Human Player Safety

[Chris Hibner]

There is a thread going on about having to stand behind the controls by 3 feet during the autonomous period and that it might be a safety concern.

Has anyone thought about human player safety problems? We've been doing human player practices recently and noticed that 10 seconds is not enough time to do much of anything. Many of the things we tried to do with the boxes resulted in the human players running at full speed to get back to the sensor pad to get there within one second of losing the autonomous time.

Now, I'm sure you can say, "then just don't do anything with the boxes other than put them right next to the HP starting position". But that's not very realistic for the competition. I can really forsee at least one accident this year in which a human player is rushing back to the sensor pad and trips and falls (either over their own two feet or on the railing near the gate) and either breaks a bone or gets a head injury.

Has anyone else noticed the need to have the human player rush like crazy?

-Chris

[ChrisH]

The day of Kickoff we got together with another team and marked out a full sized field on a basketball court. We then "played" the game using people for robots.

One of the first things we noticed was that if Human Players tried to do much more than drop the boxes in a stack they didn't make it out in time.

My recommendation is to go recruit your HPs from the track team. A sprinter or two wouldn't hurt, but bring plenty of Ace bandages. One thing is nice though, this year we get to recruit from a sport besides basketball.

Of course at our school Robotics is our ONLY team sport.

[kevinw]

Could a human player wear a helmet and padding to prevent / reduce the risk of injury, or would this fall under the category of special equipment that requires necessity for use?

[Soukup]

okay..i'm sorry to have to be so negative but human players can do PLENTY in 10 seconds. Last night and engineer and myself tried this out...mainly because we didn't believe what this thread was saying. And guess what..could do everything that I wanted to in under 10 seconds. Now I am the most athletic member of my team..but I am by no means in any outstanding physical shape. I am sure that at least one person from your team is sure-footed. One easy way to find this out...hopscotch. You'll find out who is quick with their feet and who can do this job. It really isn't a safety hazard and if it is...get a new human player!!!