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Unread 20-03-2011, 22:03
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AKA: Dustin Shadbolt
FRC #1555 (Team PULSE)
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Join Date: Jan 2010
Rookie Year: 2010
Location: Monticello,Indiana
Posts: 320
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Re: A plea for a quieter pit area

Quote:
Originally Posted by Duke461 View Post
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.
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.