Robot Stragedy and Evolushun:
From the beginning of the competition, we recognized (like many other teams) that the scoring structure would require utilization of the 4 bin in order to minimize the amount of penalty points incurred. With this in mind, our original strategy involved parking our robot in front of our enemy's 4-bin and then proceeding to fire our own balls directly across the table into our own 4-bin. When designing a ball shooter, we ran into some issues that made us rethink our strategy (although come time of the mock competition, other teams demonstrated that a ball shooting robot was indeed possible.)
In consideration of these discoveries, we then switched to a more unorthodox, but ultimately simple design. Rather than navigating our large robot into place to score, we opted for a miniature robot deployment system, tethered to our main robot with a large LEGO chain. With this implementation, our robot merely needed to determine the correct orientation, and then turn to align itself with the 4-bin from the start. The mini-robot would then drive directly into the 4-bin, depositing our balls rapidly, while at the same time providing a barrier that would impede the progress of other robots.
Our strategy, as well as the design limitations on the robot required that we could only ever score 4 balls into the bin, regardless of the points required. However, thanks to the chain tether, our robot would prevent our opponent from scoring by limiting their movement.
Historical Background:
When it came time for the actual competition, our actual stragedy was not implemented since our code was not loaded onto our robot by the time of impound. Come impound time we had code designed for qualifying in the Happyboard. Our robot, rather than performing as described in our strategy page, used a much simplified strategy in which it moved forward the correct distance and then shot the miniature cart directly into the 2-bin. This simpler code was designed to demonstrate functionality of all aspects of our robot, and to ensure that we passed the class. We feel that had we been given the chance to implement our actual code and test it, we would have fared much better, as our robot's actual strategy successfully trumped other robots (albeit the orientation code was iffy at times).