2012 Match Initial Observations
 

With the 2012 Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage underway, there have been some interesting observations starting to develop. This thread is intended to discuss initial match observations. See below for some questions that could aid the discussion.

What strategies seem to be effective? Ineffective?
What robot design(s) seem to do well?
Where on the field do robots tend to congregate?
Do robots cross the field often?
Where do the balls seem to appear? Disappear?
What hoops tend to have the most scoring?
Offense/Defense reactions?

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

maybe I am just not noticing, but it seems like sometime the auto-updating for ref fouls and for balancing are not showing live on the audience display. maybe it is a delay in the webcast, or perhaps the FMS is still being tweaked.
gameplay wise, I agree that balancing and hybrid are swinging the matches pretty heavily

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

Two things:

1. It seems two bots balancing on a bridge is pretty standard (but I've only been watching the semis and finals)

2. There are always more than 2 balls starting on the coopertition bridge, making an autonomous that will lower the bridge seems to me like a good idea.

EDIT:

question for people who saw the quals, how often was the coopertition bridge balanced?

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

During qualifications it seemed like teams were rushing the bridge balancing, often tipping the other robot off onto its side.

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

This was a big point during kickoff. All fouls were supposed to be auto updated and the teams and audience would know the score within seconds after the match ends.

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

This a a repost of comments that I made in the Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage thread:

Congratulations to Aces High, 176, The Whos'cteks, 716, and 2168, The Aluminum Falcons, on their win.

Many great teams and unique designs

Team 23 returns after a >10 year absence. Their design is unique and enviable. Pics later.

Here are some interesting observations:

Scoring balls matters, so hybrid matters.

In the endgame there were two robots on each bridge without much trouble, so those scores cancel.
The amount of time that they spend balancing and then waiting can be a tradeoff while others score. 230 could score from the ramp, but didn't.

Balls get stuck under the ramp, and the drivers can't see it as they try to trip the bridge. FIRST will probably fix this, but it could still become a defensive strategy to prevent balancing at the end, without physically touching the bridge.

Catapults work. There were two, Buzz, Team 175, and Team 558 RoboSquad. They take ball wear and variability out of the shooter equation, but usually require specific placement of the robot, which can be defended.

The barrier was not a problem. Balls under robots were.
I am thinking of suggesting the addition of some brushes under the bumpers to keep balls from getting under the robot. (without keeping them there!)

Bobcats were there and will probably be on Einstein again.
They have a unique design in their ball acquisition device that, while not great at the scrimmage, will greatly reduce their scoring cycle time if they can make it work.

Team 23 was the only team to use the Kinect system. They used it to tip the coopertition bridge for balls in hybrid.

I will post some videos shortly, including:
The season's first coopertition score.
Team 23's Cool Vacuum Cannon.
Buzz's Catapult.
Some shooters.

This is going to be a very interesting game this year, it may rank pretty high among favorites.

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

The coopertition bridge, to my knowledge, was only balanced twice with two robots.

I can't speak for the live scoring as we didn't have a screen, but the scores were available within a few seconds after the match.

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

Going to be an interesting game this year after seeing a lot of what went on in the scrimmage. Had to watch Suffield since DC wasn't webcast to my knowledge.

Fouls and Technical fouls are going to be a big break or make in lesser matches.

Balancing is going to be a major deal and shooters/launchers are going to be looked at.

And one question: Anyone see any dumpers?

Happy last few days of the build.

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

Here are some videos from the Suffield Shakedown.

Here is the FIRST coopertition qualification points scored of the season:
http://youtu.be/HBwPsmAPN5M

This is the Team 23 Robot with a cool shooter cannon:
http://youtu.be/i1VVEy0sNow

This a the first of the finals matches that shows some good shooting and both bridges balanced with two robots each:
http://youtu.be/zbmAYkPZJHI

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

DC wasn't webcast. At the DC scrimmage today teams were having a hard time getting on the bridge. We didn't run real matches as much as it was a free for all of who wanted to be on the field and when. Very few if any(i didn't watch the field the whole time i was there) teams went over the barrier they all focused on the bridge for field travel. Not alot of scoring happened, but a few teams did have decent shooting powers. Everyone just needs more practice they should be good to go.

This year I think, more than any year, teams who have practice bots or finished early and had time for practice before they bagged their robots, are going to be at a substantial advantage.

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

Here's some of the stuff I got today looking at the practice/scrimmage that happened at Watchung Hills in NJ.

You really have to pay attention and take it slow on the bridge

Omni wheels make it very hard to balance on the bridge and keep good control

If your using a reverse cowcatcher to bring the bridge down, it needs to be outside your bumper zone and you must apply a solid amount of force

Human players can throw balls across the field easily in the last 30 seconds, but accuracy is hard

When camera tracking, the trend in errors tends to be too much power as opposed to not enough

A ball caught in one side of the bridge is a problem. Multiple balls caught on both sides of the bridge is a fatal flaw. The sloped pieces of poly carbonate were not effective at all on the field we had.

Balls often get caught in between the wall and the netting that rises above the wall to prevent them from leaving the court. I'm curious to see how these will get undone, as dislodging them may interfere with the drivers in the drivers station.

The bridges tend to rock for 5-10 seconds after you drop off of them

When human players are throwing balls in the last 30 seconds, they have to be very careful of not stepping outside of their designated area. I saw a lot of potential foot faults today as various people threw them across the field.

Didn't see any mecanum drive trains yet (although there were only a handful of robots there)

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

I was not at the scrimmage posted by the OP, but I was at a meet in Eagan, Minnesota and here are my responses to the questions from what I have seen:

What strategies seem to be effective? Ineffective? This team used a little bridge like thing to just let a ball roll in to the hoop, I am not sure if it was at all legal but it was excellent in teleop mode, and their autonomous mode only needs a little tweaking. The other excellent robot was the Green Machine's robot, they were fairly accurate at shooting.

What robot design(s) seem to do well? The smaller designs worked best, a robot at our scrimmage kept flipping over from being too complex and tall.

Where on the field do robots tend to congregate? Usually at the key or the bridges.

Do robots cross the field often? During the whole meet our 'scouts' only saw one robot cross the field. It was our robot when I was driving it (we had 4 people drive, only 4 tests during the whole day due to pneumatic issues and wheel issues) when I crossed the field I basically bumped into the robots a bit (it was a 2 v 2 match). Two of our wheels had electric tape on so we couldn't push after contact, just right when we made contact.

Where do the balls seem to appear? Disappear? We had A LOT of balls go under bridges. Our first driver had an issue, along with myself at the end when I attempted to balance.

What hoops tend to have the most scoring? The top hoop was the most scored from what I could see.

Offense/Defense reactions? Our scrimmage at Eagan was basically ALL offense besides our robot, though we saw only 1 match with defensive action since our pistons got busted in the middle of the match due to operation issues. Some of the designs amaze me. Our robot is on the lighter side (75 pounds with battery) and our two drivers who managed to get on the bridge found it very easy to balance. The negative part is it is next to impossible to balance with another robot since they are much heavier than ours.

This is our team's rookie season by the way.

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

Getting the 4 balls off the coopertition bridge is huge.

Also its easier to balance 2 robots than one.

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

I have some questions.

How many teams effectively used camera tracking to line themselves up for shots? How well did they do this? Did all of the best teams use vision?

Also, looking at the hybrid modes for the final match video someone posted, it looks like none of the robots used active vision targeting to line themselves up before shooting. Is it easy to line up the robots perfectly before the match so no camera correction needs to be done?

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

The NBA it is not.
That 0-0 match was brutal and I think there's gonna be some pretty agonizing qualification matches (or even whole regionals) this year but at least the quality of play picked up exponentially during the elims. It looks like autonomous and the ability to get up on the ramp can make or break alliances. Not much in the way of defense but I doubt teams like 23 and 125 are gonna be allowed to make a living parking in front of the basket and popping balls in at their leisure all day long especially in St. Louis.

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

I would politely suggest finding a way to strap some barbell weights onto your robot to get much closer to 120lbs.

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

Hi all,
I was at the Simley event in Minnesota.
My off the cuff thoughts are,
1. Too many tall robots, there was lots of tipping, and I didn't see anyone except us even try to cross the bump. Of course, I in no way saw all the matches.....
2. There was a really good dumper team, 3007, that could consistently dump in the 2nd tier both in hybrid mode, and during the match. Of course, I'm wondering if that will work when there is defense to be had......
3. balancing should be easy if drivers are practiced at it, and balls aren't stuck under the ramp.
4. Some of the shooters are way over powered, and of course they miss by a mile because of that. Of course, it's easy to turn the power down, the question is can they turn it down in a controlled manner?

Unrelated to the playing, we spoke with inspectors at the event, and it looks like making your bumpers and frame perimeter legal is going to be a pain this year for us, picky picky picky...... Kind of sad when you have to put more effort into your bumpers than your shooter. lol

Our bot didn't have the shooter on top yet, and so was really light, but it could do a wheely stand half way across the field! That was a real crowd pleaser, but of course didn't garner any points. :ahh:

It's going to be a great year, have fun all,

Mike

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

I disagree. We won a regional ramp camping in 2006, and in ATL still did well enough to seed in the top 8. We mostly shot from the ramp, but we would shoot from the base if we had to. The only times we were ever effectively defended was when a big name team with good scouting was the other alliance. Unless we see some really fantastic launchers I would wager that the 2168s and 125s of the world do pretty well. I really have a hard time seeing wheeled launchers getting the consistency from the key, but we haven't seen what the tippy top tier is up to yet.

I really like this game. The audience seems to get into it in a way we haven't seen since 2008, every time the net swooshed the crowd stood or their arms went up. The end game is exciting, watching those teeter totters rock back and forth was nerve racking! I think the point balance is about right too, while a balance is worth a lot of points, if the match is close you can still see the down team matching the balance or maybe even scoring a couple more points to still win. I think balancing is about the right level of difficulty too -- it isn't easy but we saw it quite a few times on the webcast, which is promising. The first 3 balance is going to knock the crowd of their feet. :ahh:

Strategically, knocking the balls on the ramp to your side of the field is huge. So is autonomous.

I think we're in for a good year. (Except for the enormous monkey wrench in the works that is the Coopertition Bridge. There is a lot of potential for bad blood on that field element.)

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

Don't you worry 125 will be able to shoot from wherever we need to....

Yesterday was all manual alignment, shooter speed, and hood angle for us, our drivers did great. We apparently had a bad Ethernet cable to the camera, oh well.

The biggest things I took away from yesterday:
1. Balls under the bridge is a huge issue
2. Teams looking to track penalties in scouting will be nearly impossible
3, balancing on bridges seems sketchy for now, once teams have more practice it should be fine
4. Hopefully they fix the fenders, the red fender at suffield was completely dislodged several times
5. Teams were inconsistent at best from the key, this should improve
6. Defense seemed useless. we parked in front of the fender and teams were able to back up to the key. Also, the high risk of penalties hardly seems worth getting anywhere near a robot shooting from the key. Well see how it plays out

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

@ kborer22; I agree there were some issues, but we all expect some at Suffield. The red fender was missing the velcro at the bottom. We knew but had no vecro to correct the problem. The ball issue was noticed right away & relayed to FIRST. As the day went on there were less instances of balls under the bridges. I guess the teams recognized this and adjusted their strategy. As for the rest of what you said about shooting from the fenders & balancing act. I will go out on the line & say everybody learned valuable information & will only improve dramatically from this. They also had that issue when we stopped round #3 in Hybrid. When the stop button was pushed, it caused a loss of info for the AP (access point) & had to be corrected. Again, FIRST was advised of this. The reason was that the bridge supports were not removed. They didn't pause the round for fear of the robots being caught up in a continuous Hybrid loop & unable to stop. As always there are things learned that are not thought of during planning each year. Life is a continued lesson & we never stop learning. We just roll with it. I am happy with how yesterday went & am looking forward to Hartford Regional.

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

As Team 23's cannon operator, i just want to point out, in probably Team 23's unique case, that the cannon can be shot from anywhere reasonable on the field. For example, all i need to do is drop the cannon 2-3 degrees and back up 5 feet. In these few matches though, as a team we seemed more concerned with testing the preset codes such as the kinect hybrid, and one touch auto shooting from predetermined spots on the field for our rookie programmers (and by rookie i mean no past coding experience).

With that said, i do agree with you. Team 23 will be headed to WPI and our drive team is expecting to see plenty of defense and will be required to shoot from more than against the fender.

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

What team is that? Your profile doesn't mention your team number.

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

Just because something worked in the past does not mean it will work today. Aim High and this game are different.

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

I'm mostly interested in whether anyone was crossing the field--our drive train doesn't cross the bump (but is very fast on the bridge), so it'd be great to know in advance if that's going to be a crippling decision so that we can possibly whip something up using the withholding allowance.

Did anyone try to play a more agile defense? In the matches I saw, all of the defensive robots just tried to ram their opponents into submission... to my thinking, the best way of playing defense in this game is being quick enough to snag the rebounds on all of the missed shots.

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

The classic form of FIRST defense. Depending on rules can be very effective (2007, 2009, 2010) or potentially very damaging to your chances of winning (2005, 2011 and this year). Mostly due to a "no-contact" zone on the field that is often forgotten or ignored by aggressive drivers.

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

Also factor in that the "no contact zone" only gets bigger as more robots stuff themselves in at the border of the key. I think the lack of defense at Suffield was based mainly off of two things...

1. The fear of getting fouls just traveling to the fender.
2. Teams inability to even cross over from one side of the field to the next.

I wouldn't expect 2 to be an issue as we get deeper into the season, but 1 will remain a massive factor.

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

The fresh painful memories of such consequences are still fresh in many teams mind from last year.

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

As they are for us...

I feel for any alliance, sending a defensive between the key and the fender is going to be taking a huge risk. There will be teams who do it extremely well, as there always is. However, the drivers of that defensive robot will need to be on their toes and very aware of where they are. We will see many teams parking just on the edge of the key. Defensive teams will have a 3+ foot radius around the key to be aware of at all times. The best defense will be teams who can clear the other alliance's zone of rebounds/stray balls.

-Brando

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

A third reason you didn't see defense at Suffield Shakedown: no team came to play defense to win the game. They came to refine their offensive capabilities on an official field. Defense will come because a good 60-70% of teams at regionals won't make one shot in the hoop. These teams may not play an ideal defense, but it will be an annoying one.

Re: 2012 Match Initial Observations
 

Defenders will actually be at a driving advantage compared to the offensive robots in that zone since the drivers of defensive robots will be right there on that side of the field. A well practiced drive team will be able to defend and clear balls to the other side of the field with minimal chances for penalties I think. This might actually be a year where you see a 'powerhouse team' play defense and be successful at it!