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Unread 05-03-2006, 17:53
BrianR BrianR is offline
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Re: VCU DISQUALIFICATION!

Quote:
Originally Posted by nukemknight
The scoring in the lower goals is counted by a camera (of course with a human back-up in case a robot goes into the goal). There are lights under the goal, with a camera mounted at the top of the player's station. A wire mesh is mounted inside the goal to keep the HP's from reaching over the light (one swipe of a hand across the light and the camera counts 5-7 balls). The 2-3 inch margin teams are given for going into the goals is the space from the outer edge of the goal, to where the camera begins scoring. Anything that crosses that light can be scored by the camera, including a robot.
On this note, if anyone has noticed a few extremely high scores posted in the results of the first week regionals. The one case that stands out to me is a score of 11109 at VCU, but if that were a typing error of a score of 109, there were also scores of aver 200, which I find hard to believe given the other scores we saw, even in the finals. I believe that the reason for these errant scores may be robot incursion into the corner goals. I believe that if a robot enters the goal, it will be counted as much more than a simple hand, and thus even a short infraction would greatly inflate scores. This would make FIRST's position on DQing any violators very reasonable, as it would be a major hassle to figure out the right score, and it may not be possible. Thus they are trying to make it as fair for everyone as possible, so that there is no dispute over scores. This is the most equitable process for dealing with this inherent shortcoming in the ball counting technology, and as they clearly published the penalties for goal infraction, it is by no means unfair to DQ any team found in violation of this, especially in light of the problems that it causes in scoring the matches.