Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

I think one effective way to help teams get in and out of the pits is to have Pit Adman announce that the pits are a working area with lots of robot traffic and people need to be aware of robot traffic going back and forth and be ready to move out of the way when teams are moving back and forth. Crowd Control could also help with the crowding of the pits and critical access points (like the entrance and exit of the field area).

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

I agree completely except for the replacing of the words "because of" with "based on". My post was stupid and rude but in no way does it represent everything I have ever done. And, while my comments must reflect negatively on me I do ask that everyone remember that we all make mistakes and say/do things we regret, please let us move on from this.

In short, thank you for calling me out. I appreciate it and realize that, from time to time, we all need a good smack to make us see when we screwed up and did something we shouldn't have.

Sorry for this, I'll try to do better in the future.

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

I think this is why people should call each other out. Tempers flare, words fly, and sometimes we don't always act our best. I'd be lying if I said I never lost my temper with a student, but I believe the only way to improve from that is to keep each other in check.

With that said, I was rather poignant with you, and for that I will apologize. I think we've all bared enough knuckles here. Mistakes will always be made, and I'm sure there's plenty of mine waiting to come up and swat me in the face.

I hereby rescind my overarching criticism of your ability to mentor, but for the sake of posterity I'm not going to remove or further edit my original posts.

Matt

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

I have asked that my offending comment be removed due to the negative impact it could have on students reading it and viewing it as a criticism of the safety award and teams that actively seek it.

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

Just trying to get this thread back on to the original intent of the thread,
lets focus on the pits again:
Last year, i was a freshmen on team 461. I joined the second day of build season, and 9 weeks later, i found myself at the boilermaker regional. This was my first competition, so i did not know much about the whole thing. I did, however, know one thing: If You're not doing anything, get out of the pit. I stayed away the whole time, unless i needed one of the upperclassmen to help talk to another team. I also knew that, as i was walking around the other pits, lots of people would be trying to cart their robot around. I soon realized the conventional method was to yell, "Robot!". I caught on quickly, and was able to be alert of my surroundings. Sure, the yelling was a bit bothersome, but there is no reason for me to be complaining. It's a robotics COMPETITION. Don't get me wrong, its not a place JUST for robots to compete, but isn't the center of the event the robots? If you don't get your robot out in time, the volunteers, refs, etc. get mad, and then you're holding up the competition. You don't need to run to get to the field, but all the people standing outside of the pits in the cramped up little passageways probably aren't doing anything important, just socializing or something. If you really want to talk to a team, you can step inside their pit, or go outside. If there's no room to step into their pit, they probably have too many people inside of their pit. The key here is to observe your surroundings.
Now as a sophomore, i'm on the drive team, and just finished the boilermaker Regional this weekend. I had to yell ROBOT! many times, whether i enjoyed or not, but i know that it would have taken much much much longer to get through the traffic if i whispered excuse me. I'm not trying to be rude, arrogant or obnoxious, and frankly, its a bit arrogant of the OP to infer our intent and emotions when we say robot, but we are on a huge time constraint, and we can't waste time waiting for people to slowly meander out of the way. Again, i'm not saying they have to run out of the way or anything, just get out of the way safely and at a moderate pace, not too much to ask for.
Basically, what im saying is no matter what, trying to navigate your way through the pit is going to get aggravating, both for the people in the way and the people trying to get you out of the way. We're not being arrogant, we're not being rude, and we might be annoying, but you know what, i think you can deal with someone trying to get their robot on to the field to play the game.
The real issue here is that there are too many people in the pit area. The reason it gets too loud is because there are too many people in that area.

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

I couldn't agree more. I saw a lot of this at Boilermaker this year. There was times where we could barely get out of pits in general. Trying to get to the field was a nightmare because we had to get past the people watching the live feed TV and stats TV. Yelling robot was the only way of trying to around everyone safely. It also didn't help that some teams brought some trumpets or something. Luckily around our pit there wasn't to much yelling late into the competition because we were all of aware of the robots and no one had to yell. But like Duke said, there was too many people in the pits. At times we did empty our pit of un-needed team members (we only have 4 so it's hard lol). I would recommend some teams look at doing that. Not only does it speed up what you need to do, it also creates a safer environment for everyone trying to do everything.

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

Wow, that's amazing how we can just censor anything we want to when we want to. I hope lessons are as easy to learn as it is to censor.

Disappointed,

Jane

P.S. I am quite capable of sticking my foot in my mouth on occasion and I deal with the consequences, be they red reps, PMs of chastisement, or public posts of chastisement - but I deal with them and hopefully, I learn where I have crossed the line between mentoring and arrogance. It can happen to any of us and we have to stay aware of that and use wisdom in our mentoring and in our posts in CD.

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

Thank you,:)
It's very hard for us to control, we have 48 students, about 40 of them were there, but thankfully about half knew to stay out :p

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

I have no objections to having what I wrote on this subject deleted. A few years ago I was involved with a group that was GP with a person that was bad with the youth and we ended up shutting down to protect the youth. Since then protecting youth trumps all else. If my views are a little or a lot too stong and I offended others I am sorry.

I still feel that a double regional with the music not so loud is great.

PS. Never write to a forum when your cat is trying to lie on the keyboard while you type. It made my bad spelling worse.

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

Before I was just frustrated. Now I've been to Long Beach, and I'm just completely baffled.

It appears that the Safety Advisors have specifically instructed teams to yell "ROBOT!" at ANY time they are moving their robot.

Additionally, if teams do not yell "ROBOT!", the safety advisors are telling them that they need to.

The result? Every team (including mine, that's another story... :-( )yelling their heads off any time a robot moves through the pit, and the surrounding 5 teams "helping" (yelling too) when there is not anyone in the way, for the WHOLE path to the field.

I yell back at them "There's no one in your way, why are you yelling?" But they're so caught up in yelling "ROBOT!" that I don't think they hear me.

It's really gotten out of hand, and it needs to stop.

Can a Safety Advisor please come on here and post the logic by which this is an acceptable practice? Whose idea was this, and what purpose does it serve? I really don't understand.

We have 10x15 pit areas.

We have 20-foot wide isles.

The whole pit area is free and clear. There is hardly ever anyone in the way here. Why are we yelling?

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

Find the head safety advisor (my dad might know who that is at L.A.) and ask him. If it comes from higher up, find out who--and make sure to write them a very nice letter explaining that because they are telling everybody to do this, everybody else is going deaf due to the increased noise level, which means that they can't hear stuff that's more dangerous than a robot, say, a forklift in their workplace. If it's from the head safety advisor, see the contents of the letter I mentioned above, and ask if they have a noise monitor in the pit area or that can be transferred over to the pit area. IIRC, someone brought this up for the competition area a year or two ago, and decibel meters were brought to some competitions to check, with results that said "some areas are too loud, we need to fix this".

You could also, when the Safety Advisors instruct you to yell "Robot", do exactly what they say--as loud as possible, near their ears. They may quickly see the noise contribution that yelling robot makes to the buzz of robot motors, the machine shop, hand/cordless tools, conversations...

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

Best advice in this thread yet. I'm grinning from ear to ear.

Blake
PS: I was just at the DC regional and didn't hear a single "ROBOT!" yell.

I wasn't in the pits much, but when I was, I only heard an occasional spoken warning, and they were at the volume they should have been - as loud as common sense would dictate, but no louder than that.

There were also a few "Robot coming through"s and "Excuse me"s heard. All were appropriate and useful.

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

It seems most of the problems are coming from regionals where space is an issue. I didn't notice too many loud calls of "Robot!!!!" at GKC, and there shouldn't have been too many anyways because we had an amazing amount of space. I do remember that we politely said "Excuse us" moving to and from the field a few times, but there was never an issue of gridlock.

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

Agreed. Not every regional has a 10x15 pit area with 20 ft wide isles. I know Boilermaker didn't

Re: A plea for a quieter pit area
 

I would say your mileage will vary depending on the regional you are attending. At the VA regional, they put the scrolling stats and scores on flat screens right next to the entrance to the queuing line. Folks get so worried about looking at their rankings they forget to look behind them and walk into robots/carts/ other people. Sometimes a loud "ROBOT!" will pull them back to the here and now. Gridlock IS an issue there.