Pittsburgh, wrap up and frustrations

[Ashes]

Your welcome for everything! We were jsut try our best to give back to your great team! 45 has helped us last year alot and we are jsut glad that our happy attitude rubbed off on you guys! good luck and we hope to see you guys again! We love you guys!

[Andy Baker]

We did learn some lessons in Pittsburgh... and I wanted to post this today so that other teams will not make the same mistake we did.

This was the first time that we ever tried to go to back to back regionals.

We "assumed" too much. We really made 2 mistakes:

1. We should've used Midwest Conference Services' preferred shipper to insure that our robot would be picked up from St. Louis on Saturday (FedEx has no Saturday pickup). MCS would've made sure our crate was going to be in Pittsburgh.

2. We should've called FedEx to coordinate a pickup at the St. Louis Drayage site on Monday morning. We did not do this, and we assumed that MCS was going to handle this... wrong. FedEx picked the crate up on Wednesday (the day before practice in Pittsburgh!).

So... I spend 1/2 of our drive on the phone with MCS, Yellow Freight (the Drayage site), and FedEx on Wednesday, trying to line up a next day ship directly to the arena. We thought that would work, but due to a mechanical failure on a FedEx plane, the crate did not get in the Pittsburgh area until Friday morning.

So... if you are playing in back to back regionals (or in the last regional to the Championships), I strongly suggest coordinating your speedy shipping needs with the local Midwest Conference Service reps at your competition and to not use FedEx. This is actually printed in the FIRST manual under shipping... we just needed to READ THE MANUAL.

This is our team's fault (me and another guy are taking the heat). We do not blame FedEx or MCS. We should read the manual.

Please learn from our mistake.

Andy B.

ps... any of you who read this and are going to back to back competitions - please send this note to your team leaders. You do not want them to make the same mistake we did.

pss... I suppose what comes around goes around... who would've thought that my "Tom the FedEx guy" prank in 2002 would come back to haunt us.

[Nick Seidl]

At last weekend's Pittsburgh Regional, my team, team 448, was one of two teams disqualified from a match for spectator signaling. Out violation was due to a misunderstanding of the rules on our part, and we hold nothing against the referees or our opponents. We had no intention of breaking a rule, or creating and unfair advantage. The truth is, we messed up. We have accepted the consequences for our actions, and we want to be able to regain the trust of the teams at that competition. We ask that the community forgive us for our "unprofessional" behavior.

On a lighter note, we would like to thank Team 45 for stepping in to help our alliance, and we admire your ability to deal with a lousy situation.

We would also like to extend a congratulations to team 1114 on their well deserved Rookie All-Star Award, and only wish that their first elimination rounds could have ended better for them.

As a general observation, I noticed that the teams at the Pitt Regional were on the whole, an awesome group of people. I've been to many regionals at several locations over the past four years, and I'd like to point out that the folks at this event seemed to me to be the most amicable I've come across.

Finally, to Mr. Fluck, I think you need to re-think your hockey allegiances. I clearly remember a 7-0 rout last year that your Aves were on the losing side of.

[Collin Fultz]

Originally posted by Nick Seidl
At last weekend's Pittsburgh Regional, my team, team 448, was one of two teams disqualified from a match for spectator signaling.

what exactly happened? (i want to make sure i don't do it by accident)

[Steve W]

As one sitting at the scorers bench I know the delema that the Refs went through. We tried announcing about the signaling and hoped that everyone knew. You where the second team DQ'd but your team did admit to the error rather than try to make up excusses. To err is human and to admit to it supreme. Your team did an awsome job and helped make mine easier.

[marlon_jbt]

With the hand signals thing.

I, and another boy on my team were using hand signals to guide our driver. (Obviously, that didn't work, because he wanted to do his own thing) who was supposed to use those signals to indicate scores, stacks, and where to go without beating the robot up.

When we heard that we couldn't use them, my heart jumped, because I couldn't remember reading about that. I DO remember reading about the two-way radio thing, but NOT hand signals. Maybe I need to go over the rule book again, huh?

[Austin]

Personally, I think that the 'rule' is not the greatest, in fact some may say it's retarded. I really don't see why the rule exists. I am a driver and, i don't know about you, but i NEVER look at the audience, i always have my eyes on the robot, whether the real thing, or its image on the big screen, never other people. I also believe that if someone were on my team and they were REALLY excited about the match and got their adrenaline flowing that they might give a few hand signals, that would never be seen by the drive team but noticed by the refs, therefore DQing the team, unfortunatly, even though they would seldom help the driver anyway. If the driver did, have we ever heard of TEAMWORK, and if one team communicates w/ hand signals there would be nothing hindering another's ablility to give them just as well. So i don't see why its a problem.

[Steve W]

The people in question where sitting alone behind the opposing team. They where seen signaling the mentor or human player. I believe by the reaction of the driver that they had no idea what was happening. This did not alter what happened. The following link to the FIRST forum might help clarify the rule.

http://jive.ilearning.com/thread.jsp...rt=0&trange=30

[Collin Fultz]

hand signaling is bad, but yelling is ok. that's good, because when i'm not a human player, i yell like there is no tomorrow

[Cory]

As I read this, i have this nagging feeling in my stomach that we did not place the labels for San Jose on the crate. I knew I should of stayed and packed up the crate instead of going off to the stands to watch finals. Oh well...I hope whoever loaded the crate knew what they were doing.

Cory

[Mimi Brown]

I really don't see why the rule exists. I am a driver and, i don't know about you, but i NEVER look at the audience, i always have my eyes on the robot, whether the real thing, or its image on the big screen, never other people.

I couldnt agree more...i hardly hear what my coach says when im driving, let alone pay attention to people in the stands.

[Clark Gilbert]

Just wondering, but has anyone experienced this at any of the west coast regionals? I think they did it at St. Louis too. In the quarter finals when it was us (45) and 1114 on the field 448 was standing behind us. At first we were going to have them stand right behind us and give us directions, but then we asked the head ref and he said "no, they can't do that" "they are spectators".

Oh well.

[Josh Hambright]

I agree that i wouldn't be able to see any hand signals coming from the stands...matches are a blur to me. I just do my job and pay attention to the robot and occasionaly try to see what other robots are doing. I can hear the base driver and i can hear the coach occasionaly, and i even heard the announcer a few times but thats it.

Why are hand signals bad but yelling directions would be okay, that doesn't make sense.

[Marc P.]

I think the idea is to prevent any unfair advantages of a team willing to use hand signals to either guide a robot out of a sticky situation (since it's difficult to see short robots on the opposite side of the ramp), or to ensure the robot is properly aligned in scoring position on top of the ramp, or how much farther to move left or right to make sure a bin is in position to be dropped onto a stack. These situations would alter the outcome of a match by someone other than the 4 legal people in the driver stations, and can easily be used if a driver is told to look at person X in the crowd to figure out where to move.

[Shelley_delphi chick]

As a senior member of Team 48 walking into the pit area and seeing all the teams creates had become breath taking, until I looked in the pit area beside us and no robot. My mouth about dropped and I heard echos of where is their robot at. Team 45 walked in like nothing had happened and began to set up their pit area like another day at another robotics competition. Team 48 students helped to assemble their pit area and also tried to make everyone laugh about the situation. Team 48 was more the happy to stand and applaud your hard work and sportsmanship offering your help to any team that needed it. That is what that award was truly meant to resemble. Your an excellent team with an impressive looking robot. I can't wait to see you in action at Nationals.