The Center Goal
 

I think this is a question on everyone’s mind with major strategy implications. Hopefully this thread can allow us to sample opinions out there on how much the center goal will be used in the competition.

Things To Consider
• 3 Points-
May be considered too little by many teams for the complexity of mechanism involved
For teams that can build effective mechanisms, the scoring advantage for balls available would be great.
• Undefendable (path of ball) with height restriction
• With 2 defensive robots, both side chutes could be covered, preventing scoring anywhere else but the center goal

I hope this poll brings in some valuable info on the opinions of teams out there and some possible trends we might see. Good luck to all in these days of formulating our designs.

Re: The Center Goal
 

I think it will be a common target, in that many teams will try to shoot balls into it.

I think that very few teams will be able to master integrating the CMU cam and their shooter to allow them to shoot quickly and accurately from anywhere on their side of the field.

Re: The Center Goal
 

To be quite honest, this really depends on whether or not FIRST actually fixed the CMUCam stuff this year. Just because it was tracking something in the kickoff doesn't mean it will work on the field. Remember last year they had it tracking something (Dave's shirt) in the kickoff too, and it wouldn't work on the field!

IF the CMUCam acually works, I think most teams will be able to do it, mainly because of the amount of stuff FIRST has already done for us, not to mention all the work others outside of FIRST have done on similar problems! :D

Re: The Center Goal
 

Dave was saying that since they've actually lit up the target with the green cathodes, it'll completely prevent the robot from locking on to a target in the background that may happen to be green

Re: The Center Goal
 

Right, but you still have to track it with a color window, which means there can still be spurious noise, shifted colors due to saturation, different background, noisy blue channel, etc. It may be able to get a lock, but how high is the quality of the lock, I wonder? With a poor quality lock, it is much harder to aim! :rolleyes:

Re: The Center Goal
 

I heard today from someone that tested it that it is working much better. He had some settings wrong the first attempt, but it worked like a champ on the 2nd try. Time will tell what teams find with it, but I think they learned a lot last year and made things much better this year.

Wetzel

Re: The Center Goal
 

I've talked to people who have tested the cam, and they said it worked outstandingly.

Re: The Center Goal
 

well you can probably get away with a very small window. I don't think the color is going to change from light to light. very much at least.

Re: The Center Goal
 

My team succesfully used the CMU cam last year.
All you have to do is mount it to your firing mechanism.

Re: The Center Goal
 

How accuratly can the CMU cam be used to get a distance from the goal?

Re: The Center Goal
 

pappy thinks medium

Re: The Center Goal
 

I'm fairly confident of Medium. It looks easy, but sadly that is never the case. It's not so much finding the green thing, as getting an accurate shooter. While nearly everyone that tries may find the green thing, few teams will be consistently get them in. I may not be a Car Nack (although I wish he or his son would give us some predictions) but with that said

Re: The Center Goal
 

I worked to build the vision target today.

Unfortunantly, our power supply couldn't output enough amps to power the whole system at 12v, so it was only running at 8v. At 8v, the target is definitely not bright enough to track. However, mentors on our team who went to New Hampshire said the official field green targets were much brighter, so hopefully as soon as we can correct our power problem we'll have a nice bright green rectange.

Re: The Center Goal
 

You can get a reasonably accurate indication of the elevation to the goal light. Working out the distance from that is just math (or lookup tables).