Human players and FIRST games

[TEE]

In 2009, I believe my team had one of the best human players (if not the best human player) of the game, so you could say I have a unique perspective on the matter. He consistently scored almost all of his moon rocks, and usually scored one or both super cells. There were several matches where he made the difference between a win and a loss, and there was at least one match where he scored 2 super cells to tie the score, so if the argument is that the human players had an impact on the game, then yes, they did, but from what I witnessed throughout the season, they didn't alter the competition so much that it was no longer about the robots.

In 2009 still, each human player started with 20 moon rocks, and could only get additional moon rocks if a robot delivered them, and could only use a super cell if the robot delivered an empty cell. Every thrown moon rock that didn't end up in a trailer was fair game for the robots, and so the robots that were the best at getting the moon rocks off of the ground and into the other robots' trailers had the advantage.

Further, the trailers were attached to the robots! A well-driven robot was difficult for human players to score on, while a poorly-driven robot was comparatively easy to score on. In autonomous mode, the goal of just about every team was to avoid being scored on, and our robot did that particularly well. All our robot had to do was drive straight for a couple of seconds, and then spin for the rest of autonomous.

**This is kind of off topic, but in Traverse City that year, I remember the announcer crediting team 85 for coming up with the spin strategy, when, I think (correct me if I'm wrong) we were the first team that did it at that competition; our autonomous was finished during build season, and we only changed it at nationals to try other methods of avoiding human players, and to try to run an empty cell in autonomous.**

Anyways, at every competition I attended, the teams with the best robots won. At Traverse City, team 85 (BOB) dominated, because their robot was the best at picking up and scoring moon rocks rapidly. In spite of our human player, we couldn't beat them. At Wayne State, teams 910 and 66 did particularly well— At the Michigan State Championships, teams 217 and 67 won, and at Einstein, 111, 971 and 67 won (which is particularly significant, not only because they won that final match, but also because they had to win their way through qualifications and eliminations to get there).

So, my point is that no matter how much of an effect human players have, it will still be a robotics competition. Once the season starts, human player strategies can be copied, and human players themselves can hone their abilities, but the robots (even if they can be changed slightly) can not be copied, and so are the most significant part of the teams, from a competitive standpoint.