2007 Official FRC Game Hint / Email Blast

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by raymaniac

The 5 on the diamond plate

+

Bananas are rich in potassium
The atomic symbol for potassium is K

=

The robots are going to have to "run" 5K's!
That means that either the matches are going to be really long, or the robots will have car engines.

5 kilometers in 2 minutes and 20 seconds! With autonomous for the first 20 seconds! So the robots will have to average just a little under 80 miles per hour, with faster peak speeds! And they could follow some very interesting trajectories if their autonomous modes are even a little bit off!

I guess it doesn't seem very safe.

[Elgin Clock]

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

The banana reference is more wide spread than we thought.

A past preffered supplier of the tape on the carpet defining areas of play is tapemonster.com:

http://www.tapemonster.com/framesetu...ainbinmain.cfm

[raymaniac]

Originally Posted by StephLee

I like the connection, but with more teams than ever would they really allow longer matches? It just wouldn't be reasonable.

If they did it like a real 5K, they could get all the teams in one or two matches. The matches would still take a long time though, and where would they hold it?

Originally Posted by Richard

5 kilometers in 2 minutes and 20 seconds! With autonomous for the first 20 seconds! So the robots will have to average just a little under 80 miles per hour, with faster peak speeds! And they could follow some very interesting trajectories if their autonomous modes are even a little bit off!

I guess it doesn't seem very safe.

Autonomous might be a problem...

[StephLee]

Originally Posted by raymaniac

If they did it like a real 5K, they could get all the teams in one or two matches. The matches would still take a long time though, and where would they hold it?

True, I guess they'd only need a few. But how exciting would a simple speed contest be? FIRST is leaning towards more specator-friendliness, and that's kind of squashing most of my ideas. Some would be fun to play and design for, but horribly boring to watch.

[raymaniac]

Originally Posted by StephLee

True, I guess they'd only need a few. But how exciting would a simple speed contest be? FIRST is leaning towards more specator-friendliness, and that's kind of squashing most of my ideas. Some would be fun to play and design for, but horribly boring to watch.

They'd watch it for the was reason they watch NASCAR...

Originally Posted by Richard

5 kilometers in 2 minutes and 20 seconds! With autonomous for the first 20 seconds! So the robots will have to average just a little under 80 miles per hour, with faster peak speeds! And they could follow some very interesting trajectories if their autonomous modes are even a little bit off!

Then again, that's probably not a good idea.

[Tottanka]

Hehehe...
If FRC takes the road of speed competitions we might even find ourselves in 2008's Beijing Olymic games

[raymaniac]

Now that I think about it, if they decided that they wanted it to be more of a 5K than a NASCAR race, one of the requirements might be for a huminoid robot. That would probably make the robots slower, so it might be cool build, but it would get boring to watch after about 5 minutes.

[Molybdenum]

Given the "2007Clue1" in the URL of the image, that it looks like a clip from a movie, and that it makes little to no sense on the whole, I'm inclined to say that it's nothing but a clip of the countdown played at the beginning of the kickoff broadcast, and a complete red-herring to boot.

I wouldn't put it past FIRST to give us a hint solely with the intent of messing with our heads. My theory is that after we've argued about it for a little too long, they'll post another still from the kickoff broadcast, and hopefully a more useful one!

[Tottanka]

i found another clue!!!!
http://img308.imageshack.us/my.php?image=lolej7.jpg

[raymaniac]

Originally Posted by Tottanka

i found another clue!!!!
http://img308.imageshack.us/my.php?image=lolej7.jpg

Maybe we'll get another clue every 520 posts!
We only need 519 more posts of speculation, random guesses, and nonsense to get another clue!
Now how long is that going to take...

[joshsmithers]

Originally Posted by Molybdenum

Given the "2007Clue1" in the URL of the image, that it looks like a clip from a movie, and that it makes little to no sense on the whole, I'm inclined to say that it's nothing but a clip of the countdown played at the beginning of the kickoff broadcast, and a complete red-herring to boot.

I wouldn't put it past FIRST to give us a hint solely with the intent of messing with our heads. My theory is that after we've argued about it for a little too long, they'll post another still from the kickoff broadcast, and hopefully a more useful one!

so your saying we should continue to argue? i like that theory.

my idea is that the game hint refers to terrain, and possibly the game piece. The banana may be a clue to terrain as well, given Dave's famous "slip up" post. the way I see it, pool lining, diamond plte surface and a slippery surface(where the banana comes in) are some of the possibilities. there may even be 5 types of surfaces for the game. I'm tired of carpet anyway.

As for 5K, that's for the human players.

[StephLee]

Originally Posted by joshsmithers

As for 5K, that's for the human players.

I think you're on to something there...the human players have to run on treadmills the entire match or else the bot stops moving.

[geeknerd99]

Somewhere down the line, somebody proposed the "5" having do to something with "Take Five". Take Five was recorded by the The Dave Brubeck Quartet in '59 on "Time Out". If you don't know jazz, I just totally confused you. If you do, you should know what I'm talking about.

Here's the Wikipedia link to it.

Take Five was special in that it was done in a 3-2 meter, with the driving piano rhythm going "1-2-3 1-2" the whole way through the song, rather than a 1-2-3-4-5 pattern. Hmmm, sounds remarkably like a backbot, does it not? Perhaps the asymmetry of the "manhole" also represents this unbalance.

"Time Out" could mean anything, from "no time left" to "sitting out for a bit". Perhaps the backbot this year really is crippled (stranded in water!), unlike last year where it could gather ammunition? What about rolling disables, where instead of all robots being disabled at once at the end of the match, each team has one robot disabled in the order of their choice 5 seconds apart?

I didn't bother to search it, but perhaps this 1-2-3 1-2 rhythm could tie into the red, green and blue lights? (I'm the programmer, and I've been losing sleep over that since Atlanta).

mmmmm... I could go for a banana....

[Goober!!!]

Ok I looked through the forum and didn’t find anything about what I came up with.

So I looked up "5 diamond plate" on Google and I clicked the 2nd link on there and came up with this site http://www.biorust.com/tutorials/detail/206/en/ . I wish I have photoshop on this computer so that I can test my theory. And my theory is that this "step 5" to the picture, I think it might do something so if any of you guys have photoshop would like to test my theory please reply. Thank You!!!

Goober!!!

[Sgraff_SRHS06]

Originally Posted by dlavery

Just to make sure that I don't slip up and give away too much, are you a-peeling for one clue or a bunch?

-dave

I think this is the slip-up clue he's talking about.