Quote:
Originally Posted by 1885.Blake
You are right that if everyone is making the hike from the pits to the field and back every 60 minutes, then everyone is losing about 45 minutes of productivity during those 60. Slowing down the pace of the matches is one degree of freedom that can be used to reduce this waste (Seems dissatisfying). Changing the location of the field or pits is another option (tough). Dividing the team to conquer the jobs is another way (Seems fairly easy to me, but maybe others would hate it).
Blake
|
One other way that I could see to reduce wasted travel to the pits in Atlanta is to open one of the gates from the competition floor to the stands so that immediately following a match, teams could watch other teams (would greatly improve scouting), rather than running back and forth. This would some introduce some complications but I think they could be fairly easily addressed.
1) A gatekeeper would be needed to make sure that only appropriate badges would receive admittance from the stands to the floor.
2) FIRST would need to decide whether to permit teams to carry their robots into the stands, since spectators are not required to wear safety glasses. If not, a robot "parking lot" with "valet" could be designated -- leave your robots on the floor when you go to the stands.
Yes, we would hate the divide and conquer strategy (we are a young team trying to deepen our bench, so I realize that the more developed teams would not necessarily feel this way). Our students stuck together most of the time, and much learning occurred through the continual running commentary that went on, especially right after a match. One member would reflect on the team's performance, another would chime in a suggestion, others would critique/analyze it, and the whole team would arrive at a consensus as to whether they would implement that change for the next match. Some of these comments were strategy-related, some design-related for the future. They also made many observations on other teams' strategies & designs and incorporated some of the ideas from earlier matches into later matches. As demonstrated by the requirements of the engineering journal, reflecting is an important part of the experience, not only after a tournament, but in the middle of the process.
If teams could travel from the floor to the stands, I think adding one extra match on Thursday afternoon and one on Friday morning (for a total of 6) would not cause too much extra stress (on the teams -- I don't know about the tournament staff). But I would not recommend trying to squeeze in 7. While a limited number of matches may cause teams to feel that the rankings were unfair, the crux of the matter is this: did the limited number of matches result in the best teams being excluded from the finals, causing the "wrong alliance" to come out on top? I think not! When done right, alliance selection paints a better picture than limited statistics can.