So I have watched some matches, and usually the number of cubes in a stack does not usually exceed 11 in a match setting. But there are some teams that are trying (if not already done) to use 4 stages in their traybot. Will this ever be a viable strategy for gameplay? What do all of you think about having 4 stages that can hold up to 15 cubes? Do you think someone will be able to place that many cubes in one match? Will it be practical?
a 4 stage tray can’t hold 15 cubes and fit but there is a video of a robot stacking 14 cubes and there’s a team in Indiana that does 15 and I’ve heard there is some china teams doing 15.
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my bot has a 3-stage tray, and the most we would be able to stack would be 10. Correct me if i’m wrong, but i’m pretty sure you need at least a small 4th stage to get 11
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Unless your tray is really high off the ground and full length (each angle channel being 17.5”) it would not be able to hold 11. 4 stage can potentially hold 14 but even 13 would be pushing it. So yes, 5 stage is really the only option if you are shooting for 15 cube capacity.
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That’s interesting. But would you think a 14 stack is practical for a competition. With the limited time and opponents?
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an 11 or 12 stack is probably the practical limit. anything more would take more time to set down, as well as a very strong tray tilter
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14 stack isn’t really that practical because the basic guaranteed win condition is 11 green, 11 orange and 12 purple + auton win. So There is no real need for anything over 12 cubes.
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while this is insanely cool. It is not all that practical. although my hat is off to these dudes cuz this is a sick robot.
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We were were messing around with cubes the other day and tried making some 15 stacks (without the bot ofc) and as others have said it doesn’t seem all that practical. I’m not sure it’ll be sturdy enough to be reliable during a competition.
Also no? @Riptide
Last time I checked none of the tray teams in Indiana could do 15. One of our vexU teams may be able to but I don’t think any hs teams are.
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Now I am curious to how many cubes can be stacked by people with a traybot.
- 1cube
- 2cubes
- 3cubes
- 4cubes
- 5cubes
- 6cubes
- 7cubes
- 8cubes
- 9cubes
- 10cubes
- 11cubes
- 12cubes
- 13cubes
- 14cubes
- 15cubes
- A godly amount of cubes
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oh, I guess I was being trolled lol. Someone told me 6210x could do 15 cubes. I’m p sure there is a team in China that can though and That team that did 14 in the vid had a fan running on, but I don’t think higher than 12 or 13 is a good idea because there is simply no point.
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There’s a few ways to back it up, here’s what I see:
There can be a maximum of 6 stacks on the field (2 in protected, 1 in unprotected, times 2 for red and blue team)
There are 66 cubes at most, some may be lost because they fall out of the field or don’t get used. If robots score 9-10 cubes per stack, we get a range of 54-60 cubes in the scoring zones, leaving the rest for towers. That’s why my team aimed for that range.
Other teams justify having taller stacks on the basis of playing skills, or to deny the other team points. But for any strategy, pick it and commit to it and you’ll do great every time. Our team once almost lost to clawbots that only managed stacks of 2-3 but only stacked one color.
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in the end ideal win conditions won’t have much of an impact on anything but the highest level. If a team can stack 15, and have the driver skill and intake tuning to do it efficiently, they could gain a significant advantage in a towerless strategy, but one must also consider if they’ll be able to get enough cubes against a strong alliance, as well as the drawbacks of carrying so many cubes. Personally, I wouldn’t make a 15 stacker, but if you have a strategy that uses one effectively, I’d love to see it.
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Our team has a 4-stage tray, it is capable of scoring 12 cubes (13 if they fake it a little) and yes, they are capable of (and did so several times) scoring those 12 in a tournament.
That being said, is isn’t very practical and its a wrong strategy most of the time. Every extra cube is exponentially more expensive on several fronts:
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Intake compression - up to 6-8 cubes, a piece of cake. 10 cubes - you have to plan it well. 12th cube - a lot of trial and error to get the intake right. 13th cube - you’d likely have to sacrifice speed (gear → intake speed of all the cubes, not only the last one) due to extra friction and the weight of the stack.
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Driving - long tail makes it hard to navigate around the field. Weight on the rear wheels dictate the motor power split, type of drivebase, length of the training wheels mechanism. With the cubes in, you have to maneuver way more carefully not to loose them.
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Scoring - while you can tune the gears and levers to handle the extra load, each extra cube has a longer lever (quadratic increase of the torque needed). Worse yet, it adds to the time to score. If you try solving kinetic vs. potential energy of the cubes in the stack during scoring (so you run the tray scoring mechanism at the maximum speed that still won’t over-throw the cubes), you’ll realize that while the potential energy change of the cube during scoring grows linearly with the cube position in the stack, the kinetic energy during the swing grows with square of the position. The more cubes you have, the slower the tray has to move.
All in all, if you decide to intake that 12th cube, you’d have to struggle it onto the tray, move around with it like a sloth, take looong time to score it and then pay great attention you won’t topple you shiny new stack with your tail.
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15 if u count vexU. 