The VIQC Virtual Skills for the new season’s game, Full Volume, is now available! Are you excited about it? Let’s start playing.
The primary objective of Full Volume is to place Blocks into Goals.
So first, let’s figure out how to successfully program the Herobot to place a Block into a Goal and gain one point. Imagine the process of a human picking up a block on the Field and putting it into a Goal. This process consists of the following steps: 1. Moving close to the Block, 2. Lowering the arm, 3. Grasping the Block, 4. Moving close to the box, 5. Raising the arm above the box, 6. Releasing the Block to let it fall into the Goal. To control the robot to place the Block into the Goal and earn 1 point In the VIQC Virtual Skills, we can replicate this process with the robot by simply coding Virtual Byte, the VEX IQ Hero Bot, to perform these behaviors in the same sequence.
Before starting programming, let’s take a look at the Robot Controls involved in these actions.
Collect and drop a Block
The Intake of the Virtual Byte is controlled by the Intake Motor Group. When the Intake Motor Group spun forward, the Block in front of the Intake Mechanism will be taken in. And when the Intake Motor Group spun reverse, the Intake will drop the Block.
Raise and lower the Arm
On the Virtual Byte, the Arm is controlled by the Arm Motor Group. We can raise and lower the Arm to adjust the height of the Intake to perform various tasks.
Move on the Field
A drivetrain is controlled to drive and turn the robot on the Virtual Skills Field by using the blocks in the “drivetrain” category.
Now we can easily code the robot to execute the instructions in a correct sequence to collect a Block and drop it in the Goal, and win 1 point!
Two tips to ensure scoring:
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Before releasing the Block, carefully adjust the position and orientation of the robot to ensure the Block can fall into the Goal contacting the Floor or transitively contacting the Floor via other Scored Blocks.
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After releasing the Block, wait until the Block completely leaves the intake before executing the next behavior to ensure that the Block lands at the desired position in the Goal. We can use a wait block or an optical sensor to control the robot’s behavior during this process.
According to the scoring rules of Full Volume, we also have the opportunities to earn Uniform Bonus points and Height Bonus points!
If we can ensure all the Blocks scored in a Goal are the same type, that Goal can earn a Uniform Bonus of 10 points! This means that when we score at least two blocks of the same type in each Goal, we can receive a Uniform Bonus of 30 points!
Furthermore, we can also receive a Height Bonus based on the highest Fill Level shared by all three Goals. This means that If we manage to score at least one block in each Goal, we can easily earn a Height Bonus of 10 points!
Fill Levels are used to determine the overall Height Bonus. To maximize the Fill Level of a Goal, a simple strategy is to program the robot to consistently drop the blocks at the same position and orientation. By stacking the blocks on top of each other, we can gradually build up the height and achieve a higher Fill Level.
Full Volume is an incredibly interesting game! Its inherent flexibility provides us with opportunities to unleash our creativity in problem-solving, enabling us to discover optimal strategies from numerous possibilities.
We will continue to explore the game in our future posts. Please let us know if you have any questions, comments, or feedback. Thank you!
