[Chris]

The Einstein field always seems to have minor field issues due to the fact it gets zero play time throughout the course of the weekend.

In 2008 the carpet bumps that they had covering the support pieces for the center wall weren’t secured down as well as they were on other fields and we literally sucked one into our drive train gearbox during a lap, causing our robot to become disabled. We literally had to back drive the gearboxes to pick the robot up off the field.

In 2009 it had been a long time since any of the robots on Einstein had played on unused regolith and it showed. It seemed like all the robots on Einstein, were handling much different (worse) than they had in the divisional finals.

It stinks if 469’s robot was in fact misfiring on Einstein due to field variations, but the one thing that is fair about Einstein is it’s the same field for all the contestants.

I think it would be interesting to give the teams that make Einstein a practice match while all the spectators are getting seated. This would allow teams to calibrate field specific items to the field where the Championship is going to be decided. I know things like lighting variations can mess with camera tracking and such (I wonder if anyone in 2006 had issues with this on Einstein).

Just a thought