PNW 2006 -- The Pacific Northwest Regional in Portland

[Ethulin]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

TOMORROW! IT STARTS TOMORROW! MUST LOAD THE VAN!

... and print the flyers... and help John finish the cart ... and ... well ... sleep for a couple of hours, I guess.

The tournament starts TOMORROW!

Haha! It starts TODAY!

[activemx]

I will be there reffing and inspecting.

[Bill Moore]

Originally Posted by activemx

I will be there reffing and inspecting.

I wish this was being webcast. I'll be free all day Friday, and I've never seen PNR yet.

Hey guys how'd practice go? Any High scores? Inquiring minds want to know. Johny 5 says: "NEED INPUT!"

[Rick TYler]

I'm falling asleep as I type, but I think I can cover a couple of things:

1. The state of the robots on Thursday is not as good as it was last year. This was a tough technical challenge year.

2. Scoring the center goal is a lot easier in the lab than on the field. Center scoring was not common.

3. Good human players are scoring 5-10 points each doing full-court throws.

4. The Cheesy Poofs looked human! They were struggling to get their robot ready just like the rest of us!

5. Team 492 still has the sweetest-driving robot in the northwest. Smooth as silk.

6. Team 1294 scored a center goal in autonomous!!! Send congratulations cards to...

7. I have the feeling that things are going to get a lot more competitive tomorrow. Lots of teams are still improving.

8. Huge props to three students from Issaquah Robotics Society (1318) who took time out to help me install our bumpers. I stayed late in the pits to do this (the team was at dinner) and Eric, Kyle and Elise helped me with holding, drilling, and bolting. Finest FIRST tradition!

9. It is hard to tell which period is which from the stands. The instant scoring is cool, even if one alliance did have a reported score of about 425 in one round. I think Thursday is practice day for the Regional team, too.

10. Quite a number of balls hit the chains in the center goals and bounce back out.

11. Most robots can get onto the ramp, even though a lot are top heavy. At least four robots turned over today, including ours.

12. Good ball sweepers are unusual.

13. This early, the best robots scored in the corner goals.

14. THE MUSIC IS TOO LOUD! A lot of folks are using ear plugs in the stands.

More news as it develops...

[gobeavs]

I agree with most of what Rick TYler said....

Music being loud: especially the whistle signifying the end of a round. Ouchie.

Center goal scoring and competitiveness: agreed. During practice I didn't see any consistent center-goal scoring, though a lot of robots our improving (especially ours ).

Human Players: hard to score in corner goals - mostly for me because of bounce in the balls and the ramp going to the goal. I feel it worth it to hold onto the balls and let the robot score.

Robots tipping over: Yep. Ours tipped over also. Even some of the smaller robots (ours is maximum height) were tipping going onto the ramp.

[Ethulin]

One thing I noticed was that the human players saturaded the playing field with balls by trying to throw them into the side goals. Teams' human players would be throwing as soon as a ball got into the corral, so all the balls ended up being on the field as fair game or in bots. I think (hope) that most teams' human players will wise up and understand that throwing for the entire 2:10 just is not effective and infact is detrimental.

[Bill Moore]

Originally Posted by Ethulin

One thing I noticed was that the human players saturaded the playing field with balls by trying to throw them into the side goals. Teams' human players would be throwing as soon as a ball got into the corral, so all the balls ended up being on the field as fair game or in bots. I think (hope) that most teams' human players will wise up and understand that throwing for the entire 2:10 just is not effective and infact is detrimental.

It will be interesting to see how this proceeds today and tomorrow.

Not every team had a decent goal or court to shoot at during build. I expect Thursday and maybe even today that a number of teams will take the "Shoot as often as possible strategy" to gain more experience on a real field. If the strategy works, this should help them improve their scoring accuracy by the end of today.

They may not end up in the top 8, but a good scouting team in the top 8 will see this change in accuracy, and watch them closely tomorrow morning. There are always a couple of teams that walk in rough, but improve significantly before Saturday, and are a good selection for playoffs.

[Ethulin]

Originally Posted by Bill Moore

It will be interesting to see how this proceeds today and tommorrow.

Not every team had a decent goal or court to shoot at during build. I expect Thursday and maybe even today that a number of teams will take the "Shoot as often as possible strategy" to gain more experience on a real field. If the strategy works, this should help them improve their scoring accuracy by the end of today.

They may not end up in the top 8, but a good scouting team in the top 8 will see this change in accuracy, and watch them closely tomorrow morning. There are always a couple of teams that walk in rough, but improve significantly before Saturday, and are a good selection for playoffs.

Exactly why scouting is so important. Our scouting app (STAMP) creates an "Improvement Trend" calculation to find just such teams, even though they are under-rated.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by Ethulin

Exactly why scouting is so important. Our scouting app (STAMP) creates an "Improvement Trend" calculation to find just such teams, even though they are under-rated.

If STAMP shows higher than our current rankings, I think it rocks. Otherwise, I blame programmer error.

[Rick TYler]

Day 2 preliminary report.

Seven matches down, three to go. Top Gun is currently ranked 43rd out of 46 with a CP of 31 -- tied for highest in the regional. We are 1-6-0. We lost three matches by one point, one match by two points, and one match we actually won but a scoring error showed it as a 4 point loss (we had two robots completely on the top of the platform at the end -- the refs scored zero, we protested, and the refs added five points -- we later noticed that it was scored as only one bot on the platform and not two, but they said it was too late to change now, that we should have said something earlier, we said we did, they said, "too bad"). Our only big loss was to an alliance which included both the Cheesy Poofs and Team 948 -- which has a wicked accurate center-goal shooter. They beat us by 20 points. We also had the privelege of winning the highest total point total of the day at 64 to (IIRC) 60.

Today's random thoughts and notes:

1. The Scallywags (#1369) drove onto the other team's ramp at the end of a blow-out match. Ninety percent of the audience and the announcer ("Wow! They drove onto the wrong ramp, what a mistake!" <-- paraphrased) thought it was a mistake. We thought it was genius, and applauded as they walked out.

2. High goal shooters still are not the bomb. With a few exceptions, not many goals.

3. The Cheesy Poofs made big clouds of magic smoke in one match, and broke a shaft in another. When they worked, they were AMAZING. Team 753 took them out of one match with inspired, genius, outstanding defense. The Poofs still scored some low goals, but their awesome shooter was quiet.

4. Our robot could be better.

5. Good human players are now scoring 7-10 goals by hand into the low goals.

6. There is less indiscriminate ball-throwing than there used to be, but some HPs are still toss-happy, including throwing into dead goals.

This is a great game. They could run it again next year with no changes and it would still be a great game. I don't think there will be a "perfect machine" as there are so many different strategic decisions to make. All-dumping teams don't work. All-shooters don't work. Mixed teams work, and there is room, as always, for fast, smooth defense.

I want to play Aim High again!!!

[Madison]

So, here are some thoughts I've gathered about yesterday and today at the event. I have a feeling there'll be a negative slant to this, but realize that it's not because I don't understand why it happens or that I don't appreciate everyone working to make these events possible. I'm just sayin' that the rest of y'all need to be prepared for these issues as you compete in upcoming weeks.

• There was no systematic verification of balls' exit velocity during inspection.
• Some inspectors are going to misinterpret or incorrectly interpret rules regarding the shielding of shooting mechanisms. In particular, I'm aware of at least one case wherein a team was asked to shield roller chain that was in application unrelated to their shooter. Another team is competing with too many of a single motor-type, though I don't believe the mechanism they're attached to has ever been used. I understand safety is paramount, but exposed roller chain has not in the history of FIRST been questioned for safety, generally speaking.
• Your practice matches are not a time to "practice" defense. Practice driving or collecting or dumping or shooting, but for the love of all that is holy, please don't drive your robot into machines that are being tuned, tested, and fixed. Thanks.
• The real-time scoring system doesn't work. They're relying on referees to act as a redundant scoring system. Referees don't work. It has, on different occasions, lost a match score, crashed, and miscounted balls going into goals. I've been told, but don't have evidence, that scores have been swapped between alliances and that they have overlooked things like giving points to robots on the ramps.
• It appears as if the referees have been scoring offsides penalties incorrectly, unless the procedure has changed and I'm unaware. Rather than assessing a 5 point penalty for every 5 seconds of offsides violation, an alliance has been penalized just once per round or match. This became a concern to us when we lost a match because the alliance we competed against was offsides for the length of an entire round and was only penalized 5 points. We lost. After appealing to the referees; even showing them the rules that state the correct procedure for assessing penalties, they refused to change the outcome. That kinda sucks for a whole mess of reasons that are best left to another thread.
• Own up to your accuracy. Shooting is hard, if not practically impossible, in most cases. The Cheesy Poofs are getting better with every passing moment and will be a scary thing to see tomorrow, I'm sure. Other teams are getting better as well, but not in near the same capacity. The Poofs are scary. Anyway, if you can only shoot in a temperature controlled vacuum, please admit to it.
• Any robot that can store and dump 15+ balls in its hopper will instantly negate any middle-of-the-road shooter and they'll do it faster, more reliably, and more often.
• Please read the rules. The backbot isn't a cool name I made up because I like strategy, it's a requirement and you can't cross the midfield line when you're bored. (Yes, this happened.)
• Bring spare parts if you've got 'em, big metal hammers if you don't. Our poor robot has taken a beating, physically.
• Make sure your PVC pipe is regulation. We'd pressed a plastic piece into ours to make a floor and we had to fit it with the specified endcap before we could pass inspection. We put the endcap over our spacer.

I think that's it for now. If I think of more, I'll write more. There are good things, too, of course, but that's all stuff that's related to our machine and our experience and that probably doesn't matter to any of you. We're having a good time, we've got a fantastic machine that is reliably responsible for a large (80%+) part of our alliance score each match and we're in good shape despite being placed up against some of the best machines at the event.

(We won a match despite missing one of our three alliance partner robots. 1425 ran fantastic defense while all three alliance human players loaded our hopper with upward of 25 balls which we then dumped in one giant load. It rocked.)

[gobeavs]

Some thoughts from this guy on 1425....

Maybe I just haven't seen good human players, but I don't see hardly 4 or 5 go into the side goals from one human player - and that is with a high volume of balls. One strategy we used a couple times (even though our robot wasn't meant to push balls) was to just shove the missed balls around the corner goals into the goal. It has given us a few points.

Shooter speed inspection needed to be earlier. They just got their speed detector working late today, and I saw at least one robot (and I'm sure there were more) that shot way over the legal speed limit. Shooting isn't nearly as hard if you have a nearly-straight trajectory. It seemed they had it working later though, as they spot checked our team (we passed) after a round.

We are proud of our robot. Our only scoring option coming into the competition was shooting, and even though that didn't work we have made it to 3 wins 4 losses, ranked 24th, with ball rolling and good defense. Best part is: we just got our shooter to work in the last round of the day, and we made 3 or 4 in....expect big things from us tomarrow .

EDIT: M. Krass reminded me of one thing...the physicality of the game. Maybe it is just that our robot is more flexible than in previous years, but we have had some good battle wounds and jostling. When playing robot-to-robot defense on a good shooter it gets pretty physical.

[sciencenerd]

A few of my thoughts, after the regional ended.

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

1. The state of the robots on Thursday is not as good as it was last year. This was a tough technical challenge year.

Yes, it seemed like there was much more noise in the pits this year on Thursday from machinery operating (of course, it could have been that the team right before us was running their jigsaw the entire day straight!)

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

4. The Cheesy Poofs looked human! They were struggling to get their robot ready just like the rest of us!

Yeah, after all I heard about them I was expecting everything perfect. When I looked at their pit, they had the hopper off and were still making modifications. However, once they got that puppy working it sure was something to see!

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

8. Huge props to three students from Issaquah Robotics Society (1318) who took time out to help me install our bumpers. I stayed late in the pits to do this (the team was at dinner) and Eric, Kyle and Elise helped me with holding, drilling, and bolting. Finest FIRST tradition!

No problem! We had finished up the work we could do on our robot a little earlier, and the programmers wanted us out of their way. We were just looking for something useful to do. It was good to meet you in person.

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

9. It is hard to tell which period is which from the stands. The instant scoring is cool, even if one alliance did have a reported score of about 425 in one round. I think Thursday is practice day for the Regional team, too.

Yeah, that was a challenge. As a driver, it was really hard to figure out when the periods switched, and when it was coming up, while still staying aware of the situation on the field. I was lucky enough to have a coach that was able to keep track of that, letting me know when periods 2 and 3 were about to end (to get ready for the next) and when there was about twenty seconds left in the final period (to go for the ramp). Without that, it would have been impossible to keep track of everything.

And about the score, there was that one elimination round where blue got a reported score of around 3100, the "high score of the universe" according to the announcer. I couldn't stop laughing as I saw that number just keep going up...

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

10. Quite a number of balls hit the chains in the center goals and bounce back out.

Yes, I think there were more of those than FIRST anticipated. I hope they do something about that in later regionals.

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

13. This early, the best robots scored in the corner goals.

Yes. From what I could see, the most effective robots were the ones that could either score well and consistently in the corner goals, or were so incredibly amazing/had such a great strategy of scoring in the center that they could negate any defense. This was best illustrated by the match between alliances 1 and 8. Although 1 had some great shooters, 360's defense was enough to totally shut them down. Alliance 8 could easily have won the regional, if it wasn't for 254's amazing strategy in that final round.

Sciencenerd's final analysis of Aim High: Shooters that can't shoot faster than 1 ball/second are next to useless. They will never be given an opportunity to sit still long enough to score significantly. Defense will be high, with many effective robots dumping at most one load of balls in the corner goal, then spending their time stopping the shooters from ever getting lined up. Robots that can't ramp had better be pretty durn amazing to make up for it. Team 254 is awsome.

[steven114]

One thing that consistently disappoints me about the FIRST games is that there's often a 'reach' goal that is very difficult to achieve - such as using the camera to aim and fire at the top goal this year - that is easily shut down by simply having a box on wheels hit the robot repeatedly. It's too bad that a robot which is able to hit the target repeatedly (no small task!) can be shut down by such a robot.

Not bashing anyone or anything, just an observation.