New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!

[BoilerMentor]

Originally Posted by kylelanman

This was due largely impart to the fact that the FMS did not allow the head ref or the score keeper to disable a robot without disqualifying them. If the bumper violation occurred early on in the match the head ref would go over to the player station and demand the team press or press the E-Stop button for the team. If the bumper violation occurred towards the end of the match the head ref did not bother to disable the robot because of the amount of time it took to walk over to the player station press the E-Stop button.

That is unreal. My understanding is that the head ref, under no circumstances should leave his post at mid field this year, especially with the responsibilities on the tablet there. I was pretty shocked to see him moving around the field. That said, obviously FIRST needs to make a real solution to this problem if that is indeed the case.

[RyanShoff]

Originally Posted by Cataclysmatic

In addition, I would like to apologize about any damage that we caused during the entire regional from defense, I know our robot took a lot of damage through out the weekend and has caused us to prepare to make a lot of fixes at our next regional, thankfully these robots are able to take a fair amount of a beating.

Chances are, our pits will be right next to each other at Wisconsin. It'll be fun comparing bent parts coming off the robots. I thought about challenging you to a race to see who could make the first practice match, but there is little chance we'll make one.

You might want to consider some "curb feeler" posts on the corners of your frame riding about an 1/8" over the carpet. Your wheels must in real far in, or you have a lot of drop in your center wheel. You practically tip over when you change direction. People kept hitting our climbing robot last year, and the colored discs would fly out. We added "curb feelers", and we lost a lot less discs.

No hard feeling from 4143. We'll gladly play with you, or cleanly against you at Wisconsin. Good luck at St. Louis. Hopefully we'll see you there.

[Gutsyten42]

This was a great competition and I'd like to thank anyone and everyone who helped put on the event. It was a lot of fun and I look forward to next year CIR. I'd also like to thank our alliance partners 171 and 4143, you guys were a great alliance and I can't wait to see you guys at Milwaukee. Congratulations to 525, 4926, and 1986, you guys played extremely well and going into that last match I had no idea which alliance was going to win, I hope to see you at Championships (if my team wins at Milwaukee that is). And again congratulations to 1986 on the Chairman's win, we were hoping to win it, but I'm glad to see how close we were to the team that won. To all other teams I wish you a good season and we will see any of you that are going to Milwaukee there.

[jeremylee]

Originally Posted by BoilerMentor

1736 built a heck of a robot. The only drivetrain we really ever struggled to control in defensive interactions in the course of qualification play.

Thanks! We put more focus on drivetrain this year and are happy with our kitbot on steroids. I think part of it was our driver Dan though. I think he has the knack.

You guys had a great drivetrain too. I recall Dan not being too excited to start the quals against you guys after the practice matches.

I'm curious, how did the blue nitrile hold up? Is this your first year using it?

[Cataclysmatic]

Originally Posted by RyanShoff

Chances are, our pits will be right next to each other at Wisconsin. It'll be fun comparing bent parts coming off the robots. I thought about challenging you to a race to see who could make the first practice match, but there is little chance we'll make one.

You might want to consider some "curb feeler" posts on the corners of your frame riding about an 1/8" over the carpet. Your wheels must in real far in, or you have a lot of drop in your center wheel. You practically tip over when you change direction. People kept hitting our climbing robot last year, and the colored discs would fly out. We added "curb feelers", and we lost a lot less discs.

No hard feeling from 4143. We'll gladly play with you, or cleanly against you at Wisconsin. Good luck at St. Louis. Hopefully we'll see you there.

Wait... we are supposed to plan for time for practice matches? I thought that first day was fix the robot day

Yeah, we have a few (a lot) of changes that we are planning out prior to Wisconsin that we plan on implementing.

Don't expect any less defense from us though, just more clean defense ... and possibly stronger

Regarding the tipping, there's a couple things wrong with the robot currently, and I will relay your recommendations to the rest of my team to check out... a lot of it is also that prior to the regional, I had about 10 minutes worth of real drive time with the robot and still don't really have a feel for driving it (First year as the driver)


See you there... along with the rest of your alliance from CIR haha.

[BoilerMentor]

Originally Posted by jeremylee

Thanks! We put more focus on drivetrain this year and are happy with our kitbot on steroids. I think part of it was our driver Dan though. I think he has the knack.

You guys had a great drivetrain too. I recall Dan not being too excited to start the quals against you guys after the practice matches.

I'm curious, how did the blue nitrile hold up? Is this your first year using it?

Our blue nitride should last at least one more event thankfully, as there is 216"^2 on the robot. We love our blue nitrile. HBR has been using it for at least 6 years. We have a heck of a driver too. This is his third year. The drivetrain on this robot is tough to keep on the ground with the torque and traction it has, but he is adjusting to it. 6 cims with an 18.75:1 reduction was kind of a sick fantasy that just happened to come true this year. I like.

[BoilerMentor]

Originally Posted by kylelanman

This was due largely impart to the fact that the FMS did not allow the head ref or the score keeper to disable a robot without disqualifying them. If the bumper violation occurred early on in the match the head ref would go over to the player station and demand the team press or press the E-Stop button for the team. If the bumper violation occurred towards the end of the match the head ref did not bother to disable the robot because of the amount of time it took to walk over to the player station press the E-Stop button.

If they unchecked the box prior to submitting final match scoring it doesn't apply the DQ, so it could be used to disable, then unchecked at the completion of the match.

[J-Blondie]

I sincerely hope that reffing gets better for Milwaukee being the same head ref. There needs to be more consistency in the calls and there needs to be calls regardless of the outcome it makes on the match.

We played a match where our robot died with a ball in it's possession. Therefore, at least two members of our alliance put up the dead ball sign including us. They then began hitting the glass with it to get the attention of the field crew/refs. With a little more than 20 seconds until the end of the match, one more score could have at least been attempted, however no ball ever got put back into play because the pedestal never lit up. Our robot was having issues, so our team went back to the pits while our two alliance partners went to the box to discuss this issue and why a ball was never allowed back into play. The story I was told was that it may have been an error on the field, however the ball being in play wouldn't have caught up with enough points and therefore there would be no match reply. Those involved can feel free to correct me if I am wrong as this was heard secondhand from a couple of people, but watching from the stands I was definitely thinking there would be a reply of the match because of no ball coming into play and was very surprised that after the amount of time it took them to bring up the final score and finish discussing everything that a reply was not going to happen. We also had a DQ on our record and were never really sure what it was for so we discussed it with the head ref who also wasn't sure. It has since been removed from our record so it was probably just a mistake and didn't really matter for us, but luckily we noticed it and were able to bring it to attention and get it off of there.

Also as far as robots taking damage. I think we can all understand that robots are supposed to be built to take the possible defense and collisions they might come up against. However I know that many teams have been surprised about the amount of defense involved in this year's game. That said, to give you an understanding about how rough it actually was out there, we now have a cRio that is unusable in a competition robot. While it is a cRio that has of course seen a couple seasons, something that was brought to light was the delamination (I think that's the right term) happening to the circuit board. This was brought to our attention by the head inspector (Al) and some of the control systems people there. While it could have been there before we even started playing this past weekend (there is a good chance it was starting anyways) there is also a possibility that it was worsened by a couple hard hits we took. There were definitely a couple of hard hits that caused us to go dead for either part of or the rest of the match. Just something to consider if you think that you're safe from damage if you build a robust enough robot...

All in all, it was a pretty good regional. Our team had fun though we didn't do all that great. 2-9-1 is a record we are definitely looking to improving for Wisconsin... Perhaps the autograph of Woodie Flowers will do us better for Wisconsin (We asked him to sign our robot)

[gurellia53]

Originally Posted by J-Blondie

at least two members of our alliance put up the dead ball sign including us. They then began hitting the glass with it to get the attention of the field crew/refs.

I had to call dead ball a few times with no issue. I would take the card around the driver station wall and get near enough to a corner ref where I could yell for him or her to look over and see the Dead Ball sign. Just holding the sign up to the glass was very ineffective.

[J-Blondie]

They might need to come up with another way entirely. As I said, it was two of our alliance members all pounding on the glass and yelling at the refs about it and trying to get their ok to release another ball. Ah well, what's done is done, I just hope they either come up with a better way or pay more attention when that happens.

[PandaHatMan]

The FMS and dead ball system both need work. There was one time our robot had rebooted due to low voltage, and was up and running again before they even saw the dead ball sign. Perhaps a button per alliance station would work that would trigger FMS to light up the pedestal?

The pedestal also had a long delay between scoring a ball and lighting up. I realize part of this is the refs have to count the ball as scored, but some times it took more than 10 seconds.

[Nemo]

From our team, congratulations to all of the teams who made this a great event. It was pretty cool to see 525 pair up with 1986 (and don't forget 4296). 525 and 1986 are both so full of super nice people that it was really cool to see them win together. Our alliance had hopes of upsetting them in the semis, but that #1 seed was simply more reliable and effective than us. If we replayed that matchup enough times, we'd eventually get lucky and win a few

It was great to meet some really cool teams while we were there. I got a chance to talk to people from 1756 a bunch, and they're a really cool team with a great program - thanks for the alliance invitation! 1288 is likewise a very smart bunch. It's SO much nicer to work with allies who are quick on their feet with rules and strategy. Sorry we couldn't get our auto working in the elims! We thought we had it!

Congratulations to Team 1986 on their first Chairman's Award (am I right?). I knew it was only a matter of time.

Congratulations to Jan on the Woodie Flowers trophy! No surprises there either, and no surprise that 525 now has no fewer than three WFFA recipients mentoring the team.

Congratulations to the finalist alliance on a strong performance. Our team has a bit of a new connection to 171 since their drive coach is a respected alumni of our team.

Some thoughts on the robot flipping in the finals, and this is all just my analysis, not an attempt to tell anybody the definition of right and wrong.
4296 had a tendency to tip. While their team built quite a good robot, it is possible for it to tip as a result of normal pushing on the front bumpers. That indicates that the bumpers were mounted a little too high, the CoG was too high, the CoG was too far to the rear of the robot, or some combination of those. That was evident in one of the qualifier matches prior to alliance selections, so I'd say that the #1 alliance took a knowable risk by selecting them. I don't think the first flip in Match 1 of the finals was an example of egregious behavior. I do think it would have been better for everyone if the 171 driver had had the presence of mind to realize that the robot was in the process tipping and backed off before it happened. In match 2, 171 had a blue ball they were trying to score, so I don't entirely blame them for driving through the defender on the way to their scoring zone. In match 3, the driver had already tipped 4296 twice and could be reasonably expected to know that they were tippy. I think it was unnecessary for them to plow through and tip them again, so I find that instance to warrant a penalty or yellow/red card. I can give the driver a bit of slack since finals match 3 is a really high adrenaline situation, they know they're the underdogs and they're trying to play 110%, things happen faster than people think behind the glass, and 4296+alliance own a piece of the responsibility for the existence of the tipping risk of that robot. Nevertheless, on balance I call that third tip a penalty/yellow card offense. And if the first or second ones had been called as a foul, that's life, because that's a risk you take if you tip a robot over, even if it's by accident. I fully believe 171 when they say they weren't intentionally trying to tip anybody. On the 1986 tip, it's worth noting that 171's arm was stuck in the deployed position (bent cylinders); they were not intentionally leaving it down as a battering ram. But it's a foul/card for contact inside the frame perimeter as the rules are written, and a driver has a responsibility to drive a little more carefully when their collector arm is sticking out in front of the robot. It can cause damage and tipping, which is a potential issue both from a sportsmanship perspective and from the pragmatic perspective of avoiding fouls and damage to your own robot.

In that last area, our drive team also has had a bit of a learning curve. We have talked about it some, and I think we are a little wiser now. To 1747, I wish we had gone over to your pits to apologize and try to help with repairs after we accidentally scraped off your pneumatics with our collector arm during the qualifier match. Our drivers said that they got more careful about the arm position after that, but they certainly continued to drive aggressively. If we damaged anybody else, we apologize. (we have some scars of our own)

I do hope FIRST finds a way to make this game less difficult to referee. While I did feel there were some incorrect calls and scores, I don't blame the refs for not being able to correctly do so many things at once. The system needs to be adjusted to provide some relief to the referees, who are human after all.

I have plenty of other opinions... if you want more, just ask! Okay, I'll shut up.

[Mastonevich]

Only because you asked, 1986 won their SECOND Chairmans Award. First was in 2009. They are a very deserving team indeed.

Originally Posted by Mastonevich

Only because you asked, 1986 won their SECOND Chairmans Award. First was in 2009. They are a very deserving team indeed.

I hear that in 2009, they had an awesome driver and Chairman's presenter in as well!




(It was me Brandon and Drew were the other 2 in our awesome Chairman's team)

[PandaHatMan]

Originally Posted by Nemo

To 1747, I wish we had gone over to your pits to apologize and try to help with repairs after we accidentally scraped off your pneumatics with our collector arm during the qualifier match.

All is good. It was a quick fix. The tanks were only held on by zip-ties. (If you didn't notice, we tied them on with rope afterwards) You guys did do a number on the compression fitting, but we had extras. Thanks for playing with us and we look forwards to competing again.