3.2.3 Center Goal

[SURVIVORfan44]

Originally Posted by Nuttyman54

I noticed in some videos that there was a person standing behind the teams with a long stick to unjam balls.

Haha, that's what we refer to as the "ball manipulator". When the balls get jammed, we'd have to poke them with the "ball manipulator" to get them down the chute. I was assigned to this task a couple times at VCU.

[AJunx]

It's still on the loose.

Was bounce-back spotted at YOUR regional?

[Billfred]

I saw some bounce-out at UCF, but the events were pretty isolated. In one day of Peachtree, I think I saw one bounce-out. But about 99.1293% of the balls that passed through the hole stayed there.

[hillale]

There were several "bounce outs" at the St. Louis Regional. Also, our alliance lost one of the Saturday Rounds due to one of the balls being caught up in the rope netting. The refs then waited until after autonomous to knock it down, causing us to lose autonomous.

[Jeff Beckett]

yes we saw a lot of bounce out from our team and others at GLR. sometimes we would shoot all ten in auto mode and couple would bounce back. as well there were times we got so many in auto mode with our robot and alliance robot that there was a good 20 second delay while they got all the balls down. some1 before said that it was spinning the ball that caused them to bounce out but we have very little spin and still happens. i guess this is something we have to deal with and see what we can come up with to keep it from happening, though it really didnt effect our game to much. so i guess i find this acceptable.

[Uberbots]

As far as i know, as long as your ball shooting speed remains under 12fps, then you wont have that problem. Dont quote me on this, though, as this is only an observation of other robots, and relative speeds and such.

So anyway, i would check your shooter speed before you complain that the spaghetti doesnt do its job

--oh sorry i think a future comment has nullified this post... i didnt realize that the pushing could have been caused by a swing.

[eugenebrooks]

1) YES, we had a high rate of bounce back for relatively long shots.
This affected the outcome of some matches for us.

2) The goal stayed the same as initially designed, we would not expect
it to be changed. If it was changed, one might reduce bounce back
for some trajectories, while increasing it for others.

3) We have witnessed bounce back at every regional we attended.

4) Bounce back is part of the game challenge. The chance of bounce
back depends upon the trajectory. We found that high angle shots from
closer to the goal minimzed bounce back, and this is a good thing
for the best shooting positions for most robots. Once we gathered
enough experience with bounce back we learned to avoid shooting
positions that increased the rate of bounce back unless the game
situation forced shooting from these positions.

Our shooter fires at 45 degrees, with a wheel speed that is set by
the range information obtained from the camera. An RPM limit that
produces 12 m/sec is enforced in the software that controls the wheel
speed. Getting bounce back does not mean that you are shooting to
fast. It has more to do with the specific tractory of the ball as it
enters the goal than the speed.

[Nuttyman54]

It's not just the speed or spin. It was my observation that if you shoot in a whole mess of balls really quickly, it tends to get the chains swinging. The swinging motion causes them to push some balls back out. I saw a number of balls bounce out at SVR because of this.

[Cory]

We had a good number of our shots bounce out at SVR.

It would appear that the highest number of shots bounce out when you shoot into the upper right portion of the goal--where the ramp is highest, and the chains do the poorest job of deflecting the balls.

It's part of gameplay, and to be expected though.

I think ball scoring is problematical, and it is part of the game. Since it makes it harder for everyone it is fair, but I don't like the chains for this reason. If you made your canon exactly like FIRST said, Firing a poof ball exactly at 12 mps and hitting the goal smack dead in the center, your ball would tend to bounce back. So the better you aimed, the more you were penalized. This just ain't right. I think FIRST was well aware of this problem, but it was just impossible to modify the goals of all the fields of play once competition began. Then you'd have the situation where different FOPs would play differently, and that would be even less fair.

The automatic scoring, particularly in autonomous mode seems buggy. I.e. How can you score just 10 balls low and get 23 points? Like wise how can you score 23 points if you only aim high in autonomous mode? I know the scoring delays in SVR were because the refs were confirming the counts by hand after each match. Don't know if any match was decided by miscounting, but it can happen, and that's part of the game too.

My last gripe is the 'at the buzzer' rule. In my opinion if the ball is in the air when the light goes out it should count. Seems to me unfair that someone puts 5 balls into the goal in auto mode, but it takes a while for them to score, they should get all 15 points. I think the Cheesey Poofs had this problem. They put a lot of balls into the goal, but often they are under counted because they haven't gone through the slot before the possesion changes. (I don't feel sorry for them however.)

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by Dr.Bot

My last gripe is the 'at the buzzer' rule. In my opinion if the ball is in the air when the light goes out it should count. Seems to me unfair that someone puts 5 balls into the goal in auto mode, but it takes a while for them to score, they should get all 15 points. I think the Cheesey Poofs had this problem. They put a lot of balls into the goal, but often they are under counted because they haven't gone through the slot before the possesion changes. (I don't feel sorry for them however.)

At Detroit, based on the experiences gained at GLR, balls that were caught in the center goal ramp when the light went out were manually counted and included in the final score.

As far as the chains, there were some balls that bounced off them in Detroit and didn't score. Perhaps if the chains were plastic rather than metal they would have less momentum when swinging back and forth, and fewer balls would have been deflected out. However then they would also have less mass to absorb the initial impact, so maybe the first shots would have bounced out.

Either way, the field specs were posted. Teams could have elected to install the proper chains in their practice goals, and learn to deal with them then.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Dr.Bot

My last gripe is the 'at the buzzer' rule. In my opinion if the ball is in the air when the light goes out it should count.

Those balls are counted.

[The Lucas]

Originally Posted by FRC45

Regarding the answer to this http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=125 it says if balls are in the center goal but not counted yet, the photoswitches will detect them and trigger a 5sec wait to allow balls to be counted.

I wanted to confirm if there is going to be a 5sec delay between periods regardless, because based on other answers, a ball in flight before the buzzer (period ending) will still be counted. If that ball is still in flight, and not in the center goal yet, it wouldn't be able to trigger the 5sec wait in order to be counted.
Can you clarify how balls in flight will still be counted when they finally get to the center goal?

Thanks,

Originally Posted by GDC

With the exception of the end of the autonomous period, there is no delay between game periods. Balls in flight when the period ends will be counted for the period.

Originally Posted by FRC45

As a followup, can you please clarify how balls in flight will still be counted after period 2 especially, if there is no delay in turning off the counter? Will the scoring counter still be active for a short time after the period ends to allow those balls in flight to be counted once they reach the goal? Otherwise, I am not clear on how balls in flight will be counted.

An answer to a previous question like this (specifically for automode) said if balls were in the center goal, but not yet funneled in the chute, it would trigger a 5sec delay to count them. However, that does not address balls in flight, as they would not yet be in the center goal.

Thanks,

Originally Posted by GDC

There is no five second delay after the second or third period. If ambiguity in the automated scoring is created by rapidly scoring robots, human intervention will be used to ensure that all balls in flight at the end of the period (and only those balls) are counted.

This Q&A seems to answer the question about how the balls are counted. Although I am not sure exactly who is in charge of the "Human Intervention"

At one regional (webcast), I even saw more than a 5sec delay after auton to count all the balls that were scored. Did anyone else see this and remember which regional it was?

[Katie Reynolds]

Originally Posted by The Lucas

At one regional (webcast), I even saw more than a 5sec delay after auton to count all the balls that were scored. Did anyone else see this and remember which regional it was?

At GLR the field crew waited until all the balls that were scored in autonomous were actually counted before bringing back human control. Sometimes this was as long as 5 seconds.

[Gearhead.]

I am pretty sure that the chains were not created as a design constraint. There is nothing you can really do to avoid hitting the chains. At both regionals I attended, NJ and long island, the balls seemed to not bounce out. Occasionally, one or two would during big barrages and close matches, so it meant controversy. I watched VCU and the balls could NOT stay in the hoop. That was a chaining mistake. The chains were either too close together or too loose/tight.