Significance of the Human Player
 

It's clear that the human player has a huge role in the game this time, more important than in the past few years. There are also many similarities in what the human player has to do and what a basketball player does. Considering how Dean Kamen has talked about how the allure of professional sports has been drawing students away from the "important" things, is this an attempt at revenge, drawing more athletes into FIRST?

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

I think revenge is a little harsh because Basketball and other sports haven't really hurt FIRST. It is however a good way to accomidate people with different interests and skills. Robot building isn't everyone's forte so catering to a different talent is a good aspect of the game. It really adds a good dimension to the game.

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

I was wondering about that myself, and although the overall impact of the human player is a bit more than I would like to have (being the main means to score points) it is in no way the only way to do so. Additionally, the static goals are cut so that you can acutally just heave it in with as much accuracy as a basketball net, so it puts less strain on the human player. the robot is still a key element, but i think that whats being emphasized this year is the element of co-operation. whether or not that is a good thing remins to be seen however :D

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

theres the whole inspiration and recognition of science and technology thing. The way I see it, FIRST is constantly trying to inspire and bring in people that would normally not be thinking about robotics or engineering. So, bring in some more athletes, or other groups whose members generally arent engineers, show them how much fun and interest they might have with robotics, and well inspire them :D (or convert them depending on how you look at it ;) )

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

I was worried about the overimportance of a human player's skills until I saw the mock round they did. The human players in that match didn't seem to have any problem at all getting the balls into the goals. Therefore I suspect that it's easier to shoot the balls into the goals than I initially feared.

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

Lol, you mean Jason had quite a few problems getting the balls into the goal, while that really, really good girl nailed every shot? Naw, she must've been so good she made Jason look bad :D

I thought I heard Dean/Dave/Woodie saying that the human players had been practicing quite a bit before they went out there, so start shooting!

Cory

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

Im telling you the secret to a really good human player is 100 shots a day for the first week, then up it by 100 for week 2 and so on, so by the time competition comes, the coaches won't fear if your human player has "the stuff" to do his/her job.

As Cory said, start shooting ASAP and make all serious HP candidates do this.

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

In past years the human player had a major role - last year was the exception

I watched a student at clevland hit the goal 10 for 10 with soccer balls in 2002, while it was being dragged across the field

in '99 it was amazing how well some students could sail them floppies

in '98 some kids that discoverd if you wipped the ball directly at the metal goal, it would go THROUGH the bars and score

remember the innertubes in '97?

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

of course, the human player is very important in this years game..

However, in the end.. it will be the best combination of the two who will win. An awesome HP without any balls isn't that great!

Also, as i said in another post, i think there's a hidden metaphor behind this. It goes along the lines of how robotics help humans in the real world. In this game, the robots help get the balls to the HP to do their task.

My $.015 :)

Jack

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

What surprised me was that the robot CAN'T score the purple balls, so you're forced to train and rely on a human player. I suppose that having a robot feed balls to a human player is probably faster and more accurate in most cases than having a robot deliver the balls itself. You'd have to chase down each individual ball, hold it in a cage and then dump them all into a goal (or do it one by one), that would lead to a lot of top-heavy monsters, like we saw in 2002 on one hand and a lot of teams would focus entirely on the small balls and develop lousy systems for delivering them, thus dooming the team. We saw that in 2002 as well with my old team for example. Instead, the veterans have to focus on a challenge they haven't solved yet, hanging from the bar and one they haven't seen since 2001, handling big balls.

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

whoa whoa whoa! the purple balls are worth 5 points each

you get 10 of your 26 balls in a goal and you have 50 points

cap it and you have 100

get all 24 purple balls in the center goal and cap it, and you have 240 points

what was that about hanging?

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

WHOOPS!!!

Totally sorry bout that!

New Game just sorta slipped my mind for a sec ;)

Thanks.. and you're right.

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

even if you bot cant do anything but cap a goal - your human players have 6 balls - score them and cap the goal, and you got 60 points

this is the point where teams need to do some data driven analysis - look at each possible scoring method, and see how many points it will get you

then decide which ones you want your bot to do based on that.

(and read the scoring section of the manual carefully :c)

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

Psst veteran teams have hung from a bar before. In fact the only part of this game that wasn't in a previous game that I know of is grabbing the balls off the T outside the feild.

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

Really? What year was that? I'd like to get some more information, and possibly video. it must have been before my time.

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

2000.

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

Thanks!
Sorry I screwed up with that.

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

i may be a noob at all of this cuz its my first year on a team, but i've been going to first competitions for a few years now, and it seems like theyve taken the challenges from the past 4 years, stuck them in a blender, and came up with this. personally i like the game and i think its exciting this year. i cant wait to see what everyone comes up with.

the human players are equally as important as the robot itself. the robot and the human player have a symbiotic relationship, and the team will not succeed if they cannot work together efficiently. thats basically my take on it as of now... good luck everyone

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

Everyone on 639's pretty PO'd about the amount of human involvement this year. Of course, our team hasn't been around that long, so we haven't seen some of the competitions you guys are talking about, but I think the emphasis should be on the robot, as in FIRST Robot ics. Talking about working together is all fine and good, but the fact remains that teams with better human players will have an advantage over other teams. To my understanding, after a quick once-over of the rules, a team could use the mobile goals to make it easier to sink shots, but this takes time, while a team with a good human player could just be feeding them balls. Of course, 639 might just be freakin out about this because we're all...dare I say...NERRRRDS! But I'd hate to see a team win it just because their HP can "sink a jumper from half court".

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

Then again, maybe FIRST isn't about winning...

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

I'm just a rookie, but personally I don't really like the idea of depending so heavily on a human element in a robotics competition. To me, it seems like the robot should do most, if not all of the work (minus the control for non-autonomous mode). Just my thoughts..

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

Come on guys, I'm sure you all saw kickoff and you saw that one lady that made oh I'd say about 99% of her shots. I really don't beleive that teams should be freaking out over this. Just take one or two people aside and say okay all you have to do is be good at making shots. I'm sure by the end of the six week periods they will also be a 99% shooter. Making these shots is nowhere near as hard as making a basketball shot, its a 4ft diff in height and the goal has a giant backstop and is very wide. If you are that crazy about not shooting into the stationary goal make your robot grab the mobile one and drag it over the your station and fill it up real easy by takin a 2ft shot.

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

If you guys are all worried about having terrible human players, recruit some from your school's basketball team. Or practice a lot... I got quite good in 2002 with very little practice. It really isnt that tough.

Cory

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

duhh.. i think it was 99... not sure tho

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

Hitting a certain % of the shots is only half the problem though. The other half is being able to fire off shots in a timely fashion, cause I'd hate to have balls sitting there, unthrown, when time runs out. Anyway, goal moving is going to be rather inefficient, not only because of the use of time in the competition, but also because of the use of design and build time. Anyway, I doubt that many people join FIRST teams to practice their jump shot for six weeks.

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

There are six balls in the operator station to start, 18 in the ball-drop thing and 2 on the tee, thats two people shooting 26 balls. Figure 13 balls a person thats a shot every ten seconds, plenty of time. Now I haven't actually gone out and timed this but I'm guessing that it shouldn't take more than 3 or 4 seconds for someone with a LOT of practice to bend over, grab a ball, aim and shoot at a stationary target.

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

I don't think what FIRST is asking us to do is to get skilled athletes to improve our chances of winning. I think what FIRST is asking us to do is what you said second - the people already on the team (who may or may not be classified as "geeks", "nerds", or the like) need to get out to the gym and improve their motor skills. Being technologically capable is great, but so is having the ability to not get creamed in a game of H.O.R.S.E. :)

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

I like the concept of cooperation between human players and robots, but this year they have taken it a bit too far- youre score basically relies upon the shooting abilities of your human players- completely independant of your team robot...

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

I like that. FIRST is ultimately more about the people than the robots and there's more to life (and FIRST) than just machines. Also, ultimately technology isn't the answer to every problem and people do have to make important, often philosophical decisions about how they use and interact with technology. I don't really know the answers to those questions but I'm glad that FIRST is making me think about that

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

There are plenty of ways to make up for a bad human player, such as moving a moblile closer for a shorter shot, capping, and the bar. Keep in mind you can pass the ball to your allies human player if he/shes any better. Also there several significant differences between this game and previous years, the biggest three are the platform, no scoring zones, and the C programming code. Also a note from someone at the NH kick-off was that the better of the 2 human players(who was REALLY good) shot more like a soccer goalie(underhanded-ish) than a basketball player.

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

Another note on shooting...

The balls at kick off were probably in excellent shape.

After several matches, they are going to be misshapen. Shooting will probably get harder as the tournament goes on. Still, 99% dropping to 75% isn't too bad.

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

I know they will have spare balls for if they get popped, so they might swap in fresh balls every few matches.

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

Also with the balls getting misshapen there come the fact thet will become Oblong i.e. Oval shaped. and be extremely hard to throw with any sort a accuracy what so ever. They will even start to roll funny.

Re: Significance of the Human Player
 

So, herding (and therefore HP fire rate) is going to get harder as the tournament progresses.