First Week Regionals *Merged*

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Ok, Its 3:30 on Thursday. I know its still early, but I am eager. I've got some questions for all you hotshots who are attending a first week regional.

Auto/Human Loader - Which is more popular? Have their been any penalties or problems involved with either?

Stack High vs. Stack Fast - Which of these seems to be the predominate game plan? Whats the highest stack you have seen? Was there any particular scenarios where a team that could stack high did better or worse in a match? ..Why?

Strong/Fast Bots - Has there been any pushing in matches? Has having a tough robot stuck out as something vital to the game? On the contrary, how fast is too fast? From the few practice matches I watched from VCU, it seems teams aren't jetting across the field very quickly.. am I wrong?

Autonomous Mode - Have you seen any robot successfully stack a vision tetra in auto mode? If so, on which goal and how long did it take? What are some other big autonomous strategies that don't involve the vision system?

6 Robots on the field - Do you like it? Too Crowded, too hard to see?

Lets get some answers goin' here, I'm sure all of us sitting at home this weekend cant wait to find out any little secret they can about Triple Play.

Feel free to answer any of my questions, or add anything you think is important as the weekend goes on. Anyone else: feel free to post any question, and hopefully we will get answers to these.

Go teams!

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

What happened vs what you planned
How is your planned strategy, such as employing your human player or not, different from what really ended up happening in matches due to added variable of competition?

Robot Damage
What are major issues to watch out for in terms of robot damage? Is ramming an issue? Have arms messed up wiring? What sort of action is the most damaging to your robot? How was significant speed affected this?

Scores
There were a lot of predictions going around about scores. What do you see as realistic trends?

[Corey Balint]

To add onto the 6 robot idea...

How fast is the setup/take down of every match-- I know its practice day and all, but we should be able to get a feel of how everything is going.

[Heretic121]

Originally Posted by Corey Balint

To add onto the 6 robot idea...

How fast is the setup/take down of every match-- I know its practice day and all, but we should be able to get a feel of how everything is going.

during qualifaction rounds im not sure... but during elims you get 4 minutes from when the field CLEARS to get your bot on the field... so each team got about 10-12 minutes between each match to fix thier bot in elims which was great *or at least until finals you get that time*

[Anthony Kesich]

Doug G is right. Our alliance thought we could win by having 2 fast cappers and a defensive robot. It seemed to work well for a while until we got to finals and came up against 3 high cappers. We had the weakness that even though we capped really fast and reliably, we couldn't cap the small goals more than 2 high. Even with that weakness, we went undefeated in the qualifying rounds (11-0-0, 9 avg pts) mainly because of strategy.

Coaches are big this year. The driver and myself (the operator) were too busy avoiding our teammates and bashers (which there are quite a few of this year) to think about where to go next. Our coach scoped the field and we did the work.

Communication between coaches is key also. Have a predetermined plan and try to stick somewhat to it, but also be open to adaptation at any point. We sometimes would cap 5 goals and then go and play defense for the last 30 seconds.

Getting back to home zone for the 10 points in not worth it unless the entire team in unable to cap (i.e. not designed to do it or flipped). Say you own your entire side, the entire middle, and a corner on your opponents side. You shoot back with 20 seconds remaining. In those 20 seconds, an opponent could cap the center goal or a middle side goal, thereby taking away 2 rows and 20 of your points. It seems to me that it is more important to keep capping till the end, it will net you more points and will keep your opponents from stealing from you.

The big thing to do in autonomous this year is to cap a corner goal with the starting tetra which also knocks down a hanger, thereby scoring you 4 points. When we were paired with 254 once, we owned the entire back line at the end of autonomous. We knocked down our hanger, they knocked down theirs and they capped the center home goal.

Another key point for strategy is to only cap where it helps you. It is pointless to cap your home corner goal if you already have a tetra in the base unless that makes it so your opponent cannot take it from you. Once you own the entire field, then you can start capping over your own goals, not before.

Penalties are huge this year. There were three big ones. Hitting your opponent while loading (30 pts), having the human player not stand in the triangle while loading your robot (10 pts), and not having your robot in the triangle while loading (10 pts). Many teams tied zip ties across the front of their robot so they would touch the triangle rather than trying to maneuver a wheel on. It ended up being iffy. For the most part, they got penalized. Either the judges couldn't see the zip ties well enough or (more likely) the judges were looking for a wheel/tread to be on the triangle. So, if you were planning on doing something like this, talk to a judge beforehand to see how they interpret the rules so you don't get penalized.

In my opinion, the game is much easier to score on the fly. Well, aside from penalties that is. A quick glace at the field will normally tell you who the winner is, or who is winning at the time. It is also much more fun than last year's game since defense is much bigger. Before, you really couldn't take away your opponents points. This year, you must be constantly aware of who owns which goal, how you can easily break an opponents line, and where everyone is. There were many times when we would cap a goal and then go on defense, pushing other bots around.

There's another point. Robots that capped well and had a strong drive train dominated since they could play both offense and defense. Multiple-speed transmissions didn't really make a difference this year, but maneuverability did. The 6-wheel design was quite popular. We found it to work very well for our team. It allowed us to have plenty of grip for pushing with an incredibly small turning radius due to a center wheel lowered 1/32". It seemed that about 60% of the teams used the kitbot gearbox, and I don't blame them. The stock gearbox has a great gear ratio to give you both speed and torque. We, unfortunately, couldn't use it due to the way we had to have the shaft go straight through our gearbox and have the motors be opposed to each other for our direct-drive transmission. I don't know about the other alliance, but in our alliance for the finals, no one had a stock box.

As for robot damage, anything requiring repair was self-inflicted for us. Mainly, we forgot that steel rivets will stretch aluminum holes. And we just wore our treads down due to overuse (and due to burning a 8 square inch hole in the carpet). I saw many broken arms. There's a lot of torque required to accelerate an 8.5 pound object held 8 feet our from your robot. 701 broke their arm a couple of times, but fortunately they could repair it. Others were not so lucky.

Well, thats about all I have to say. I hope some of this information helps those of you competing in the weeks to come. Good luck everyone and, for those of you going to SVR, I'll see you shortly.

-Tony K

[whakojacko]

our arm fell almost fully extended holding a tetra onto one of the side rails . It unlinearized our linear bearings, sigh. We also went with the 6 wheel design and liked it. We had a custom gearbox with shifters, but didnt shift a lot.

Also realized just how important strategy is this year, i cannot stress this enough. Our plan that let us, 245, and 766 go lossess in elims was the result of 2 hours of thinking friday night at the hotel. When we had started qualifiers on friday, we originall were ranked 3 at lunch. However, teams figured out that our big capping capability was neutralized by a moderate pushing bot. So every match in the afternoon we faced alliances which sent their worst capping bot at us, with a decent amount of success that had dropped us to 14th by the selections on saturday. However with a strategy that our team got down from playing lots of rounds together we were effective in neutralizing pushing bots against us. Strategies like this were so effective against pushing bots that we really had no troubles getting pushed around in elims. So for other regionals, teams GET A GOOD STRATEGY!

[Alex1072]

Originally Posted by whakojacko

our arm fell almost fully extended holding a tetra onto one of the side rails . It unlinearized our linear bearings, sigh. We also went with the 6 wheel design and liked it. We had a custom gearbox with shifters, but didnt shift a lot.

Also realized just how important strategy is this year, i cannot stress this enough. Our plan that let us, 245, and 766 go lossess in elims was the result of 2 hours of thinking friday night at the hotel. When we had started qualifiers on friday, we originall were ranked 3 at lunch. However, teams figured out that our big capping capability was neutralized by a moderate pushing bot. So every match in the afternoon we faced alliances which sent their worst capping bot at us, with a decent amount of success that had dropped us to 14th by the selections on saturday. However with a strategy that our team got down from playing lots of rounds together we were effective in neutralizing pushing bots against us. Strategies like this were so effective against pushing bots that we really had no troubles getting pushed around in elims. So for other regionals, teams GET A GOOD STRATEGY!

The strategy we developed in the hotel was for the last two rounds of the seeding rounds. Team 766 deserves the credit for our elimination strategy. Also, although we did get a lot of pushing because Spark was such a huge "hit me" target, the major improvement was in driver strategy rather then global strategy. Patrick Wang gave us some good pointers on driving Friday night that we really appreciate. Thanks Patrick!

PS: Obviously the robots sent to play defense wern't the "worst bots", they were very effective in stopping us for half of friday, and were valuable to their partners. I'm curious what role they'll have as the strategies evolve and gameplay changes.

[tbmantia]

Originally Posted by Alex1072

The strategy we developed in the hotel was for the last two rounds of the seeding rounds. Team 766 deserves the credit for our elimination strategy. Also, although we did get a lot of pushing because Spark was such a huge "hit me" target, the major improvement was in driver strategy rather then global strategy. Patrick Wang gave us some good pointers on driving Friday night that we really appreciate. Thanks Patrick!

PS: Obviously the robots sent to play defense wern't the "worst bots", they were very effective in stopping us for half of friday, and were valuable to their partners. I'm curious what role they'll have as the strategies evolve and gameplay changes.

What did you all do differently during the elimination rounds?

[Alex1072]

Originally Posted by tbmantia

What did you all do differently during the elimination rounds?

We took advantage of the fact that defensive robots have to react to us, not the other way around. Basically we moved around more and used the loading zone to discourage people from touching us.

[Spikey]

EDIT: Beginning of Merged Thread

I am curious as to how robots performed during the practice matches today. Were any teams able to cap the vision tetras? How was the autonomous period? Was there a lot, or very little capping? How well were robots holding up? Did you see anything truly amazing?

[kaszeta]

Originally Posted by Spikey

I am curious as to how robots performed during the practice matches today. Were any teams able to cap the vision tetras? How was the autonomous period? Was there a lot, or very little capping? How well were robots holding up? Did you see anything truly amazing?

My overall comments based upon the Manchester pits:

1. Overall, bot design is *very* similar this year (i.e. most bots are near-indentical in design).

2. Not much (yet) in useful autonomous mode, mostly knocking hanging tetras down and (if started with a tetra) capping a tetra. (Our team is no exception, we're still debugging).

3. Very few teams are using the camera. I only saw one team that could do something useful with it. Dead-reckoning autonomous seems more prevalent, and some teams are doing quite well.

4. Some very good cappers out there, but few that can cap center goal once more than 1 or 2 tetras are up there (our bot can do it, but it's on the very top end of our range). Many tetra-handling arms are wobbly, and a lot of arms are dropping tetras. A lot of teams seem to be having trouble with fine control of the bot arm (our bot has a left-right pivoting hip on our arm to allow finer control, surprised we haven't seen more of that sort of thing).

5. Weight and dimensions aren't a huge issue this year, most teams are well underweight and within the box.

6. Pits seem more relaxed, and teams better prepared (but maybe that's just because our own pit area is more relaxed)

From our own team, we're happy with how the bot is driving, but have lots of little niggling details that we need tinker with (like the limit switch that didn't work...)

Should be some fun matches tomorrow, especially because a lot of teams will be fairly well-matched (at least technologically, driver skill is a huge issue).

Rich the coach, who enjoys being close enough to Manchester that I can sleep at home...

[Stephen P]

I was at Nasa/VCU. I saw a couple teams get to the vision tetras, though i don't think i saw any cap during auton. The teams that performed best had simple arms that went up and down quickly. We had an arm with a single pivot and an apex gripper that performed very well and very quickly. But it's all about speed and reliability, not about fancy tall arms.

[Petey]

Didn't see any robots cap during autonomous at Granite State. Only three or four really capable teams, from what I saw.

Our team had a lot of troubles holding onto the tetras. Did anyone else find them inordinately slippery?

Pits were wacky--lots of people scrambling to get their stuff done, even more than usual.

Also, matches are very boring to watch, unlike last year.

--Petey

[sanddrag]

I want to know:

Has anyone gotten (or even though about getting) the 10 pts for all three in the end zone?

Does anyone "contain" tetras as opposed to stacking them?

How many rows are usually made?

[Collmandoman]

we should start a chatroom.. because this Q&A response thing is slow~ and ther eis alot of excitement out there~

so I'll make one

name

"FIRST Regionals" on AIM

come if you can -- hit yourself if you can't