UNH Recap and Robot Rankings NEFirst

[joemost]

UNH was a fun event! Here are just some sort of my notes that I had scribbled down. Only two more competitions in the regular season until the New England Championship at WPI! (Everything on this post is only about New England teams, and in this case specifically the UNH Competition

I am not trying to offend anyone and I am pretty harsh about every team! I would love to hear your comments/ opinions.

Top Tier Stackers: 2342, 3467, 885, 213, 4564
Second Tier Stackers: 58, 3390, 811, 5122
Top Tier Cappers: 138
Second Tier Cappers : 133, 58

2342- Kings of Qualification. Kings of ONLY qualification. 2342 reminds me a lot of 1519 as they have nearly perfected their 3 tote stack auto mode. Capable of getting coop pretty much every round. The weakness of their team in my opinion has been their picking. They seem to like to pick a capper 3rd pick in the playoffs. Picking a robot that could cap their stacks more efficiently in the playoffs would serve them well.

4564 - good stackers, sometimes seems a little clunky

811 - sometimes seems a little slow. But not bad stackers. I look for them to be one of the strongest third picks at WPI, as they will not require a cappers attention.

213 - Wow, big improvement. When I first saw them I wasn't too impressed, but they really stepped up their stacking. The limited productivity early made them a little bit of a sleeper in playoff picks. But boy did 133 get their moneys worth with them.

501 - a strong third pick for WPI. Slow and unstable but with big upside especially in the playoffs.

58 - probably the most versatile team on the field. Not a top tier capper but definitely good. I am unsure that anyone on the field can cap and stack as well as they can. A jack of all trades. Seemed to struggle with getting containers off of the step

133 - Flew under my radar in the Quals, but definitely showed some skill at capping in the playoffs. It seemed to work to their advantage. A capper like 138 looks too good to be picked as the 3rd alliance in the playoffs, while a team like 133 might still be on the board. I think teams that can get a good capper 3rd in the playoffs might end up winning it all.

138 - Struggled in the playoffs and ended up getting knocked out. Often struggles a but in Coop as if they don't have a stacker they can't do a lot. They attempt to stack totes two at a time but it takes a while. Was my pick to win as they are able to control the containers in the playoffs. The double cap was awesome to see. It allowed them to put up some serious points in matches where they were left with robots only capable of making 1 or 2 stacks

5122 - good stackers. In WPI if they focus on more stacks instead of two huge stacks I think they will go far. Need a good capper though, takes too much time to self-cap.

319 - awesome to see in auto, being the only team besides 2342 to get a 3 stack in auto. Doesn't seem to do a ton after that in regular matches. Sometimes they seem to be a very fast stacker. Sometimes it seems to take all day

1058 - a notorious self capper. They were a little consistent, sometimes would make huge stacks sometimes would just struggle at the feeder station most of the match. Often I would only see one big stack from them a match.

885 - impressive stackers. Fast

3390 - stack two at a time. Only downfall is a capper can't cap them until they are done making both stacks. Not as strong for team play. Still good.

3467 - great stackers. Need to focus less on capping their stacks though, only do it if its a must in quals. I loved how they didn't waste time for the little points in auto during the playoffs. I also gotta say, great drive team. I was behind their drive team during one match and the communication between their human player and operator was great. I haven't seen a human player hustle like theres before.

An overall trend I saw was teams like 501 and 5122 getting a little too obsessed with making huge 6 stacks. Every team doing it was only capable of making 1 or 2 in a match and would struggle to get it to the scoring platform. It really seems like 4 is the sweet spot level.

[Jay O'Donnell]

Originally Posted by joemost

1058 - a notorious self capper. They were a little consistent, sometimes would make huge stacks sometimes would just struggle at the feeder station most of the match. Often I would only see one big stack from them a match.

We definitely had consistency issues. Our focuses before New England champs are going to be our lining up (which has to be pretty precise) and making our arm longer so the RC won't fall out like it was. We also had two matches with mysterious comm issues that we couldn't explain easily or replicate. On the practice field we went from picking up a bin to a fully scored 42 point stack in under a minute, so our goal is to make two full stacks in a match. We keep improving every day.

[joemost]

Originally Posted by Jay O'Donnell

We definitely had consistency issues. Our focuses before New England champs are going to be our lining up (which has to be pretty precise) and making our arm longer so the RC won't fall out like it was. We also had two matches with mysterious comm issues that we couldn't explain easily or replicate. On the practice field we went from picking up a bin to a fully scored 42 point stack in under a minute, so our goal is to make two full stacks in a match. We keep improving every day.

You guys are still a great team! Id love to see you guys go for a four stack or a 3 stack and cap those instead of just going for that one huge one. Comm issues suck

[Jay O'Donnell]

Originally Posted by joemost

You guys are still a great team! Id love to see you guys go for a four stack or a 3 stack and cap those instead of just going for that one huge one. Comm issues suck

Our reasoning for going for the 6 stacks is that we currently have no way of getting RCs off the step, so we want to maximize the points we can get out of the three RCs on our side of the field. If it makes sense for us to make smaller stacks with the alliance we have, then we will definitely make smaller stacks.

[Drew4564]

Thanks for the awesome recap, Joe!

Originally Posted by joemost

4564 - good stackers, sometimes seems a little clunky

Thanks for the mention! I'm curious what you thought was clunky - was it our stacking or our capping? We definitely had some rougher moments at the human feeder station with some toppling totes, so I agree that it could definitely seem clunky at times.

Originally Posted by joemost

An overall trend I saw was teams like 501 and 5122 getting a little too obsessed with making huge 6 stacks. Every team doing it was only capable of making 1 or 2 in a match and would struggle to get it to the scoring platform. It really seems like 4 is the sweet spot level.

This is definitely some interesting analysis. For playoff alliances such as 3467's and 58's who had the ability to retrieve RCs consistently off the step, 4 is definitely the sweet spot - many teams can both build and cap at this level repeatedly. However, for alliances such as 3930's (who allied with 5122), making these few large stacks was the best way to get points from the 3 RCs they were able to work with.

Also, I'd like to mention a few other teams I observed at UNH. Team 3451, The Anomaly, was a consistent and strong stacker from the landfill who could cap their stacks if needed. Team 5265, Radical Impact, made huge improvements after we worked with them at Pine Tree and showed their strong abilities in the landfill. Team 2648, Infinite Loop, showed that they have some big stacking potential at the feeder station and are continually working on their 3-tote autonomous.

[joemost]

Originally Posted by Drew4564

Thanks for the awesome recap, Joe!



Thanks for the mention! I'm curious what you thought was clunky - was it our stacking or our capping? We definitely had some rougher moments at the human feeder station with some toppling totes, so I agree that it could definitely seem clunky at times.



This is definitely some interesting analysis. For playoff alliances such as 3467's and 58's who had the ability to retrieve RCs consistently off the step, 4 is definitely the sweet spot - many teams can both build and cap at this level repeatedly. However, for alliances such as 3930's (who allied with 5122), making these few large stacks was the best way to get points from the 3 RCs they were able to work with.

Also, I'd like to mention a few other teams I observed at UNH. Team 3451, The Anomaly, was a consistent and strong stacker from the landfill who could cap their stacks if needed. Team 5265, Radical Impact, made huge improvements after we worked with them at Pine Tree and showed their strong abilities in the landfill. Team 2648, Infinite Loop, showed that they have some big stacking potential at the feeder station and are continually working on their 3-tote autonomous.

Saw roughly 90 matches so don't hate me for not specific examples. But it would definitely be the feeder station. A lot of teams struggled at the feeder station, but robots that needed a tote as a platform struggled the most.

Thanks for adding those teams, I had limited time and just wanted to mention teams I saw. Looking forward to WPI

[DirtyBird213]

Originally Posted by joemost

Top Tier Stackers: 2342, 3467, 885, 213, 4564

213 - Wow, big improvement. When I first saw them I wasn't too impressed, but they really stepped up their stacking. The limited productivity early made them a little bit of a sleeper in playoff picks. But boy did 133 get their moneys worth with them.
...
Every team doing it was only capable of making 1 or 2 in a match and would struggle to get it to the scoring platform. It really seems like 4 is the sweet spot level.

Thanks Joemost- We looked at simple strategy- Keep it simple and Do one Job Well!!
We modified to that 4 stack priority and stuck with it! Took a risk with standings but knew if we could be consistent it would be rewarded
UNH Event champion is proof
Hats off to BERT for sticking with us and 501 for completing the "Island of Misfit toys"

[TedG]

Originally Posted by DirtyBird213

Thanks Joemost- We looked at simple strategy- Keep it simple and Do one Job Well!!
We modified to that 4 stack priority and stuck with it! Took a risk with standings but knew if we could be consistent it would be rewarded
UNH Event champion is proof
Hats off to BERT for sticking with us and 501 for completing the "Island of Misfit toys"

Well put! (LOL)
Thanks to you (team 213) and team 501 for doing such an awesome job when we needed it most! You performed very well.

It was a great team effort on the field, and our scouting team paying attention to all the teams the whole weekend. It goes to show that you can't rule out the underdogs, sometimes it just clicks.

[katiyeh07]

Did anyone else notice that EI was given to a team that had already won EI at another district event?

It was noted in the District Points Ranking Update in January that:
"District Teams will only be able to win FRC’s most prestigious awards – Chairman’s Award, Engineering Inspiration Award, and Rookie All Star Award – once per season at the District level. This supports the broader distribution of those awards."

While they are obviously deserving of this award, it now means that only 9 not 10 teams will be competing for it at the District Championship.

Link to that can be found here

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by joemost

3467 - great stackers. Need to focus less on capping their stacks though, only do it if its a must in quals. I loved how they didn't waste time for the little points in auto during the playoffs. I also gotta say, great drive team. I was behind their drive team during one match and the communication between their human player and operator was great. I haven't seen a human player hustle like theres before.

Thanks for the kind, honest words. For UNH our goal was to do two 5 stacks with RCs/noodles all in one which seemed to work well in our shop but for a few programming issue that made our stacking rougher the RC kept falling off either while indexing tote #4 or during delivery so we went back to the split stack strategy.

For Sunday we had a new RC strategy of spitting the RC out halfway and then slowly lowering our elevator to place for a smoother delivery but only got to try it in one match and got two of the three placements down the first miss was with the RC handle down.

Lots to practice moving forward. Overall I'm really impressed with our driver, operator, and human player for stepping up and performing so well with less than an hour of practice in our shop plus their time at Reading.

Good honest analysis here!