Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

Since the new way of doing safety tokens, I told my team to send someone out from about 5 or 6 feet to ask people to move politely. It has the exact same effect as screaming robot but much nicer.... One of the head safety people saw this and told us that for as long as he could remember, people screamed robot, but honestly, it is excessive and kind-of rude unless really needed [for those wonderful non-FIRST people staring in wonder with their ears shut :P].

I think if we ask the DJ's to turn the music down to a good level and ask politely before yelling, the pit will be a much nicer place :]

Good luck to all competitions running today, and may your pits be quiet :D

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

Why not? It should be replaced with a comprehensive safety certification program.

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

Interestingly enough, we've won the Safety award a handful of times over the last few years (At least 3 or 4 times since 2006) and we rarely ever shouted robot... Usually we emphasize other aspects of the award like proper training for various incidents (10 or so kids are trained in CPR, Battery Clean up, basic First Aid and that sort of stuff) and we always add some sort of lifting handles to our robot that get us some extra points with the judges.

From what I can remember, the "Safety Nuisances" - those teams who send kids around the pits carrying signs, or passing out safety flyers - rarely win the award...

(I wouldn't mind to see the award eliminated, then our Safety Captain might stop scolding me...)

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

Sorry, but that's not how it always works. I've been safety captain before and the safety judges' presence wasn't motivation for me, but I found that others could be persuaded by it. In other words, even if the award is eliminated, we should still be safe.

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

That's where the breakdown is and where I can see room for improvement. Separate the awards from the actual safety aspect of it. I don't think safety should be awarded; I think it should be an expectation clearly spelled out. Mandatory robot yelling should be eliminated if it has, indeed, been mandated at some events. Jeepers.

Jane

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

There is a huge difference between safe, and annoying. Not placing your hand under whatever you're cutting when you use a jigsaw is safe. A 10 item safety checklist and approval form to get the jigsaw out is also safe, but annoying.

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

Dissing a team by trashing their work (monies, time, effort) is not cool.

Jane

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

To everyone else in the thread, I'm sorry about my rudeness here, but it's a sore point with me. As mentors we have a duty to inspire and lead by example, and his behavior has been anything but helpful in that regard.


Matt

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

A suggestion for the future - use your safety advisors. In a moment that you can spare, alert the safety advisors to the aggressiveness of the team distributing the fliers and how it was distracting your team while you were all working on the robot. That's not being a tattle tale, that's making sure that the safety advisors are aware of the aggressiveness of an enthusiastic team so that they can deal with it and get things settled down. You don't have to be sitting ducks and you shouldn't be - but you don't have to be mean or obnoxious, either.

Jane

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

Your job, is to help these kids learn about STEM, not to win a robotics competition, if that means explaining to them how they can better accomplish their safety goals, then so be it. Also, you may want to consider how your language conveys your thoughts, and try to be more professional.

The proper response would have been to speak with their team officials and explained how they were going about this wrong, and that it was causing a problem. If that failed you, then you speak to the FIRST officials about it. There are many better options, both in terms of respect and effectiveness.

Now, I feel bad for derailing the thread, so I'm going to contribute and nudge it back on topic!

I think that teams shouting "robot!", are generally well intentioned, and I think are responding to the environment they're in. I'm not particularly bothered by it personally, but I do see how it could be a problem. Maybe it's time for someone to make up a nice little safety video for teams and see what FIRST thinks of it?

Things we could cover:

• Proper robot cart etiquette - how to move your robot around quickly and safely, and the best ways to get peoples attention without being disruptive
• Proper pit layout/crowd control - how to keep your pit from overflowing with people and tools and taking up too much space
• Proper ways to promote safety - let's face it, the current safety award and the typical attempts for it tend to cause more trouble than safety awareness, we can do better!

Let's work the problem!

Matt

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

oh, never mind, that does sound annoying.

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

Yelling "robot" should only be the case when people are crowding in the middle of the aisles. When no one's in front of us, we keep quiet.

I cannot stress enough to the freshmen members to not be obnoxious about it.

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

At Seattle we had two regonals going at the same time in the same room. The volume of the music could not be turned up as loud as it would interfer with the other regonal. If teams can get people to move out of the way quietly that is great but I have seen folks hurt by a moving robot. I would rather have noise then someone hurt. We were at a regonal once and had to evacuate the hotel along with six other teams. We were the only team that could locate and count that we had all of our members. It is easy to anticapate an event after it has happin and to react like the TSA does. It is hard to plan for events before they happin. I command the teams that try to plan ahead for the "if's" that may or may not happin.

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

Boy this thread is starting to get rather chippy.
Who'da thunk that people would get so heated about the merits of safety criers.
Keep it up guys and next thing you know it'll end up in the Moderated Discussion Thread.

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

Aside from that, heading to Waterloo, I sure hope the music isn't too loud and people don't scream robot every few minutes. There are better methods than that for clearing a low density area. Also hope people don't forget GP as people seem to have lately.