Team Update #18

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by squirrel

You gotta TRIGGER the TARGET. If your minibot doesn't TRIGGER the TARGET reliably, you might need to redesign your minibot.

The description of the ARENA suggests that it will take a minimum force of 2-4 Newtons to TRIGGER the TARGET.

Exactly: by definition, if the sensors aren't tripped, you haven't triggered it, and are entitled to zero points. It doesn't matter how hard you hit it.

Fundamentally, the problem is that the rules define scoring in terms of a process that is hard to directly observe (were the switches actually tripped, or did it hang up on the bolts?), and which is inherently impractical to error-proof (did the sensors get tripped because a robot shook the tower, or because a minibot ascended it properly?).

When the refs were scoring it manually, there was really no way for them to systematically and conclusively distinguish false positives, false negatives, true positives or true negatives. They were just guessing. (And the timing aspect being based on triggering, and not mere contact made it all the more impractical to observe from floor level.)

I think this update makes the best of a game design choice that was, in retrospect, not so good. An alternative might have been a rule change, to change the criteria for triggering, but I can certainly see that that introduces other problems. I can only hope that FIRST did some testing and established that the best balance of true and false outcomes is achieved through the changes they've implemented.