Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

I'm here watching the elims in the UTC Regional, and in between the finals matches, the teams received a "robot cool down period". Being in the elims at FLR, we never had this. It seemed like we barely had time to breath, before we had to start again. I was wondering if any other regionals received the cool down period.
My question is, should FIRST implement a standard period between matches in elims...? It doesn't have to be a huge amount of time, such as 3 minutes. This would allow teams to know for sure how much time would be before their next match. At FLR it seemed like we were always asking, how much time we had before the next match, to see if we had to call a time out or not.
What do you think...?

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

I definately see the reason. There are some teams who only have 2 batteries. It takes a while for those to charge, plus you don't want your electrical to overheat and make magic smoke.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

I agree, FLR was very rushed. A cool-down period would have been very helpful. We found our selves putting bottles of water on our CIM motors to cool them down since we had so little time between matches.

Watching a regional and competing are very different situations though. We might have had just as much time in between, its hard to judge. Does anyone have video and could pull off the downtime between matches at various regionals to compare?

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

Usually this is when an alliance calls a time out.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

In Hartford any time an alliance had to play two consecutive matches they gave them a break in between. This was in addition to the alliance time outs.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

<T19> allows for an extra minute of cool down time if you have to play back to back matches (4 minutes total).

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

They were giving 5 minutes between each match at Hartford.

And I think it's a good idea

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

I am glad that this is a rule that exits. It allows the teams to take their time and get ready for the next match. You will especially need it at championship, for the last minute run back to the pits :ahh:

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

Actually I like these cool down periods. I wish they were a bit longer, but during Bayou when 118 had 4 back to back to back to back matches, I am glad the drivers at least had a bit of a break.

(PS. Did anyone notice that on the Bayou Regional statistics page it only lists 3 matches in the semifinals instead of 4?)

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

It is the same way for the Midwest regional (5 finals matches). It only lists decisive Elim matches, never ties. Probably has to do with how the scoring software is written.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

Section 9.4.5 specifies that tied matches are replayed, so the tie score gets replaced with the new score.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

Just a suggestion from any outsider looking in. Why don't you pack a small fan with you and use the fan between matches to cool down your motors? :cool:

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

1270 definitely could have used these cool down periods in the finals at Florida. We pulled it off but it was definitely hectic because when the match was over they were telling us to hurry up while we were walking to reset/ refresh batteries. I also see the point about battery charging. We have a box that charges 4 at a time and holds 10 and whenever we get to the finals we have all 10 charged and bring them all to the field to share among the alliance. This year we stored them in 86s full toolbox robot cart.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

I would definitely like to a standardized time between matches for the eliminations round.

In one case in Detroit, we had to make a program change because our arm was loose on the set screws - but they started our next match too quickly - perhaps 4 minutes after our last one ended.

We ran that match in manual, and during the match our opponent damaged his arm. Then, in between, before we got to play our final match (we were tied one-one) they had everyone doing line dancing on the field.

Gracious Professionalism says I should probably keep my mouth shut - but I have to admit it was frustrating for them to get the time (though accidental) to fix their arm when we didn't have the time to fix ours in the previous matchup.

Standardize it at whatever time you like to make it fair - short or long. It just needs to be consistent.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

There also wasn't much of a "cool-down period" between those matches. The number 1 seed alliance played 11 elimination matches. By the end, 648's motors could have been glowing red hot. I've never seen anything like it.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

I just got home from watching the UTC elimination rounds today from Hartford. Being that I drove in the elim's at FLR, I think that the FLR elimination rounds were run much better. At UTC the time in between matches got to a point where it just seeemed like stalling. At FLR, the head referee actually had a stopwatch going for everything in the elimination rounds that needed to be timed such as these cool-down periods. FLR is a very by the book regional and though maybe they should lengthen the time between matches, they are doing EXACTLY what FIRST says to do.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

The head referee at UTC also used a stop-watch to handle all of the time issues (timeouts and cool-down periods).

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

Even though the head referee may have had a stopwatch the entire time, are you sure that he was following the time contraint rules extremely meticulously? At FLR, we almost had to go out in the finals with only 2 robots on our alliance because of one robot barely making the time constraint.

I do think, however, that while the competition must keep moving, FIRST should sometimes be a little more leniant to the time constraint issues, especially in the finals.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

I am glad the referee's at UTC followed the rule book and gave the robots a cool down period. Your motors can run powerfully for only so long before their performance degrades.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

The time between final matches are a bit hectic, always have a fresh battery or two standing by, if needed ask to borrow one from another team, you should have no problem getting one. Also i know team 836 a few years ago, back when we were using the dewalts had some spare fans rigged up with some spare parts just to cool down the motors every second we could. You could fry an egg on the dewalts after a good finals match.
By having so little time in between matches you really get to test the durability of your robot. Think of your robot as a stock car racer running and running and not a drag racer that has to be rebuilt and fixed after one time out.
But I haven't been around first in about a year i am sure some things have changed since my high school days.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

I don't know the exact system for timing that they had at SVR for the finals, but there were videos between some of the matches. The video between the first and second match was particularly helpful, as it allowed us to find the disconnect in the distribution block and fix it without calling a time out.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

Luckily, we had enough time between the semis and finals to fix our drive. Our chain had fallen off and we were about to approach 111 about "lending" us their timeout... luckily we didn't need it.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

You actually can't "lend" timeouts this year. The end of T20 shocked me when I first read it

With all the talk of GP and helping your opponents, why would they actually put that in the rules? I think it was probably to prevent 2 consecutive timeouts.

Of course, there is nothing stopping Wildstang from calling a timeout to touch up their tie-die paintjob :D provided it wasn't following another timeout.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

Wow... I didn't know that. It's all good though, they ended up needing it after the third finals match, I believe.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

Better not tell the Refs at Chesapeake that, we called a timeout in the 2nd finals match when clearly all of our alliance robots were ready so that one of our oppenents 1848 could make some repairs. Its all about being GP, and of course our official reason for the timeout was for changing batteries and letting motors cool;)

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

Cool down period?

Back in my day we didn't have cool down periods. We had a can of compressed air held upside down.

And we liked it that way. We loved it. I have fond memories of drenching the old drill motors with that stuff between final matches. You started as soon as the robot was off the field and stopped when the robot was back on the field. Maybe you hit the breakers with some loving to keep them from glowing.

Is it good for the motors? Not at all. But then neither is getting the motors that hot in the first place. Pour on the Thermal-shock-in-a-can! It's still a viable option today.

-Andy A.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

I bet that works well to get them cooled down. It's really, really cold on the hands once it's turned upside-down.

Re: Robot Cool Down Period...?
 

Not to argue about this rule again, but this rule specifies that you cannot have cascading time outs which, as I understand it, means that two time outs cannot be called in a row.

The cool down periods at BAE did not bother me. At the begining of each cool-down period, Andy announced that the teams would have a five minutes. Yes, I do believe that is 1 minute more than the specified amount of time. But I would rather see robots that have had time to cool down and are working.