IS THIS RIGHT?!?!?

[Ian W.]

yes, both teams 329 adn 358 had amazing robots. i know from experiance, being in two matches with 329, and i think two matches against 358. the mouse was a great feature, but i'm not surprised that it got destroyed by 358, becuase as they say, they played defense, and the mouse was on the opposing home zone. from what i saw though, the mouse was resurected, because it was used in the elims, i think. can't wait to see "mighty mouse" at the nationals. gotta have the glowing eyes.

[Chris]

I gotta say i agree with Elgin Clock, I'm not a big fan of these mouse type robots. Because of confusion on the Yahoo forum, we didn't put one onto our robot. However i think we all need to just deal, these things seem to be here to stay. If you have one be prepared for teams to go after it. If you don't well then you will just have to adjust your strategey. I know my team is going to try to build one in the pits, maybe with a few motors and a little creaitivity, who knows. proabably won't be very good though
:-(... but hey oh well, i'm looking forward to New Haven and Nats, and good luck to all


Chris
151 The Wildcards

[fast frank]

what if a robot has no ground clearance like ours? our chassis kind of rubs the carpet. on a hard surface,it has alittle less than 1/8" clearance. i guess the small casters sink into the carpet a little.

i don't hate those mouse things, i kind of like them actualy, great idea. but my opinion will probably change quite quickly if our robot gets caught up on it. so if i were you, i'd try to keep it away from robots with low ground clearance.

[RebAl]

Originally posted by Chris
I gotta say i agree with Elgin Clock, I'm not a big fan of these mouse type robots. ... I know my team is going to try to build one in the pits...


Chris
151 The Wildcards

???
What are you saying with that?

You guys may or may not like them but they are the most efficent way to get into the enzone that IS legal.

-Robots with low ground clearence would not get entangled, they would simply just push the tether. we know because our robot has about the same as you in clearence and it was fine, plus we usally run our mouse close to a wall to avoid all that.

[Adam Y.]

Hey our robot probably had some better plays than pathetically crushing pathetic mouse then again..... We were the ones that caused the one team to smoke durning the one round and we tipped over and still won(I think it was ur bot or some mouse bot) As for the bot that tipped you over I agree that was way out of line. My teacher was screaming and I was at the blatant disregard for rules.

[aka Scott White]

It seems like the destruction of your mouse was the result of an unfortunate series of events that no one could have predicted, but I have to agree with fast frank when he says that from a drivers perspective, it is sometimes difficult to control your robot. I was a little guilty of this myself.

Our robot's bearing system kept popping out of its housing (due to the large amount of friction our 30 inch long treads generated while turning), in almost every match we competed in. Since we didn't have the time in the pits to rig up anything more than a quick fix at this point, we didn't have terribly high hopes for our robot for the match outher than heading straight accross the field, harpooning a goal in the process. Then we saw who our alliance partner was; team 550. Their robot was basically a box with a revolving cane on top to hook a goal with. The robots we were going up against was team 613 (i think) who had two catch and release harpoons mounted on their robot, and another team whose number escapes me, who had a massively powerful drive system. It was my turn to drive, so we looked at our competition and said "well, looks like we won't be winning this one, lets just go in there and try to get some practice pushing goals around."

The match started, and 550 went across the field to get a goal, and we moved up a little and intercepted 613 pushing a goal into their goal zone. Unfortunatly, their robot seemed to stall out while pushing the goal, so they couldn't really move it into the zone enough for us to get a good angle on it, and with them behind it, our robot stalled out pushing both . I began pulling back and ramming the goal, and succeeded in moving it back about a foot each time we hit it. After it was out of our zone, I drove around to the side of 613, and began pushing their robot directly, but did not succeed in doing much. I tried moving around to the other side of their robot, and pushing from that side. At this point, our harpoon inexplicably dropped, directly onto the top of their robot. We immediately tried to bring it up again, which took about three seconds. By that point it was too late. 613's light was out, and I don't remember seeing their robot move for the rest of the competition.

Unfortunate? Yes. Belligerant? No. However, I did see an act that was. Team 203's (Campbell's Soup) robot "Rocky" was in the middle of a match when their endzone scoring apparatus accordianed out. Another team saw this, and grabbed a goal, and first ran over their scorer, then dragged the goal back and forth accross it until everyone could clearly hear the metal snapping.
The other team was not penalized, although it was clear that this was intentional, planned destruction.

Hopefully, at nationals, the judges will be a little more discerning.

[patrickrd]

I think there is some misunderstanding between judges, referees, and inspectors, which I think people ought to know the difference.

The judges are the the part of the regional crew in the blue shirts. They are the people who give out judged awards, for example the motorola quality award. Judges are VIP's with technical background that FIRST and the regional designate long before the regional takes place.

The referees are the ones in black and white who watch each match and they make the decisions regarding whether a team violated rules during a match. The judges have no part in this... In fact many judges do not even know what the game is all about until they arrive at the event and watch a couple matches. Referees are typically composed of one head referee designated by FIRST and a crew of referees chosen by the regional. These are the people that could disqualify a team for intentional distruction or entanglement.

The inspectors are not judges or referees (except in a few very isolated cases where there are inspectors who are also refs). They wear FIRST crew shirts and are for the most part indistinguishable from the rest of the volunteers. The inspectors are the ones who actually inspect your bot and complete an inspection checklist on Thursday. These people are typically regional volunteers that FIRST feels have lots of technical background and are very knowledgable of the rules. These are the people that could say a tether is an entanglement hazard and should be removed before the robot is allowed to compete.

So why is this Patrick Dingle giving you all this information? Because he met and worked with all the judges at Long Island and think they are not to blame! They were a great crew.

- Patrick

[Perseus]

At one of our regionals, a team won the gracious professionalism award. However, this team were chanting "DQ them" at the refs after one of our matches. And it was not just few team member. I remember just thinking to myself, how can they be graciously professional when they wanted us to get DQed in our first match when it wasnt even against them?
who decides this award? other teams or judges?