MAR Competitions

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by techhelpbb

One thing I love about automation and sensors:
They are without emotion and beyond practiced emotional assault.

Seriously we had sensors under mid-field elements in the past. I think all the people very troubled by these errors or to the way the referees get treated as a result should pony up

I have got at least $250 to take the human out of this crossing scoring. Can go higher for a reusable solution.

I want to see referees like Jon come back next year and people, do not fool yourselves, referees have sworn this job off in the past because of the practiced emotional backlash.

FIRST/MAR you know how to find me to collect your bounty for the sensors.

The issue I see with more volunteers is even if there are referees for the quadrants and the robots (12 referees total) one can still miss things and even if they do not you will have differences of opinion between those watching a robot and those watching the quadrant. The people watching the robots would have to move and then you have mobile wireless terminals and all those issues.

Stab in the dark:

There might be enough ferrous crap on an FRC robot (mostly motors) that you could detect crossing by change in magnetic field inducing current in a wire. Wire coils under each defense ramp (in and out) and watch transitions.

Better solution would be some sort of RFID chip on robot (passive) with readers under the ramps to ensure it's one bot doing the crossing. Could possibly do this with the existing radio infrastructure but that's beyond my skill set to quickly figure out.


Or, dumb question: 6 refs, 6 bots... one ref per bot. Like most teams scouting do.