Pool Noodles -- How Important?

[MrJohnston]

We may or may not outfit our robot with a way to move unprocessed litter to the landfill... We may or may not outfit our robot with a way to carry litter from the human player zone to the landfill... I suspect, however, that we will have access to enough gray totes that we will be able to score a lot more points putting totes on the scoring platform than we could ever score hauling litter to the landfill...

Once the robot is complete constructed, we'll be practicing quite a bit and timing various ideas and routines to see if it is worth our time to shove a pool noodle into each recycling bin as we create our stacks.... We'll see what the stop watch says.... I'm not sure how keen I am on even having humans throw the noodles... Those things can disrupt a robot as its working in the landfill (assuming a good throw!) or attempting to make stacks. I could see a poorly thrown noodle or two significantly hurting an alliance's scoring potential... It just doesn't seem to be worth the risk as an attempt to score one point.

Of course, if we find nice, firm noodles that will fly quite well, being able to land them on the other side of the field makes a whole lot of sense...

In a nutshell, if we do anything special for the noodles, it will be a low priority, only created if we are so fortunate to already have a robot that does everything else we want well.

[philso]

Originally Posted by Wyatt Jordan

Throwing the litter onto the other team's side could be very useful in messing up the opposing alliances stacks. If you throw the litter far enough (which I believe is possible) to hit the first scoring platform and fall right next to the stacks they have made there is a chance that a robot on the opposing alliance would knock their stack over trying to pick up the litter. Especially considering they wouldn't be able to see the litter well if it is on the other side of a stack on the scoring platform.

It is possible this becomes more of a psychological tactic. It gives the teams on the other side of the field (not really your opponents) one more thing to think about doing.

[Hoover]

We are also trying to evaluate litter. Each team has only 10 noodles so it isn't like the multitude of Frisbees.

A human player has to throw from the station which means it has to go up and over the wall. Then the noodle has to sail far enough to make it at least to their own landfill. If the noodle comes short of that then it ends up in the -4 area of their own playing surface. (If this includes being over the line of the landfill and own playing surface, the risk is even worse).

So the human player can score in the order of distance.

-4 for their own side
1 for their own side
1 for the opponents side
-4 for the opponents side

With odds like these, I am not sure we will even throw noodles and would probably try to dissuade our alliance from doing so.

Find my errors, or refute this.

[GBilletdeaux930]

I think many people in this thread are having trouble realizing the implications of the fact that W/L doesn't matter, only your average score does.

If you throw 10 noodles over every match, you have a (slim) chance to increase your average by 40 points. To be realistic, lets say you average half that over you 10 matches, so 20 points up. Even if you average only 1 over the step per match, thats 4 points increase to your QA.

If one match, you throw all 10 over and your opponents get all 10 in the landfill, the max their average score could be effected is ~1 point (10 points, 10 matches). If the match scheduling system is working correctly, you shouldn't play against the same team twice, so you can't effect their alliance average by a significant amount.

So your average goes up 20 points (or even just 4), your opponents that match maybe 1. Still in your favor.

[Pretzel]

I think most people think the pool noodles are harder to throw than they really are. Me and another teammate did an unscientific test throwing noodles down a hallway (~8-10 feet wide, so more difficult conditions than the field) during the first week of the build season. What we found is that with minimal practice (under 30 minutes), we were able to throw the pool noodle far enough to score the +4 points ~30-50% of the time. A majority of our "failures" came from the noodle curving and hitting the wall on either side, so I would image that you percentage on the field may be higher than that by a small margin. We also ensured that it simulated throwing the noodles over the wall by throwing them overhand, since such a motion releases the noodle at higher than six feet for both of us.

Just remember that the noodle only has to be partially partially past the opposing alliance's landfill to score points. It scores points for your alliance if it is not entirely contained within their landfill, so you can have 3/4 of the pool noodle still in their landfill and it will still count as unprocessed litter. This shortens the required throw distance by ~4 feet. It might also give the litter a higher chance to actually score points for you if it's not entirely out of their landfill zone, since the opposing alliance may think that it has already been pushed into the landfill zone when it really is still unprocessed litter.

During elimination matches I could see pool noodles potentially making it more difficult to pick up totes from the landfill (depending on the robot) if the noodles were lying on top of the totes. It appears as though the lifter designs which stack their current stack on top of another tote before lifting the new bottom of the stack (see the Ri3D designs, such as Betelgeuse, for an example) would need to "sweep" off the noodle before they could make a taller stack. It could slow down the opposing alliance's stacks. If you were the only team that threw extra pool noodles, and the other teams kept them strictly for their containers, your average match score could be slightly higher by comparison since their stacks took longer to accumulate (and you might have scored points with the noodles as well).

Each alliance, especially in elimination rounds, will have to carefully weigh the possible outcomes and take into account their robots' capabilities when deciding what to do with their pool noodles. You will always have at least three "discretionary" pool noodles to use (for throwing, scoring in the landfill, or ignoring completely) even if you are able to score a noodle in every bin available to you during a match.

[lcoreyl]

Originally Posted by Hoover

We are also trying to evaluate litter. Each team has only 10 noodles so it isn't like the multitude of Frisbees.

A human player has to throw from the station which means it has to go up and over the wall. Then the noodle has to sail far enough to make it at least to their own landfill. If the noodle comes short of that then it ends up in the -4 area of their own playing surface. (If this includes being over the line of the landfill and own playing surface, the risk is even worse).

So the human player can score in the order of distance.

-4 for their own side
1 for their own side
1 for the opponents side
-4 for the opponents side

With odds like these, I am not sure we will even throw noodles and would probably try to dissuade our alliance from doing so.

Find my errors, or refute this.

first off, there were never negative points. second, they have updated the rules to prevent "the noodle agreement" . If you are red, and your HP throws your red noodle and it goes 2 ft into your red side of the field, it counts as nothing.

throwing a noodle, the HP can score 4, 1, or zero points for your alliance, or 1 point for the other alliance. If your alliance has a bot that is good at noodling a recycling container--great. If not, I have to agree with GBilletdeaux930 that there's not much downside to throwing...

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by lcoreyl

If your alliance has a bot that is good at noodling a recycling container--great. If not, I have to agree with GBilletdeaux930 that there's not much downside to throwing...

Actually, we had understood that with a bit of practice, a HP could put a noodle in a bit sitting on the floor in a few seconds. We were considering parking an RC there while we brought a stack of totes over to score on the platform.

[Rangel]

I think most teams are going to realize week 1 of competition how hard it is to push the pool noodles on the ground. For most drivetrains, you probably won't be able to just push them as the robot will just run them over. I think a robot that can move litter is going to be of value come final matches and occasionally in eliminations. Other than that, it's not really worth it points wise to move litter on the ground unless you are capping recycling bins.

[lcoreyl]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

Actually, we had understood that with a bit of practice, a HP could put a noodle in a bit sitting on the floor in a few seconds. We were considering parking an RC there while we brought a stack of totes over to score on the platform.

i agree, this is what I meant but didn't say... robot that is good at getting RCs to the human player for noodling, and then stacking the RC on totes. I assume we won't see very many robots noodling RCs themselves.

[Trey178]

Have yet to see a team try this option: picking up a container and moving it toward the litter chute so the human player can put one litter directly into the container. There doesn't appear to be any rules against it (yet?). The downside to this is that drivers will have to accurately maneuver their robot to catch the noodle.

[Jay O'Donnell]

Originally Posted by Trey178

Have yet to see a team try this option: picking up a container and moving it toward the litter chute so the human player can put one litter directly into the container. There doesn't appear to be any rules against it (yet?). The downside to this is that drivers will have to accurately maneuver their robot to catch the noodle.

We tested doing this on the field in Manchester on Kickoff and it was incredibly easy to do. The can doesn't have to be very precisely lined up, there's a big window for the human player to be able to feed it in.

[Chris is me]

I think really there's only two things to consider with noodles

1. Is it worth the extra time to drive up with a container to feed a noodle in from the human player? Does my design allow this?

To me, it's one of those things that seems too easy not to do. Container robots will need something to do while they are waiting for stacks to get made, if they are not stacking the totes themselves. Obviously, bringing the containers to the human player station to be loaded with litter both fills this time and adds the equivalent of three totes worth of points to the score. I only expect it to be skipped in a big time crunch, or if the team is placing a container on a stack in an unconventional way.

2. Can my robot passively push the noodles into the landfill to avoid giving my opponents (in the finals) points?

This isn't THAT important, really, but it's something nice to have. However being able to drive these noodles into the landfill requires a mechanism low to the ground, which is somewhat conflicting with the ability to drive over the bump. If you've got time for a flap or something to drop down on one side of the bot for this purpose, great, but I'm not sweating it too hard. I've got stacks to worry about first and foremost.

Anything about picking noodles up off the ground, etc. is a waste of time.