What did you learn in todays scrimmages?

[JohnBoucher]

OK.... Who want to share what they learned scrimmaging today. I watched the UTC web cast, Thanks Shelton, and there seemed to be a lot of penalties. What was the biggest thing that triggered the penalties?

Any other observations?

[Greg Marra]

Originally Posted by JohnBoucher

OK.... Who want to share what they learned scrimmaging today. I watched the UTC web cast, Thanks Shelton, and there seemed to be a lot of penalties. What was the biggest thing that triggered the penalties?

Any other observations?

I'll talk about the penalties that were recieved.

In the first round of the finals, the 38-177-88 aliance received a 30 point pentalty for interfering with a loading robot. Combined with a penalty recieved by the other alliance for backing out of the human loading zone before their human player was back on the pad (they were wired wrong), this first game was decided 1-0. It just shows how painful penalties are.

We also recieved a penalty in an earlier match for not being on the loading zone before we grabbed a tetra from the automated loading station, but that was in a practice round. Also in practice, we fell out of bounds twice, which is not good either.

The main thing I think I learned today is how important defence is. Also, lighting was not what we had hoped it would be, and we have to make adjustments to how we set up the camera for these conditions. Oh yea: don't leave the camera somewhere it is likely to get fallen on. We were about two inches from crushing our CMUcam into oblivion.

[Jeff Rodriguez]

I think a simple drive train and a good tetra manilpulator will get you farther than just a great drive train.

[Koko Ed]

To me it seems that grabbing the vision tetra during play is more trouble than it's worth. It looked like half the time it would land awkwardly on the goal and the robot would have to spend alot of time adjusting the thing to score it.

[Rich Wong]

Here is what I notice at UTC:
A lot of penalties at the beginning (this can kill your ranking early)
Low alliance scoring (strategy really counts)
A lot of the bots look alike (look alike, look alike , look alike...)
Blocking is useful strategy (it seem easy to knock tetras off of other bots)
The game is challenging (and was exciting to watch at the end)
There is enough space for six bots to move
Capping is not so easy (tetra don't always land correctly)
It is dangerous for the auto-loader guy (I saw him pull back several times)
Automonous mode is not utilized much
2 minute is a very short time
Fast bots are very affective
It was not easy watching almost 4 hours of webcast with very little resolution but it was worth it.

[Barry Bonzack]

1. the arm operator and the driver need to communicate with each other well. ie: If the driver is heading to wards the human loading stating, be sure to tell the arm operator to put arm in appropriate position.

2. I send the 2 minutes is not a lot of time and tetra stacking is difficult. There is not much margin for mistake if team are hoping to stack tetras one at a time. we mostly only got 1 stack, and never got more than 3.

3. have the "mentor" position keep a close eye on the clock while looking at who owns what rows.

4. Our robot can lift an entire 5' goal and vision tetra off the ground.

Edit: We were at the Robot Ruckus scrimmage at Colonial High School in Orlando.

[Kyle Fenton]

Well I was at the Quincy scrimmage today and here is some of things I noticed.

*Almost all of the robots were similar in design and in functionality.

*The only auto mode I saw was capping the tetra they had in the beginning of the match, which caused the magnet tetra to fall.

*This is one of those rare years were operators have to be careful and look out for robots, because their long arms with tetras on them can cause them to swing a tetra behind the glass, if the arm is high enough.

*No one went for the end zone, they scored tetras until the end

*Getting rid of the vision tetras off the floor in the beginning of the match proved very useful

* Being fast and maneuverable is very good advantage

*The center goal seems to be worth scoring it, if you have the time.

Here is one of my team matches from Today. It isn't our best, just the first one I pulled from my camera.

http://www.rhodewarrior.org/121Match.mov

One other thing. I didn't realize this, but it seems that this years OI doesn't switch channels, even with a dongle on. It seems that the only work around was to flip the most significant bit (the bit farthest to the left in the team number on the OI) on

[Yan Wang]

Originally Posted by Kyle Fenton

*Almost all of the robots were similar in design and in functionality.

It's as though FIRST tried to make this happen!

How did rookie teams perform? How many teams used the KOP chassis and/or gearbox?

[Barry Bonzack]

Originally Posted by Yan Wang

How did rookie teams perform? How many teams used the KOP chassis and/or gearbox?

We are using neither. I believe our team did decently, we looked really good at times, and had some trouble some others. Just a bit more practice stacking and trimming down our time and the drivers should be able to hold their own pretty well. Practice practice practice... I'm glad we have a couple days left.

Also like to give props to Cocoa High School and 1694, two rookie teams that thought had good bots.

If these scrimmages in other places were webcasted, where can I go to download some matches of what all I missed while battle testing Pa-10?

[Andy Grady]

A few key points about the competition from someone who witnessed it first hand....

1. Penalties are KILLERS. In the craziness of everything you have to pay close attention to what you are doing on the field. Teams were losing 10 points at a time on a match by match basis.

2. I'm thinking I will be shocked if I see a single robot pick up and score a vision tetra this year during autonomous mode. Teams were having a hard time scoring vision tetras in manual mode, let lone autonomously.

3. I dont know how much the webcast showed of the finals, but one of the big reasons why the alliance of 38, 177, and 88 won was because their opponent did not spread the field. What happened in the final match was that a bunch of robots became so involved in a defensive struggle on one side of the field, that no one was paying attention to the silently scoring team 88. The focus was on the two teams who could do damage fast (230 and 177) and the simple but effective pick and place robot 88, did the damage in the end.

4. I think I underestimated the 3 robots in the home zone bonus. As it turns out it helped out quite a bit to the winning alliance.

5. Careful about getting tangled in the auto loader. I saw it get ripped off the ground multiple times, which caused teams problems.

6. Teams were not paying attention in many of the matches. So many matches could have been won had teams just realized that if they capped over a certain team instead of going to an empty goal, it could cause a huuuuge point swing.

7. It is VERY easy to descore points accidentally. In other words...if you aren't sure if you can cap over a stack...it might not be worth the risk.

8. Scrimmage Standouts...

230 - Absolutely amazing robot. They could drop a stack of 3 tetras on a goal at one time. In one round, they made 4 deliveries...3 of which had 3 tetras.

177 - Could hold multiple tetras on a conveyor like arm and they scored extremely fast.

1124 - Very simple, but probably the fastest and highest single tetra pick and place robot at the competition. I dont know if they missed a goal they were aiming at all day.

88 - Very underestimated pick and place robot. If you lost sight of them and left them alone for a couple of moments, next thing you would know is that they were closing out a "triple play".

[tiffany34990]

well down at swampthing 179's pit

you have to watch out for flying tetras if your down near the field....penalites are gonna hurt for some...make sure when at scrimmages don't be all on the same channel for radio....

most of all beware of tytus and driving

we learned a few thing with the our bot though--it was a great day


thanks to swammpthing and letting us come!!!

[thoughtful]

WOW, U guys must have had barrels of fun.

I have 2 questions.

1. is the video still available online?
2. How strict were the judges about the manual loading zone; e.g ( if a robot's tires are barely touching the loading zone but the arm is a bit out of the field, would htey call a penalty?)

[Ductapemaster05]

I must say that team 230 had the best robot out of the bunch, i mean stacking three tetras at once was just amazing words cant descirbe how good they were. The bot was original and hopefully one of a kind, but i give kudos to the drivers as well its not all the robot. So i bow down to the furry of 230

[nehalita]

our school went to The Swamp Scrimmage (same place as S.P.A.M.)

We learned that our arm wasn't strong enough for some of the tetras...we fixed that on site and after that, things went great!

One of our mentors almost got the life knocked out of them though....yes flying tetras definitely were something to look out for. But it was all good in the end. It got me so excited

and we got food, so everyone was happy. Thanks to The Swamp Thing =)

[EvanG]

From my position on the stands as an alumni, I have some insight about penalties. As in previous years, be sure to be ready to be dissapointed by penalty calls. There is a lot that the judges have to watch over this year and that was evident in their mix and match penalty calls. Often they'd call a penalty on one team for doing something that the other team does 30 seconds later and it slips by the ref watching a different robot. It's been the same every year so that'll come as no surprise to some, but this year penalties can be huge and hurt your score badly.

Another thing, it appeared that the robots with cameras found themselves attracted to a ref standing outside the field wearing a green sweater. Not the brightest choice in clothes selection for this game, i must say.

Otherwise, I got to say this is among one of the best games I've seen recently. I can really see the championship going up for grabs.