Why we need ground pickup

Has anyone taken into consideration a robots strategy might be to just sit at our feeder station and throw frisbees onto our side of the field? It would allow for more points to be scored faster. I feel a lot of good teams will use this strategy in the finals.

as always we will probably have to decide on what we can do.
It will probably not be possibe to do everything.

Ground pickup isn't too hard to pull off though. We all have ideas already and are basically all solidly agreeing on the same concept. The really tricky part is maybe (maybe) getting them into the hopper, and then into the shooter. And I'm currently installing inventor to be able to visualize those ideas in magical, technicolour 3-D.

I believe if we go for ground pickup, then we should NOT go for pickup directly from the human player station as well. It's not that much tougher to have the human player drop the frisbees onto the floor and have the robot pick them up off the floor. I'm just afraid that this year, if we have ambitions to implement direct pickup from the human player station (like the 3 day robot) AS WELL AS ground pickup, then our robot will be more mechanically complicated than it will need to be, and it will add unnecessary weight, giving us constraints when designing a climbing mechanism (remember what earns us 50 points too)

That being said, I find it really cool how the 3 day robot mechanically loads the frisbees, no conveyors required or anything! That's keeping it extremely mechanically simple... But it cannot pick up off the ground.

Pros and cons to weigh!

I agree with matt on the aspect of only needing one pickup style or the other

when it comes down to brass tacks the ideas we have come up with or have seen in videos for player station pickup go DIRECTLY into the shooter
so if we implemented ground pickup, how would the frisbees get to the shooter...?
the loader we need to make is going to become a lot more complex this way

Like matt said, pros and cons, do we want ground pickup capability? or just go the player station to load up?

Non Ground Pickup
Pros:
Easier to build
Easier to design
Consistent amount of points every game
Less weight
Allows more time spent on other aspects of the game (climbing)

Cons:
Less options for autonomous
Less options for strategy
Requires going across the field to refill
Easily defendable

Summary - The safer pick of the two, consistent

Ground Pickup
Pros:
Allows for up to 36 points in autonomous
More points to be scored faster if we have a proper strategy with our alliance
We don't have to leave our side of the field if we have a proper strategy with our alliance
Last 30 seconds is Christmas
An advantage over teams without ground pickup

Cons:
Harder to build
Harder to design
Inconsistent amount of points each round
More weight
Less time spent on other aspects of the game

Summary - A more of a gamble, highly depends on our alliances strategy for it to be effective

I just made this in a couple minutes and left out a couple things, leave additional pros and cons if you have them.

William Surmak wrote:Non Ground Pickup
Ground Pickup
Pros:
Last 30 seconds is Christmas

That's actually hilarious, Will.

Honestly, I say the last 30 seconds will be completely pointless for scoring. We will need that time to DRIVE TO the human player station, grab our coloured frisbees, and then climb the tower and deposit them for 50 points. I would hate to give less than 30 seconds for this task. I read on Chief Delphi that team 610 is giving 40 seconds to the endgame.
Not to mention we will likely be defended once teams know we can potentially score 50 points, we can't afford to try scoring one or two frisbees when 50 points is within our grasp...

That being said! If due to whatever limitations we face because of the bill or other reasons, and we are faced with a misfortune of not being able to climb the pyramid, I say it's a good idea to indeed make those last 30 seconds Christmas then hang for 10 points!

Also, wall-only pickup is a CON as it is easily defendable, as in preventing our robot from getting to our loading zone.

I agree with you Matt, we should leave ample time to deposit the frisbees and hang. I would like to add assuming we have a perfect autonomous mode and ground pickup, we could score 86 points from just autonomous, hanging, and depositing the coloured frisbees!

William Surmak wrote:I agree with you Matt, we should leave ample time to deposit the frisbees and hang. I would like to add assuming we have a perfect autonomous mode and ground pickup, we could score 86 points from just autonomous, hanging, and depositing the coloured frisbees!

That purely on its own is a force to be reckoned with. I have doubts many alliances of three 'average' robots will be capable of scoring that many points in the first place! With points that big I think you guys will have an interesting team decision to choose how you want to design pickup and climbing