What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

How are the rookies doing?
Did anyone cap a vision tetra in autonomous mode yet? :ahh:

Just curious.

Oh, and what is going on for a team social Friday night?
Anything? I may take a ride up later after work if the weather is nice, and I will definately be there Saturday all day.

Good luck to all teams!

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

Practice matches went smoothly for the most part.

It seemed like most teams with issues resolved them by the end of the day. I think almost everyone was able to run in at least one practice match.

126,20,173,69,230 all looked good in practice.

Nobody has capped a vision tetra, the closest anyone came was 157 when they picked one up during auton.

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

How many tetras was 230 stacking at once? They looked good at the UTC scrimmage (I think they did 3 at a time), and I was just wondering how many they are able to do at max.

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

They were doing 3 at a time all day.

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

Yup, 3 is the max we can cap.

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

My team is at UTC, and this is the first time I have seen so many teams with problems, or just not finished. So many teams did not have their bots done, and still didn't have it working by the end of tonight. Yes they got a practice round in, but it wasn't very successful for many teams. I hope it isn't this way tomorrow, because its depressing that so many teams are having problems. Has it been this way at the other regionals? (at practice rounds)

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

Today's practice rounds at UTC were FAR better than those at Sacramento last week.

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

I did not notice a lot of bots having serious trouble at the Great Lakes Regional. Most practce matches had at least a majority, if not all of the scheduled bots, on the field practicing. I saw many robots capable of capping, which is encouraging. Looks to be a good competition.

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

David,

Also, didn't your team cap a vision tetra in your last practice match? That was sweet!

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

The first day is always an experience. Practice rounds at BAE made it look like many maschines were having their difficulty, and it looked as though the competition could be dull if things didn't shape up. But, as always, teams came out to win the next morning. Many robots that did little during practice proved major contenders throughout qualifiers. Everything that happened on thursday showed little foresight. Believe me, by tomorrow, you'll have quite the competition. All the bugs seem to have a way of working out in time to make things interesting!

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

Is it me or did a lot of teams give up on the vision tetra and camera?

Some strong teams I noticed today (I was in the pit area most of the day chillin out):

178, 181, then i'd like to say 536? (they have the shark or something)

I also heard team 230 is awsome but I haven't seen them.

Also hate to jinx myself or be cocky (the drive team is being cocky and kind of annoying the rest of the team), team 1071 looked impressive, probably able to stack 8-9 high on the center goal if we had to, scoreing about 4-5 tetras per round after we fixed our controller.

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

Anyone know what happened with the robot over in the spare parts area? I walked in there a couple times today, and the same one was there.. being worked on. I didn't want to interrupt their hard work. Can't even remember the number at this point.. hrm.

Also noticed the lack of wireless internet access, which disappointed me.

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

I saw alot of teams that were doing really well and alot of teams that had some problems with parts either falling off or not being completely finished. Over-all though, it was a good first day. I'm kinda bummed that they don't have WiFi internet access so that i could update you through out the day, sigh oh well. Anyways, i'll try to update when ever i have net access.

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

We were having a score of problems today. First, we needed to disassemble our transmissions and put in new side plates. We also needed to drop 5 pounds off the bot. Doing these things brought us to about 2:00, and we were only able to compete in 2 practice rounds. In the first, our motors were wired back wards, and the program was reversing sides, so the bot was near impossible to drive.

In our first match, our camera locked on to the target with no problem, but I overlooked a break statement in the code, which caused the robot to never enter tracking mode. In our second match up, the backup battery was dead, and we did not have connection to the camera (doh!).

I am pretty confident we should be able to track the vision tetra tomorrow, and hopefully after we fix a few bugs we can pour all of our recourses into making that happen.

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

Things seem to be running smoothly for the most part at UTC, although I also noticed that there were alot of teams who have been having problems on the first day... my team included. I didn't get to watch many matches at all, but the robot that stands out most in my mind is team 69's robot, which had a very simple yet elegant arm that would cap quickly and easily.

As for my team... it was a mediocre day for us, although certainly not as bad as it could have been. We have been struggling to perfect the design of our hook, and a good portion of my day was spent wrestling with the hacksaw to make new pieces for the hook. I think we are close to getting it to work well, but it is still rather frustrating... by then end of today I was pretty much at the end of my rope.

We have also had some problems with our wheels... we basically chewed up one of the inner tubes of the pneumatic wheels (don't ask me HOW it got off of the rim of the tire and into the sprocket, but it did). We were using low air pressure to let us turn easier, but somehow this caused the tire to be pinched and... it self destructed. I am thinking of keeping the remains of the inner tube as a souvenir :p . Anyways, now we are forced to use a higher air pressure in order to prevent this from happening again, but now we are bouncing like CRAZY when we turn. If anyone has any ideas as to how to remedy this problem without lowering the air pressure in the tires, feel free to share them! The bouncing makes me nervous and our robot nearly lost its balance today because of it. Not to mention it creates difficulty when trying to cap.

I hope things go better for us tomorrow... I need to try to keep a positive attitude when things go wrong. A combination of lack of sleep and lack of food made me rather... almost depressed by our performance this first day. I think once we get the hook working better, and we get some more driver practice, things should begin to shape up. I think that we are DEFINITELY not the only team who has been experiencing these difficulties, and I am thankful that it is not worse.

Good luck to all the teams competing at UTC tomorrow, and I hope we can all get our robots up and running!

-- Jaine

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

o yes.... sacramento....heheh we only got in 1 practice round, a lot of teams had similar "fun". We had to replace the old 6v fps with new 12 ones which meant takeing apart our spool mechanism and (with we needed the new gearbox as well) and re-wiring. Not many teams (well except maybe 330, kudos to them) were got to 3 or 4 of their partice matches

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

Jaine:

If I remember correctly you guys are using six wheel drive? Maybe try letting some pressure out of the tires with the majority of the weight over them? Start with just one end (front or back) and then maybe let it out of the middle also. If you only have four wheel drive, try just one end of the bot. Play around with different tire pressures all around, kind of like ghetto suspension tuning :D .

Cya in the pits....
....look for the blue spikes! :rolleyes:

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

We are in fact using a 4 wheel drive system.
The problem with letting air out of the tires is that the tires get pinched by the rim when we turn. This will lead to flat tires, and maybe even the mysterious phenomenon of the inner tube coming out completely and becoming entangled with the chain and sprocket, which happened today. So right now our only choice is to increase the psi... and bounce ALOT. So if there is any other way to fix this problem without letting air out of the tires, it would be ideal. If not, I guess... oh well.

But thank you for your advice anyways... it is much appreciated.

-- Jaine

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

Janie, have you thought about using the hard inserts in the tires? That way you won't have to worry about them going flat or anything.
We use them and it works great.

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

We had this same problem last year, with our tire pinching when we turned and the rim actually popping it. The solution for us was to cover one set of tires in the 2" pool hose from home depot. We called this "poor mans omni wheels" It grips fairly well forward and reverse, but can glide sideways. We also tried filling the tires with expanding foam (also from home depot) to deaden the bounciness a bit but this added alot of weight.

The easiest solution is to put zip ties around the wheels. Ugly, but it has a simmilar effect as the pool hose.

I will be at UTC tomorrow, and I hope to see all of the great machines in action!
Best of luck!

Rob

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

Well here i am sitting in the stands during lunch (Thank you NETPLEX :-)). Anyways, a lot of people are saying that it is hard to figure out the penalties and points from the stands. Also, the highest score i saw here today was 80 w/ a 10 point penalty during match #11. Alot of teams are being really defensive against the good teams making it extremely hard for them to score. I'll update some more as the day progresses. Be sure to check out the webcast too!

999 out.

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

Jaine,
I know it doesn't help a whole lot, but it is possible you are letting too much air out of the tires and it is causing the beads to unseat. Basically the only solution that doesn't require anything over or on the tire would be to just mess around with the air pressure until you can find one that works.

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

Well, I must say that today was WORLDS better than yesterday for team 716.

We finally got our hook to work... and it works well now. We moved up from being the 23rd seed at the beginning of today to being the 4th seed by the time todays rounds were over. We also experienced great success with our autonomous modes... we consistently capped the center home goal with the tetra that we were allowed to start with. So kudos to team 716's lone rookie programmer this year...Dillon (CmptrGk), for getting this to work!

As for our wheel problem, we didn't get that resolved. I am not sure if we are going to do anything about it at this point, because we really don't have any materials to work with to make the wheels slide easier. For example, I love the pool hose idea, but we don't have any. And as for the tire inserts, I don't really know what they are...so I don't think we have any. :o As for zip ties, I was told by Andy Brockway, our engineer, that they wouldn't have enough surface area to make much of a difference.

This WAS our problem, as I said earlier. Our tire pressure was too low, but when we made it higher, our wheels bounced very badly. So I guess we are stuck with the bounciness, unless we can come up with something else. Thanks to everyone here for giving us suggestions as to how to fix this problem though! :)

Good luck to everyone tomorrow..this has been a wonderful and exciting event.

-- Jaine

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

What did everybody think of the UTC Team Social today? I think the food line was better run having four lines and needing to go straight through versus the two and truning around last year. However, I liked the comedian and magician much better then the magician this year. I would have to agree with here on one thing the best trick was our clapping cause that was just a mystery that it happened some of the times.

What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

Hello again

As the Friday matches of the UTC regional came to a close, wow were there surprises, and then again there was the usual. Here's the rundown of what happened today:
- 230. For anyone who watched the UTC Scrimmage or the practice rounds yesterday, 230 seemed like they would dominate the field with their 3-tetra-at-once loading mechanism. But somehow, as the results below show, 230 ended up with surprisingly near the bottom of the list.
- 228. Before today, no one expected us to be a awesome robot. But as the results show, we stayed in the top 5 for the entire day, with Gus being the number 1 seed for most of the morning. We were also in the highest scoring match of the day (as far as I know) along with teams 178 and 271, for a score of 87 points. (That was an exciting match, as I was the arm driver :D)
- 173. As usual, RAGE has once again proven themselves a powerhouse team.
- 178. A good, solid robot, especially since it can hold upwards of 5 tetras on it.
- 20. The only team to go undefeated today.

There were several high scores today. RAGE's alliance had 75 points in one match and 1071/271/? had 80 points in another (90 before the penalty). And here's the ranking (as of 6 PM Friday):

Ranking/Team #
1. 20
2. 178
3. 69
4. 716
5. 228
6. 173
7. 558
8. 1124
9. 126
10. 177
11. 195
12. 546
13. 236
14. 271
15. 1665
16. 1373
17. 1071
18. 1524
19. 157
20. 521
21. 1685
22. 809
23. 181
24. 19
25. 1568
26. 905
27. 999
28. 296
29. 571
30. 839
31. 230
32. 1099
33. 1100
34. 1493

Good luck to all teams for their Saturday matches!

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

Lots of good teams with 3-4 losses as well this year, just seems like a lot of very good teams aren't getting good breaks. It's going to be an interesting day tomorrow, I think teams ranked 9-15 all have a major impact this year. Team 126, 271, 1071, 546 and I bet 230 will all be in that 9-15 area tomorrow around selection time, all those teams are solid. 126, 1071, 230 could all make serious runs if they're put with the right partners.

The way UTC is going, I think we have a lot of parity, I think about 10-11 teams really stand out, even though some aren't ranked as high as they should be, but lots of penalties and not much help from alliances are killing some very good teams. I bet the way it's all setting up, any of the top 5 seeds can really say they have an awsome shot at winning. Something I noticed since I've been in first is usually the top 2 or 3 seeds usually win, but UTC is really shapeing up to have some very strong 4-5 seeds and even the 6-7-8 seeds are going to be tougher than in previous years.

Team 20 really isn't getting the credit for being 8-0-0 (or 9-0-0)... Lots of people are looking at 69 and 126 as being the teams to beat, but team 20 is really getting the job done.

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

Well today was a great improvement over Thursdays practice match game play. I have been doing field reset for the past 2 days and will be doing it Saturday. Field reset gives you the opportunity to see every single round played and to watch the game play progress and become more complex as the competition goes on. I would really like to see the robots using the CMU camera vision system to get on the field and stack a vision tetra in autonomous. I want my team to be able to do it first in a official match, but I would really like to see it happen regardless of the team that completes it. Everyone, please be careful when you are picking up a tetra from the autoloader or you are close to a robot preforming this task. The penalties that you can receive here are match altering and are hard to recover from.


Jaine,
Most of the suggestions that have been made are pretty good and here is mine. Team 237 has used a drop down system in 2003 and 2004 to eliminate the robot from jumping all over the field and not turning easily. (1st 2004 pic and 2nd 2004 pic) This got us on 2 drive wheels and gave us a smooth, easy turning robot. This is a option that could be implemented on your robot somehow, but I am not sure about the amount of weight you have to spare and the time you have available to make it in. Your drivers were doing well with the problem and as long as they keep with it, you should be fine.

Saturday should be great, good luck to all and see you on the field!!!!

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

Well, it doesn't look as though anyone has posted on the UTC winners yet......here goes!

The winning alliance....

69 HYPER
126 GaelForce
1071 Max

Finalists.....

20
173 Rage
230 Gael Hawks

The competition was great and exciting as always. The finals couldn't have been any more close or competitive! Congrats to all teams! :)

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

You forgot the 35 ranked team!
176 Aces High
Yeah well everyone has a bad day.

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

we had some slight issues during finals. we have our autonomous switches plugged into the OI. with our interesting way of folding up the control box there was stress on the solder point, so we lost the ground on all of the switches for autonomous. gah, so at that point it reverted to another autonomous which went forward and turned towards the autoload station. well, since we were attempting to cap during autonomous we were facing towards the center goal near the driver station. then it turned and smashed into our alliance partners. then trying to move around the caping part of autonomous i opened the wrong version of the project file. then we lost to blue, not sure what the score was. but it was fun though.

on another note, with our capping autonomous, we managed to be able to get a triple play during autonomous once. has this happened anywhere else so far? we also managed to cap the center goal near the driver station about 8 times during autonomous. but in the end it was a good day. I'm happy with how we did, and also the autonomous modes(I'm a rookie programmer).

dillon

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

...We're The Rocketeers. ( www.team20.com - not updated for this year yet. Go us.)
We really need to work on team spirit and getting our name out there, eh? Obviously no one notices us. How do you get your whole team so excited guys?! My friend and I have been trying so hard and rallying a dead team. We plan for mascots and tons of things and everything falls through. I mean, we did great this year, but our team spirit is seriously lacking!!!

Congrats to teams 69, 126, 1071 and 236!!

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

This regional rocked. We had a great time.

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

[quote=Tully]...We're The Rocketeers. ( www.team20.com - not updated for this year yet. Go us.)



My apologies, Team 20, THE ROCKETEERS. You guys had an awesome machine and did a great job choosing your alliance.......I just couldn't remember your team name! Nice job! :)

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

Thanks for the congrats, and I'm glad you guys did so well. Today team 20 was given a lot more respect in the pit area around us, which I'm actually happy about, because it just seemed like yesterday some teams that talked with our team always left out team 20 as far as being one of the top 3 teams and people seemed to be makeing excuses for some teams being so low ranked and stuff. Fact is teams 20, 69, 178 did their jobs and, I can't see how some people could have left team 20 out of the conversation all day friday.

The #1 seeded alliance at UTC was an amazeing alliance. Not only did teams 20, 173, and 230 have great robots, but I don't think their are any 3 teams out there that could have shown better sportsmanship, team 173 is ALWAYS one of the first teams to offer help when they could, either in the build season or at a compeition, and haveing the 173 students and adults lined up on both sides of the isles at the meadows high fiveing the winning teams was an amazeing feeling for our team, and I'm sure for the rest of our alliance as well.

We'd like to thank teams 69 and 126 for picking us, it was truely a team effort to win the regional.

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

I'd like to thank your team too, as well as our other opponents in the final, teams 69 and 126. Especially, I would like to thank our alliance partners, teams 173 and 230. You guys beat us fair and square, but I wish we had taken the game to you a little better. You way "out strategized" us!

Team 173 was our neighbor in the pits. What a ball! They were very professional, of course, and had a wonderful machine and a fabulous arm, marvelously designed with execution that could have been on on a moon lander. Mostly though, they were friendly and fun. We had a ball!

Team 230 was very focused and very on top of the game, and wonderfully nice people. It was a real honor to be on the stage with them.

We were the alliance leaders, and I wish we had been a little more clever in the lead. Please don't misinterpret me: the winning alliance was great, with excellent machines. They won and no doubt!

Anyway, this was my first experience with coaching, and it was a real ball working with our students, and with our many alliance partners. FIRST will remain one of the great experiences of my life. This is one of the best parts of being an engineer.

You guys rock!

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

Did any one else notice the rankings on the FIRST site are all messed up, IT ranks my team 1568 at # 20 when we were really #13, It seems that this is what they used to determine highest rookie seed, It was awarded to 1665 (one of my favorite teams, Congrats on rookie all star you deserved it) instead of us. (We were 13 they were 20, we picked them for our Alliance) Team 1665 did something that was very GP, they came over to our pits and gave us the award even though the judges said they would simply send us our own trophies. Again congratulations to 1665 and all the other teams who won awards at UTC.

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

Our autonomous tracked the tetra, moved to it, pretended to grab it, and pretended to release it onto the goal. In short, we came close.

Re: What's going on in DA CUTTT? aka: UTC Regional update thread.
 

I never thought i could have so much fun at a regional I wasnt competing at. Guess i was wrong. The $93.20 ticket from Da Dirty Jerzey to Da Cutt was well worth it. 195's 4 speed was amazing, 173 was dominant throughout, 236 3 years in a row, 126 winning again. Congrats to all the winners, and all the new friends ive made.

Btw...I LOVE DA CUTT!