Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber
Karthik is scared teams are going to overestimate how much they don't suck.
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While I'd hesitate to say this is definitely why Karthik in particular was terrified of the results of that poll, I can definitely say this is why
I was terrified of them.
On average, robotics teams really aren't particularly good at building robots* (or, perhaps more accurately, robots that can compete effectively). As someone who loves to see teams succeed both on and off the field, I looked at the results of that (and the other, similar polls about functionality) and wondered how many of the teams that said they were trying to score in the high goal, climb the mountain, and go under the low goal would even be capable of one of those things. That 90% of teams said they want to go under the low bar, and that in other polls,
64% of respondents said they would do both low bar and hang, about
80% of respondents claimed they were doing 4/5 defenses, and
70% of respondents have claimed that they are planning on doing either high goal or both high and low goal indicates that there are a whole bunch of teams that are likely biting off FAR more than they can effectively chew. Obviously I hope I'm wrong, but this indicates to me that there are going to be a lot of mediocre or ineffective robots this year (though one could argue that's the case every year, it's just more of a shame when it's such a fantastic game that supports a ton of valid niches for robots).
So, basically it boils down to that shooting, crossing defenses, and climbing are already tough, and the indication that 90% of teams are compounding the difficulty of whatever else they're trying to do with trying to do is, well, terrifying.
*I know this is an extremely strong and possibly offensive statement, but it's true pretty much across the board-- GOFIRST (my college robotics org/team) just competed in two robotics competitions on one weekend where more than half of the participants were either completely ineffective or somewhere between bad and mediocre at the tasks, including us, and we're a group of people that each have 5+ years of robotics experience. Robots are just hard, however you cut it.