Hey guys, turning point was so fun but now it is time to start thinkjng about Tower Takeover. This discussion was created for brainstorming and if you do not want to share your ideas, that is totally fine. Jsut thought it would be fun to bounce ideas off each other.
I thinks you need omni wheels, a fast lift, and an internal stacker to be successful.
I’m thinking an H-drive, with a cascade lift, and on the end of the lift there would be little ramps to gather and align cube, then a claw to pick up cubes. The wall the cascade makes would be a great aligner for towers, and the claw would be able to remove cubes from towers.
Our team made a 4 stage cascade lift this season to stack the caps. It was kind of slow but it worked out pretty well. I think that is a good idea but a 4 or 6 double reverse bar would be quicker and a little bit easier to stack the blocks.
Cascade lifts are slow and fairly difficult to build, but very space efficient. They can also go very tall and and can be adapted for this game easily. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a bunch of cascade lifts with internal stacking and depositing. H-drives aren’t bad but I think motor distribution for that system would by wonky. 5 motor drive for v5 probably isn’t viable but I could be wrong. I think mecanum wheels would trump an h-drive only because of motor distribution.
I have an idea for a DR4B but it would only be able to hold 4 cubes. It would be very fast. Although I’m not willing to share specifics, I think that being able to hold multiple cubes at once, being able to control the position of the cubes and being able to deposit them consistently is key.
Most people are overlooking the towers, hoarding cubes isn’t what will win in this game. Multiplying the value of the cubes in your stack is what will. Just the nature of the cubes (they are slippery and not easy to stack) shows that you shouldn’t build too high of stacks. I think stacks shouldn’t exceed a certain height because you risk the chance of tipping. Using towers to multiply the value of the stack will give you a better yield for your score.
I am also thinking about motor distribution since we can only use 8 motora with V5. 4 motors for the drive, 2 for the lift, 1 for the claw, and one for getting the stack from the bot into the safe zone.
I think slippery tippy stacks are just going to be part of the challenge. Top tier robots are going to make some serious stack, it just wont be easy. Even if all 7 towers are scored, that still leaves 59 cubes on the field.
Here’s a scenarios:
Edit - my math was wrong.
Well, I was thinking a 3 motor drive, one for the middle wheel, 2 for each side. Just chain it together.
What about a X drive, those are very fast.
I also just thought about the Rocky Mountain Pirats “Stack-a-mole” from highrise. It’s team 314 and ya’ll should check it out. I haven’t checked for any specific videos of it, but their hungry hippo reveal for bankshot, 0:21 seconds shows a small clip of the robot.
I mean it’s not a horrible idea. I think it would be worth testing, but just know that you won’t be able to move nearly as fast as 4 motor or even 6 motor drives. If you build as light as possible then maybe. I think you would need at least a high speed v5 motor for this to work. That means your wheels would be traveling at 200 rpm at best, but added weight and friction will likely reduce that number significantly. I estimate at least a 50 rpm drop because lifts are heavy and all the work done by friction will be distributed to only 2 motors as opposed to 4. If you do the math out on paper and translate that linearly, the max speed of your robot will probably much slower than other robots. Defense isn’t as necessary in this game so you won’t need as much torque.
We’ll have to see, luckily the game isn’t a race track.
Just imagine a skyrise robot and an in the zone robot mashed into one… that’s probably going to be the meta tbh
It all comes down to your strategy and driver. Do you value maneuverability or speed? And which are you willing to trade off.
We are using mechanum wheel 4 motor drive. With a dr4b an an intake similar to frc power up ones.
Thats a good idea for an intake.
I was thinking a claw that when it was closed it would be square but have little standoffs that would fit into the the grooves on the cubes.
Here’s the video for anyone else looking. I wish there was more.
Stack-A-Mole at 0:21 seconds
Found more
That is a good idea but how would you make it work with only 8 motors?
Off the cuff, with 5 motors I think you could do:
2 Drive
1 intake (chain the sides together)
1 to lift scissors
1 to open door
That leaves 3 to buff up which ever system seems most worthwhile.