Week 0 Discussion

[cjl2625]

Originally Posted by Mastonevich

I was not able to attend a week 0.

After actual use of the fields, FIRST provided or team built, was there any cycle time advantage to using the low bar? That seemed to be an often cited advantage of the low bar.

Depending on the robot, not necessarily. If you can just fly over the rough terrain, rock wall, or moat, the amount of time saved isn't all that significant.

Then again, I haven't driven on an actual field, so I could be wrong.

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by cjl2625

Depending on the robot, not necessarily. If you can just fly over the rough terrain, rock wall, or moat, the amount of time saved isn't all that significant.

Then again, I haven't driven on an actual field, so I could be wrong.

I would agree. B/D defenses can be taken at ludicrous speed. The low bar requires a bit more care.

[Mastonevich]

"Prepare ship for ludicrous speed! Fasten all seatbelts, seal all entrances and exits, close all shops in the mall, cancel the three ring circus, secure all animals in the zoo!"

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by Mastonevich

"Prepare ship for ludicrous speed! Fasten all seatbelts, seal all entrances and exits, close all shops in the mall, cancel the three ring circus, secure all animals in the zoo!"

You just made my day! I must have watched that movie 50+ times. Always funny like the 1st time I saw it!

[dodar]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSeLG1_cHvs

[mwmac]

Originally Posted by dodar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSeLG1_cHvs

Angle of effector needs a little work...

[SenorZ]

Originally Posted by dodar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSeLG1_cHvs

I was the double face-palm on the zoom. It was a sympathy reflex. We almost did the same thing in practice on Saturday.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by SenorZ

I was the double face-palm on the zoom. It was a sympathy reflex. We almost did the same thing in practice on Saturday.

To the point where when you guys asked if the Portcullis was good, I answered with "Yes. Wait, are you planning to try it?" and on hearing "Yes" back the answer changed to "Nope, not good".

To be fair, they did figure out how to work the Portcullis without bending it.

[BotDesigner]

Originally Posted by itsjustjon

For the teams that were there, how little visibility did you really have?

I always thought that, although you cannot see your robot from behind the drawbridge, you still could "know" where your robot last was, in a sense.

As a driver in a week 0 event, the visibility was pretty bad. In the opponents courtyard you couldn't see anything less than 8 inches above the ground. During one match (when we started as a spy bot and attempted a scale) one of our bumpers fell off and we had no idea that it had until after the match when we retrieved the robot. Also we had a major collision with another robot behind our own drawbridge when we didn't see them sitting there. We came to the conclusion after the event to add cameras to the bot before bag-and-tag.

[Ginger Power]

New and important observation. The real field version of the drawbridge is basically impossible for one team to do alone. Check out Gamesense's YouTube Page to see what I mean. It takes more time than any other defense, but you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot if you pick it because it kills your visibility.

[Ty Tremblay]

Originally Posted by EricH

To the point where when you guys asked if the Portcullis was good, I answered with "Yes. Wait, are you planning to try it?" and on hearing "Yes" back the answer changed to "Nope, not good".

To be fair, they did figure out how to work the Portcullis without bending it.

This design would probably work with the real portcullis, much better bearing surfaces, less force to lift, much stiffer.

[Connor McBride]

Originally Posted by Mat

From what I saw at Week zero in Merrimack I can say that it looks like high goal shooting is a rarity. I saw 2 teams that were actually able to score a high goal, and only once per game, and accuracy was terrible. Additionally almost everyone is going low, and it looked like only 2 teams there were capible of scaling the tower, although I did not see it attempted. I also saw no one cross every defence. Past that feild reset took ages, and queueing a pain that needs some refining. I think that the first week of competitions should plan for many delays. Another thing I noticed was it appears that the FMS system is all new networking hardware, and it also needs a bit of refining, but I think that the combination of that and new radios may result in less bandwidth restrictions for next year. I am very excited to see what this season brings.

Queuing was a pain i'll give you that. However that is the way FIRST wanted it to be. Field reset will definitely be better as the weeks progress. I believe i'm correct on that this is the first game with interchanging field elements which would make things a bit challenging on the reset team since this has never been a thing before.

[angelah]

We went to a practice event hosted by TORC 2137 for the second year in a row. They had a full field built. I've watched a lot of scrimmage video, and I'm pretty convinced it was the best practice field I have seen. They also had their machine shop open and many team members on hand. Really great hosts!!

I'm going to keep things general... There were only four of the teams present actually using the field; the rest were working on their robots. Out of the five (us and the other four) there were two high goal shooters and only one working on scaling.

There were no matches, just an open field you could use as you needed. My thoughts: The visibility was as bad as expected. They had metal elements as opposed to our wooden versions, and we were glad to test them out; we didn't notice much difference except that the moat was easier. We are adding extra reinforcements for our driver's station laptop, because robots were slamming into the low goal with force (which they graciously took in stride considering the work they put into that field.) We noticed some connection issues and such as have been mentioned on CD and have added protective material under our electronics (the foam you use under electronics in R/C planes.)

[c.shu]

Originally Posted by angelah

We went to a practice event hosted by TORC 2137 for the second year in a row. They had a full field built. I've watched a lot of scrimmage video, and I'm pretty convinced it was the best practice field I have seen. They also had their machine shop open and many team members on hand. Really great hosts!!

Thanks for the compliments! Our field crew worked long and hard making the obstacles and structures.


#Teaser

[lovelj]

Originally Posted by waialua359

Absolutely this.

Two more lessons learned from Palmetto.
1/ Porticulis is easy. Don't lift. Bump with a wedge. They have springs that help lift and slow down the fall. We struggled until we saw others do this. It may be an easy autonomous shot.
2/ We believe, at least for us, ball variability does have an impact which is more pronounced the longer our shot. We had much higher shooting percentages at the high goal up close, even though the angle was much harder, than mid or long range.