Human Player: Past, Present and Future

[Warren Boudreau]

Robot/human interactions are a fact of life. We have to interact with some kind of machine everyday. Including this interaction in the gameplay is simply adding another realworld element to the competitions.

We, as competitors, now have to take this interaction into account and include this in future designs.

Keep the human players. They add a degree of uncertainty to the game. After all, the machines can't do wrong.

[Jessica Boucher]

The level of HP-robot interaction will always be in flux, no matter what, and that's because the game changes every year.

If we were stuck playing Triple Play every year until 2025, then the rules could be fine-tuned to the point where the front office is comfortable, and then it would stick, with changes being made only in the face of major shakeups (ie, changing it because someone got knocked out cold by a tetra blow to the head).

Thus, as you can see by the original post, the game the year after usually is on the other end of the spectrum in terms of HP involvement, and is probably a result of threads like this one, talk from the team forums, etc.

Remember: it has been proven that when someone likes a service, they tell on average 6 people, but when they don't like a service, they tell 11 people about it...so the people that like the level of HP involvement will always be quieter than the people that don't like it, causing the change into the other direction and for the opposite to occur.

[KORN_lover_2007]

I think the human player is a very important part of the game because it shows how humans and robots can work together. I do not think that the human player should have almost no importance in competition. The HP in Triple Play had a good amount of interaction because you didn't have to use it, you could just use the automatic loading zone. That was my first year in robotics so I'm not too sure about years before that, but the game where you had to shoot balls into a goal, I didn't like that too much because I think it involved too much skill needed by the human player in an aspect not really related to robotics. If you can shoot baskets, that's great, but I think it was too dependent on the HP to make a lot of points during the game. So I think the level of dependence on the HP should stay as it was for Triple Play.

[Barry Bonzack]

My two cents

I like more human involvement to the degree of 2004, but would happily compromise with 2002.

[Ian Curtis]

2004. Both the robot and the human player can (in different ways) score, and more importantly what the robot does CAN counteract what the human does. Some people have said that the 50 point bonus was too much, but when the time came for Einstein, it was no longer too much. You HAD to score balls to win and you HAD to hang to win. It's like football. Two players working on different things, working to achieve the common goal of winning.

BTW, should this be moved to the FRC Game Design forum?