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Unread 03-03-2008, 01:42
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AKA: Bryan Molloseau
FRC #3210 (Falcons)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
Rookie Year: 2008
Location: Oregon
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Re: week 1 questions

At Oregon, it was obvious that getting the ball quickly was key regardless of how the ball was hurdled. Many robots could hurdle but the best were very quick. Team 368 could get the ball on the run, hit top speed running down the lane, turn and zip their elevator up, spit out the ball quickly and get it down quickly - they were a hurdling machine. That being said, I think a launcher could be even quicker since they don't have to slow down to hurdle. But getting the ball is usually a problem for a launcher so a good design makes a difference. Team 473 was affective in pinning the ball on the wall to pick it up - launching was no problem for them and very cool to watch.

Hybrid mode was a real mixed bag. We used the IR board pretty well but it sometimes was blocked or out of range. only one team made it a full loop, we made it close to 3/4 loop twice and almost always 2 lines. most teams either crossed one line or not at all. one team knocked down two balls and had 3 lines (team 1540). teams that didn't move were in the way most of the time.

placing the ball on the rack at the end was key as was being able to knock them down (which was our specialty). A lot of bots tried to knock the balls down but many many of them struggled and some just plain couldn't do it.

Line violations was called ALL of the time. even a corner of a bumper that passes back over a line will get you a penalty - I really hope they revise this for the rest of the regionals. It seems odd that you only get points in hybrid mode if your bot totally crosses the line, but you get penalized for even the slightest bit over.

Impeding was called a lot but I think, again, it was due to interpretation. Slowing down in front of a hurdler to keep them from hurdling was called every time. We thought this was a legal move since they would then need to bump to pass. but, we were wrong and learned the hard way as did many other robots. However, you could impede pretty well if they were not trying to hurdle.

no 80" rule violations that I know of. And no violations during Hybrid either. In several cases, controlers were knocked down by speeding bots in autonomous but they did not get penalized - which I thought was a shame since the affected robot would be out of action while they reset their controllers.