Originally Posted by themccannman (Post 1466382)

Also I didn't look that closely but I don't think they're ramp had any bearings on it, I'm pretty sure the totes just slid down. They made it as light as possible and bearings probably would have added more weight than allowable, they are very close to 120lbs at the moment.

Originally Posted by Steven670 (Post 1466360)

254's ramp looked like it used ball bearing rollers. I would have been more impressed if they hadn't totally ignored rule T6. They just had one guy carrying the ramp separately. I guess if the rule doesn't have a penalty it doesn't exist.

Originally Posted by Steven670 (Post 1466360)

In one match they just stopped at 254 points and sat waiting for the clock to run down.

254's ramp looked like it used ball bearing rollers. I would have been more impressed if they hadn't totally ignored rule T6. They just had one guy carrying the ramp separately. I guess if the rule doesn't have a penalty it doesn't exist. There was one time that the ramp ended up with its outer end back at the wall. I didn't see if it fell wrong or got pushed. 254 didn't even try to get the totes off it, they just mined the landfill.

Another thing I wondered about was the stack(s) the tether was touching at the end of the match. You can't really see it in the videos. The refs weren't checking if the tether was supporting the totes. Judging from the blue box in the game manual the stack(s) should have been de-scored. They definitely weren't doing that. If they did, it could really hurt 254, as it is tough to control such a long tether.

Still, the Poofs were way ahead of of everyone else. 1678 couldn't do as many stacks and probably messed up more often. 971 had a jamming problem getting totes from the human player. 368 had a lot of trouble with their 3 tote autonomous, although they seemed to get it working in the later matches. They also had problems with mis-fed totes. 846's ramp tended to jam and they had a lot of problems with stacks falling over.

Our own robot (670) amazed me with its reliability. We improved more since the CVR than 254 did, with about 3x the scoring. The only real blemish was when the drive team decided to try to do a six stack with bin instead of our usual five stack in the semifinals and it fell over because it was too heavy. They really should have tried that on the practice field first... We were only fighting over 3rd vs. 4th place anyway. We were too slow to make it into the finals.

Originally Posted by Cory (Post 1466556)

Thanks for assuming we were cheating, but if you had asked you would have found out the inspectors and refs decided teams should demonstrate that they can establish a compliant transportation configuration, but in the interests of saving time during setup should bring the robot on in it's starting configuration.

Originally Posted by themccannman (Post 1466025)

254 scored 254 twice, once in quals, once in elims (both with 1678, maybe we can score 1678 points at CMP?). Also our average was 170 just fyi. 5 vs 6 wasn't the difference in average, the difference was that 254 grabs a can off the step in teleop, we don't so we just run out of cans after 3 stacks. The ~30 point difference is about the value of one stack.

Originally Posted by AlexanderTheOK (Post 1466674)

Of course, if anyone can tell me of a match where there actually HAS maxed out can usage, I would love to admire it.

Originally Posted by Steven670 (Post 1466360)

Still, the Poofs were way ahead of of everyone else. 1678 couldn't do as many stacks and probably messed up more often. 971 had a jamming problem getting totes from the human player. 368 had a lot of trouble with their 3 tote autonomous, although they seemed to get it working in the later matches. They also had problems with mis-fed totes. 846's ramp tended to jam and they had a lot of problems with stacks falling over.

Our own robot (670) amazed me with its reliability. We improved more since the CVR than 254 did, with about 3x the scoring. The only real blemish was when the drive team decided to try to do a six stack with bin instead of our usual five stack in the semifinals and it fell over because it was too heavy. They really should have tried that on the practice field first... We were only fighting over 3rd vs. 4th place anyway. We were too slow to make it into the finals.

Originally Posted by AlexanderTheOK (Post 1466674)

Of course, if anyone can tell me of a match where there actually HAS maxed out can usage, I would love to admire it.

Originally Posted by Cory (Post 1466556)

Thanks for assuming we were cheating, but if you had asked you would have found out the inspectors and refs decided teams should demonstrate that they can establish a compliant transportation configuration, but in the interests of saving time during setup should bring the robot on in it's starting configuration.

Originally Posted by TikiTech (Post 1466808)

Shout out to Devin, thanks for taking time out to "talk story" with us and helping with ideas for the future. Mahalo!

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad (Post 1466709)

And that has been happening since the first week when they found out that trying to follow the rule slowed down the competition schedule too much. All of the other competitions have has the starting configuration set up since.

Originally Posted by JB987 (Post 1466974)

Actually not accurate to state all other competitions have had the starting configuration set up allowed prior to reaching the field. At the LVR, we could NOT do so as the head referee decided to adhere to the letter of the rule...though as a member of the planning committee I tried to talk him into the "relaxation" of the rule since so many events had reported doing so in prior weeks. It was decided that we would wait and see if we were having trouble maintaining a reasonable cycle time. As it turned out we managed to stay on time and stayed within the rule. The question now is what will the practice be at Champs? It would be nice if FIRST would address this issue and all of us enter the event with the same expectations.