Secret Sauce: Shot to Human Player

[scaryone]

Very cool bot and interesting strategy. Wondering if risk of foul points factors in? At some of the competitions, fouls for reaching over were an issue. Did you guys find that the case at your event?

[marshall]

Originally Posted by scaryone

Very cool bot and interesting strategy. Wondering if risk of foul points factors in? At some of the competitions, fouls for reaching over were an issue. Did you guys find that the case at your event?

Not from our human player. He was well trained not to over reach for the ball and cross the barrier. He was one of the few who walked away with no fouls called on him at the event.

We did get a verbal warning from the head ref because we were attempting to shoot to another team's human player a couple of times and our HP couldn't get the shot aligned properly from the back so the ball went out of play. This was easily fixed though and we are now working on a way to train other team's human players.

Thanks for the compliments folks. We appreciate them.

[FrankJ]

It was a pleasure helping to prove your theory Sat. morning. (Q84). This game has done a good job of requiring alliance partners to work together to be successful.

[who716]

I find this strategy to be very viable because this way the ball is never on the ground bouncing around wasting time, the more time the ball is in the robot or in the hands of the human player the less is getting kicked around on the floor.

[nlj007]

Originally Posted by who716

I find this strategy to be very viable because this way the ball is never on the ground bouncing around wasting time, the more time the ball is in the robot or in the hands of the human player the less is getting kicked around on the floor.

That was our thought exactly when we chose this strategy; low cycle times were more important than huge point cycles.

[topgun]

So, why wasn't any of the defenders hitting you? The 900 human player was indicating that you needed to line up before shooting. Couldn't a defender have just rammed in and knocked the robot off enough to shut this down?

[pabeekm]

Originally Posted by topgun

So, why wasn't any of the defenders hitting you? The 900 human player was indicating that you needed to line up before shooting. Couldn't a defender have just rammed in and knocked the robot off enough to shut this down?

Defense turned out to not be a big problem. Because we were in the corner, we could only be hit periodically thanks to pinning rules. Even when we were hit out of alignment and couldn't readjust before the firing activated, the ball would only land a few feet away from our human player and either
a) it was out of bounds and he would receive it back within a few seconds
or
b) it landed on field in the general vicinity of the goals

Plus our drivetrain is built pretty tough, so knocking us out of alignment probably isn't worth what little delay it causes our cycles.

[BEN35678]

We were planning on doing that as well we just need to find out how consistent it will be.

[AndyBare]

I loved this! You guys did great at Palmetto, and if I could give you just one piece of constructive criticism (I only have one), it would be this: Don't put your human player in striped pants. We knew that you guys would be loading horizontally across the field from the guy in zebra pants, so we knew exactly where to send the defense. Again, great job, and hope to see you guys at FIRST Championship in St. Louis!
Andrew - 1261