What is the right stragy if one opposing robot is dedicated to blocking or pushing your robot

VEX Robotics Competition Discussion
#1

In today’s tournament, my team did quite well in the beginning but badly later on because the opposing teams started to block and push our robots. In this kind of situation, What is a good strategy? Run away, push back, wait 5 seconds, or any other suggestions? Thanks

#2

This is probably a flaw with robot design. If another robot is able to push you around, you have a flaw with you drive base. If you dont have center traction wheels, you will be able to get pushed from the side. If you have your motors set to coast for the entire match, you will get pushed from front/back. If your robot only has a 4m drive, you will lose a pushing battle against a 6m drive bot. You can set up shooting positions that are safer from defense, such as inside the low goal, or against a wall. If your teammate doesn’t have shooting capabilities, talk to them before the match about strategy. If they can push your opponents so that you can shoot without any issues, that increases your score, helping you win the match.

#3

Thanks a lot. Very good points! Our bot does not have a traction wheel, but it is quite heavy and the friction seem fine. We will think more about strategies on how to deal with this kind of situation.

#4

This can be helped with some improvemnts to your robot such as centrw traction wheels, defense skirts wedges, torquier drive for pushing back. My main pice of advice would be practice. If you guys are in a decent size oeg have your sister teams aplay defense on youguys for a full match and priactice evasive manuvers and knowing really well were you can shoot from. Or just build a second smaller robot that one of your teamates can drive around and do the same thing as mentioned above. Watch some of 4082b and 515r matches they have mastered the art of evasive manuvers and are able to score consistently even when encou yering heavy defense from some of the top teams in the world

#5

That is a great example. We will check that out. Also thank your for the suggestion on practicing in the presence of defense.

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#6

My middle school team discovered that if their bot is push into the right side wall they can make shots perfectly because their robot shoots to the left. So they go there for shots and defensive bots cannot cause as much trouble.

Experiment with your robot to see if you can make shots when pushed up against either wall.

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