My team is a first year so we’re just sticking with a basic autonomous for our robot; picking up the mogo, placing a single cone on top, then scoring in the 10 pt zone (at least). So just out of curiosity, what have you guys been programming for your autons and how successful have they been?
Any interesting stories about autons you’ve seen gets bonus points!
One time I saw a teams autonomous malfunction and instead of picking up a mobile goal and putting it in the 10 point zone they picked up a mobile goal and put it on top of their alliance member that had remained stationary during autonomous.
At my last competition, the best auton was 109Y I believe, which could do a preload on a mogo in the 20 pretty consistently
@Easton
I think you might be talking about us (109z). Unfortunately, 109y did not have enough time to make an autonomous.
It was the one that had a 10 motor drive and couldn’t tack cones other than the preload right? If so then I am referring to 109Z. We were hoping to alliance with you in the Elims, but you got picked first.
Actually
109A was the 8 motor 2:1 base who could not do cones had a 20 pt auton
109Y was the 6 motor torque base who could only score Mogos in the 10 point consistently no auton
109X(i think) was the only team with a dr4b but was not good at cones or Mogos no auton
109Z was the one with the good auton and had the weird 1x claw for the pre-load during auton
Back to the main topic, what auton you are going for right now does work pretty well. There are some teams who can do 3 cones on a mogo in the 20 point during auton. Others focus on the stationary goal.
The best approach is to build up a library of autonomous routines. For our first tournament, the team only had “one lousy 2-point stationary goal auton” and felt bad for that. But since it was very simple and reliable, and it was early in the season, that gave them 17pt headstart on every match.
They have since built up their library (10pt, 20pt, both sides) and pick the best routine for every match depending on the alliance’s auton and what the opponent plans to do.
As the game is getting more aggresive (opponents running fast blocking auton on both sides was a commonplace), that simple and reliable 2-point still comes handy.
Edit: grammar…
Speaking of defending autons, I’ve seen some pretty good defensive strategies out there. One of the most interesting one includes the time that a robot who was chosen to be on a top alliance because of their looks wasn’t working so their alliance captain reprogrammed their code right before a match to “accidentally” skit out and run right into the best robot on the field. Suffice to say their alliance won the tournament.
I’m woking on something pretty special… but all I have now is the preload on the mogo, and put it in the 20.
@Korbin We wrote an auton that went all the way to the opponents side, then flipped itself over on the stationary post (this was a robot we built at the day of the competition) and trap the two opponents robots in their zones (completely unintentionally).
Sounds like something I would do…or just would’ve loved to watch lol
@Korbin It worked beautifully some rounds…except for when the other alliance got out or when our alliance partner couldn’t do anything either.
Adding to my experiences, at the last match I attended, some team managed to program their small robot to pick up a mogo, take it past the 20 pt, and actually end up dropping it outside the arena. Not sure if it were an accident or not since I was only able to witness the act once, but I can for sure say that it was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.
22 pt auton*
We had a 1 motor cone dropping thing just for lolz too xD
@spartanshl
It barely worked tho. Lol
Really funny story, at our last tournament, we were on the red alliance in Finals. Our opponent had a 20-point mobile goal autonomous, so we decided to run our ramming autonomous to prevent that (preventing their autonomous would be more valuable than running ours). We waited for the robot we wanted to counter to place, and then placed across from them. They noticed we were angled to disrupt them, so they decided to change the angle of their robot to prevent a collision. The referees said that since we were red, if they changed their orientation, we would be allowed to adjust ours after theirs (this is a rule). So we turned to set up for our stationary goal autonomous, if their autonomous was not going to work, anyway. So they turned back. We turned to ram. They turned back away. We turned back to do the stationary goal autonomous. Cue audience laughter. Ultimately, they should have just ran their 20-point auton, so that way we would have had to waste our auton, too, instead of being able to score on the stationary goal, but it wouldn’t have affected the outcome of the match. Funny moment, and a huge benefit of being able to select routines on the fly with an LCD screen!
Lol, what did they end up choosing for their autonomous?
They just had the same autonomous, but angled differently to be nonfunctional but prevent a collision. I guess they figured our robot was more robust than theirs or something. Also, we have a lot of kinetic energy coming at anyone, so there’s that, too. It’s pretty scary, I’d imagine.
Wow, trash talking are we?
lol