Immobile 200+ pts solo robot concept

[kht5586]

The basis of the concept is that you make a robot that sits with 2 wheels in their opponent's courtyard, and 2 in the secret passage, close to the castle wall, with most of the mass of the robot in the SP, and a 15" extension off the back.

The extension and the side of the robot all have inputs (optional, can be closed), to take in balls from the human player station as they are fed out. Then the balls are brought through the robot and shot out the top, with another one entering as the last one leaves.

This requires you to score 4 shots to get it running so they have to start feeding balls back, so you might want alliance members to start with balls and score them asap, along with the 1 you would score from auto. If you or a alliance member can get 1 more after that they are forced to start ejecting balls and you can start an infinite loop.

My rough math shows it might be possible to do this in a 3-5 second cycle. With 5 points every 3 seconds of teleop (minus a couple of seconds for setup) you score 200 pts at least, though at the end you may want to challenge. The best autonomous in my opinion is to start in the spy zone and shoot, allowing you to get into position faster once teleop starts. Once this happens though, I see no reason to move after the loop is started. If someone could clarify and see if any rules violations would apply that would be great.

[Purpose]

It'd work for about 30 seconds maybe. According to G21 (A ROBOT contacting carpet in the opponent’s SECRET PASSAGE may not contact opposing ROBOTS), you're allowed to be in their secret passage, but you're not allowed to touch opposing robots in their secret passage. Once the other alliance noticed what you're doing, all they have to do is send one robot to touch you and you'd be at fault and get a tech foul.

[TimTheGreat]

Originally Posted by Purpose

It'd work for about 30 seconds maybe. According to G21 (A ROBOT contacting carpet in the opponent’s SECRET PASSAGE may not contact opposing ROBOTS), you're allowed to be in their secret passage, but you're not allowed to touch opposing robots in their secret passage. Once the other alliance noticed what you're doing, all they have to do is send one robot to touch you and you'd be at fault and get a tech foul.

Not quite. G11 states that the opposing alliance cannot force a robot to break a rule. So if they touch you it's not a foul on you. In fact, it's a foul on the OTHER team.

[Purpose]

Originally Posted by TimTheGreat

Not quite. G11 states that the opposing alliance cannot force a robot to break a rule. So if they touch you it's not a foul on you. In fact, it's a foul on the OTHER team.

You know, I forgot about that rule. I think you may be right, it definitely could be applied in this case, but the way I'm reading it, it seems to be a fail safe so teams don't design a robot or an entire game plan revolving around giving other robots fouls. In this case, an opposing robot is in your secret passageway, in the way of the boulder dispenser. You could possibly argue that you needed the dispenser, and it's your alliance's dispenser and they shouldn't be in the way. I don't know, it seems like it's in the air.

[AndyBare]

Originally Posted by Purpose

You know, I forgot about that rule. I think you may be right, it definitely could be applied in this case, but the way I'm reading it, it seems to be a fail safe so teams don't design a robot or an entire game plan revolving around giving other robots fouls. In this case, an opposing robot is in your secret passageway, in the way of the boulder dispenser. You could possibly argue that you needed the dispenser, and it's your alliance's dispenser and they shouldn't be in the way. I don't know, it seems like it's in the air.

G21 is a super iffy rule right now by itself. Waiting for QA to clear up some question about "contact"

[BotDesigner]

Originally Posted by TimTheGreat

Not quite. G11 states that the opposing alliance cannot force a robot to break a rule. So if they touch you it's not a foul on you. In fact, it's a foul on the OTHER team.

But would it be a foul on them by sitting in your secret passage hoping you would touch them forcing a foul on you by you forcing a foul on them. Logically it doesn't make sense because the fouls would go on forever. Foul on you for forcing them to foul you by them forcing you to foul them...

[Greg Needel]

Originally Posted by TimTheGreat

Not quite. G11 states that the opposing alliance cannot force a robot to break a rule. So if they touch you it's not a foul on you. In fact, it's a foul on the OTHER team.

I guess I don't see this. Since they can clearly have a defender in their own courtyard, as long as no pin comes into play, if they touch you than wouldn't it just be defense and not trying to force a foul.

If I was a ref and I saw a team blocking access to the HP slots that a team was trying to get to there is no way that this would be called as intentionally trying to draw a foul. Additionally I think that an interpretation of G25 might come into play after it was done a few times, as it is intentionally impeding the flow of the match (although none of the definitions clearly define it as such in the current manual)

[Knufire]

If this was going to work this year, it would have worked in 2012. Which it didn't.

[alopex_rex]

Originally Posted by TimTheGreat

Not quite. G11 states that the opposing alliance cannot force a robot to break a rule. So if they touch you it's not a foul on you. In fact, it's a foul on the OTHER team.

No, that is not what G11 states. This is what G11 says (emphasis added):

Strategies aimed solely at forcing the opposing ALLIANCE to violate a rule are not in the spirit of FIRST Robotics Competition and not allowed.

Bumping into someone in your secret passage is not a "strategy." No momentary game event is a "strategy." You have every right to drive around in your secret passage, and if someone is in your way you have the right to bump into them.

A lot of people are over-interpreting G11 in this way, and some of the previous posts have done a good job of showing how absurd that interpretation is. Combined with G21, that means that if two robots on opposite alliances hit each other in a secret passage, whichever one initiated the contact gets a foul, which will often be impossible to judge, and clearly goes against the intent of G21, which is written to only apply to members of the opposing alliance. That's not to mention the infinite descent of "well you caused me to cause you to foul me, so you violated G11 by forcing me to violate G11," and so on ad absurdam. Any interpretation of the rules that results in infinite recursion is clearly flawed.

The intent of G21 is clearly that robots in the opposing team's secret passage have to make way for opposing robots or get a foul. The opposing team does not have to have a justification for doing so--it's their own secret passage, they can do what they want in it!

[Case0823]

I had a similar thought on this strategy initially.

I also found that I had misinterpreted the field drawing as to whose secret passage is whose, due to the different flags in different drawings being visible. That topic is covered in another thread.

The point is that the secret passage you'd need to sit in or by, is controlled by the other alliance. Therefore if you are contacted by their bot when they try to receive boulders you will most likely be penalized. It also means that the other alliance controls when and how those boulders are put back onto the field. This will limit your points. AA year proved how a nicely timed bump can cause a miss with a long shot. Therefore I do not think this will be a high scoring strategy for very long if at all.
It worked better for Frisbees since you controlled most of the variables.

It's technically feasible with the current rules but very risky. This also depends on the interpretation of the blockade foul.

[Leav]

We discussed the Choke-hold robot idea today, and we see 2 flaws with it:

The first flaw is debatable: Intuitively, this is not the way the GDC intended the game to be played. The reason you should care is that they have the ability to change the rules at any point, including AFTER build season. (see HighRollers in 2008 for an example of this)

The second flaw is a bit more powerful. Consider Rule <G4> (emphasis added):

DRIVE TEAMS may not extend any body part into the FIELD during the MATCH.
Momentary encroachment through the hole in the HUMAN PLAYER STATION behind the BRATTICE while placing a BOULDER into that hole is an exception to this rule.

Violation: FOUL. Violations of this rule are likely to escalate to YELLOW or RED CARDS rapidly (i.e. the threshold for egregious or repeated violations is relatively low)

Blue Box:
Examples of egregious violations include, but are not limited to, walking onto the FIELD during a MATCH or intentionally reaching into the FIELD and grabbing a ROBOT during a MATCH.

Our interpretation of this is that a human player may insert his hand into the BRATTICE while holding the ball, and then throw the ball UP and possibly also diagonally. The ball would most probably not enter into the choke-hold robot, and the strategy defeated.

The height limit means that the robot can't block the brattice, so this would always be possible.

Thoughts?

-Leav

[AndyBare]

Originally Posted by Leav

Our interpretation of this is that a human player may insert his hand into the BRATTICE while holding the ball, and then throw the ball UP and possibly also diagonally. The ball would most probably not enter into the choke-hold robot, and the strategy defeated.

-Leav

The rule does say "placing." More specifically, if you want to dive beyond that., "placing... into that hole." I think that kind of firms things up a bit.

[EricH]

The other problem with this concept is TU#1... If there's somebody parked down there, and their bumpers don't match the berm, they need to run if somebody else comes in!

[Leav]

Originally Posted by EricH

The other problem with this concept is TU#1... If there's somebody parked down there, and their bumpers don't match the berm, they need to run if somebody else comes in!

Only if they are touching the carpet, if I understand correctly. it's possible (probably) to execute the choke-hold strategy without touching the carpet in the secret passage.

[AndyBare]

It would be allowable, but why would they feed boulders to you?