REWARD OFFERED: A CAPPED VISION TETRA ON THE CENTER FIELD GOAL

[PURPLE!]

Originally Posted by thoughtful

I think when(not if ) someone caps it the programmers of the team deserve a standing ovation!

Heh, well 624 has already been cheering on our programmers. If you have ever seen us in competition you know we have a large "CRyptonite" sign where everyone holds one letter. Well, now during the first 15 seconds we hold up "Pye" (one of our 2 programmers).

[PURPLE!]

Okay, I am just curious to what the actual tiki looks like... and being this is a robotics tournament, honestly I think this would be the best tiki for the award

Tiki

[Wayne C.]

Originally Posted by PURPLE!

Okay, I am just curious to what the actual tiki looks like... and being this is a robotics tournament, honestly I think this would be the best tiki for the award

Tiki

sorry- I don't have a pic of the tiki- it's sitting on the front seat of my truck though. And I didn't want to post a picture because I know nobody will ever win it and it would just make some poor team sad to see it and never get it. ; )

I love the TIKI drive and it is something that our scouting team should definitely look into. I know I will be looking to get one soon for my PC.

WC

[jgannon]

Originally Posted by Dave Flowerday

I think this is something FIRST needs to think about. They gave us great tools this year for autonomous, yet basically no one can do it (even if a few manage to make it happen at the championships, it's still essentially 0%). The only way we're going to see better looking autonomous modes in the future is if they can find some way to give the software guys on all these teams some time to work with their real robot. Just like every other team I'm sure, our software team only had a day or two to work with our completed "shipping" robot. If every team had had an additional week to work on software for their competition robot, I think we'd see more capping happen.

From this thread:
"I've been giving it some thought, and I think that FIRST may very well have known what they were getting us into by including the camera with the kit. The animation and the human simulation at kickoff both indicated that vision was going to be a simple task; both showed two teams on one alliance pursuing vision tetras, and the animation even showed a robot using vision during driver control to find the loading station. No one familiar with the technology could honestly believe it to be as simple of a task as it was portrayed, but that wasn't the point. Line tracking is a pretty simple task; many teams achieved it last year, and once it was done, the vast majority of us programmers got to sit around and watch the rest of our team slave away on mechanical issues. By giving a monumental, practically unattainable task, FIRST continued to strive for their stated goals; they don't care if our code works, but rather that we've been inspired. I personally spent dozens of hours trying to make the camera work, and all the time between ship date and competition was spent pondering how I could pull it off in only three more days of work. By the end of our regional, our team ended up hacking our camera box off the side of our robot, because I couldn't make it work. Did I succeed in capping a vision tetra? No. Did FIRST inspire me, and lead me to ponder programming tasks that I'd never even dreamed of? Absolutely, and I'm thrilled about it. It's fantastic that a very small group of teams have mastered the technology, but I wouldn't say that the teams that at least made an attempt (probably a sizable number... anybody remember the thread complaining about how easy programming was going to be this year?) have failed."

While it would be great if I had another week to program the robot, and if we had more teams that could cap autonomously, I don't think that that's the point.

[Mike]

Big Mike has a picture of me and a half tiki we won at Trenton...

[The Lucas]

Originally Posted by Wayne C.

sorry- I don't have a pic of the tiki- it's sitting on the front seat of my truck though. And I didn't want to post a picture because I know nobody will ever win it and it would just make some poor team sad to see it and never get it. ; )

Better buckle that tiki up! It's a long trip to Atlanta. It would be a shame if it broke during the trip down and someone actually won it. I can vouch for the fact that the Team 25's tiki awards look very cool . We won one at the Brunswick Eruption in 2002, and it is one of the most noticeable trophies on our shelf

[BillP]

Originally Posted by jgannon

From this thread:
"Did I succeed in capping a vision tetra? No. Did FIRST inspire me, and lead me to ponder programming tasks that I'd never even dreamed of? Absolutely, and I'm thrilled about it. It's fantastic that a very small group of teams have mastered the technology, but I wouldn't say that the teams that at least made an attempt (probably a sizable number... anybody remember the thread complaining about how easy programming was going to be this year?) have failed."

EXACTLY! Here in a nutshell, this young man has very elegantly phrased what F.I.R.S.T. is all about. While the students and mentors of 624 CRyptonite are extremely proud of what the students have accomplished, we are all equally proud of ALL teams. This is especially true for any team that even attempted to get the vision camera working.

Joey, if you are coming to Atlanta, please come see me ... I want to shake your hand! (I'll be the one with the green beard).

[Collmandoman]

Last night 1466 capped the center in auto twice.. out of 5 tries ~ someone from newton can now do it- but I doubt we'll actually run it at nats! BUT WHO KNOWS... ever reason to come and watch newton all day

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by jgannon

While it would be great if I had another week to program the robot, and if we had more teams that could cap autonomously, I don't think that that's the point.

While I certainly agree that anyone who tried it got something out of it and that is a good thing, many teams have posted and said they didn't bother trying because they could tell it was too hard. But the reason I think autonomous was mostly a failure this year is because it's boring to watch. Remember, in order for FIRST to continue to spread they want to try to make it interesting and appealing to people who don't know much about it. FIRST has hinted time and again that they want to make it as TV-friendly as possible to open up that avenue of publicity. Having a competition where 11% of the match time appears to be robots just sitting there on the field does not work well for that goal. Compounding this problem is that the "easier" autonomous things to do like knocking down the hanging tetras can be done by many teams, but they don't involve much movement so it isn't that visually appealing to the spectators. My parents came to watch the Midwest Regional and they didn't even notice that a lot of robots actually did accomplish something in autonomous. From way up in the stands, if you're not watching closely, it's easy to miss the relatively small movements that a lot of teams make in order to knock those tetras down.

I really don't think FIRST intended or expected such a small amount of use out of the camera this year. Those cameras cost $200 per kit. That's a lot of money that could have been spent on something that would have been useful to more teams if they knew people weren't going to use it.

[BillP]

Originally Posted by Dave Flowerday

FIRST has hinted time and again that they want to make it as TV-friendly as possible to open up that avenue of publicity. Having a competition where 11% of the match time appears to be robots just sitting there on the field does not work well for that goal. Compounding this problem is that the "easier" autonomous things to do like knocking down the hanging tetras can be done by many teams, but they don't involve much movement so it isn't that visually appealing to the spectators.

OK, I see your point here, and I would agree that, to the non-initiated spectator who knows nothing about FIRST or the nature of this year's competition, the fact that many robots did nothing in autonomous was certainly not exciting. It may be that FIRST actually did underestimate the complexity of getting the camera system to work with respect to capping goals, but I wonder how many teams got the vision system working properly but were unable to get the software/hardware coordination required to get a tetra on top of a goal (something that is not exactly trivial even when the students are driving!). From my perspective, the harder the challenge, the greater the opportunity for learning. The bar can sometimes be set too high (no intended reference to last year's game), and maybe this year, it was close ... but I don't think it was too high.

Just my opinion

[Mike]

Originally Posted by Dave Flowerday

Those cameras cost $200 per kit. That's a lot of money that could have been spent on something that would have been useful to more teams if they knew people weren't going to use it.

FIRST buys those cameras bulk, so they get a deal on them.

I think taking the cameras out of the kit is a horrible idea. It's like FIRST saying "Well it was too hard, so we give up. Lets give the kids something easier to do."
How is that supposed to inspire kids?

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by MikeWasHere05

I think taking the cameras out of the kit is a horrible idea. It's like FIRST saying "Well it was too hard, so we give up. Lets give the kids something easier to do."
How is that supposed to inspire kids?

I think you misunderstood me. I don't want them to remove the camera either, in fact I will encourage FIRST to give us another chance with a camera-based game next year. I was responding to this statement:

By giving a monumental, practically unattainable task, FIRST continued to strive for their stated goals; they don't care if our code works, but rather that we've been inspired.

...which seemed to be implying that FIRST didn't really care if anyone made the camera work. My point was that I didn't think they'd spend all that money to put the cameras in the kit if they didn't expect them to be used.

Originally Posted by BillP

I wonder how many teams got the vision system working properly but were unable to get the software/hardware coordination required to get a tetra on top of a goal (something that is not exactly trivial even when the students are driving!)

I agree. A challenging autonomous task is good and makes for better learning, but I think they underestimated the complexity of this year's task a little bit. Which also brings me back to my original statement that I think if there had been a period of time this year where the robot building had to be done but the software teams could still work with their robot we may have seen more action with the camera.

[jgannon]

Originally Posted by Dave Flowerday

I was responding to this statement:

...which seemed to be implying that FIRST didn't really care if anyone made the camera work. My point was that I didn't think they'd spend all that money to put the cameras in the kit if they didn't expect them to be used.

Just because the camera isn't on most robots doesn't mean it wasn't used (ours got plenty of use during build season, though it isn't on the robot now), and doesn't mean it's not a valuable tool. As you know, a copy of Visual Studio comes in the Kit of Parts. It's not something that ends up on the robot, nor is it something that everyone uses, but for those who do use it, it can be a valuable tool in the process of inspiration. And, the few teams that did succeed in their efforts with the camera inspire us all to do better with autonomy next year. Just because not every team has a camera on their robot doesn't mean that FIRST overestimated us, nor does it mean that they threw away a whole lot of $200 components.

[Wayne C.]

Originally Posted by Wayne C.

The original offer stands- first to cap per above gets a TIKI like the ones we use as BE trophies.

How about if all you guys who claim to be able to do it send MY TEAM the donuts if at the end of the Nationals the bet still stands? Big Mike and I sure like those Krispy Kremes.....

You know, as I sit here with this poor lonely tiki I keep thinking of all those Krispy Kreme donuts that will be showing up at the team 25 pits on Saturday morning......

Maybe even Dave will show up in his purple Hawaiian shirt?

To make it even more interesting- I'll up the bet to include one of our purple Hawaiian shirts for the programmer who gets the job done first. It will be sitting in the pits with the TIKI waiting for you - IF you can do it.

WC

[BillP]

Originally Posted by Wayne C.

To make it even more interesting- I'll up the bet to include one of our purple Hawaiian shirts for the programmer who gets the job done first. It will be sitting in the pits with the TIKI waiting for you - IF you can do it.

Better be prepared with 2 purple Hawaiian shirts for 624. We have 2 programmers who collaborated on our successful software.