Re: 2014 Texas Robotics Invitational (T.R.I.)
 

An email just went out to all the teams with pit map, venue map, and event information. I've attached it here as well.

Re: 2014 Texas Robotics Invitational (T.R.I.)
 

From an email that went out to attending teams.

"The Texas Workforce Commission is one of the sponsors for the Texas Robotics Invitational (TRI) event. As one of the sponsors for the TRI event, TWC has required that each student participant attending this tournament participate in an online survey located at www.centraltxfirst.org/survey. Coaches should advise students to consult with their parents or legal guardians prior to taking the survey. The survey needs to be done prior to attending the event.

If you have any questions or your team has already done this survey please contact FIRST in Texas representatives Jessica Galfas or Ben Holquist copied on this email."

In addition there will no longer be a judges workshop like announced in the flyer for the event.

Re: 2014 Texas Robotics Invitational (T.R.I.)
 

T.R.I. will be played using the 2014 Aerial Assist rules with the following modifications.

1. No inspection, Honor system on legality. +5 pounds allowed. Gross / obvious violations of robot rules will be identified by the referees and must be corrected before the robot continues.

2. There is no zone requirement for possession. In other words, a possession anywhere on the field will be considered a possession in all 3 zones.

3. A trussed ball which is untouched by another robot and enters the low goal will be considered scored.

4. The basic foul of G21 is removed. Continuous / repeated violations will still be a technical foul. Contact outside the safety zone will still be enforced.

G21: ROBOTS may not extend outside the FIELD.
Violation: If intentional or if ROBOT extends into the SAFETY ZONE, NO CALL. If continuous or repeated violations, TECHNICAL FOUL. If contact with anything outside the SAFETY ZONE, RED CARD and the ROBOT will be DISABLED.

5. G14 will be modified to allow for “no call”.

G14: Strategies aimed solely at forcing the opposing ALLIANCE to violate a rule are not in the spirit of FRC and are not allowed. Rule violations forced in this manner will not result in assessment of a penalty on the target ALLIANCE.
Violation: NO CALL unintentional, inconsequential, or part of regular game play as judged by the referees. TECHNICAL FOUL for all others.

6. G12 will be modified so that an immediately rectified possession of the opposing alliance ball (from a truss shot, human play or field crew action, etc) will not be penalized at the discretion of the referees.

G12: An ALLIANCE may not POSSESS their opponent’s BALLS. The following criteria define POSSESSION :
“carrying” (moving while supporting BALLS in or on the ROBOT or holding the BALL in or on the ROBOT),
“herding” (repeated pushing or bumping),
“launching” (impelling BALLS to a desired location or direction via a MECHANISM in motion relative to the ROBOT), or
“trapping” (overt isolation or holding one or more BALLS against a FIELD element or ROBOT in an attempt to shield them).

Violation: NO CALL if immediately rectified unintentional and inconsequential FOUL, if unintentional and inconsequential (i.e. does not significantly impact MATCH play). TECHNICAL FOUL per consequential instance. TECHNICAL FOUL per extended instance. If strategic, RED CARD for the ALLIANCE.

7.G27 will be modified to remove the words “high speed or repeated aggressive ramming”. We're keeping the game play resulting in portion though. This is because everybody has a different definition of what qualifies aggressive ramming. But to stress, we are keeping the gameplay resulting in…

G27: Strategies aimed at and/or game play resulting in the damage, destruction or inhibition of opponent ROBOTS via actions such as attachment, tipping, or entanglement of ROBOTS are not allowed.

Elimination Alliance Selection
The top 8 seeds will be the alliance captains but their selection order will be randomly assigned. Alliance captains may not select other alliance captains. A serpentine order will be in place for first two selection of an alliance. The fourth members of each alliance will be randomly assigned to them from the remaining teams.
1. Top 8 Teams = Alliance Captain
2. Top 8 Team numbers are placed into a hat, the first team drawn is now the #1 alliance captain and allowed to select their first alliance partner from the pool of teams that are not captains.
3. This continues through all 8 teams.
4. The last team drawn from the hat is allowed to select two teams just like a normal 8 seed alliance captain and we continue back up in reverse order like a normal serpentine draft.
5. After all alliances have three teams, the remaining 8 team numbers will be placed in a hat and they will be randomly selected by the alliance captains in 1 - 8 order.
6. This will end with each alliance consisting of 4 teams. During elimination play each member of the alliance must play in one of the first two matches of each series. (In practice this means after the first match, an alliance must switch in the team that didn’t play in the first round). Alliance captains must turn in a line up card to the head ref prior to each elimination match and may not deviate from that line up for that match.
7. One member from the non-playing team may be part of the drive team group and will be considered a COACH.
8. Declines are not allowed unless the team does not want to compete in the elimination rounds.

Thanks to the IRI planning committee for many of these rule changes.

Re: 2014 Texas Robotics Invitational (T.R.I.)
 

Please have your orders in for pre-order lunches by this Tuesday. We will be ordering on Wednesday.

Re: 2014 Texas Robotics Invitational (T.R.I.)
 

Texas Robotics Invitational Promo Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTx628nQSTU

Thanks to the Discobots and Zach Ahmed for putting this together.

The event setup starts in a few hours and matches begin tomorrow. Webcast link will be posted later today and it should be on TBA

Re: 2014 Texas Robotics Invitational (T.R.I.)
 

Web Stream:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/texas-...s-invitational

FULL FIELD

Re: 2014 Texas Robotics Invitational (T.R.I.)
 

Had a chance to catch a few matches yesterday, but missed the finals. What were the final results?

Re: 2014 Texas Robotics Invitational (T.R.I.)
 

Working on getting everything up on The Blue Alliance but it probably won't be submitted to them till tomorrow night.

The winning alliance was
624, 3847, 1429, and 5070

Finalists were
148, 2789, 3735, & 3999

We used a different alliance selection process and I thought it did a pretty good job of mixing things up. We had a 4 vs 7 final, with the #1, #4, #6, & #7 alliances in the semifinals.

All of the matches are on our youtube channel plus the full recording from the day is their as well. We had a whole host of audio and video problems throughout the day on both of our streams so the recordings we have don't have sound.

Match recordings

Re: 2014 Texas Robotics Invitational (T.R.I.)
 

Here are the qualification scores right out of the FMS.

Elimination scores have to be inputted by hand since we had to mess with the bracket a lot.

Re: 2014 Texas Robotics Invitational (T.R.I.)
 

Allen,
You and the entire TRI team did a fantastic job with this event. The Robowranglers were thrilled to get the chance to come down and play with lots of old friends.

Kudos also to 3847 for the win! You know I'm a huge fan of your team, and robot. It was fun to get to face off against you in the finals -- though I am getting a little sick of playing against 624 in finals matches. :-P

-John

Re: 2014 Texas Robotics Invitational (T.R.I.)
 

CRyptonite had a great time at the inaugural T.R.I. From the button design to the overall quality of the event, everything was well run and right on point. Thanks to Spectrum, the LSR Coordinators, and all the volunteers for making it happen.

We would also like to thank our phenomenal alliance partners, 3847 Spectrum themselves, 1429 Kaos, and 5070 Gearnotics. It was a tough road to the end, but we managed to pull it off.

As exciting as it was to be on opposite ends of the field - We'd love to be on the same side of the glass sometime soon. We still have two more chances this year :)

Re: 2014 Texas Robotics Invitational (T.R.I.)
 

Great venue, planning, people, and execution - gold stars to all the folks that made it happen.

Gold stars to all the teams letting the younger members get a feel for the process.

Such a great collection of teams and volunteers.


CAN'T WAIT TO MARK THE DATE FOR TRI 2015.

Re: 2014 Texas Robotics Invitational (T.R.I.)
 

Thank you to everyone that came out to the inaugural T.R.I. this weekend. It was a fantastic event and all of that is due to the fantastic people that helped put it together. I promise I tried to make this short, however I failed.

First off thank you to Lucia Sevick for organizing a large amount of the event from bringing in volunteers to getting the table rented. Her experience with running events and getting all the little and big things checked off was amazing. T.R.I. wouldn’t have happened this year without her.

A huge amount of gratitude is owed to Texas Workforce Commission and FIRST in Texas. Their finical support allowed us to put on this event and remove the entry fee for teams. Thank you for all you have done for FIRST in our state, we truly appreciate it.

Mary Jo Maciejewski & Dominic Baula are two new teacher mentors on Spectrum this year and they led the school and facility side of planning and operating this event. Thank you so much for everything you did to make TRI a success. Also, thank you to Strake Jesuit College Prep and their facilities department for working through all our requests and helping put on a great event.

T.R.I. was a success largely due to the great volunteers we had working the event.

Chris Culbert didn’t really have a set position at TRI, I’m not really sure if he does at any event but he is always solving problems and working to give teams, students, and volunteers a better experience. Thank you for everything.

Judy Bryant (57) was our lead at pit admin as she is at the Lone Star regional and numerous other robotics competitions throughout the year. Cecilia Cisar was helping her out at this event as well. Thank you for all that you do for the teams and keeping that part of the competitions running so well.

Thank you to our referees at this event, they were Rachel Smith, Alan Cisar, LaQuinta Parker, Scott Rippitoe(1477), & Robert Oakley(1477). They had a number of people helping them scoring each match including Spectrum alumni, parents, and volunteers from team 3103 Iron Plaid.

We had a phenomenal field crew at TRI. Led by Mark Koors who made the trip to Texas to FTA our event and see how the new AM field perimeter would work out. AndyMark sent along Brett Heininger and Connor Forbes with the field who were awesome the whole event. FTAA for TRI was Aaron Graeve, a 1477 alumni, who has been a staple at Texas events this year helping to fix problems all over the place. Dave Cheuvront and Eldon Jackson were charged with keeping the field and the field reset crews working efficiently and they did a wonderful job of that as always. Scott Eddy and Fran Goundry(3103) were operating the scoring table for the event, and they even managed to work through our crazy elimination alliance selection process, I’m sorry and thank you. The TRI field reset crew included members and alumni from 1477, 3103, & 3847.

Paul Johnson(1429) was our MC and Game Announcer and he had a difficult job doing both tasks and keeping things moving. Thank you for your hard work.

Luis Medina(118) and The Robonauts ran the video, web stream, music, and a whole host of other things for the event. Thank you & it’s always great working with you guys. Nothing was really going are way in the morning but we came up with creative solutions to our problems. Next year we’ll get song selections for every team, instead of just the ones we think of on the spot.

Mrs. & Mr. Mendoza, Mike Outlaw (624), David Stoltz, Jim McAuliffe (3847) handled our queuing responsibilities making sure that teams were on the field and ready to play all day long. During eliminations half the time we didn’t know which alliance was supposed to be red and which was blue and we even switch bumpers mid round once but we got everything working and the matches that needed to be played were played. Thank you for your hard work.

Thank you to Lana & Steve Henderson(624) for getting the radio kiosk up and running and all the teams ready to connect to the field.

We had three safety advisers on hand for our event. Marilyn Cisar, Robert Tinker, & Steven Treese(624) kept everyone safe at the event and I happy to report we had no major injuries at this event.

I want to thank all of Texas Torque (1477) for their help setting up and tearing down the field both processes went so much smoother having you all there. Mr. Ball, Chase, London, Domino, Robert, Matthew, Aaron, Scott, and the rest of the way to many of you for me to name right now, thank you.

I want to thank all of the students and parents on Spectrum that spent the last few weeks preparing for this event. Concessions were led by one of our parent volunteers Teresa Smith and a number of parents and students who did an awesome job. There are a ton of little details that make events run well and they wouldn’t have happened without you all. From making driver and volunteer badges, programs, signs, and a whole host of other things. Thank You.

Lastly I want to thank every team that choose to come to our home and play robots with us. Some of you had very long drives (3741 Grulla HS had a 5.5+ hr drive) to come compete, thank you for making the journey. We had 3 pre-rookie teams (Pearland ISD, Katy-Taylor, & Katy-Tompkins) and I have heard they all had a great experience working with the veteran teams and working towards building strong programs for this coming year. Our goal for this event was to build the community we have in Texas and give more teams experience to help them in the future. I hope each team was able to use this event to build their programs, train drivers, make new relationships, and learn.

I am sure I missed people but we are truly grateful to everyone that helped put on this event. Thank you all for coming, we had a wonderful time, and we can’t wait for next year.

We’ll be sending out a team survey in the near future but most importantly please let me know how we can improve.

Re: 2014 Texas Robotics Invitational (T.R.I.)
 

Thank you to everyone that helped put TRI together! We had a few team members mention that if they hadn't been told, they wouldn't have known that this was the first time the event had been run based on how smoothly everything went, and I completely agree! A special thank you goes to the students on Spectrum that recommended checking out the Hokkaido restaurant around the corner from the school, it was delicious! I would also like to thank our elims alliance partners 3735 & 3999, it was a pleasure working with both of your teams, and we will see you at TRR!

A really big and heartfelt "Thank you" goes out to our alliance captain, the Robowranglers from team 148. Every time we play with you or against you we learn something new, and we learned so much from you at this event. It was truly an honor to make a second run through elims with you this year. Thank you for being the awesome people and organization that you are!

Re: 2014 Texas Robotics Invitational (T.R.I.)
 

How was the game without the zone requirement for possession?