, ect) they should be pretty much equally matched…
thats where strategy plays a big role
very true, although some may argue that it is more difficult to get one type at its “peak efficiency” than the other.
No, I’m pretty sure there are meaningful inherent design differences.
For example, the top roller is inherently better with balls because the force of the roller is always directed straight inwards; a side roller pushes balls sideways or outwards unless you get the balls in the perfect place. This means that, when picking up balls, it’s easier to drive a top roller because you can run the intake the whole time.
For other example, the side roller is inherently better at starting-orientation barrels because the top roller tries to rotate them when it brings them in (since it almost invariably hits the top of the barrel before getting around the back). A side roller hits the barrel directly on the side.
There are a bunch of other pros and cons to consider, too: sideways barrels, removing objects from goals, scoring speed…
by worlds (“peak efficiency” time) i bet the drivers and programmers will compensate enough that it will barley make a difference at all
again, by worlds, i bet the top roller design teams will tweak it enough so that it will not have any difference at the pickup speed
im just saying that the list of problems/differences we see today between the two designs will become smaller and smaller until they are pretty much equal in efficiency
im guessing the main factor between robots (not design) will be drive speed, arm speed, programming aid (with will all be “standardized” by worlds)
I would flatly disagree with a lot of the so called “disadvantages” of each intake type that are being said in this thread. As someone who has built both types of intakes to at least near “peak efficiency”, I do not believe these intakes have a lot of the disadvantages that are being attributed to them. Seems a lot of this is actually caused by people observing intakes that haven’t been made to their full potential ( no offence meant). All orientations of balls and barrels can be treated very efficiently by both types of intakes if they are built properly, though this requires much more tweaking using the side intakes, and a sidewards barrel, than with the top intakes, and a standing barrel (in my experience anyway).
Right, but there are differences in the amount of time that you have to put in to get them to the hypothetical “peak efficiency” where everything performs the same. If you’re confident that you can perfect one or the other, you still need to base a decision on which one is going to take you less time to get right.
Personally, I believe the chance of both having an identical “peak efficiency” is very slim. And in reality, in the time there is until worlds, the amount of time it takes for each to be built to peak efficiency is almost irellevant. The overall more efficient intake is better, and I believe that there IS an overall more efficient intake.
I wouldn’t expect anything less from a world class team like your own but we made some small changes of our own especially in autonomous we will have an actual autonomous not me turning it every match. and strategically we made a lot of changes due to the periods at 1:00 to 1:30 in the match where we just sit and wait for the doubler we found WAY better ways to pass the time
Nice! Im looking forward to seeing your new strategies. We just started our new robot yesterday, so hopefully we will finish in time!
well good luck with the build but if you don’t quite finish in time ill gladly help you guys out at the competition, last competition we had a lot of down time anyways (scouting was a lot quicker than what were used to at QCC because your in one big open area instead of the classrooms)
You are too kind. We will most likely be done. And you will find that at the pembroke competition scouting will be just as easy because it is in a big gym.
we are just trying to make new friends and yeah we figured, and honestly i didnt know that most competitions were in gyms until last year i always only went to qcc as you can see this year we are a lot better than previous years (a big thanks to our sponsors) and when were good Mr. Meagher likes to show us off so were probably going to go to 7 or 8 competitions vs the normal 4
When is the pembroke competition? Any chance of seeing video from it?
its on December 3rd and my team might post videos but if not you will probably be able to find them posted here http://www.youtube.com/user/Scidkelly the past two New Hampshire competitions finals are posted
the final matches will most likely be posted on youtube by the the prembroke mentor (Scidkelly) or they will be on www.simplerobotics.org
I just noticed your reply. Sorry about that. Same with us. We would usually stop vex till April but we are no longer doing Frc. So we are going to like 7 also. We arnt taking all 10 vex teams to all of them tho just 3 or 4. So we will probably be seeing you guys alot this year. Are you guys going to be attending worlds?
well my school only currently has 2 teams so you might see our second team out there soon (there shooting for January 7th at QCC) since my team is qualified we will be going to worlds if we can raise the money (we went the last two years) but it was a big challenge last year and its probably going to be quite a challenge this year as well. weather we can go or not we still would like to win some more regionals.