[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by Biff

Glib comments about "it's just another item you have to work around" don't help.

It's not a glib comment - other teams (mine included) anticipated this problem and successfully solved it. Perhaps I missed it, but I didn't see any questions on this forum of how to solve it or I would have explained what we do. Part of engineering is anticipating possible problems and incorporating solutions into the design. One suggestion was already made (point the camera at the ground). Our solution was to have the camera look only at the exact locations that tetras should have been found and use the virtual window function of the camera to further restrict it's view. We did not have a single problem with our vision system at the Championship. We successfully tracked the tetras and goals in every single match we played using the calibration values that FIRST provided. Since our software knew which spots the tetras were located in, we could intelligently decide which one to attempt to pick up, and in the cases where we knew that we couldn't pick up either of them (due to the robot's design and not having enough time) we instead would drive over to the autoloader so that it was ready to go when driver control started.

Other comments in the forums here lead me to believe that the numbers for calibrations were at best inconsistent. Looking at the playing fields with the skills I have learned shading cameras lead me to conclude the only way to get a good set of calibration numbers was to put your robot out there and do it yourself.

We used the provided numbers at the regionals and Championship and they worked perfectly. I remember hearing after Week 1 regionals that some teams had trouble with the numbers, but I haven't really heard anything like that since. Did other teams have trouble with the numbers in Atlanta?

It was also stated that deliberate color schemes and clothing that sole intent was to confuse the vision system were against the rules.
... In my opinion the match should have been replayed as the announcers clothing, although maybe not deliberate, clearly interfered with a vision system.

Are you suggesting that the announcer was deliberately trying to confuse the camera with his clothing? I'm sure you're not, but FIRST made it clear that they would not go so far as to restrict people from wearing green or anything like that.