Brandy,

Good advice all around.  I would always tell my teams "Every second you spend in base is a second your robot is not scoring points"

Practicing and perfecting mission starts from base results is much better scoring.  And I agree that inconsistent robot performance is often a result of operator error and not the robot itself.

I will add, though, if your team is working with a single, master program, then the motor memory could cause one mission to affect the next mission.  In situations like this (one single master program), a motor reset at the start of each mission can help.

John

------------------------------------

John J. Barrett
Industrial Medium Software, Inc. | 1616 Anderson Road | McLean, VA 22102 | http://www.industrialmedium.com
(cell) 703-231-5094 | (office) 703-286-0818 | (fax) 703-286-0888

On Oct 7, 2013, at 12:36 PM, B Bergenstock wrote:

My old FLL team figured out it was never programming the missions or coming up with amazing attachments that killed their score, it was the switching.  It was having 1 attachment do one mission, and then take it off and put on the next attachment that resulted in lower robot game scores.  Their best score in their 3 years was the year they figured out to adapt 2 attachments to participate in 8 missions :) 

 

That and always trying to start from one place in base (as much as possible anyway). I know it's probably too late to help a lot of teams with that tip, but the more missions you have that start in one place, the better the chance that the operator will get it right and the robot will hit it's target, as just a few degrees off in a mid-field mission can be disastrous at the wrong angle. Sensors can greatly aid in correcting for small errors, but hooking or slicing the robot when placing it down may be difficult to compensate for since it can miss its sensor's mark.  Practice here does make perfect!  It's nice when teams keep track of whether a mission worked well or not.  Understanding the percentages of achievement right before a tournament can take the guesswork out of what missions to run on the table in a time crunch.  

If you can't start in one place, at least have the team do themselves a favor and don't float the robot in the base. Have it start off a wall, or make a lego ruler to create the angle you need and be consistent with the starts each time.  The increase in accuracy from starting off a wall is significantly higher than floating "the back wheel off the side of the M", or "having to count 7 dashes in the left side base to line up the back wheel". Just don't.  I noticed with my team that one operator would complain about a mission never working, but put a different operator down there to start it off and it was a 95% accurate program. Our first year was fraught with us blaming the robot for what turned out to operator error that would have been solved by following this simple best practice "start rule". 

  If you are seriously considering that two chassis concept, have the kids do several runs (like 5-8) with and without chassis changes and see what their final score would be in a timed match.   I recommend not adding any new programs the week before competition; Perfect programming, but no new ones. Practicing our robot game starts and just getting lost of face time with the game we were going to run at competition, we learned it made for a much higher score!  

Regards, 

Brandy 

FTC 6193

       

On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 9:40 AM, Bdh612-ess <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

My team considered that, but besides the complexity issue, we worried about the transition time and robot bloat issues in trying to provide the switch-ability mechanism. 

That said, I'd live to see the video, could you post a link?

Brian

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 7, 2013, at 9:07 AM, Alex <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Answer for question two.

There is a team that does the multiple chassis plan. The motors and programmable brick are moved.

There are youtube videos that show them switching between missions.

 

On 2013-10-07 07:46, Larry Landsberg wrote:

2 separate questions. Hoping for 2 separate answers. 

1. Can you use multiple robots during the tournament, ie 1 robot (EVS) for the first mission we attempt then a second robot (NXT ) for the next mission we attempt? 

2. Can we have two different chassis but 1 brick that we switch between chassis during the tournament?

Thank you,

Larry

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