Day 8: MCCC and lifting prototypes continue

Lifting Prototypes

We purchased a lever chain hoist this morning so that we could test different lifting concepts without having a robot cable of lifting another just quite yet.

Keeping a partner level is definitly going to be a challenge. We are going to continue working on our retaining device as well to help hold our partners securely close to our bumpers. We do have tread on the two forks that we have under the partner robot as well.

The robot with the arm weighs ~120lbs, the robot with the vise mounted to it weighs 140lbs. 

We will also need to make a robot with a higher Center of Gravity (CG) than this current partner bot. As the CG of a partner that you are attempting to climb is going to be very important. 

MCCC 2018: Minimum Competitive Concept Competition

East Texas hosted 3 Robot in 3 Days teams and 118's Everybot team this year and they all headed to The Woodlands, Texas home of Texas Torque World Headquarters (FRC#1477) and had the first ever MCCC. A true "Week 1" competition. We had several of our alumni and friends up at the event and we were able to secure video of several of the matches. 

The fields were only the wooden version and weren't setup up perfectly (lacking exchange/vaults) but it gives you a good idea of how some matches may go. You can learn a lot from watching real robots play that you may not notice when you simulate in your head or with humans.

Match 1

Match 2

Match 3

Match 4

Take Aways (some we already knew, just confirmed)

• Scoring in the scale is difficult but if you can do it, even one cube could win you the match. So finding a way to do it will help win you a lot of matches
• Defending your switch is going to be difficult. Your opponents have 11 of their cubes on that side of the cube all in easy to remove portals and you'll need to be able to ground collect and score or defend against them to keep your switch safely in your control and getting your alliance points
• A great intake will make your robot much better than a great lift/arm/shooter/etc.
• The cubes like to slide on the carpet so test intaking by pushing your prototype towards the cube and not the cube towards the prototype.
• Climbing points will be important and it's a hard task (they also only had a week so we can cut them slack)
• Vision will be limited around the switch and scale. Camera feeds and sensors will help make your drivers' jobs much easier
• Scoring a lot of cubes quickly will win you matches (seems obvious but we like to repeat the obvious)

- Spectrum

"Competition helps people figure it out." - Brian McBride, U.S. Soccer Player