Car Nack Predicts 3/06

[Car Nack]

FIRST will have problems handling the numerous claims that robots are exceeding the ball shooter intial velocity of 12meters per second.

Car Nack has spoken.

[Ricky Q.]

Agreed.

[EricH]

I certainly hope Car Nack is wrong, but I'm pretty sure he's right. We shall see.

[Tomasz Bania]

I am 99% sure that he is right!

[ida_noeman]

It's going to be pretty difficult to judge how fast the balls are coming out.

[dlavery]

I think that Car Nack will be wrong on this one _IF_ FIRST adopts one simple policy. In NASCAR, if Team A believes Team B has put a car with prohibited modifications on the track, they can request a tear down inspection by the authorities. If they are right and Team B has an illegal car, then Team B is penalized appropriately (up to and including having a "win" rescinded). However, if Team A is wrong and the challenged car is perfectly legal, then Team A has to pay for the tear down and rebuild. This is their penalty for filing a false charge. A similar policy could be instituted at the competitions if excessive spurious "they are shooting too fast!" charges become a problem.

-dave

[Ricky Q.]

Originally Posted by dlavery

I think that Car Nack will be wrong on this one _IF_ FIRST adopts one simple policy. In NASCAR, if Team A believes Team B has put a car with prohibited modifications on the track, they can request a tear down inspection by the authorities. If they are right and Team B has an illegal car, then Team B is penalized appropriately (up to and including having a "win" rescinded). However, if Team A is wrong and the challenged car is perfectly legal, then Team A has to pay for the tear down and rebuild. This is their penalty for filing a false charge. A similar policy could be instituted at the competitions if excessive spurious "they are shooting too fast!" charges become a problem.

-dave

But what does team A pay? Krispy Kremes?

[Jessica Boucher]

I definitely agree with Car Nack, and completely disagree with Dave. (Sorry, Dave )

Although it is a fantastic solution, I feel that the desire for low match turnaround time at a FIRST event will overpower any "checks" such as Dave proposed, or any other additional "check" than the inspection at the beginning. I can imagine that after the first time a team overturns a decision based on ball speed, teams will be more attune to the problem and thus request a check more often than if the issue was nipped in the bud even before the event begins.

Teams need to trust that every team is keeping within the rules set out by FIRST. I know they don't all the time, but I think the only way to stick to the idea of "referees calls are final" is by not allowing an overturn. Poor match calls can make-or-break the team perspective of an event, and thus referees should be chosen for their experience, so that if a situation arises it can be handled quickly and correctly. Selecting experienced referees also cuts down on the amount of issues missed, and decreases the amount of overturns.

Bottom Line? Which would you rather have, more matches while trusting your opponents are keeping within the same rules that you stuck to, or less matches and distrust of every team out there? I think we've come too far as the FIRST Community to regress to the latter decision.

Side note: If it is not addressed in the season, I think FIRST will be overwhelmed in the team forums about this particular point. And, it's not like that hasn't happened before!

[Rich Wong]

Since FIRST is incorporating an UL person to help with Safety Inspection, they should incorporate a State Trooper with a speed gun to check the exit velocity of the Poofballs.
The team is issue a speeding ticket and require to appear in front of the Robot Inspector again- 3 times and you're DQ.

Seriously, maybe a speed gun can be used to check the speed of the balls?
Has anyone try it?

[Joe Johnson]

I apologize for not following every Q&A thread, but didn't FIRST say that the ball exit velocity was going to be judged based on going X distance when fired at Y angle?

It seems to me that this should be the test.

A team is supposed design robots that meet this test.

There are 100's of ways to cheat, but we don't plan on teams cheating.

Teams could sneak in extra fix it window hours or fudge accounting or or or.

I think that most teams will try to follow this rule if they are given a way to know if they are in violation.

A simple rule that is easy to verify seems to me to be the best friend of folks who want to see teams play by the rules.

Joe J.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

I apologize for not following every Q&A thread, but didn't FIRST say that the ball exit velocity was going to be judged based on going X distance when fired at Y angle?

It seems to me that this should be the test.

Negative. That was given in the rules as a guide, however someone asked Q&A(I think a search through the Rules/Strategy forum should turn up a few threads on this) and recieved an answer to the effect of, "we're still trying to decide which one or combination of the following (list of methods)". Using this method as a test is also risky because you need to account for shooter height when you do it, otherwise tall shooters will complain that short shooters can shoot faster.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Rich Wong

Seriously, maybe a speed gun can be used to check the speed of the balls?
Has anyone try it?

We've used a radar gun to measure ball speed. It can be very inaccurate if the ball is not traveling in/close to the same plane in which the gun is pointing.

[Billfred]

Perhaps the simpler solution is to use a nice and natural part of the planet to our advantage: gravity.

If you can tilt a robot so that it shoots vertically and measure the height from floor to shooter in centimeters, you can have it fire a ball and time how long it's airborne. Throw in some simple math, and bada-bing, you can tell in about ten seconds whether it's legal on the velocity side.

In fact, I'm sure Kevin Watson has been hiding in his workshop doing some black magic with an old RC, some limit switches, and a piece of string cheese to accomplish just that.

[Rohan_DHS]

Originally Posted by meaubry

What does 12 m/s look like anyways?

well, just drive a car at about 43 km/h (roughly 27mph) and you'll find out

[meaubry]

Originally Posted by Rohan_DHS

well, just drive a car at about 43 km/h (roughly 27mph) and you'll find out

I think you missed my point, but thanks for converting it to mph for me.
I wanted to get a feel for what it looks like as an observer - if I drove, the perspective would be different than if I were stationary, watching something fly out at 12 m/s. I think that an object moving at a constant velocity may not "look the same" as an object moving at an instantaneous velocity.
If accusations are based on what something "looks" like - we could be surprised to find out that we were wrong.