Penalty Points at Regionals?

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by SwaDan

Read the updated Section 4 of the manual - The Game

You get 10 Pt penalties for various things, such as goaltending, pinning robots, robots assisting balls into goals, touching the controls before auto mode ends, driving part of your robot into the ball corral, players touching a mobile goal - I think that's it.

Avoiding them is simple - don't do any of the above things.

Reaching into the "field" area from the ball corall constitutes a penalty as well.
That happened here in NJ once that I saw.

[KenWittlief]

we all know where to find the rules - WHICH rules are being broken ???

WHY are so many teams getting penalty points?

we cant tell from watching the webcasts - we only get to see one small part of the field at a time - we cant see everything that is going on

My best guess would be that robots are protruding into the ball corral when pushing balls through, only because our bot did this when we first ran it, and we had to make special mods to make sure it didnt drive into the opening.

[Eric Bareiss]

Watching the VCU regional, 90% of the penalties are from robots entering the ball corrals.

I watched a bunch of matches and it looks like even if they don't enter the corrals but it kinda looks like they might, they throw a flag. Seems like there's at least one in every match. They are being very strict.

[IMDWalrus]

Originally Posted by Eric Bareiss

Watching the VCU regional, 90% of the penalties are from robots entering the ball corrals.

I watched a bunch of matches and it looks like even if they don't enter the corrals but it kinda looks like they might, they throw a flag. Seems like there's at least one in every match. They are being very strict.

I think that we'll be seeing less penalties soon, for one of two reasons...
1.) The referees loosen up slightly
2.) Drivers learn what, exactly, they need to avoid doing.

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by IMDWalrus

I think that we'll be seeing less penalties soon, for one of two reasons...
1.) The referees loosen up slightly
2.) Drivers learn what, exactly, they need to avoid doing.

Forget #1, but count on #2.

Do not count on the referees loosening up on the rules/penalties concerning robots entering the ball corrals. This rule is related to the physical safety of the team members, and is designed to prevent the potential for robot-human contact. FIRST will not lighten up on this.

However, every year we see noticeable improvements in driver skill and abilities from week to week. They drivers (and all other team members) will be improving as they get more practical experience with the game and with driving in a realistic game environment. That experience will result in fewer penalties, as they make fewer mistakes.

-dave

[KenWittlief]

hopefully the word will get out after this weekend - if your bot is designed to push or deliver balls into the corral, you need to make sure that side of the bot is high enough so you CANT drive it through the opening

expecting the driver to see that well over the edge of the wall is unreasonable

expecting the driver to get right up to the edge of the corral opening and not nudge over the line is asking too much

the dimensions of the corral opening are in the field description - hopefull this will not be an issue after these 1st round of games.

[Pierson]

Everything that has been said above is true.

We competed at Portland (PNW) and Andy Baker led a fine team of refs. Though I did not watch every match, it seemed like 1 in 10 (matches) had a penalty. It also seemed that those matches which had one flag, normally had multiple flags.