Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Mike, there is a known problem with the towers, FIRST sent put instructions on Friday on how to fix it, the next day we were told that it doesn't work. Minibots not triggering the sensor was a constant problem across events this week.

Also, please don't make two different posts in a thread within five minutes of each other.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

mike, we hit the top with a tremendous amount of force, and sometimes the pole didn't register due to the pole itself not being established correctly (I believe two poles at NJ hardly ever went off). I mean no disrespect when I say this, but I disagree. I don't think we want to encourage too much force at the top of the pole to damage the sensors or the mini-bots.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

OK physics folks answers me a question :)

Isn't it a matter of enough force, couldn't a light but very fast minibot deliver as much energy as a slow heavy one?

Of course a slow minibot would have more contact time but that wasn't part of the challenge was it?

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

1st Year physics: Impulse/Momentum

Ft=mv

so yes, a large and a small minibot can apply the same force to the plate

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Although minibus nit triggering towers were an issue, I believe that it us also very important that FIRST specifically defines what is and what is not "playing the game". During elims our alliance received a red card that really could have gone to either alliance depending on the definition (which has not yet been established) of "playing the game". This red card cost us both the match and the tournament and although fairly accessed, we could have avoid a prolonged discussion over the specifics of the card which caused a 20-30 minute delay and was overall and unneccessary hinderance.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

At FLR on practice day the tower finish lights would trigger if you hit the tower hard enough with your robot. They basically all but disabled the tower lights for all poles at FLR.

BTW, our small but light minibot definitely crushes the top plate. Impulse - momentum (or work energy theory, too) shows that it is momentum, not simply mass, that dictates the contact energy. Believe me, if a minibot that is going up in less than 1.5 seconds it will hurt you if it contacted you. 4 (or whatever the small number is) Newtons of force does not hurt you. The claim about small, light minibots in the earlier post is based on no physics that I use.

Paul

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

His two posts were both relevant to the thread topic but addressed separate issues. There's no harm in what he did.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Something I observed from week one:
A good defense can ruin an ENTIRE team, if played correctly.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Especially if you load the team's zone full of tubes they do not want. e.g. If they have two top row squares already load the area with a bunch of squares as obstacles. If they get past the defending robot after it has already delayed them, now they have to deal with tubes in their way that they do not want.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

I read through this whole post and theres quiet a few differences between the different regionals from week 1. There is one thing I did not notice in the entire post though.

There are very few autonomous with the Y-code, quiet a few straight line autonomous modes.

I will summarize NJ briefly here.... There were about 7-8 consistent minibots, there were about 2 or 3 really fast minibots. I think at NJ a lot of teams did loose the focus on the minibot and only focused on the main bot.

We had a working minibot, but it was not fast and nor was our deployment system designed till 3 days before NJ regional. The final minibot and deployment was designed within the week prior to the regional. The design for the minibot came from ideas and videos posted here on Chiefdelphi (credit goes to team 118*)

At NJ, if you had an effective minibot, it was game over, your alliance was probably going to win most qualification matches. (save some odd penalties)

Other than that, one of the biggest things I noticed with flooding the field with tubes, this is fine for qualification matches, however in eliminations the name of the game is to starve your opponents of tubes, especially if your opponents have a good tube scoring mechanism..

By around week 3 or so, most teams will have a minibot, by around week 4-5 most teams will have a consistent deployment and minibot. At this point I think the tube scoring will become extremely important.

Also if you could have an alliance with 2 scorers and one (defensive/scorer), along with 2 minibots, that was an effective strategy for us.

I am looking forward to seeing how this season progresses in terms of strategy.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

YES defense changes again in the eliminations, and can be played in a big way against a high-powered alliance. The first Final's match our alliance was way off-balance, everyone was trying too hard trying to out score them on tubes, we scored in the wrong order, ran into each other etc. causing major confusion even on my part. Mean time, our human players were tossing tubes to the opposition and making it easy for them to score. Someone posted earlier about Human Player discipline- absolutely! Don't get too excited & throw the game away because you want to do something!

Thanks to some great scouting/strategic advice from our friends 2337, in the Kettering Finals we switched to a stronger defensive posture in our 2nd match and had our alliance been able to shut 33's mini-bot down & deployed our own (we only had 1 on our alliance, 494's) we might have went to a 3rd match. It was certainly much better played than going point-point, even if we took out the confusion factor.

I have to agree with the earlier post, but will gear it more toward an alliance. Going forward, for an alliance to be highly competitive, scoring 2 or 3 ubertubes in auton, (can anyone score from the middle in auton, aside from 33, 148 doing a double... I see an opportunity if done correctly) and having at least 2 mini-bots for flexibility will be "must-haves". Execution on placing tubes is a given, do right, do it efficiently.

As for the "best gripper", active rollers are good, but so are claws (if your design ensures you get a good bite every time- we did not & it made it tougher especially when everyone gets excited during elims)

Load station... what load station? Never used it once, though we designed our arm to be able to use it, other-wise we would have used a 4-bar variation and made life a little easier. We didn't get our arm working effectively until late Saturday & it as well as the controls still have room for improvement.

Good luck to everyone competing in week #2! :)

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Have a STABLE robot arm- at traverse city, I saw a lot of teams that had a robot tall enough to place on the top rack, but whose arms would flex and bend up to 8 inches back and forth, making it much harder for them to place. A lower center of gravity and a light manipulator with a rigid arm helped enormously.

Also, a team that can score 6 tubes on the middle rack will beat out one who only scores 4 on the top rack, even though the top is considered to be a necessity for many teams.

And, of course, a fast and reliable minibot will get you at least to the top 8 seeds. I think that a t traverse city, 6 or 7 of the top eight teams had a minibot deploy at least every other match.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

If you are using a non-Classmate PC for your driver station, make sure you use a Windows login with the name Driver. The uppercase D matters.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

For us, this was a matter of sensor calibration. In order to follow the lines under FLR lighting conditions, we had to turn the gain on the line finders all the way up -- but because the center of the Y is also the center of the field, and the black tape they use to tape the carpet together is somewhat reflective, the sensors would then read the black tape *after* the Y, and thus keep on driving straight.

We verified this by putting our sensors right over the black tape during the practice day -- sure enough, it was triggering them!

Our autonomous worked fine on the practice field (which did not have the black tape), and fine at home, but would not work on the field itself.

Re: Lessons learned for Week 2 Regionals?
 

Minibot + Deployment: Most know the importance of minibots and deployment, here's what i've got.

If you've got a guide system that touches your minibot, you're going to have to cut it down so your minibot doesn't lose you a match. We got called on it during our fourth match.

Also, make sure you don't burn up your minibot (Last match on Friday, BAE/GSR *COUGH*).

Deployment is crucial. Make sure the feeders guide you in unless you have a system in place to get you on 100% of the time.

Don't deploy at the Flintstone's feet sound (unless they change it, make sure to ask). That is the 5 second warning until the race starts. When the base of the tower changes colors back to the alliance color, go.

Manipulators: If you have something that can pick up off the ground, abuse it. A LOT of teams will be throwing tubes. If you don't, arrange with your alliance partners to make sure they save a few tubes for you, if they decide to use their human players as feeders.

Don't waste time trying to score high if you're having issues or consistently missing, move down a peg, and get on with it. There is 0 time to waste, especially if you are under tube pressure and/or deploying.

Work with your alliance to make logos. Don't screw up logos by putting them on so it looks like the actual logo TO YOU (If you can't bear to think of the FIRST logo backwards :rolleyes: then make something up in Paint. You're going to need it.).

Feeders and Defense are not crucial. BAE/GSR finals was 3 offensive bots vs. 3 offensive bots. They can skew results in quals, especially if your robot can effectively play D, but are not specifically crucial in finals.

Feeders/Analysts: Make sure your human player is almost at the level of coach knowledge and awareness-wise, especially if they are pigeonholed into analyst all weekend. Most analysts at BAE/GSR became a second coach to their team. Help out your alliance.

If you're aiming at a strategy to shut teams down, throw tubes strategically and AIM!!!! You have no idea how many teams threw tubes willy-nilly. If you've got the space, have your human player practice with all three tubes, and get good at aiming and distance. Make sure they know to be a sniper, but make sure that they can turn it to turbo if you need to start shutting down a section of field.

Strategic points to flood with tubes: opposing feeder lanes, towers, safe zone. Do it only if 2/3 teams on that alliance cannot pick up off the floor, and you can.