Karthik & 1114: Effective FIRST Strategies 2016 - Championship Conference

[synth3tk]

With the possibility of my school bringing back the team, I'm definitely looking forward to this!

If one of the fields goes into sheer chaos and massive riots due to a missing field queuer, you'll know why.

[dv/dt]

Topic of interest:
How did Tower Capture influence strategy decisions related to the choice of high cycles vs high points?
My interest is related to a medium resource team. We chose to go with high cycles into the low goal (>6) rather than low cycles into the high goal (<=3) to increase chances at tower capture. I'm not sure this was a good strategy for our team.
Thanks!

[Edxu]

In 2013, I had no real idea as to what division I wanted to focus my efforts on, but basically due to this conference and seeing how it affected a team's performance, I was inspired to dedicate my time to my team's Strategy division, and I've never regretted it.

I highly recommend going to this conference, as it will definitely improve the performance of your team at competition, no matter what kind of robot you're competing with.

[lbarger]

Originally Posted by Jacob Paikoff

I really hope that someone records the presentation, especially this year with all the unique strategies of Stronghold.

I haven't been able to make it in the past due to volunteer commitments and it'll be the same this year, but I still really want to see it.

I agree with Jacob. I will be inspecting robots during the presentation, but would otherwise love to attend. We need a recording posted soon after the event!

[Katie_UPS]

Originally Posted by lbarger

We need a recording posted soon after the event!

Originally Posted by plnyyanks

If someone gets me a stream, I will make that happen

Originally Posted by Jacob Paikoff

I really hope that someone records the presentation, especially this year with all the unique strategies of Stronghold.

Can I add a requirement to this? Can we please get decent audio? The last recorded one was using the mic on the camera, which was decipherable but also awful -and does Karthik's presentation no justice. It would be awesome if someone recorded the audio off Karthik's mike and synced it up to the video in post. I'll even sync the audio/video if someone gets them to me.

[Joe Johnson]

Originally Posted by Karthik

<snip>
Oh yeah, I guess we'll talk about what terrified me back during build season and how that played out throughout this season...

<snip>

Karthik,
As you know we've had a number of (non-CD) discussions on this topic. I hope you will react to my contention that FIRST (inadvertently or by design, I don't know) literally saved the season by having the low bar consistently be the #1 defense.

Yes, there were terrifying aspects to the fact that 90% of teams were designing their robots to go under the low bar but you also have to admit that one side effect of so many teams trying get their robots under the low bar (even if they failed to ACTUALLY be able to limbo*) is that these robots end up with a much lower CG than they would have absent that design goal.

Even so, I think I have seen more "wheels to the ceiling" flipped robots this year than any year in FIRST since I started in the 1996 season. It is terrifying to me to think how many robots would be flipped on the defenses had FIRST NOT put their thumb on the scale by having the one constant defense be the low bar.

I think this merits a word or two in your presentation -- if for no other reason than to get the idea into FIRST's head that they need to be smart about the incentives they build into future games*.

Free advice. A bargain at twice the price...

Dr. Joe J.

*by the way, I predicted "at best we'll have 50% limbo bots once you exclude robots that have no other skills beyond just being able to limbo." Does anyone have the data to make a chart that shows % of limbo teams for each week of the season? Love to see where things actually landed.

[Monochron]

Disappointing that this conference is at the same time as Jared Russel and Tom Bottiglieri's talk about Computer Vision + Motion Control. Tough to choose!

[marccenter]

Originally Posted by Rivet Man

Hi marccenter,

Although I've never watched one of Karthik's presentations I have heard about them!

I think that putting in the example that you generously provided about your own team's experience would help the audience lock onto the topic at hand. Do you have any video of this mechanism in action? I tried searching thebluealliance for it but had a bit of a tough time finding this device opening the Portcullis.

Again, always love to see how engaged people are! I'll be riveted to my screen later tonight when I get around to watching one of Karthik's old videos (These are posted on Youtube, right?).

Best Regards,
RM

Here's an example from the FiM Southfield district event during autonomous in match 63. The large, 4 inch wheels added to the ball intake mechanism are used to raise the portcullis during auton period.

http://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2016misou_qm63

[Brutick]

Never had a chance to catch one of these in person, but they're always great and informative! Hoping to see a live stream or a video afterwards

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by marccenter

Here's an example from the FiM Southfield district event during autonomous in match 63. The large, 4 inch wheels added to the ball intake mechanism are used to raise the portcullis during auton period.

http://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2016misou_qm63

I don't have a video example (yet? maybe when North Bay posts their archives) but we discovered that our robot could use our shooter to raise the portcullis, as well as lower the cheval de frise. It could in theory, with some minor rework, shoot high goals. We tried to make high goals work with it as-is, but it was too inconsistent for us to do in real matches because we had no intermediate stop between up and down.

Here's a picture of our robot.

[itsjustjon]

Originally Posted by ConnorTheCoch

Karthik, you are my idol. You are legendary and this conference is a great idea. Kudos.

This guy xD

[couvillion]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

Karthik,
As you know we've had a number of (non-CD) discussions on this topic. I hope you will react to my contention that FIRST (inadvertently or by design, I don't know) literally saved the season by having the low bar consistently be the #1 defense.

I think by creating a need for a small robot, they also split the game into two. Where high resource and low resource teams could contribute more equally.

A team with a lot of members and resources probably would not choose to restrict themselves to a small chassis that restricted their ability to add a lot of features. But teams that only could build a moving part, or two could compete within their "weight class" and still contribute to the success of the alliance.

I think that dynamic is under appreciated by the many large high performing teams and might be the best aspect of the game this year. It would be interesting if the teams that are going to St. Louis are of a different distribution of average size than previous years.

[BotDesigner]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

Karthik,
As you know we've had a number of (non-CD) discussions on this topic. I hope you will react to my contention that FIRST (inadvertently or by design, I don't know) literally saved the season by having the low bar consistently be the #1 defense.

Yes, there were terrifying aspects to the fact that 90% of teams were designing their robots to go under the low bar but you also have to admit that one side effect of so many teams trying get their robots under the low bar (even if they failed to ACTUALLY be able to limbo*) is that these robots end up with a much lower CG than they would have absent that design goal.

Even so, I think I have seen more "wheels to the ceiling" flipped robots this year than any year in FIRST since I started in the 1996 season. It is terrifying to me to think how many robots would be flipped on the defenses had FIRST NOT put their thumb on the scale by having the one constant defense be the low bar.

I think this merits a word or two in your presentation -- if for no other reason than to get the idea into FIRST's head that they need to be smart about the incentives they build into future games*.

Free advice. A bargain at twice the price...

Dr. Joe J.

*by the way, I predicted "at best we'll have 50% limbo bots once you exclude robots that have no other skills beyond just being able to limbo." Does anyone have the data to make a chart that shows % of limbo teams for each week of the season? Love to see where things actually landed.

The lowbar didn't just save Stronghold from a tortuga epidemic. just by seeing how many flips have occurred as a result of bumper to bumper contact, I thing that without the lowbar it would have happened 10 times as often as a result of the high bumper zone.

[CalTran]

Um, is there any chance there's an update on this presentation getting recorded/streamed? As tempting as it is for me to actually drive down to St. Louis to watch it...

[engunneer]

Originally Posted by CalTran

Um, is there any chance there's an update on this presentation getting recorded/streamed? As tempting as it is for me to actually drive down to St. Louis to watch it...

There is a "Conference" webcast on TBA gameday. I'm not sure what else will be there.