Saturday, April 19, 2014
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Worlds Warm Up on 4/12/2014
We had a blast at the Worlds Warm Up tournament on Saturday!
This tournament was attended by most of the teams that qualified for the High School World Championship, and a college VEX U team. We were seeded 4th out of ~20 teams, but due to our mechanical failures, and heavy defense by our opponents, we were eliminated in the quarterfinals.
This tournament was attended by most of the teams that qualified for the High School World Championship, and a college VEX U team. We were seeded 4th out of ~20 teams, but due to our mechanical failures, and heavy defense by our opponents, we were eliminated in the quarterfinals.
Tao's Driving/Stratagy Notes To Self
Asses the field before deciding what points to score:
-If your opponents are capable score-descorers, Stash buckyballs first, even though they score fewer points
per second than large balls
-If the field is less capable, than points are points, and you should score large balls whenever you can.
If your opponents will play defense, get to the goals ASAP, even in autonomous if you can.
If your ally is capable, use the strategy.
The strategy is:
Bot A starts in the hanging zone, and gets some auton points as well as putting themselves in a good starting position.
Bot B starts in the middle zone, and scores 12-15, ending in the goal zone.
Both A and B focus completely on buckyballs in the beginning, with one playing some defense when necessary to score balls.
After goals are full of buckies (any color, just try to fill them up with yours), play volleyball, with A in the middle-to-hanging zones and B in the goal zone.
A hangs while B towers the goals.
If this works, you will get 10(auton)+30(buckies)+20(hang)+10(large ball on goal) + 5(assuming you have 1 large ball in the goal zone) = 75 points
If your opponents will probably fill the goals before you do, then a more defensive approach may be required.
B (or A, which ever one is the slower stasher), hangs out in the goal zone playing defense on your opponent while the other one stashes buckyballs. If they are blocked, they may have to throw large balls around instead, or play more defence, depending on how strong the opponents are.
Still hang and tower at the end.
This does not lead to big victories, but it is a way to succeed even against very strong scoring bots.
Make sure not to get in your allies way. Even if you are a little closer, if they are going for it, you should do something else.(in most situations)
Communicate with your alliance about the plan, and communicate in-match. Try to plan your opening moves while autonomous is being scored.
Tao
-If your opponents are capable score-descorers, Stash buckyballs first, even though they score fewer points
per second than large balls
-If the field is less capable, than points are points, and you should score large balls whenever you can.
If your opponents will play defense, get to the goals ASAP, even in autonomous if you can.
If your ally is capable, use the strategy.
The strategy is:
Bot A starts in the hanging zone, and gets some auton points as well as putting themselves in a good starting position.
Bot B starts in the middle zone, and scores 12-15, ending in the goal zone.
Both A and B focus completely on buckyballs in the beginning, with one playing some defense when necessary to score balls.
After goals are full of buckies (any color, just try to fill them up with yours), play volleyball, with A in the middle-to-hanging zones and B in the goal zone.
A hangs while B towers the goals.
If this works, you will get 10(auton)+30(buckies)+20(hang)+10(large ball on goal) + 5(assuming you have 1 large ball in the goal zone) = 75 points
If your opponents will probably fill the goals before you do, then a more defensive approach may be required.
B (or A, which ever one is the slower stasher), hangs out in the goal zone playing defense on your opponent while the other one stashes buckyballs. If they are blocked, they may have to throw large balls around instead, or play more defence, depending on how strong the opponents are.
Still hang and tower at the end.
This does not lead to big victories, but it is a way to succeed even against very strong scoring bots.
Make sure not to get in your allies way. Even if you are a little closer, if they are going for it, you should do something else.(in most situations)
Communicate with your alliance about the plan, and communicate in-match. Try to plan your opening moves while autonomous is being scored.
Tao
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Scout Savant
A post by Peter, Tao's dad.
For the last 3 weeks I've been working at night and weekends on a scouting app for VRC. As we've discovered over the season, scouting at events is tough and many parents wished for a better way to do it. I was hoping there was an existing app to make this easier, but unfortunately none exist. Although VEX Via provides a way to get match scores, it doesn't keep the old data or provide a way to analyze it. Via also doesn't provide a way to search the data or view all the events a team attended.
Vex scouter gives the user a way to rate a team, but you have to manually enter everything. I'm lazy, so entering data for 50 or 100 teams feels a bit tedious. Given the data is up on robotevents.com, an app should come with all of that. More than once I wished robotevents.com was more user friendly and presented data more elegantly. I also wished the data on robotevents.com was more consistent.
Scout savant gives users the ability to search for events or teams and view those details. On the events page, users can see the match and rate the teams. As an event progresses, users can rate a team's performance for each match. That data is saved so that later on, you can go back and look at the notes. Before the alliance selection, users can view all of the ratings and comments taken that day to determine which teams are the top picks.
Outside of events, users can analyze teams for up coming events and do "pre scouting". One of my goals was to reduce the guess work of figuring out which teams to scout. The hope is that pre scouting can make better use of limited time and give people an indication of a team's strengths and weaknesses.
Here are some screens of Scout Savant. The app has been submitted to appstore and hopefully will be live by friday April 11.
For the last 3 weeks I've been working at night and weekends on a scouting app for VRC. As we've discovered over the season, scouting at events is tough and many parents wished for a better way to do it. I was hoping there was an existing app to make this easier, but unfortunately none exist. Although VEX Via provides a way to get match scores, it doesn't keep the old data or provide a way to analyze it. Via also doesn't provide a way to search the data or view all the events a team attended.
Vex scouter gives the user a way to rate a team, but you have to manually enter everything. I'm lazy, so entering data for 50 or 100 teams feels a bit tedious. Given the data is up on robotevents.com, an app should come with all of that. More than once I wished robotevents.com was more user friendly and presented data more elegantly. I also wished the data on robotevents.com was more consistent.
Scout savant gives users the ability to search for events or teams and view those details. On the events page, users can see the match and rate the teams. As an event progresses, users can rate a team's performance for each match. That data is saved so that later on, you can go back and look at the notes. Before the alliance selection, users can view all of the ratings and comments taken that day to determine which teams are the top picks.
Outside of events, users can analyze teams for up coming events and do "pre scouting". One of my goals was to reduce the guess work of figuring out which teams to scout. The hope is that pre scouting can make better use of limited time and give people an indication of a team's strengths and weaknesses.
Here are some screens of Scout Savant. The app has been submitted to appstore and hopefully will be live by friday April 11.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
We Are Competing Worldwide!
After our success at the New England Regional Middle School Championship, we were invited to compete at the Vex Robotics Middle School World Championship in Anaheim, California! Thanks to generous sponsorships from Concord and WPI Apartments, we will be competing!
3/22 Worcester Scrimmage
We competed in the 3/22 QCC Scrimmage in Worcester. We ranked 1st out of 47 teams, and even scored our season record of 95 points in one match, with help from our allies Light Speed Robotics.
This tournament was only practice rounds, 8 of them. We came to the tournament with a new feature that allowed the robot to pull itself up 12 inches to hang from a 40" bar. It worked in 6 out of 8 matches, the two failures being from bad rubber bands (Uhg! we will use surgical tubing next time), and someone parking their robot under the hanging bar.
Fixes required:
-Using something more reliable than rubber bands for the rope retention system
-Programming! We need a goal scoring middle zone autonomous program.
-More programming! We need a good hanging zone autonomous program too.
The robot is on it's way to being ready for Worlds!
This tournament was only practice rounds, 8 of them. We came to the tournament with a new feature that allowed the robot to pull itself up 12 inches to hang from a 40" bar. It worked in 6 out of 8 matches, the two failures being from bad rubber bands (Uhg! we will use surgical tubing next time), and someone parking their robot under the hanging bar.
Fixes required:
-Using something more reliable than rubber bands for the rope retention system
-Programming! We need a goal scoring middle zone autonomous program.
-More programming! We need a good hanging zone autonomous program too.
The robot is on it's way to being ready for Worlds!
Monday, March 3, 2014
Middle School New England Champions
We won the New England Regional Middle School Vex Championship!
We learned much, and had a great time as well! The robot we won with was capable of completing every task in the game, Vex Toss Up, and reliable at completing most of them. It was able to drive over the bump easily, and could cross the field in only four seconds. It could also high hang with the ball, pick up three bucky balls, score three bucky balls in the goal, pick up big balls, knock big balls off the barrier, place them on the goal, and throw big balls. But it wasn't always this way, especially when we started in October, 2013. The first version of the robot, which used a lever arm and top roller, could only hold two bucky balls at a time, and could not hold big balls. It also took a long time to get the balls into the goal, and sometimes fell over. But overall it was reliable when we competed with it at the Worcester Scrimmage on November 16. We redesigned the robot to use a scissor lift to reach the 40" bar.
We built a first version, made of steel, which was too weak and flimsy, but we decided to try again. We competed with this second version of the scissor lift at the Boston University Qualifier tournament. It performed badly, with problems like the lift being floppy, slow and getting caught on the intake. The lift was also not quite strong enough to handle the four motors used to power it. The high lift also gave it a high center of gravity, so it was easy to knock over. That is why we decided to switch to a six-bar lift for our next robot. The six bar lift allowed for very fast lifting of a ball carriage that always stays in the same orientation, allowing for a gravity fed roller. We competed with this fourth robot at the Green Mountain Challenge. This was an improvement, but we still could not manipulate large balls, so we decided to use side rollers, which can pick up big balls in addition to bucky balls, and created our fifth robot. But it had reliability problems when we used it at the QCC Qualifier. Large balls often fell out of its grasp, and bucky balls frequently got jammed inside our robot. We added a launcher to throw big balls around the field, as well as improving reliability. Both the launcher and the improved reliability were very helpful, though we did not make it in the top twenty four teams at the New Hampshire Wrap Up. In the week between the New Hampshire Wrap Up and the Regionals, we kept the same robot, only improved it. We were able to improve our launcher, improve our overall reliability, and add one key feature: the high-hang, transmission driven winch.
You can see our final robot in action in this, our first semi final match.
What worked:
-Our autonomous program worked if we operated it correctly
-Robot handled small balls well
We built a first version, made of steel, which was too weak and flimsy, but we decided to try again. We competed with this second version of the scissor lift at the Boston University Qualifier tournament. It performed badly, with problems like the lift being floppy, slow and getting caught on the intake. The lift was also not quite strong enough to handle the four motors used to power it. The high lift also gave it a high center of gravity, so it was easy to knock over. That is why we decided to switch to a six-bar lift for our next robot. The six bar lift allowed for very fast lifting of a ball carriage that always stays in the same orientation, allowing for a gravity fed roller. We competed with this fourth robot at the Green Mountain Challenge. This was an improvement, but we still could not manipulate large balls, so we decided to use side rollers, which can pick up big balls in addition to bucky balls, and created our fifth robot. But it had reliability problems when we used it at the QCC Qualifier. Large balls often fell out of its grasp, and bucky balls frequently got jammed inside our robot. We added a launcher to throw big balls around the field, as well as improving reliability. Both the launcher and the improved reliability were very helpful, though we did not make it in the top twenty four teams at the New Hampshire Wrap Up. In the week between the New Hampshire Wrap Up and the Regionals, we kept the same robot, only improved it. We were able to improve our launcher, improve our overall reliability, and add one key feature: the high-hang, transmission driven winch.
You can see our final robot in action in this, our first semi final match.
This is our robot!
What worked:
-Our autonomous program worked if we operated it correctly
-Robot handled small balls well
What we need to change:
-Transmission gears need to be beveled more
-Transmission piston needs to be prevented from rotating
-Winch rope needs to be tighter, this involves the hanging hook being just barely high enough
-Launcher didn't launch balls at a low enough angle
-Hanging hook was hard to use
- Large ball intake could use improvement
For the full results of the regional Results of the competition
We created a YouTube Channel for the team Dream Robot YouTube Channel
-Hanging hook was hard to use
- Large ball intake could use improvement
For the full results of the regional Results of the competition
We created a YouTube Channel for the team Dream Robot YouTube Channel
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