Re: Next Year's game idea....
 

A water Competition would be good but.... not to put all the teams down but some teams have a hard time building a robust robot. To build one thats 100% waterproof will be trying and hard espicially with the currently set 130lbs. w/ battery.

Another issue that may arise is this robots would be small ones. for the simple fact that you cannot lift a 130lb robot out of the water w/o a crane. The playing field would not be very big either.

I too would like to see a water competition but it would be too hard of game. Many things would have to be changed and the problem would be how interesting could it get.

If anything I would like to see Multipliers and many scoring options available with the "Winner Gets the Loser Score for QP's" And the 0 - 1 - 2 Method for Ranking.

Same Field, maybe with hanging objects in which robots have to retrieve and place in their Respective alliance zones. Maybe put the E-Stop Buttons to use again and end the match at your own free willing. Almost like in 2001 where where if you ended the match after a certain time you get an X amount of points. This type of game wouldn't be very spectator friendly but nevertheless has some ideas that could be usable.


Ahh the copy and paste is such a godly tool - thanks to jessica she had posted in a newly started thread that was created by anonymous (too lazy to look) the link to this one.

Thank You Jessica

Re: Next Year's game idea....
 

High school students + electronics + water = hahhahahahah

That could be cool if it would work...

Re: Next Year's game idea....
 

[quote=Greg Young]We've heard over and over that IR tracking is going to be essential in the future. I think Dave's been reading too much Harry Potter. Think Golden Snitch.

One game piece is a small autonomous robot with an IR beacon on top that moves around the field. The direction of motion is under control of a random number generator with ultrasonic range sensors for object avoidance so it can run away from robots that are trying to capture it. Its maximum speed is 3 to 5 feet per second.
QUOTE]

so how about this.

there is a Roomba (that robot vacuum) on the field, with an IR beacon attached to it. catch the roomba.

The time multiplier concept would be great to have. A fun time for strategy. Once you clock out your are dead for the rest of the match, leaving your opposing alliance freedom of teh field. Interesting.

I think the game next year should focus more on precision. We've seen the drive train feature gaes, like 2002 and 2003, and basic manipulation of an object, so how about something harder. Place a tennis ball atop a 6ft pole. Turn a doorknob to trigger somthing.

Re: Next Year's game idea....
 

I have information from an inside source that the field will most likely be the same general side next year. One interesting idea I heard was to have the robot assemble something from parts on the field then use that thing to do thing X (climb, stack, push, open, etc.). A larger vertical element to the field (i.e. things hanging from the ceiling) would also be nice.

Re: Next Year's game idea....
 

I could understand the field being about the same size...if nothing else, FIRST can re-use most of the walls. Just patch up the ball chute.

Assembly of something would be good, as long as the parts were easy to manipulate. Rubbermaid containers are one thing, baseball-sized parts are another.

Perhaps robots have to stack up a staircase to climb? (The only hitch would be making the staircase stable--can't have other robots knocking your stairs from under you, can we?)

Re: Next Year's game idea....
 

Maybe they are just dropping all these hints about IR sensors just to throw us off?

Anyway, I think a cool idea would be to have autonomous mode in the middle of a match instead. It would be even cooler if things just went to autonomous in the middle of the match and your robot had to move itself somewhere in autonomous and depending on where it moved itself, that is how many points they would get. The only problem I could see here would be for the referees. They could also have something when in that autonomous, you had to trip some kind of switch to get extra points.

Let's just remember that while there are plenty of great veteran programmers out there, there will also be newbies coming on who barely know C and will have trouble doing an autonomous, period.

Re: Next Year's game idea....
 

Well my first comment is how about a differnt starting posistion. Not RIGHT in front on the drivers but maybe up on a ramp? And if the same old boring starting possitions stay, maybe one side consists of a red and a blue, two opponents on the same side and visa versa for the other side.

Now that I got that out, how about a task that a robot can do, to give their team an advantage, for example: A button that if pressed (one time per match) the opposite team gets a blind sheild for 15 seconds. Maybe there could be mutiple tasks and your alliance can only pick one to use against the opponet, if they can reach it (maybe very hard to get?) I think that that would be a GREAT idea. It would involve alot of challange, a big race to do what ever the task is, and ALOT of strategy. (maybe have to do it in auto or else it doesnt do anything like this years.) Well those are my ideas...what do you think?

Re: Next Year's game idea....
 

A few of the main things that I think will be kept for all FIRST games are the elements of safety, mobility and "cheapness".

Safety: Making sure everybody is safe (or else they might have some legal issues). I think the reason they choose larger objects is because it is harder for them to fly off the field and hit somebody. If you have people throwing frisbees and tennis balls, it gets a little harder.

Mobility: Not sure if this is the right word I want, but it will have to do. FIRST is growing to like 29 regionals or something similar, and they need to make sure they can take all of the materials needed for the game easily. You can't guarantee heights of ceilings and whatnot, and constructing one isn't very feasible.

Cheapness: Keeping things cheap. I remember talking to one of the Regional Directors last year (after 2003 game) and they were really upset at that game (for many reasons obviously) partly because the bins would break constantly. Not very many bins lasted more then a few matches. This year was slightly different, but the 2x ball bursting was another cost hitter. I believe FIRST will go for something that will not take a hit on the budget.

But then again who knows...

Chris

Re: Next Year....
 

I want to see some limited visibiility in the next game. I am kind of a fanatic about FIRST, and I love how this year there was no "best bot" this year, like wild stang last year. I

Back to the limited visibility,

This would be crazy, and it involves an elevated human station

1 1/3 of the field is visible to all
2. the remaioning 2/3 of the field is variable, (starts split 1/3 red 1/3 blue)

3. Human players, with the aid of robots, get frisbees and throw them at frisbee golf hoops. If a player's frisbee hits the chain, then some of the variable feild swithes to the other teams.


I know that this would be a nightmare game, but it would be a very interesting and crowd-pleasing game, i would like to see something like it.

Re: Next Year's game idea....
 

I would like to see more contact with other robots. Like last years king of the hill. So when we go back to the pits we haved something to fix. This year we had hardly nothing to fix. No motors no electronics, just some angle aluminum and that was it.

Re: Next Year's game idea....
 

if you want to fix stuff, build a robot with poor structure (serves you right to have a strong robot. We didn't have to worry about not having things to fix.

Re: Next Year's game idea....
 

If that ever happens to you, go ask other teams if they need help. Our team never stopped working in the pits, and team 100 out of some boredom just started helping us. It was pretty cool.

Re: Next Year's game idea....
 

If anybody needs help we will be there to help. as far as a sturdy robot we always go with a 1/4'' or so drive plate. And make sure everything is well protected.

Re: Next Year's game idea....
 

Seeing as how Dave Lavery has the connections with NASA, I'd like to see a competition next year where robots compete in a simulated zero-G environment aboard the vomit comet.

If that's not possible, I'd go with more small balls and goals. There's just so many ways that you can make it work.

Re: Next Year's game idea....
 

funny you should say that. Look at the driver station walls of the fields for this year (from the driver's point of view). You can see the ball chute from the 2001 game, it's patched over with a piece of diamond plate of course. I noticed it in one of my matches at BAE.