Since we’re already qualified for States, we decided for the Cranbrook tournament this past Saturday that it would be fun to experiment with a wallbot. Since it was purely experimental, we did not disassemble our primary robot, and instead built the wallbot entirely out of spare parts, resulting in some “creative” build solutions.
The robot weighed 27lb and had an 8 motor, 4-wheel tank drive, 1:1 with the high torque gearing. It also had a brake/release puller powered by 2 269s with a 7:1 gear ratio, driving a short arm into the ground and pulling the release pin out of the walls. 80+ rubber bands deployed the walls once the release pin was pulled.
Strategically the robot was far from perfect. It was designed to entrap both opponents in the corner of the field and prevent them from having cubes. It did this very well, but it still allowed teams to build a skyrise and score any cubes that were still in their corner. If this was our primary robot, it maybe could’ve been made more effective and possibly able to help our ally score, so we’re revealing it in case anyone wants to pick up and try the idea. Personally, though, I don’t think wallbots carry too much promise in this game.
It was a lever, about 10 holes long (5"). There was a mesh foot on the end, and a hard stop that prevented it from being pushed back (forward was another story but the robots were always pushing us from the front).
The brake was so effective that in practice, we could deploy the wall and turn the robot off, and the other robots were still unable to escape.
I would think that there is still potential for wallbot in this year game.
But the wallbot must be able to cross over to the other side of the pile of cubes really fast and then deploy.
This will starve the opponents of most of the cubes.
During the elimination, assuming the alliance already have 2 real solid efficiency robots (that can build skyrise and score cubes effectively), I think it is a plus to have a wallbot as a 2nd pick.
This was one of their problems at the tournament. It was picked as a first pick rather than the second round of picks. And the third on the alliance wasn’t as effective as the first round picks on the other alliances.
Yeah, most Michigan teams had never seen a wallbot before and didn’t understand leaving it until 2nd picking. If I were picking at Worlds though, I would want to see proof of the wallbot’s effectiveness before picking it.
The thing about wallbot strategy in skyrise is that the opponents still have their skyrise and around 5 cubes in their corner. The wallbot needs a partner that can build a full skyrise, score 8 cubes on that skyrise, and either score on posts or win autonomous all by itself in the 2 minute match in order to press any real advantage.
Yeah, defense doesn’t seem very feasible this year. I’m convinced this idea would work, assuming it’s legal. Unfortunately even if it is legal, I don’t have the parts to build it.
EDIT: and it’s illegal. Yeah, defense this year is made very difficult by SG9.
What, like this robot? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-FFI39fNjY
We would need to take our pneumatics off of our primary robot for that. Unfortunately we don’t see enough promise in the strategy to go that far. Although it would be a fun post-season project…
If anyone wants to pick up and expand (get it?) on this strategy feel free to use this for inspiration. We’ll probably be keeping it around as a demo bot so if you want more pictures or advice just let us know.
True… but by the time we are talking about eliminations during the World, I am pretty sure all the seeded teams will be about to handle the entire skyrise + 8 cubes on their own.
So that’s when having a wallbot as 2nd pick might be useful.
But if the wallbot can’t score anything during the autonomous, then it might not be worthwhile selecting it… considering the effect of the autonomous bonus is going to be huge this year.
An effective wallbot in my area is done by 127C, ad they have a fast little sucker that gets between you and the post, so unless your arm swings way out to score, then you’re gonna be in trouble, because its an 8 motor drive i think.
Having seen it in action, but not wanting to give too much away, as far as scoring it’s quite an effective pushbot and can score on the floor goal quite well, but nothing more.
The problem it’s been running into, which was one of the problems 127C ran into the previous two years back when I was still on the team (127C has a proud tradition of building wallbots instead of, you know, actually playing the game), is that there aren’t enough effective scoring robots in Arizona for a D bot to work effectively. There’s a very high risk the D bot will be the first pick of a low seeded team that isn’t effective enough to beat an alliance on its own, even if the D bot is very successful in handicapping them.
Still, looking forward to watching them at State, it should be interesting to see. They certainly make matches more interesting.
Nice! Not to make excuses, but as you can probably tell we were stalled the half the time (we had just run programming skills twice), and the whole thing was built out of our random spare parts.
What’s your programming skills? :rolleyes:
Regardless I look forward to seeing what you guys have when you choose to unveil it. It sounds pretty impressive.
Now I realize what a wallbot is. I thought it was stationary robot that mounted to the field wall and was just a large robotic arm. smh.
Pretty genius, although legally questionable. . I remember when I was younger my dad and I got got kicked out a Lego “pinewood derby” at Legoland for building a car that blocked cars in the other 5 lanes
A wallbot in general isn’t legally questionable in any way. Assuming you drive it right, you won’t pin or trap, and there aren’t any rules that say you aren’t allowed to block people.
I would have just awarded you the win on the spot for having come up with something like that, it’s clearly the correct solution. The challenge isn’t actually to go down fast, it’s to go down faster than the other cars.
I then would have proceeded to run the derby without you because your solution kind of ruins the fun for everybody else, but you definitely deserved the (trophy/title of winner/gold sticker/whatever you got for winning).
