1/5/2014 Day 1: Strategy and Game Analysis

Today consisted of entirely game analysis, followed by a brief 20 minute break and intense strategy discussion.  Overall, the game seemed simple and easy on the surface, but it is interesting for its strategy elements.

For a decent portion of this time, we discussed the general rules, and created a list of big parts of the game, big ones being how to score and how much each way is worth, and lack of safe zones, which is different from the past three years.  As a reminder:

Action	Base	AUTO (=Base+5)	AUTO & HOT (=Base+AUTO+5)	1 ASSIST (=Base+0)	2 ASSIST (=Base+10)	3 ASSIST (=Base+30)
LOW GOAL	1	6	11	1	11	31
HIGH GOAL	10	15	20	10	20	40
TRUSS	10
Mobility		5
CATCH	10

From the general scoring possibilities, it would seem assists are wanted and needed.  This means a floor intake is required, giving the robot the ability to pick up a missed ball or floor passes.  Also, as high goal and truss points are next to assists in terms of scoring points, some sort of launcher would also be required.  In addition to those, the ability to catch would be nice, but can be somewhat of a bonus, and should not affect the way the robots play the game.

By the end of the game analysis, we wrote out all possible strategies and abilities and knocked off the one's thought to be useless (playing in the goalie zone).  As a result, a requirements list was created for features/abilities of the robot.

Num.	Description	Priority	Performance
0	Win	Must	Yes
1	Drive	Must	Speed - ~10 actual fps Force - a lot
2	Omnidirectional	None	Does not exist
3	Launch ball	Must	Height - 100” Accuracy - 95%-100% Spin - no
4	Floor pickup	Must	Speed - <= 1sec Offset - ~50% ball diam. On-the-fly pickup - yes
5	Remove ball (no launch, no bounce)	Must	Time - <= 1 sec Speed - >= 5fps Control length - <= 50% ball diam.
6	Human player reception	Must	Distance - 5 to 10 feet Horizontal disp - +/- 8” Accuracy - 100%
7	Herding mechanism	Desired	Works. Not a driving feature

We were now set for the rest of the conceptual design process, moving toward the preliminary design/prototyping phase.

Approximate times of working: 12:00 PM - 6:00 PM (Half hour of breaks)