Yellow Tote Placement Procedure

[Jared]

We had a few questions related to the placement of the yellow totes in the beginning of the match.

First of all, I'd like to make it clear that the issue in question in no way affected our team during our competition, but I still would like to bring it up to see if it will be a problem for us in later competitions.

Our autonomous mode picks up three yellow totes in autonomous mode and swats two of the green containers out of the way. We don't need (or expect) the totes and containers to be perfectly aligned and placed, as the field tape lines are +/- 2", but we were expecting the field crew to place the totes in the center of the staging boxes and parallel with the sides of the staging zone. We have a roller intake that can handle small misalignment, (3" or so), but a 6" misalignment can't be handled.

At our first event, the field crew occasionally placed a tote or container inaccurately (container rotated 90 degrees, tote at an obvious angle). When we pointed this out to the ref/field crew, they were more than happy to line them up, and even let us straighten them sometimes.

At our second event, there was a tote and a container that were very obviously misaligned on the field, and I went out and asked for it to be straightened, and was informed that as long as the tote and container were inside the staging zone, it was okay, and the referee refused to move the tote/container.

Some random person (announcer, IIRC) walking by before the match started straightened the tote for us, so it made no difference in the end, but if the tote had remained misaligned, we would have had trouble.

To show just how inaccurate "in the staging zone" is, I came up with a worst case in SolidWorks of the field layout. The far right angled tote is placed the way the tote farthest from our robot was place, and was considered to be okay.


All the totes are fully inside the staging zones in this picture.

I was wondering if this is common practice, and if so, how often the field crew will place the totes like this. Do you think this is something we need to worry about, or was it just a one time incident?