I agree with what was said earlier. The bass at the event was DEFINITELY WAY TOO LOUD. It was piercing my head and chest. They had two subwoofers that where each the size of my car. I also agree that there was too much security personnel. I was interrogated when I tried to walk over to a vending machine next to the machine shop. The Verizon Center security staff had little knowledge of the event and didn't realize that some people had to access certain areas of the arena. This was also true during eliminations, when there were little seats available on the playing field side of the curtain. Some people, who had no choice but to stand in the stairwells and entry doors, were harassed by Verizon security staff.
I also agree that the referrees definitely held their flags when it came to "intentional" ramming. Our robot was rammed repeatedly above very high on our robot when our scissor lift was up. This is clearly against the rules as teams are only allowed to hit "low" on robots. In one match, an unnamed team even place their arm between the scissors in our lift and prevented us from moving our lift. We repeatedly, yet politely, pointed this out to the referees over the course of the two days of competition. Unfortunately, no action was taken by the referees in any of the matches in question. I understand that the referees have a busy job and there is a lot that they have to watch, but a line does have to be drawn when it comes to ramming and striking other robots. The referees can't on one hand be quick when it comes to interference penalties and on the other hand turn a blind eye to robots intentionally hitting other robots high. This is especially true when the robots being attacked aren't even carrying tetras.
I was also wondering why teams weren't allowed to have their robots in the team photo, especially when we did last year. However, our team faculty advisor became extremely angry when he heard this and completely ignored the staff at the event. He forced his way through angry BAE volunteers to bring the robot to the photographers. You'll notice that on the BAE website our team is the only one with their robot in the picture.
On a lighter note, it was very funny when the fire alarm went off at the moment when Dean Kamen was announcing team 501 as the winner of the chairman's award. All of a sudden power to the video screen, lights, and microphone goes off and a siren starts going off. The building had to be evacuated. Dean seemed extremely annoyed when this happened. There were other issues as well, such as the leader board being inoperative throughout the first day, no one having success with the camera, and other minor problems.
Other than that, the BAE regional went along perfectly fine and without any problems.
