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.