I have been at 2 regionals so far and have played Human Player at both....my closest accident was in my first match when I stubbed my toe on the field border coming off, but I didn’t fall thank god ;). If I were to fall and make a total fool of myself Id rather not be penalized for it.

This may sound harsh...
Accidents do happen, but if an HP has proven himself or herself to be a total klutz on the field, they shouldn't be the HP.

Heh, someone tried that on us in one of our matches. Little did they know that our robot wasn't in dead reckoning mode for that match; it was is stack-finder mode. It knocked down three of the stacks and was about to get the last one when autonomous mode ended:) (It actually worked to our advantage that it didn't get the last one since we ended up winning that match, but we got to see our stack-finder at work in competition for the first time.)

Regarding the injured player, I am sorry to hear that your friend was hurt. How is she doing?

-Eva
Team 891
"The pi team"

HP
 

One round, our human player that was subbing in for me, cause im the best one around, took all four bins at once and knocked them over, than he STEPPED INTO THE GRAY CARPET AREA (mistake #1) to PICK THE BINS UP (mistake #2) and last but not least he went WAY OVER THE TIME LIMIT (mistake #3), they DQ'ed us for the whole macth!!!:eek:

Once we decided it would be best for us not to use auton so I was told not to get back in time. Yet, I still wanted to do it fast to hon my skills while not standing around looking silly. so I ended up moon walking all the way back to the pad!!! Quite stylish yet still simplistic!

Human Player Option
 

One way of eliminating the rush to return to the pad would be to allow human players to place bins for a 10 second period, after which a buzzer sounds. Any bin not placed, or any bin in contact with the human player is removed for the match. You would not necessarily start with 8 bins in your scoring zone. This encourages hustle, but doesn't make the HP run or jump to get to a pad.

Yes, the call as to whether a person is touching the bins at the buzzer or not will put more responsibility on the referees, but it will also improve the safety aspect.

I did see two slips at Annapolis, though neither resulted in injury that I could observe. 10 seconds to rush back to a pad is just ridiculous in terms of safety.

Our human player fractured his ankel when he tripped on the edge and rolled it at cleveland. He managed to make it back in time, what an effort huh? But what was even worse was the paramedics did not know what to do.

Pressure
 

If you were to trip and still had 3 or 4 seconds, how much pressure does it take to register the mat? Could I (or my teams human player) crawl or roll onto the mat and still have it register? Or does it need to have a full bodyweight (100+ Lbs) on it?

Just planning for the worse,
-Jamie

Errr, yea, HP do have accidents, I should knwo this being the HP for my team. At the Central Florida Regionals, I took a nose dive off the field...heh...


Let's put it this way, I made a stack of three, but they fell over, sideways, and it is to my understanding we HAD to have then bottom down, so I scrambled ot fix them all, and on the way out, I was so absent minded, I forgot about the raised area, soooo I tripped, and did a nose dive out of the field. And I scrambled to make it to the pad (which I succeeded in doing in 10 seconds BARELY) and No, they don't stop the matches... I had my arms on the pad shoving myself up to pull me over, so I think it only requires some pressure, needless to say, I just sat there for awhile, tore off the top of my knee, the palm of my hand, and now the Medics know me on a first name basis, this was about the 10th or so time they had to fix me up.


I think the 10 second HP is fine. Even though I got joshed on for all of the days (by refs, judges, other teams, mentors, parents and my own team) It make it more fun. We had stack of 8 at our comp, and not once did anyone get DQed, so needless to say, much much fun. But it hurts being HP....

Btw, I have the video of that now. It's at:
www.orbitreview.com/~temp/639movies/MOV01961.MPG

.. goody, my embarassment gets to live on, lol.

I watch that video and my face turns red.