Week 0 Discussion
 

Post any reactions to your week 0 events here. I'd love to see discussion about the game, how it's played, how your robot does, etc.

I'll be attending the Centurion-Krawler event on Saturday, and the Chanhassen week 0 event on Sunday. Couldn't have a better birthday present than to watch robots all day!

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

In Suffield, CT Aces High is hosting Suffield Shakedown today. To watch the webcast go to http://www.shsrobotics.org/ and click on the "Watch Now" link. Good luck to everyone hosting events today and teams that are attending the events.

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Looks like it was lots of fun. Looks like destroying the defenses was literal, lots of wood chunks flying around.

Lots of interesting drive trains, it was nice to see the Falcons "10 wheel drive" in action.

Lots and lots of low bar robots today, only saw a few that had to go other directions.

Really liked how you let teams play for 5 minutes a time. It took drivers about that long to figure things out.

Good event, this looks like it will be a good game to watch from the stands.

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Aiming is hard.

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We did that last year as well as this year at Suffield Shakedown. It allows drivers to figure things out and get more driving practice before their district or regional competitions. Teams have seemed to liked this format better than shorter 2 and a half minute matches.

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What I saw at the Arizona duel in the desert as well. It seems my assumption that any shooting when not on the batter will require a solid vision tracking system. The margin of error is just too low for a driver to consistently aim manually. Maybe I'll be wrong come championships but so far it seems to be the case.

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I was most surprised to see that not one team at the Merrimack event managed to damage a Category C defense on their own. They either needed 2 robots, or spent the whole match trying to get across once. Did anyone at the other week 0 events manage to solo a Category C defense?

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Was aiming hard due to just the inherent difficulty of shooting from farther away/lack of alignment or was it due to defensive driving?

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We weren't personally practicing aiming but from what I saw of every other team, it was quite a challenge to line up accurately. For one it is really hard to see with the defenses in the way and the margin of error is just very small. Even from the archived webcasts I'm watching from the other week 0 events, aiming is a challenge. This difficulty will be magnified when robots start playing defense.

It's also hard for a lot of teams to turn because of their drive train. Making a high traction drive train to get over defenses is nice, but it also makes it harder to turn efficiently making it harder to aim.

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We made a minor modification to our robot which helped shooting accuracy. Our spotlight for aiming seems to work OK.

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Over here at team 3102's Week Zero the competition itself was exceptional, and we got the process going smoothely to make it great for everyone.

The Problems:

We were using FMS Offseason

Only about half of the OM5P routers there would configure properly, even with firmware flashes. We could take one router, configure it fine, take another, wouldn't work. Even three computers wouldn't do it when it did others fine, then randomly after trying all day it would work. Unreliable at best. We had to borrow out a few older D-links B's to teams, and those configured perfectly every time.

Teams CAN NOT connect to a central router to practice with their robots. Teams were controlling other teams and seeing other cameras, and we made sure to re-configure their routers to their proper team numbers. I was told that the DNS method implimented in FRC's software does that natively. With FMS software enabled we could get two robots working correctly but didn't have time to do more testing. This ruined our entire FMS setup because there was no time to take everyones radio's and re-configure them, especially not with the configuration problems.

The solutions:

Teams were told to reconfigure their own routers with the config software, so we had about 11 seperate AP's going. Much interference with our stream was had, however teams could operate properly.


We simply had teams use the 'practice' method and set their timing to:
0
15
0
115
20

I had to do a good 30 laps around the field overall, showing teams before every round the timing and to press enable practice when we do a ready check and count down.

Next Year:

Next year if the same issues persist we will simply inform teams to configure their own radios, then right before lunch we'l gather them up and configure them while lunch goes on. Then we should be able to control them via FMS for official rounds.

We will also be running a dedicated line to have a consistent live stream, another camera may be added.

Thank you to those that came

We greatly appreciated the crowd we drew. Solving problems and getting everyone operational was a tedious, but very rewarding task. Its really great seeing all of you compete on the field and testing out your equipment. Sorry about the music, nobody thought to hire a DJ ;) This is our first year with our official Andymark field, next year we'l try to make it all just right.

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Oh god, under defense, high goal from the middle of the field will be a nightmare. Even if I write vision code, by the time we're aligned, a defender will have pushed us half way across the field.

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I have to ask, how did you guys come up with such a complicated shooter?

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Good question, I'm not entirely sure. Though I do know a few factors that led up to the design. For example, the linear shooter (one cim, two sets of wheels on one side to get some ball spin) seemed the most promising design during prototyping, we wanted the harvester and shooter to be separate mechanisms and face opposite sides, and we wanted the release point of the ball not to be too low. So from there we came up with a linear shooter assembly on an arm.

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Absolutely this.

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Exactly! I think a large number of teams are underestimating the importance of having a robot on your alliance playing defense. In my opinion teams are to optimistic about scoring boulders and aren't taking into account how difficult it will be to a) get to the low goal with a defender in the way, b) shoot from any unprotected position before a courtyard defender can ram you or get in front of you and block your shot.

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Here in Indiana, Team 1741 hosted a fantastic event for roughly a dozen teams! All teams did well in what they tried. Best part was all the interesting designs. No two teams had really similar robots.

Thank you 1741 for such a great day!

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

High goals are really, really hard.

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From what I saw at the Suffield Shakedown:

Crossing a defense in Autonomous is a must do for the 10 points.
Spybot scoring could be worth the same, but if you can do that, why not work on crossing a defense too for 20 points total.

The high goal may only be worth it in autonomous, after that, the 3 point gamble of missing a shot against a defense (with a better view of the action) and extending your cycle times cuts into your ability to capture the tower and get the Ranking points or 25 in the Playoffs.
A sweeper Robot could help to weaken a tower quickly.

Breaching 4/5 defenses is a good idea for the Ranking points or 20 in the Playoffs.

An actual match seemed pretty quick, given the number of tasks that are possible time vampires. I think you’ll be lucky to get in 4 cycles and capture, let alone scale.

Scoring in the low goal seemed trickier than expected with the sloped batter. A good strategy may be to shoot it up the batter with enough speed and proper aim. Positioning and aiming is difficult across the field, that’s where a camera on the Robot can help.
Like the balls in Rebound Rumble, boulder characteristics will change. Many get crushed under Robots on the floor and some defenses.

The Drawbridge may be a very popular choice this year as it blocks the drive teams' vision, but that cuts both ways. Nobody manipulated the drawbridge or sally port from the neutral zone today, but that may change. The ramparts and cheval de frise take time and are difficult.

Some Robots died on the Outer Works. Make sure your connections are tight and sturdy.
Robots that get stuck on a defense can be freed by an alliance partner.

I am sure this will change, but I think that an effective alliance will have one Robot dedicated to breaching, and two Robots dedicated to weakening the tower.
The breaching Robot could hold open the drawbridge or sally port, while the scoring robots cross them from the neutral zone to score.
You've got to outscore the opposing alliance to get your precious Ranking Points.
In the Playoffs, teams may gamble on a defensive Robot, at the expense of possibly not capturing a tower. But if you've weakened the tower by 3 or four in autonomous, that may not be an issue. Then again, if by the CMP the towers start at 12........ Oh dear, I'm headed down the rabbit hole.

Can't wait to see how Stronghold is played by week 5.

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We had a small practice event with out 10 teams from SW Michigan today. Only one pair of bots tried the drawbridge, with one putting it down from the other side and then backing through with the other bot following.

Our bot had no problem hitting the high goal, but only from one spot. Our cameras get in on Monday so that should help. I don't think we will have a problem with the high goal.

Had 2 of the bots leave scattered parts all over the field as wheels and gears shattered coming down off the moat or rough terrain.

We had a issue with starting to turn before our robot "landed" from launching itself over an obstacle. If we hit and begun our turn before the from landed we'd end up sliding sideways.

Our top match was 72 points, and that is with one of the robots missing a major component and without cameras. I'm thinking week 1 will be higher than anyone expects and not like previous years.

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At Suffield, low goal scoring was made more difficult than it should be because the balls were not cycled out once they were scored. So after ~5 low goal scores it became nearly impossible to score any more because the low goal was clogged up.

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From what I saw at Week zero in Merrimack I can say that it looks like high goal shooting is a rarity. I saw 2 teams that were actually able to score a high goal, and only once per game, and accuracy was terrible. Additionally almost everyone is going low, and it looked like only 2 teams there were capible of scaling the tower, although I did not see it attempted. I also saw no one cross every defence. Past that feild reset took ages, and queueing a pain that needs some refining. I think that the first week of competitions should plan for many delays. Another thing I noticed was it appears that the FMS system is all new networking hardware, and it also needs a bit of refining, but I think that the combination of that and new radios may result in less bandwidth restrictions for next year. I am very excited to see what this season brings.

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This was only the case after about five boulders were in the goal.

We were not allowed to cut into the diamond plate for cycling the boulders or allow for proper human player stations.

However, even when there were few boulders in the low goals, scoring in them was still problematic. It appeared that the intakes that were being reversed did not have the force or speed needed to push the boulders into the goals, especially with the incline of the batter.

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First off, I'd like to thank the Lee's Summit R7 Alliance of 1730, 1986, and 1987 for hosting teams from the Kansas City area today. They were gracious hosts as always and the pulled pork sandwiches were tasty.

A few observations.
1) Stuff breaks...a lot. The defenses are punishing, especially the ramparts, rock wall, and moat. The rough terrain isn't too bad, but if you have an arm, lift it up first. You pretty much have to hit them with speed and the robot takes a bit of a beating. We built about the toughest drive train we ever have and it was still hard on the robot... And that was without defense. Better have a good pit crew.

2) High goals are difficult and rare, but impressive when a team can pull it off. I say this on observation and not from experience because we decided to focus on the low goal.

3) Scaling seems very difficult. We didn't see any scaling today but there were bots that were planning on it. If other teams are like ours, it is just tough to work out all the kinks, especially if you have a low bar robot.

4) It seems like this game has become unexpectedly tough later in the build season. It was hard to ignore the fact that fewer teams than usual were present and ready to go today. Maybe they all just have their own practice facilities now, but I suspect teams just weren't ready. The devil is in the details and with so many compact robots, space becomes an issue. That said, for us it was absolute gold to be able to get on a well built practice field and give it a go.

5) It is going to be a war of attrition. Teams who have robots that are built tough and easy to repair will have a definite advantage. Reliability and consistency are about the two most important things, and they may be hard to come by in this game.

6) Stronghold will be fun to watch. There is a lot for the robots to do and a lot of room for oohs, aahhhhs, wows, and oooooh no's!

Good luck to all teams!

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That was our issue. We scored the most low goals in a single match to my knowledge which was 10. Since we had a articulating shooter what I was doing was driving up and shooting the balls over the other balls. Half the time it went through the other end which they did count but is obviously not something I would ever do in a real match. The robots that relied on pushing the balls could only score 2 or 3 before it would just bounce out.

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It is very easy for robots to drive on top of and get caught on stray balls on the field.

The dividers on the Batter are clear and impossible to see from the driver's station. Almost every team attempting to challenge or even score in the low goal struggled to avoid them.

The Drawbridge is far flimsier than we expected, so teams that are practicing with plywood should either build a new one out of polycarbonate or be prepared to make adjustments at competitions.

One last very important note: Queueing and field reset is very challenging and time consuming due to shuffling of defenses. Please be patient with the event staff and honor their requests. A lot of thought has gone into the logistics between each match and they are doing the best they can, especially at events with limited space.

Drive teams must be in the queuing area two matches prior to their own in order to select defenses for their match.

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I'm not sure if anyone has a video of these, but 2 (or 3?) times today at 1741's event, 1747 was able to do an auto that crossed a defense and shot into the high goal. I was really impressed with their robot. Also, in one of those cases, it seems like the code was written to spin the robot clockwise until it found the tower. The robot did like a 340 degree spin and found the tower. then proceeded to shoot and make the high goal shot. It was funny to see the robot do the fun spin. It was even funnier to see the faces on some people when they saw the robot made the shot.

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Just got done with the Centurion-Krawler Event. Nothing but praise for the host teams. It was incredibly well run, one of the best non-competition event I've been to, and I haven't been to a bad one.

Tons of notes and comments about Stronghold:

- Climbing is so rare! Only 3 teams out of 20 had a climber, and only 2 look like they'll work.

- The event I attended had many of the top robots in MN attending and none of them dissipointed.

- Almost every team I talked to was in a better position than they normally are. I think this is a testament to MNFIRST's growth and all of the off season training events that are being held.

- 4607 broke the field in like 8/12 matches that we were in (Sorry 2052, and 2472!) Better watch out Lake Superior and North Star field reset crews. (Our driver likes to call his driving style DoH - Dukes of Hazard. We caught >1 foot of air on multiple occasions)

- Accurate high goal shooting wasn't terribly rare, but that's probably due to the quality of robots at the event. I'd say there were 4-5 teams out of 20 that could effectively score in the high goal, and things got much better throughout the day.

- Low goal is the way to go for almost every team. 2574 cycled low goal all day and they were very effective.

- Damaging the defenses has been blown way out of proportion. It's really not that difficult. We'll see how that changes under heavy defense, but there is a lot of incentive to focus on offense during quals.

- There were a large number of teams that could probably breach on their own if that's all they focused on. Breaching will be way easier than weakening the tower.

- The hardest non-gated defense for auton is the ramparts. It'll turn your robot sideways in a hurry.

- There wasn't a single team at the event that could pull open the Sally Port or Drawbridge from the neutral zone.

- Driving from the opponent's Courtyard to the neutral zone through the gated defenses is harder than you'd think. Most teams seemed to benefit from going over the rough terrain or Rockwall on the way back.

- The hardest defenses for most teams seemed to be the moat, and the portcullis

- Inspecting bumpers is going to be rough. Really rough... inspecting the software versions will also be rough. The PDP doesn't show up on the driver station so you actually have to connect to the roborio to check it out. That's annoying.

- Connection issues are a real thing. The robots take a serious beating (seemingly more so than 2014) and the electrical system is affected. I think we'll see a ton of robots dead on the field for 30 seconds while their radio resets. I'll bet the biggest offender is the 10 and 20 amp fuses in the PDP. With so many teams using the same PDP as in 2015, it'll be a problem. You shouldn't be able to pull those fuses out by hand, and most robots that I inspected you could. I think the plastic that holds them in has deformed, which leaves many teams in a bad situation.

- Good luck Refs, glad I'm an Inspector :D

- Karthik was justifiably terrified. There are in fact a disproportionate number of low bar robots. None of which were only low bar robots.

- There seemed to be a ton of design variety even considering the height restriction that most teams gave themselves. If I had to break them down into 2 categories they would be: Articulating arm with wheels to intake and shoot (Similar to our GreenHorns Ri3D Robot), and full side intakes that load catapults (Similar to Snow Problem's Ri3D Robot).

- If you're still reading you deserve a cookie

- Stronghold has taken the best parts of the last 4 games and combined it into 1 super-game. It'll be a blast. I'm pumped.

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

We had a really fun time at your event! It was our first time doing a Week Zero event and we absolutely loved it. All of your volunteers were super helpful!

At the event, our we found issues with:

- Ramparts! They seem to be the devil in disguise! They look so easy until it turns your 70 degrees into the next defense!

- As others have said, the high goal is super hard to line up. We didn't even have a defender on us either. I will definitely have to work on some vision if we want to be more consistent.

-Speaking of vision, at the event, I could not find one team that was using vision. There was about 12 teams there and I thought I would find at least one team with a good vision system.

- The Portcullis, Sally Port, and Drawbridge were neglected as if they were poisonous or something.

- The Spy Human player was actually super useful for lining up shots when obstacles were in the way. I thought the Spy was going to be useless but was proven quite wrong.

- We need some more sensors so our drivers can be more informed on whether or not the ball is in and how far we are away we are.

- I think we should pick only low defenses when possible because the Driver's vision was super annoying. We occasionally accidently hit another friendly robot because the big drawbridge was in the way. Cameras can only do you so good....

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I was watching the action at Suffield Shakedown briefly today. I noticed that at least one set of the ramparts used was actually backwards. Just wanted to throw that out there for any teams relying on the scrimmage for their testing. Our team definitely noticed a significant impact that the direction of the ramparts (I.e. which side is up/down) has on how it should be crossed.

Particularly if you plan on crossing this one in auto, it should be done with the proper direction of the ramps.

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

https://youtu.be/PtKH-1WJ-dU

We were as surprised as anybody to see that shot go in. Working vision code has been one of the many benefits of finishing the robot week 3.

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

It really seems that the portcullis falls MUCH slower than the field tour made it out to be, which miffs me a bit.


Man you have no idea how much I wanted to do vision code this season... so little time to do it though.

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

Thanks to 2220 and 3184 for co-hosting the even we attended. More robots were running and able to practice on the field vs. recent years.

As expected, vision is a big deal. Positioning of defenses is so key in what drivers can see. Of the 26 teams in attendance, 6 were able to shoot high. I believe there were 3 that did not bring their manipulators.

As Ginger Power mentioned before, bumpers were an issue.

Hope everyone makes good progress these next 3 days.

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I was unable to attend the 1741 scrimmage, any reports on their robot?

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What was your biggest problem with the aiming? Just the time it took or couldn't find the tape...?

I personally was surprised about how little depth perception you have when the goal is that tiny and that far away. Shooting high goal was a dice roll.

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For the teams that were there, how little visibility did you really have?

I always thought that, although you cannot see your robot from behind the drawbridge, you still could "know" where your robot last was, in a sense.

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From alliance stations two and three you can not see the feeder station.
Teams consistently struggled to line up properly to drive back thru the draw bridge and Sally port. Otherwise it wasn't that bad

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We had a very different experience. Visibility is brutal in this game. It's nearly impossible to see balls in the opponent's courtyard.

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I think the alliance that wins champs will have at least one bot that can score from well beyond the batter.

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Why?

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My thought is because of unpredictability.... if all you do is go to batter and shoot a singe defensive bot can ruin you day very easily via many different avenues. Batter only is way easy to defend with even a kitbot

If instead you can shoot far/high/low then the single defensive robot cannot key on any one repeated move.

I have a feeling in real games defenses are going to dominate those bots that show predictability in having a favorite/only shooting spot. The scouts will have that in their notes.

So teams that scout will find the bots that should just play defense in a match and those on the other side that show predictability as in needing a sweet spot like the batter. Its hard enough hitting the high goal without any defense with its nearly impossible with another bot ramming into you or getting in your way where you cannot see clearly and good luck for your spy telling you real time move info.

I do think versatile shooters will prove to be choices over a batter only bot as I'm fairly certain teams will be able to handle batter shot only bots with a weaker member of their alliance playing only defense.

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Of 19 teams at our practice session, only 3 could score goals with any consistency. All of them were set up for high goal. Many "low" bots could not get under low bar. 3 bots had implements outside their frame perimeter and are having to redesign.

Wooden outerworks had quite a bit of wood missing at end of day

Human player was almost non-existant due to very few shooters in both spy box and "bowler".

Not a single robot seemed to have been built for defense. I thought maybe some of the rookie bots would have gone this way.

3 bots trying to go through obstacles was very crowded. Even worse if you were a shooter and alliance members kept running into you. Can't imagine what it would be like if you added a defensive bot into the mix.

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We attended the week 0 in Nevis mn. 14 teams very fun and informative. Thanks to TnT
One shot HG well several others attempted and need some tuning
Most could cross non manipulator defense
I think 3275 was the only one to do the Sally port and lift the gate
Hard to see w/o camera
Had one team climb
Lots of robot parts on the field
Teams will need to communicate well to win
Scouting will be crucial

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When refs miss defense crossings it's painful, especially with manipulated defenses.

You'll see here that a red portcullis crossing is missed.

https://youtu.be/tRs7lJmzNVw?t=49

At the end of the match you'll actually find that we (319) cross over the defenses again to get in position cross it for a third time. In that time our teammate crosses it for the third time, breaching the defenses.

We make it back over in the nick of time to get on the batter, but it never should have been this close.

This scenario is particularly frustrating because in this case, two robots were distracted with a task that shouldn't have been necessary.

In a game that winning will be the result of using your time the most effectively, this could be really tough.

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True story from Saturday.

MrRoboSteve to drive team: Hey, you should try playing some defense. How about hassling that Red robot with the ball in it?

Drive team member: Um, did you see that mechanism on the top of their robot? It looks like 5 pounds of metal held on by two small pieces of 1/8" polycarbonate. Are you sure we should be doing that?

MrRoboSteve: Oh, it must be stronger than that. I think it's the angle that we're looking at the robot.

You know what happened. After the match, our drive team member went and apologized to the Red robot's drive team.

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So after watching a few matches lining up is a lot easier especially if you have a dumby stick and a good HP spy.

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I know that this can be frustrating, but please remember that these were among the first matches ever played on the Stronghold field and the scoring was being performed by young and inexperienced volunteers.

I wouldn't expect this type of thing to happen during official competitions.

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What do you mean by a dumby stick?

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I personally started using them during rebound rumble its just piece of 1x1 or even wood with bright tape. the bright tape is taped to the 1x1 at the angle you shoot at. different colors different angles different shots.

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I would. Referees will straight-up miss some, FMS errors will contribute some, humans incorrectly entering data will also contribute quite a few. In addition, there will be many near-crosses where teams do not fully meet the criteria for crossing, or just barely scrape by and the referees don't see.

This will be one of the worst years to be a referee, it won't be quite as bad as 2014 though.

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Visibility was low if Portcullis or Drawbridge/Sallyport were on both sets of outerworks.

Also, we had about 12 bricked radios at the SCRRF scrimmage. Someone didn't get firmware flash (or whatever they did) correct. Took a couple of hours to get all the radios re-flashed. Hope that doesn't happen again at regionals.

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But those aren't even refs, they're just random students?

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Precisely. The students handling the scoring were either freshmen or sophomores. Our head referee has refereeing experience, but he only has one set of eyes.

If teams are really that concerned with the accuracy of a pre-season scrimmage that is largely meaningless, then they can let me know in a PM and we'll see what we can do for future events.

The truth is that FIRST's goal with Week Zero is to test the scoring software and the logistics of the field and match flow. FIRST is not concerned with the accuracy of the results. They're concerned with making sure the software works and the game is played as intended. They look to us to fill in the gaps and those gaps are often filled by young students.

Official events will have more experienced volunteers. Scoring this game certainly won't be easy, but I'm willing to give the volunteers a bit more credit.

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

Exactly. SCRRF Scrimmage only had one ref (me), and my basic function was to signal a crossing/goal shot--or call a foul if needed. I missed several crossings, partly because I was looking elsewhere. (Also, a number of teams crossed defenses for practice not for points.) We didn't even try to keep score, though occasionally I'd signal a damaged defense.

This is going to be an interesting game to officiate, no doubt about it.

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It seems as though most alliances are focusing more on defenses and less on scoring. Do y'all think that this will lead to regionals saturated with breaches and only a couple tower captures? Also what about efficiency for low goal vs high goal if you are going to go for the capture in a regional qualification match?

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

Thanks for clarifying the situation Dan. I certainly don't expect it to be a common occurrence, but I wanted to call out that IF a crossing is missed the onus is on the teams to ensure the lights go to zero (by crossing again).

Also I want to say thanks to your team for putting on a great event. We had a blast this weekend.

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I'm not sure I agree with this. My take is this is the first time teams were able to take to a full field, so they tested themselves on the things they can't necessarily test at home.

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No problem. I apologize if I came off a little heated. In reality, teams SHOULD expect the scoring to be handled properly. It definitely makes a lot of sense to double-check with the lights before assuming you've crossed.

And I'm glad you enjoyed it. We have to make sure our long-time customers stay happy! We'd make the trip up to your off-season event in November if it didn't always fall on the same day as our FLL qualifier.

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I was not able to attend a week 0.

After actual use of the fields, FIRST provided or team built, was there any cycle time advantage to using the low bar? That seemed to be an often cited advantage of the low bar.

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Depending on the robot, not necessarily. If you can just fly over the rough terrain, rock wall, or moat, the amount of time saved isn't all that significant.

Then again, I haven't driven on an actual field, so I could be wrong.

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I would agree. B/D defenses can be taken at ludicrous speed. The low bar requires a bit more care.

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"Prepare ship for ludicrous speed! Fasten all seatbelts, seal all entrances and exits, close all shops in the mall, cancel the three ring circus, secure all animals in the zoo!"

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You just made my day! I must have watched that movie 50+ times. Always funny like the 1st time I saw it!

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Angle of effector needs a little work...;)

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I was the double face-palm on the zoom. It was a sympathy reflex. We almost did the same thing in practice on Saturday.

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To the point where when you guys asked if the Portcullis was good, I answered with "Yes. Wait, are you planning to try it?" and on hearing "Yes" back the answer changed to "Nope, not good".

To be fair, they did figure out how to work the Portcullis without bending it.

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As a driver in a week 0 event, the visibility was pretty bad. In the opponents courtyard you couldn't see anything less than 8 inches above the ground. During one match (when we started as a spy bot and attempted a scale) one of our bumpers fell off and we had no idea that it had until after the match when we retrieved the robot. Also we had a major collision with another robot behind our own drawbridge when we didn't see them sitting there. We came to the conclusion after the event to add cameras to the bot before bag-and-tag.

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

New and important observation. The real field version of the drawbridge is basically impossible for one team to do alone. Check out Gamesense's YouTube Page to see what I mean. It takes more time than any other defense, but you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot if you pick it because it kills your visibility.

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

This design would probably work with the real portcullis, much better bearing surfaces, less force to lift, much stiffer.

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

Queuing was a pain i'll give you that. However that is the way FIRST wanted it to be. Field reset will definitely be better as the weeks progress. I believe i'm correct on that this is the first game with interchanging field elements which would make things a bit challenging on the reset team since this has never been a thing before.

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

We went to a practice event hosted by TORC 2137 for the second year in a row. They had a full field built. I've watched a lot of scrimmage video, and I'm pretty convinced it was the best practice field I have seen. They also had their machine shop open and many team members on hand. Really great hosts!!

I'm going to keep things general... There were only four of the teams present actually using the field; the rest were working on their robots. Out of the five (us and the other four) there were two high goal shooters and only one working on scaling.

There were no matches, just an open field you could use as you needed. My thoughts: The visibility was as bad as expected. They had metal elements as opposed to our wooden versions, and we were glad to test them out; we didn't notice much difference except that the moat was easier. We are adding extra reinforcements for our driver's station laptop, because robots were slamming into the low goal with force :eek: (which they graciously took in stride considering the work they put into that field.) We noticed some connection issues and such as have been mentioned on CD and have added protective material under our electronics (the foam you use under electronics in R/C planes.)

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

Thanks for the compliments! Our field crew worked long and hard making the obstacles and structures.


#Teaser

Re: Week 0 Discussion
 

Two more lessons learned from Palmetto.
1/ Porticulis is easy. Don't lift. Bump with a wedge. They have springs that help lift and slow down the fall. We struggled until we saw others do this. It may be an easy autonomous shot.
2/ We believe, at least for us, ball variability does have an impact which is more pronounced the longer our shot. We had much higher shooting percentages at the high goal up close, even though the angle was much harder, than mid or long range.