Week 1 Observations

[Lunitic2197]

So, just some observations I have made during the first day of competition at Howell....

- Co-Op Scores is the easiest way for points, any alliance that doesn't do this in quals drops pretty fast in rankings. However, both teams must be aware that this is going to happen and plan it out, similar to 2012
- Grabbing bins from the centers is often useless and just clogs the fields more. More often then not, they just fall over, and few teams are able to pick these up.
- Noodle Agreement 2.0: Both teams are waiting till either the co-op set/stack is complete, or there are 40 seconds left in the match, as to not make a mess on their own side, or in the way of their opponents as they work for the co-op.
- If you don't make it clear to your teammates to stay out of an area, you are very likely to lose your 5 stack with a bin.
- Teams that stack 4 high with container/litter are able to do much faster and with a lesser chance to fall then when doing 5/6 (107 is able to do up to 2 of these in a match, getting 60 points easily by themselves in later matches rather than in their first ones where they spent the entire match on one 5 tote stack, getting only 36 points.
- Totes going out the chute with nothing there will bounce almost anywhere and are unpredictable, just putting a drive train a few inches further than the length of a tote away from the chute usually keeps them falling right side up and often in an easy to access orientation.

[rich2202]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

Curious, what penalties are being called?

Common fouls have been

G5 More than one person in the Human Player Zone
G6 HP in contact with both tote and chute door
G6-1 Prop open chute door - If the tote is stuck in the chute, do NOT release the chute door until the tote is cleared by the robot or gently shaking the chute.
G23 robot - knocks stack over, and it falls out of the field
G24 robot, while Coop stacking, knocks stack over onto other side of the field
G30 leave alliance station - do not step off the carpet
G31/G32 Coach touches anything
G33 throwing litter during last 20 seconds

[Koko Ed]

Not going to get much from week one. Teams were leaving in the middle of the day out of the blue (from what I'm told in Texas when a school closes kids on a field trip are required to go home ASAP unless they have an exception or have a hotel to stay at) so we had alot of surrogates for teams and we even had to have surrogates for surrogates. It was a mess.
It was a pleasure to watch beautifully designed robots like 987,118 and 148 at work. I took a video of one of 148's matches.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v...44&pnref=story

[Bongle]

At least on the webcast, the lack of actual head-to-head competition between alliances really hurts the excitement level. The final 20 seconds of the match loses a lot of suspense when you're only worrying about a marginal increase in each team's score rather than swinging the match to a win or loss.

I love the highly visible black-on-white numbers.

[Ty Tremblay]

Smooth is faster than fast. Especially this year.

[g_sawchuk]

Use a tote horizontally parallel to the human player station to keep totes from falling on their sides when they come from the "chute door". Yes, chute door.

[Shrub]

-When resetting the field, throw all the blue noodles to the blue side and all the red noodles to the red side. Also, be kind to them. It's extemely easy to make them unusable: driving on them with Mechanum is the easiest way.
-At most, the best teams made two tall stacks with a bin on top, and once they finely tuned their strategy, maybe a stack of three as well.
-extremely common: throwing noodles in last 20 seconds, two people in HP zone.
-coopertition is so important. Since averages dictate rank, it's an easy way to rank higher. This is probably known.
-teams usually wait for coopertition to start flinging noodles. Don't fling them willy-nilly, they really dictate the first few matches.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Mike Copioli

Allen,

Having a legal robot should be every teams priority. Updating PCM, PDP, and Talon firmware is easier than tying your shoes.

To be fair, I have a senior I have to yell at to tie his shoes on an hourly basis. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen him with tied shoes. Might need to do some "mentoring" there... or give him velcro.

[xXhunter47Xx]

I've noticed a couple things
-From what I've seen, teams have resorted to loading at the Human Player station rather than mining the Landfill
-Noodle throwing doesn't work out very well
-Step cans weren't as important as I thought (although I haven't watch any elim matches yet)
-Coopertition is pretty important

[dodar]

If you gather totes at the landfill, litter is the bane of your existence.

[Tweedy399]

I have definitely noticed today that litter makes a very large difference when going for co-op. Almost all alliances I have worked with have agreed to not throw litter until the co-op stack is scored. This is very helpful for both sides.

[lcoreyl]

1) the win-loss format adds (at least some) excitement to a low scorer if a team pulls a come from behind win. This year's low scorers are brutal...

2) teams need to know beforehand if they are sensitive to coop tote placement. If you know you can't reach far and can tell the other side, they can set and then poke it forward a little.

3) many teams have nice stable lifts but can't move stacks. They need to convince teammates to fetch totes to them on the platform.

[Johnbot]

What I've noticed from watching the Hatboro-Horsham district livestream (and the rest of the Dallas Regional after HH ended for the day):
- It is really easy to really mess up everything for yourself by dropping a full stack. I expected this, but it seems worse than I thought -> teams who normally score ~100 points barely reaching 30, etc.
- There aren't as many ambitious designs as I had expected - most every team went with the expected stackers, leading me to really applaud 148 for actually going through with the "tethered bot" idea.
- Do not let go of the door with a Tote stuck in it, you will get a yellow card.
- If you knock a tote onto the step, you may be penalized.
- If you knock over a co-op stack, you will almost definitely be penalized.
- Some teams mastered throwing Litter. Some have made great uses for it in Containers. Others did not.
- Auton is far more strategic than in previous years - the relatively low point value and relatively high difficulty makes doing other things in auton far more viable, often even desirable.
- Just being able to do something is hard. I had expected far more "pushers" -> robots who didn't try stacking, but instead just plowed for a bunch of two pointers, maybe making a stack of two.

-Teams should really try helping out their future alliance partners more with getting an auton that can at least drive/push something working. I imagine/hope many teams are doing that, but I still am seeing a very sizable teams at HH not even try to move.

[lovelj]

Coop points are important but can skew rankings. Coop doesn't count in finals so stacking and autonomous becomes critical. In Palmetto, 3824 could reliably do two 42 pt stacks from the loading station. Teamed with 4454 who could do a 42 stack from the loading station and a 3rd that could do a small stack from the field. Finals were intense with four huge stacks on a tight field. Third pick (feel terrible not recalling their number) was critical, getting a bin from the step and creating a 4th stack in finals for a 150 to 133 win.

Also, tank drives struggled in Palmetto. Holonomic omnidirectionality with swerves or meccanums is critical. It's a very tight field!

[Mike Copioli]

Some recommendations after week 1 SFR (south Florida Regional). Below are a list of observed issues. These are in order of most common to least common

1. Update your DS software, PDP and PCM firmware to the required versions.

1. Check the seating depth of your PDP fuses, I cannot stress this enough. A good rule of thumb for this; If you can remove the fuse by hand, without the use of pliers, then it is NOT properly seated.

2. Robot Wiring - Teams should pull test every connection on the robot, specifically the Weidmuller connectors (push-in-type connector on PCM/VRM/PDP). Try to pull the wire out, you do not need to be gentle. If the wire can be removed without pressing the white button you should re-strip and re-seat as necessary. Also check the main battery, breaker and PDP terminals. Make sure these connections are not loose. You should not be able to move these connections without the use of tools.

3. Driver Station Computer - Disable all power management features of your DS computer. Specifically sleep and hibernate features. This can affect connectivity to the field as hibernate and sleep disable network connection and sometimes do not re-enable properly upon wake.

4. Disable all firewall and antivirus software. This can also affect field connectivity. A few teams had this issue.

5. Battery Quality - Not all SLA batteries are created equally. Some brands of batteries contain more pure lead, more consistent chemistry and lower internal resistance than others. From my experience, the MK and Genesis batteries seem to perform the best. They have a much lower internal resistance than some of the other brands out there. Having said that, all lead acid batteries degrade over time and use, so it is a good practice to test your batteries regularly.

6. PERFORM A COMPLETE ROBOT SYSTEMS CHECK BEFORE EACH MATCH!!!
If you are not doing this you are inviting failure. Catch issues before they cost your team and your alliance partners a match.

These are my observation made by both myself and Ken Gardner while CSAing at SFR.