Re: Silicon Valley Regional 2008
 

For everyone who is wondering about the legality of Team 190's robot: another team (Team 2158) completely independent and several thousand miles away from Team 190 thought of the exact same strategy (a week after we did) and posted it to the FIRST Q&A in the third week of the build season.

It was deemed legal. And our robot and strategy was again deemed legal at the BAE Granite State Regional in week one.

The highlight is mine.

The entire robot never fully crosses any lane markers; only part of it does. It's exactly the same legality as partially driving your robot across a lane marker and then backing up. You won't get a penality because you never fully left the previous quadrant.

Re: Silicon Valley Regional 2008
 

Does anyone have a picture of the team 190 robot?

Re: Silicon Valley Regional 2008
 

Speaking of 190, congrats on the xerox creativity award! :)

Re: Silicon Valley Regional 2008
 

For the record, I now know how to defend 190. (Thank you GDC.)

Re: Silicon Valley Regional 2008
 

For the record, the Q&A in the link above was not the final ruling on 190's robot. The subsequent ruling at BAE, which brought in all Q&A rulings and Team Updates up to that point, greatly expanded the extent to which 190's scoring maneuver was considered to be hurdling (and thus protected from interference). :)

Re: Silicon Valley Regional 2008
 

That's what I was wondering when I read the Q&A response. You don't need to satisfy ALL the criteria of hurdling to be considered in the act of hurdling. You need only be in the homestretch and either moving towards the overpass or elevating the trackball (or both). I'd hope the intent is that you'd be protected while performing such an amazing feat. You could be nit-picky that the trackball is no longer rising upwards, and so the act of "elevating" has stopped, was that what the Q&A respondant was originally thinking?

I guess I'm still a little confused when the arm extends into the quadrant directly adjacent CW from the homestretch. Based on everything I've seen so far this year, I can't shake a G22 call there. The robot itself hasn't moved CCW into the other quadrants, regardless of the motion of the trackball. At some point, the robot is sitting there with a part of it projecting over the lane marker into the CW quadrant.

I'd like to see how this all plays out. A part of me thinks someone somewhere made a slip up one way or another. We're human. It happens. Hopefully it'll get sorted out if it isn't already.

Re: Silicon Valley Regional 2008
 

This whole things feels kind of wrong to me. Don't misunderstand me, I congratulate all attempts at creativity and innovation in this competition.

This however feels like another tape measure of 2002. Seriously, this design very specifically and deliberately breaks rules. It does not follow the definition of a hurdle as defined in the rule book.

If given the choice? I would have the rule book reflect the Q&A, but that has to happen from the beginning, or with an official team update. I understand teams have to check the Q&A, but that is not the easiest thing to do, and when it directly conflicts with the existing (as of now) rulebook something is wrong. It almost feels like an abuse of the GDC bombarding them with all of the questions that would allow certain designs to slip through the rules when really, it should be obvious that the design breaks the rules.

Yeah, people may say, oh your just jealous blah blah blah, but really I think these kinds of ideas crossed many peoples minds after kickoff to learn that the rules limit some of those options.

There is a part of me that admires picking a design that is on the edge. It is a very risky and tough decision, and can set you apart from the crowd and pay off in the end. This situation however does not seem quite there - I think that if people made assumptions about how the Q&A response would be interpreted (and ignored the rulebook!) then we would see a huge number of very cool, creative machines that additional freedom would have allowed. These creative advantages I feel are not in line with what the GDC I think originally intended. (Not to say they discourage creativity:))

Do other people feel the same way? I am one of the people who will advocate pushing the rules more than I think most, but the consistency of the rules, updates and Q&A has me a bit worried.

Anyway, I didn't want to be overly negative in anyway, and maybe a discussion about this belongs somewhere else... but either way, I do want to congratulate 190 for standing up for their design and have fun playing with your unique machine!

Re: Silicon Valley Regional 2008
 

as promised to some of you today, here are the rankings as of Friday night.

1. 100
2. 1280
3. 2024
4.192
5. 2473
6. 972
7. 670
8. 190
9. 581
10. 8
11. 2643
12. 1458
13. 766
14. 688
15. 115
16. 692
17. 846
18. 840
19. 1560
20. 1548
21. 971
22. 2141
23. 2035
24. 2629
25. 1516
26. 604
27. 675
28. 2628
29. 256
30. 1834
31. 2446
32. 2489
33. 2144
34. 973
35. 254
36. 649
37. 2090
38. 114
39. 1351
40. 2367
41. 1072
42. 253
43. 135
44. 2283
45. 1868
46. 1967
47. 2159
48. 1700

I apologize in advance for any typos. CONGRAGULATIONS TO ALL TEAMS WHO WON AN AWARD!

also if anyone's interested our scouts will have your stats from friday (today) electronically available for any teams that want it. (max points, max laps, etc.) tomorrow morning --> we're in the process of combining the data from the two laptops we used...we apologize for any inconvenience

Re: Silicon Valley Regional 2008
 

Which rules? And definition of Hurdle or Hurdling? (There is a difference.)

Re: Silicon Valley Regional 2008
 

It’s possibly the easiest robot to defend against ever.... They can score 1 hurdle EXTREMLY fast. But they always lose control of the ball after it is dropped. All you have to do is bump the ball about a foot and they will never be able to get it again. The suction cup is swings around too much to capture a rolling object.

However, this is one of those robots that makes you say “Wow….” and leaves you standing with your mouth gaping open. It is just simply amazing, both in terms of sheer size and engineering. The fact that a team actually pulled off such a strategy amazes me…

On another note, 254 is on the brink of being disqualified. Very strange indeed....

Re: Silicon Valley Regional 2008
 

Word on Gameday was that they had the yellow for high-speed ramming. Is that true?

Re: Silicon Valley Regional 2008
 

Yes, they hit 1280 very hard and tipped them immediately. From what I can tell, it wasn't intentional, but it was the obvious call.


For those of you wondering about Team 190's legality, we've run the entire strategy and design by the GDC members and the head refs at both of our events, and we were cleared both times. We will be extremely upset if a rule update is made following SVR that disallows us after having been told we were perfectly legal at both regionals.

Re: Silicon Valley Regional 2008
 

you never know.
rule interpretations vary from regional to regional, week to week. We clearly saw very distinct and clear DIFFERENT robot inspection and rule interpretations between the two regionals we attended.
For example, one ungracious comment we were told from one inspector was "I dont care what the VCU inspectors said, this isn't VCU."
I dont think its wrong to question any official gracefully about consistency among rules. All teams want is consistency in trying to have a great learning experience.

After what you folks went through, this shouldn't be an issue anymore now or in the future.

Re: Silicon Valley Regional 2008
 

Today, I received a penalty for "hurdler interference" when I bumped team 190's robot while they were in the middle of their overhead ball circle. I know that the Q&A is not the final official word on rules, but I'm curious to see what the exact ruling on 190's protection while hurdling is. Though it probably will not change how I drive tomorrow, I would still like to know.
On the other hand, it seems like 254 finished building their robot in the afternoon and are now winning their matches, like usual.

Re: Silicon Valley Regional 2008
 

We rounded the lane divider and accidentally clipped 1280 with a trackball in our possession as they were beginning to raise their elevator, and unfortunately they fell over.