Low Bar Poll, part 2

[Chris is me]

Very few teams actively plan on being worse at other tasks to be good at other ones. These are the teams with a good grasp of strategic tradeoffs and what they are capable of. Far more just figure they have some way of doing everything, and these teams will assume they will be fine at everything until the moment the robot goes in the bag, or even later. Those are the teams whom are likely compromising their performance the most - the jack of all trades is the master of none and all that.

[joelg236]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Very few teams actively plan on being worse at other tasks to be good at other ones. These are the teams with a good grasp of strategic tradeoffs and what they are capable of. Far more just figure they have some way of doing everything, and these teams will assume they will be fine at everything until the moment the robot goes in the bag, or even later. Those are the teams whom are likely compromising their performance the most - the jack of all trades is the master of none and all that.

Most (>80%?) teams find out what they are bad at in competition. And of those, most do not adjust meaningfully to their strengths. Successful teams are good at foresight and adaptability.

[Boe]

I have a bad feeling this poll is going to be more terrifying then the first one.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by Boe

I have a bad feeling this poll is going to be more terrifying then the first one.

Can confirm, very terrifying indeed. Over 50% of responders have indicated that they will shoot, low bar, and breach capable. That means over 50% of responders are designing to be able to handle every element of the game, save for climbing. From my experience, only a very small percentage of teams will be able to accomplish that.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli

Can confirm, very terrifying indeed. Over 50% of responders have indicated that they will shoot, low bar, and breach capable. That means over 50% of responders are designing to be able to handle every element of the game, save for climbing. From my experience, only a very small percentage of teams will be able to accomplish that.

50% of responders are either really, really good, or somewhat delusional as to their capabilities.


On the other hand, 50% of responders are at least somewhat honest with themselves.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by EricH

50% of responders are either really, really good, or somewhat delusional as to their capabilities.


On the other hand, 50% of responders are at least somewhat honest with themselves.

Experience dictates that the 50% of delusional teams are most likely not nearly as good at aiming and shooting as they think they will be.

[MrJohnston]

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli

Can confirm, very terrifying indeed. Over 50% of responders have indicated that they will shoot, low bar, and breach capable. That means over 50% of responders are designing to be able to handle every element of the game, save for climbing. From my experience, only a very small percentage of teams will be able to accomplish that.

I don't think this poll is all that scary... If a robot is going to be a "breaching specialist," it only stands to reason that it will be able to cross at least four of the defenses. Two of the defenses are mastered with a drive train, a third by being short.... That leaves a single manipulator to get through a fourth category.... Beyond that, is anybody really going to build a robot that can't attempt to put a boulder into one of the two goals? Notice, the poll does not specify shooting accurately - or even low goal vs. high goal.

It is fully believable that better than 50% of robots will be capable of crossing four defenses and capable of shooting boulders. The real question is: how proficient will they be? There will be very few robots capable of crossing four or more defenses in under five seconds each and firing off an aimed shot at the high goal with better than 90% accuracy within just a few seconds of crossing the defenses.... Even fewer will be able to also pick up a loose boulder quickly....

At the same time, it is really hard to know, at this point, just how good your team is going to be at any specific task... I know that this next week is huge for us: mechanisms are basically built and we are in the process of testing and tweaking them..... As an example, we tested our robot on the rough terrain last night and decided its performance was unacceptable, so we are making some adjustments this evening to the chassis and retesting in a bit.... We know we have a good shooter, but have not yet tested its integration with the boulder pickup... Nor have we finished with our vision-tracking - we decided we needed some better lights.... Etc.

[Keefe2471]

Do you think that those teams that misjudge how strong they will be relative to the field at their designed tasks will become defense robots?

If you look at the geometry, I believe a 54 inch moving wall will be able to block basically any shooter sitting near to the ground in the safe zone, and because of the small size of the goal this year teams being molested outside the safe zone by even a weak drive train probably have a low chance of hitting the high goal. Added to that is, if a defense robot forces a low shooter to shoot into the low goal (2 points versus 5 points) they take away any advantage the added accessibility of the courtyard via the low bar adds in the first place.