Re: week 1 questions
 

that exact reason is why i accidentally knocked over 2022 twice during a practice match after 1114 did it in hybrid they kept putting it back up.
its also an effect not noticeable from the stands which i got crap for driving weird down there. lookout drivers.

Re: week 1 questions
 

As said by Dad1279 you should place something on the end of your forks so that they cannot go the the fence on the robocoach station, we found that tennis balls work great and that you can get colored one's from a teacher/classroom supply place.

Re: week 1 questions
 

Well. I guess region affects how teams play.

There weren't any dominant launchers at GSR. What really played a role in how well you could score was how easily you could pick up the ball.

I don't think the actual launching aspect makes much difference in hurdling performance of launcher vs arm/lift. I think it is how quickly you can start moving after hurdling. Most teams have to stop, wait a little bit to get their arms/lifts low enough to just drive under the bar, launchers are already low enough. That is the advantage.

Re: week 1 questions
 

At Oregon, it was obvious that getting the ball quickly was key regardless of how the ball was hurdled. Many robots could hurdle but the best were very quick. Team 368 could get the ball on the run, hit top speed running down the lane, turn and zip their elevator up, spit out the ball quickly and get it down quickly - they were a hurdling machine. That being said, I think a launcher could be even quicker since they don't have to slow down to hurdle. But getting the ball is usually a problem for a launcher so a good design makes a difference. Team 473 was affective in pinning the ball on the wall to pick it up - launching was no problem for them and very cool to watch.

Hybrid mode was a real mixed bag. We used the IR board pretty well but it sometimes was blocked or out of range. only one team made it a full loop, we made it close to 3/4 loop twice and almost always 2 lines. most teams either crossed one line or not at all. one team knocked down two balls and had 3 lines (team 1540). teams that didn't move were in the way most of the time.

placing the ball on the rack at the end was key as was being able to knock them down (which was our specialty). A lot of bots tried to knock the balls down but many many of them struggled and some just plain couldn't do it.

Line violations was called ALL of the time. even a corner of a bumper that passes back over a line will get you a penalty - I really hope they revise this for the rest of the regionals. It seems odd that you only get points in hybrid mode if your bot totally crosses the line, but you get penalized for even the slightest bit over.

Impeding was called a lot but I think, again, it was due to interpretation. Slowing down in front of a hurdler to keep them from hurdling was called every time. We thought this was a legal move since they would then need to bump to pass. but, we were wrong and learned the hard way as did many other robots. However, you could impede pretty well if they were not trying to hurdle.

no 80" rule violations that I know of. And no violations during Hybrid either. In several cases, controlers were knocked down by speeding bots in autonomous but they did not get penalized - which I thought was a shame since the affected robot would be out of action while they reset their controllers.

Re: week 1 questions
 

reflections from week #1 Regional.....

Sadly, our design seems not to be very effective in the hurdling aspect. It is too slow and very difficult to consistently control.

In NJ, Hurdling combined with speed ruled the roost. The winning alliance had 2 wicked hurdlers & 1 little wicked fast lap bot.

I STILL think that choosing an alliance that is IN the top 8 as an alliance partner during the Alliance Selection should be OUTLAWED (just my opinion). The winning alliance in NJ had the #1 & #6 team in it, and honestly I think they could have won without a 3rd team. They were very generous and picked a 3rd partner that was ranked #13.

Penalties - the line violation penalty was called nearly every match. It must have been close to 80% and in many cases affected the outcome of a match. Would basically agree that this rule becomes REALLY hard to abide by, if you get more than 1 robot in a zone, it gets congested REALLY fast. Think the best thing would have been going COMPLETELY back over the line as opposed to just "touching" it.

I was disappointed to see that there was not much made of the 80 inch rule. Our team went to great lengths to abide by this, but I saw numerous instances of other robots that I am fairly certain violated this rule. I know this is hard to see during a match, but think it could have been enforced during the inspection process.

Thanks to teams 816 & 836 for the partnership in the playoffs, think we worked well together, just came up a little short.

Congrats to teams 25, 103 & 381. You guys played the game great, I have no hard feelings towards your teams, just do not like the rules as they are. CONGRATS!!!!!!!!!!!

Onward to Philadelphia :-)

Re: week 1 questions
 

It just seems like control boards falling are common based on what people have said on this thread, and I was wondering if anyone on drive team tried to catch their control board from falling? I know its a penalty for crossing the driver station line before teleoperated period, but is it at all considered a special case seeing that their control board could've broken like mentioned earlier this thread?

Re: week 1 questions
 

We were told at the NJ Regional that if you saw your control board falling off the shelf during the Hybrid mode, you COULD catch it and NOT be penalized.

Re: week 1 questions
 

That is correct. I recall one match where I was sitting behind the red alliance station in the stands. A robot slammed into the wall during hybrid and our control board looked as if it was going to possibly fall. Our driver reached forward a bit. He did not step over the line, but he did break the plane. The ref gave him a simple nod to indicate that he understood his intent was to save the control board had it fallen and not to gain an advantage by getting to the controls before teleop had begun. Hopefully refs will continue to be understanding like this particular one was because even with velcro, the control board can still fall, though it is less likely.

Re: week 1 questions
 

We employed this maneuver at Midwest a few times, but we're not sure if the refs called the scoring correctly or not.

I cannot stress how important it is for the refs/scorekeepers to PAY ATTENTION when this strategy is employed. If the refs call it right, it has the potential to cut down the opposition's scoring rate substantially.

Do not penalize adept defensive maneuvers due to lack of attention to the details!

Re: week 1 questions
 

I saw this match, it was a fluke. iirc, 1114/1024's opponents only had 2 bots on the field, and one of those tipped over early. The announcer even noted it, that it was essentially a 3 vs 1 match. I do not believe this will ever be a typical score in a match with 6 bots.
http://www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv...p?matchid=5330

Re: week 1 questions
 

I was impressed that the Head Ref (Sky Morehouse) specifically instructed the teams to be proactive and be ready to protect their controls even if they just thought a robot might hit their wall.

Also, on at least one occasion controls with velcro on them got dumped, so don't count on it alone to save your precious control panel.

Re: week 1 questions
 

If that happened and the hurdle was scored, it is a fault of the scoring software and not the refs. That's why the dots are on two of the balls, so the refs can record which ball crossed the line (and/or got the score). If the software is set up correctly, a ball cannot score (again) until the ref on the other side of the field keys it as passing the line.