Question for Drivers: How Was Your Visibility?
 

One thing I've wondered since the game came out was how bad the visibility would be. So, to all of the drivers that participated in these past regionals, my question is how bad was the visibility?

Specifically, can you see through the wire mesh at all? I'd assume when the wall is still up, you have no clue what's going on, but is the wire mesh transparent enough to see through it at all? What was everyone's strategy on compensating for the lack of visibility? What worked best?

Oh, and congrats to everyone who participated at the various regionals this past week - my team still has to wait 4 days to play =o

Visibility was not bad at all. If the wall was still up, it was a little hard to see the bot, but once it was down, everything was good for me. We took off our stacker so we could go under the bar after we realized it was useless, so we had some trouble then, but we just put some pipe foam sticking up so we could see our bot.

Cory

About the ramp - could you see anything through the ramp? Meaning could you see your robot under the HDPE enough to control it?

If you are under 6 feet tall, good luck seeing anything! Flags on the robot are a good thing, possibly the 'ol bicycle flag ... 5 feet tall with a neon flag at the end!

Josh (my driver) and I could not see anything! We tried looking under the grate, no luck. We used the video screen and that was great if and only if the camera was on us. We would have to have Kurt (our arm driver) put the arm up and wave at us to first of all find it, then we had to determine which direction we were facing (we have a turret)!

It helps if the bins are knocked down. If they are not, you are looking through 3 inch slats.

Other than that, I am thinking of investing in some platform shoes or contacting my local drywaller, to see if I can borrow his stilts. Is it illegal if I walk onto the playing field on coffee cans? Or can we build a box to stand on?

This is not a short person's game!:)

I could see everything fine, I'm six feet tall though. There's probably maybe a foot that you can't see on the other side of the wire mesh, which wasn't a problem because the robot's height makes up for the angle. I couldn't see through the mesh, but there was also no need to.

Depth perception was a problem for me. With such a big field and such a big ramp obstructing your view, it gets hard to tell where exactly bins are. When trying to descore bins it can sometimes be hard to see if they are out of the scoring area or not. Another problem area was seeing the alley ways not in front of the driver station. For robots going under the bar or if bins are trying to be descored in this area, it can be a problem.

Besides these, the only real problem I had with visibility was seeing if our robot was really on the top of the ramp or not. It is really hard to judge from the driver station how big the top of the ramp is. I found myself always hugging the near side of the ramp where I knew for sure that we were on. In one match I accidentally pushed an opponent's robot off of the ramp because I was afraid we were not on. After seeing footage of the match, I saw that we were on with no problem before I even started to push.

I'm 5' 7.5" ... Going to bring stool just in case :)

Seeing our bot is very difficult when it is on the other side of the ramp. It is only 13.5 inches tall.

Yes, Alot of the teams w/ large bots probably didn't have visibility issues, I'll give you that, but I know we ranked in at 13.5" and we had alot of trouble trying to knock down the central wall from behind it. True, after it was down it was easier to see, but there were quite alot of issues we had this year.

Are we allowed to do that? I swear I read something about the driver having to stand with both feet planted on the ground on CD some time back.

Our driver's a tad shorter than I. I hope he wears boots. (We'll need it, with a 13.5" tall bot.

Too true... Too true... and I'm about 5'2".

Our robot came in at about 14 inches and the bins are about 15 inches. Kinda hard to see the robot when it is blocked by a bin or two. I especially had major problems seeing the robot when it was across the field.

We ended up looking for a bicycle flag Thursday night, but one of the parents found us a kite kit. We used the side attachments and the fabric parts. It worked very well. Friday we put a red one on the back. Then I had problems distinguishing where the front was facing. So on Saturday we added a blue one on the front. Much better I must say.

A team leader was telling me that if the driver is 5'2" or less, they can use an 11" foot stool. Hrm... must look into that for San Jose.

Drive coach perspective
 

From my perspective it was near impossible to see our 14" bot. the box's are taller then our bot and the only way we could see it was if the arm was up then we could kinda tell what was going on. we did not use the video wall to find our selves because most of the time it wasn't reliable enought that we would be on camera. when the wall didn't fall in auto mode good luck. it's kinda a free for all because most of the time both robot's from the same team are running into them selves.

as for seeing throught the wire mesh. you can not see the other side from the driver station. 6' robot's, bin's and the ramp made it almost impossible to see anything except movement in the big piles that are bot was pushing. team's with flags were not all that usefull because it was hard to orient based on a flag. good idea in find the bot but hard to drive. good luck to all hope this helps.