Then there’s that one 8 motor 50 pound drive base geared to insane proportions that called The Wallbot Slayer
As much as everyone would love to see a wallbot extending itself into a huge fence across entire field, I just don’t see it being a winning strategy.
It might work if your partner is a good cube stacker and your opponents are clueless. However, if the other three robots are roughly on the same skill level then two stacking opponents are always going to beat wallbot alliance partner.
The better strategy might be for one robot to capture some cubes in autonomous:
Then use first 30 seconds of driver period to capture more cubes, spend up to a minute to stack them in the goal zones, with the rest of the match being a mad dash for the tower dominance.
Hence teams like 62A in ITZ- they can score, but they effectively score more points by preventing their opponents from scoring. A wallbot that brings cubes back to its own side could do this very well if it could also play adequate defense against the opposing alliance.
As for the robot designs - a lot will depend on how slippery the cubes are and how hard it will be to build tall stacks.
If cubes are slippery then high reaching lifts will not be practical. DR4B tall enough to score and descore a cube in the tallest towers will be all you need.
Then you want to reverse stack and carry several cubes at once (3-5) to save some time and, most likely, you don’t want to move your lift too fast around tall stacks of cubes or you risk toppling them over. Also, having two stacks very close to each other in the goal zone will be quite a challenge.
One motor for DR4B and another motor for the intake/end-manipulator/internal-stack- release seems like enough. This will leave you with up to six motors for the base, or four motor base, and one motor for something to assist hoarding, and another for more functionality on your main lift.
You always want your base to be both fast and strong, but this early in the season, it seems being strong is more important for TT.
there will always be a cage bot
there is always a cage bot or some type of tank
I have been looking for an example of a reverse stacker, but couldn’t seem to find anything. Could you explain how this is done or show a robot that does this?
Skyrise season robots from AURA or 185A are first examples that I could think of.
A lot of VRC teams either grabbed cubes individually (with some sort of hooks) or would only collect two cubes. 185A was a rare exception. On the other hand many VEXU teams could pick three cubes with their 24" robot.
As TT cubes are not hollow you will need some sort of external guides to collect several cubes and then either drop them down or carefully open those guides to let the cubes stay on top of the stack.
That’s what people said for ITZ
Hello, being only our second year and getting a late start this year, what is RD4Bs pleasae??
Basically two four bars stacked on top of each other facing opposite directions- hence the name reverse double four bar or RD4B for short. If you want to see what they look like, most of the high school world final robots were RD4Bs.
Personally, I believe the meta will be that many teams will split the work up in alliance matches. There will be robots specialized in placing cubes into towers earlier into the match and others attempting to stack cubes of the same color into goal zones. Early towers will definitely have a huge impact as it currently looks like it is essentially impossible to remove cubes from towers
It is easy enough to get a cube out of a tower, from what I can tell only about half the cube sits in the tower and the rest pokes out above the edges, and even more is poking out when it goes in on its corner.
Sure it will be harder to intake than a floor cube, but not by much unless you have a really “special” intake.
In addition to this, if the cube goes in flat, you could just place another cube on top of it to descore it.
In conclusion, I only see towers coming into play at the end of the match.
I’ve got it: double reverse 6 bar
Personally I’ve been looking at designs from VEX IQ Highrise and seeing which one is the most feasible within our 8 motor limits.
cause thats 100% necessary
Almost as nessasary as a quadruple reverse 4 bar
I honestly prefer quadruple reverse 6 bars with a 6 stage cascade lift and 4 bar lift on top all holding a standard cortex Claw bot claw at the highest point.