Joint Practices: Some observations

[Tom Line]

In my experience, vision tracking is something that 80% of the teams try, and 79.9% of the teams fail at. I've seen teams that had vision tracking working extremely well (won 2 districts) go to worlds and have everything fall apart when the bright LED's around the arena make their system near unworkable.

I've also watched many, many teams have a great vision system on their practice field and then really struggle at the event.

In 2012, most of the accurate shooters were not using vision systems. I expect the same thing to happen this year when teams get to competition and find they can't tune their system in well enough to make it work.

Maybe I'll be proven wrong - but we'll spend more time practicing with no vision system than we do with the vision system working.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

In 2012, most of the accurate shooters were not using vision systems. I expect the same thing to happen this year when teams get to competition and find they can't tune their system in well enough to make it work.

Maybe I'll be proven wrong - but we'll spend more time practicing with no vision system than we do with the vision system working.

I think youre right.
We also did vision tracking in 2012 and it worked fairly well at our week 4 event in Hawaii.
However, soon afterwards we figured it was just so much easier to create set points using both spots on the field and what the operator saw using the camera to manually aim and shoot.
After a while they just got way better at it, doing it much faster than the vision tracking.
No calibrations necessary.

[SPQLrobotics]

Are any PNW robots anticipating scaling this year? Didn't see a mention of it with regards to the 4 teams scrimmaging.

[Nuwanda]

We held a practice/scrimmage yesterday and I noticed even more similarities between the teams. Of the six teams in attendance, all six are going for the low bar. Five of the six shoot for the high goal (with varying levels of success). Of these five, four were using shooter wheels. The sixth bot is going for the low goal, but they are a rookie team and didn't want to try for too much. Four of the six have a mechanism that raises up, making them taller than 15". Four or five (it was a long day and I don't remember) had pneumatic wheels, of varying sizes. Three are attempting vision tracking, and two had it working. From what I saw, all six were capable of more than half the defenses, and at least three of them are planning on being able to do all of them. Though none of them have built climbers yet, at least two have plans for how they're going to climb.
It should be said that these are definitely above average teams. Four of them competed in St. Louis last year and and three of them played in eliminations, one as an alliance captain. Two of them are teams recognized for consistently building strong robots. I'm getting more excited about the first weeks of competition because it looks like Michigan is going to be as strong as always.

[MikLast]

Originally Posted by SPQLrobotics

Are any PNW robots anticipating scaling this year? Didn't see a mention of it with regards to the 4 teams scrimmaging.

I know that we do not. Hoping to see some though!

[MrJohnston]

Originally Posted by SPQLrobotics

Are any PNW robots anticipating scaling this year? Didn't see a mention of it with regards to the 4 teams scrimmaging.

Two of the four plan to climb. However, of those two, one had not attached the climber at all. The other had the mechanism attached - but no motors. Both consider climbing a lower priority.

[Peyton Yeung]

We had an open house today with all the Purdue teams and all 4 of the robots seem to handle most of the defenses well. Of the four 1 focuses just defenses, 3 shoot high and low, and all 4 are low bar bots. Currently only 1 plans to climb.