For this season’s game gateway, how many objects do you think is nessisary for the robot to hold at one time? Also if you have already built a robot, how many game objects does it hold at once?
That all depends on your strategy. There are enough game objects on the field this year to allow for one at a time pickup and scoring (see Cheesy Poofs last year).
That being said, it’s always a good thing to be able to hold multiple game objects. Our team thinks 2 - 3 is a good number to shoot for, and more than that gives you an even added benefit. So we are prototyping mechanisms that can pickup 1 stack of a barrel / ball combo (our claw), a mechanism that can hold up to 3 objects (a vertical conveyor with a shooter attached), and a mechanism that can hold 4 or 5 objects (an angled conveyor that can lift up).
Remember to keep in mind the skills and programming challenges when you design your mechanisms as well.
Here’s my thought process:
First off, I think a good robot needs to hold at least 2 because of the programming skills and driver skills challenges. I would then inrease the ideal capacity to 5 because of autonomous in a normal match. In the isolation zone, you can start with your 2 preloads. If you score those, there are 5 other objects on the ground that you could grab. If you’re capable of holding 5 at once, you could pick up all of those in autonomous and score them. I believe that a robot that can score all 7 available objects in the isolation zone during autonomous is going to be very successful. Also in the intereaction zone there’s a capability of scoring 6 objects in autonomous without even touching the pyramid. If both robots scored 7 objects and 6 objects, there would only be 9 objects left to score in driver control along with the doubler/negator. Also being able to hold 5 objects could potentially keeping the other alliance’s objects away from them.
Some people may say that holding just one at a time is better because it’s about scoring in the goal first. They might say that wasting time picking up more then one object at once is wasting time and the other alliance will beat you to the goals. But I have two problems with that.
- Being able to hold more then 1 object at once doesn’t mean you have to waste time going around and grabbing multiple objects at once.
- If you do what I just said you could do in autonomous, your alliance could already have the bottom object in 6 out of the 9 goals before driver operator control even starts. The only 3 left would be The two far ones in the isolation zone, and the 11.5" goal oppposite your starting position in the interaction zone.
idk, I guess we’ll wait to see more matches play out and how they work, but I’m predicting that teams who are able to score 6-7 objects in autonomous and hold 5 objects at once are going to be going deep into the World playoffs. In normal regional competition, I think just scoring efficiently will be enough to win as many regional competitions have lower competitive bars.
Sorry for the long post, but I figured ppl would ask the questions I just explained.
I feel that 3 (or more) is a good number. because in the isolation zones and the interaction zone, there are 3 goals. So use your pre-loads, pick up one more on the way, and then you can score in 3 goals without having to lower you lift.
I had a design back towards the beginning that would be able to hold every single element on the field… 
it was scrapped because it doesn’t quiet work with strategy.
The design I have right now can hold 5 or 6 in the scoring part and maybe another 1 or 2 it can push around (between the front wheels).
My current design holds upwards of 12-16… In theory, it’ll work quite nicely… I’ll have some prototypes as soon as I can find some spare time and funding… Not like either of those are important…
I’ll leave it too y’all to figure out how it’ll work…
Our current design holds about 4 of ours for scoring, but I have no idea how many of the other team’s we will be able to fit. Depends on how hard it is to maneuver a robot larger than 18 in one or two dimensions on the field.
that seems quite unnecessary.
True… It could be considered unnecessary…
But then also consider that part of the robot could possibly hold every single piece on the field…
Maybe I need to buy a new computer to finish my CAD models…
Great replies so far, I think that if a team holds 2 or 3 objects really fast then then thats great, but the teams that are going to own in the skills challenges as well as big tournaments and worlds, are going to be the teams that can hold and score 4 or 5 objects, just as fast as the teams that can hold 2 or 3. At the opening tournament a lot of teams that could hold 1 or 2 objects really fast could win the tournament. As the season progresses i think we are going to see teams be able to hold more. 
Well, its a good idea to be innovative, but dude 16 objects!!! If each object is about .5 of a pound (or something like that). Then 16 x .5 = 8 pounds. Dude holding 8 pounds in the air 30inches high is a plan for disaster. But if you do pull it off i think everyone will be pretty amazed, even if it scores slowly. 
For skills challenges, it seems that teams should be able to quickly pick up a ball stacked on top of a barrel, carry an entire 30" goal’s worth of objects, and score them all very quickly. So, for capacity, that would be about 7 or 8 objects or if in a vertical storage chute at least 30" of height. Seems like a lot now, but if anybody makes a skills challenge dedicated robot, it’ll probably do that.
We’ve got one that’s not skills challenge dedicated that is able to do that
This is true… That is quite a lot of weight… Something that has entered calculations…
And hopefully, it will hold all of those, as well as score very fast!
If you can do that, you will probably win an award for it cause that would be sick, even if you didn’t win world’s
Let’s hope you are right… 
And let’s just say that I have some trouble building small robots… I always go for the enormous one that does everything…
A very specific number, driven by both strategy and design.
Hint: Pay attention to diminishing returns.
Can someone with a full game kit and field try this experiment and post a picture if it works:
Nest 5 barrels in a touching pentagram on the floor.
Stack a doubler barrel on top center.
Pick up all 6 barrels as a unit and set it on the 5 poles of a 20" goal,
with the depression of each barrel on top of each pole.
Does it balance?
Does it need another ball stacked on top of the doubler to make it work?
Is there any difference in stability between 20" goal and 30" goal?
I would guess that you will have some sort of vetical lift that expands, possibly like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQkIg_6oslU . You could just make alot of those expanding tops ontop of each other. That’s what my team is looking at doing for skill/programming robot for extra capacity.