The burning question: How many ringers can your team REALISTICALLY score?

[thefro526]

After some practice my team should be able to score at least 3 ringers per match(knock on wood ). Our plan of attack seems tobe for the first 1 min 30sec we will score tubes and for the remaining 30 we will deploy our ramp and hopefully some one will drive on us getting a minumum of 15 points if not 30 points.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by EricH

And just how many of the 12 Einstein robots could do more than one at a time? At least six (the ones that made it to the finals) couldn't do it without a special effort, if at all.

But IRI Champs 33 and 233, who beat Einstien winners/finalists 330 and 56 (as well as single holder and division semi-finalist 980), could each hold multiple.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by nuggetsyl

Every year we never get paired with our friend teams. I guess we just have bad luck.

That's because, IMO, you had the best robot in the "world" in 2006 and everyone wanted to pick you.
Had you folks been with the high rollers, team 987, like vegas, you folks would have been unstoppable. I mean, to score 187 points?? in one match is just nuts!!!

[JoelGoering]

My team, team 935, has been practicing the past few days. With about 10 hours of drive time our drive team has been consistently putting on 5-7 ringers in 2 minutes. This is with another chasis running defense against them, and only half a rack. Sometime, I'll hopefully be able to put some video of it up.

[raymaniac]

I'm sure we could easily score 6+ ringers...
If the other alliance magically disappeared...
and our drivers were really good...
And we could slow down time

In reality, I have no idea

[Karthik]

As for this year, I have no idea how things are going to play out. But here are some concrete numbers from 2005 as a reference, the following data is from Friday action on the Archimedes field at the Championship. This division was considered to be "stacked", with teams such as 71, 173, 179, 217, 233, 980 & 1114, to name a few.

The average amount tetras capped per team, per match was 2.86.
Only 6 teams (217, 1114, 40, 71, 997, 173) averaged more than 5.0 caps per match. The highest being 217, at 5.8 per match.

If you were around in 2005, you may remember many teams saying "oh, we do 6 a match, easily". Well, trust me, they weren't. Basically what I'm trying to say, is that teams always over inflate their scoring capabilities. Beware.

[d.courtney]

Originally Posted by Karthik

As for this year, I have no idea how things are going to play out. But here are some concrete numbers from 2005 as a reference, the following data is from Friday action on the Archimedes field at the Championship. This division was considered to be "stacked", with teams such as 71, 173, 179, 217, 233, 980 & 1114, to name a few.

The average amount tetras capped per team, per match was 2.86.
Only 6 teams (217, 1114, 40, 71, 997, 173) averaged more than 5.0 caps per match. The highest being 217, at 5.8 per match.

If you were around in 2005, you may remember many teams saying "oh, we do 6 a match, easily". Well, trust me, they weren't. Basically what I'm trying to say, is that teams always over inflate their scoring capabilities. Beware.

Yes you bring up a good point, but I am going out on a limb, and going to assume more teams are scoring in auto then 2005 (maybe this thought comes solely from the fact that our team can quite regularly score in auto this year and very well in game, as opposed to our 2005 bot having troubles even capping in game). But there is one more dynamic to the game you may be forgetting, the human players can throw the ringers (in 2005 your bot may have been disabled for up to 5 sec as a human loader went to place one on). That in itself changes the game dramatically, its not hard to throw the rings within a said target area one metre (3.3 feet for the Americans) in diameter, sure the other side may be hard to throw to, but you have a huge line laying on the floor, much easier then having to go to a specific loading zone. Yes I agree that most teams inflate the number, or use the number that they had when they played on a field all by themselves, no opposition scoring or defending and even no alliance placing ringers in convenient places. I believe that’s were the problem lies, but I don't think this game will be quite like '05, I think it will be quicker paced, and have a lot more success for teams then the past two years have. Our team can do 8-10 (not inflated) undefended and no other robots on the field getting in the way, defended I assume around 2-8 (depending on the level of defence played).

[The Lucas]

Originally Posted by d.courtney

Yes you bring up a good point, but I am going out on a limb, and going to assume more teams are scoring in auto then 2005 (maybe this thought comes solely from the fact that our team can quite regularly score in auto this year and very well in game, as opposed to our 2005 bot having troubles even capping in game).

I respectfully disagree on the more scoring in autonomous than 2005. IMHO this year's autonomous challenge is very difficult (and with little reward compared to previous years) because of the randomness of the Rack. It requires the camera to even get close. While I don't doubt that you and other experienced programmers will come up with consistent routines, that will not be the norm. Remember that in 2005 many teams could score the starting tetra or knock a hanging tetra without even using their drive train.

The fact that you can throw the tubes to your bot should help up the scoring, but the centralized Rack provides a great bottleneck for the D. Only a couple more days before we get to see it start to play out. I think that once again this year, Elims will be almost a different game because the tube scores will be on par with the ramp/lifter scores.

[Uberbots]

Our bot actually has a surprisingly good scoring mechanism- we were able to score 64 points in a match during one of our practice sessions in our warehouse. We hope to go higher tonight and add a defensive element to the field with our '06 robot.

Our control mechanism makes our arm almost effortless to control- position snapping is awesome.

Record scoring time (from pickup to succesful placing)- 8 seconds

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by The Lucas

I respectfully disagree on the more scoring in autonomous than 2005. IMHO this year's autonomous challenge is very difficult (and with little reward compared to previous years) because of the randomness of the Rack. It requires the camera to even get close. While I don't doubt that you and other experienced programmers will come up with consistent routines, that will not be the norm. Remember that in 2005 many teams could score the starting tetra or knock a hanging tetra without even using their drive train.

The fact that you can throw the tubes to your bot should help up the scoring, but the centralized Rack provides a great bottleneck for the D. Only a couple more days before we get to see it start to play out. I think that once again this year, Elims will be almost a different game because the tube scores will be on par with the ramp/lifter scores.

I could not agree with you more this year.

During autonomous mode you'll have:
1> Multiple robots trying to track the same targets, creating many chances for friendly 'bots to knock you off your line.
2> The scoring target (spider leg) will be moving (as other robots try to score) relative to the tracking lamp.
3> Robots that will play defense during autonomous (I know we plan on doing just that) and most will have powerful drive systems.
4> only 15 seconds to aquire, move, line up, orientate the scoring object, and score your keeper or else it's removed from play.

I believe you will see 1 (maybe 2) keepers scored, on average, during automomous mode play. This estimate is for both alliances

I believe that with all thats going on, a great scorer will average under 3 ringers a game and that most teams will average around 1 per game.

This will put the game onto who has the best way to elevate the robots at the end game. I've seen numerous robots (here on CD) with steep angle (>20 degrees) and thin (under 32" wide) ramps.

Last years ramp was steeper, but this years ramps (on the robots) are not as sturdy, not as wide, and not standardized. The robots are not specifically designed to climb a particular ramp.

As such, I believe that most robots will score far less than people are saying they can.

JM(NS)HO

--- Dan

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by d.courtney

Yes you bring up a good point, but I am going out on a limb, and going to assume more teams are scoring in auto then 2005 (maybe this thought comes solely from the fact that our team can quite regularly score in auto this year and very well in game, as opposed to our 2005 bot having troubles even capping in game). But there is one more dynamic to the game you may be forgetting, the human players can throw the ringers (in 2005 your bot may have been disabled for up to 5 sec as a human loader went to place one on). That in itself changes the game dramatically, its not hard to throw the rings within a said target area one metre (3.3 feet for the Americans) in diameter, sure the other side may be hard to throw to, but you have a huge line laying on the floor, much easier then having to go to a specific loading zone. Yes I agree that most teams inflate the number, or use the number that they had when they played on a field all by themselves, no opposition scoring or defending and even no alliance placing ringers in convenient places. I believe that’s were the problem lies, but I don't think this game will be quite like '05, I think it will be quicker paced, and have a lot more success for teams then the past two years have. Our team can do 8-10 (not inflated) undefended and no other robots on the field getting in the way, defended I assume around 2-8 (depending on the level of defence played).

David,

I was just commenting on the tendancy of people to inflate stats. I agree that there are many subtle differences between the two games.

[Lil' Lavery]

While only a handful or two of teams at each regional will be CONSISTENT autonomous (>80%) scorers, I believe that many teams will be able to it between 25%-50% of the time. There are ways to place the keepers that give a fairly large margin of error, and other ways to sense the rack once you get near it (aka ultrasonic sensors/touch sensors/etc.).
What will really be interesting is what consistent teams do AFTER they score a keeper

[ericand]

The camera is not needed to get close. It can be used, but there are lots of other ways of detecting where to score. It just depends on how picky you are about exactly what leg you score on. The rack is way big enough to allow strategys that don't require precison to avoid your team mates in attempting to score.

[waialua359]

this weekend will be a good indication of whats to come and how accurate this poll is on scoring and how well teams can do the autonomous.

[Andrew Blair]

I have no idea what's going to happen in autonomous. That's going to depend on the average programming ability of teams in FIRST. The incentive this year simply has not pushed teams to center their efforts to code instead of mechanisms. I've seen several successful teams posting video here, in similar numbers to last year. I do think that, like last year, there will be between two and five robots per regional that can consistently score, and the rest will flounder around or play defense.

I do know that defense in the operator game will be a more effective strategy than has been suggested, because of what The Lucas said. There is a massive choke-point in the middle of the field that a one armed monkey with half a brain can effectively defend half of. Even if a box was to play around in the middle of field, get in the way of the rack and push around tubes that are thrown to robots, the ability of 1-2 robots to move about and score will be severely hampered. Try to defend that box, and you've created an even bigger mess in the middle of the field. While you sacrifice one scoring robot, you can gain more than that impeding the other team. Once they lose a spot on the rack, they're done there. You can't come back with a volume score later on.

My opinion: teams that can score well under pressure, or are good opportunists will do well this year. As well as those defenders who can do a bit of scoring themselves while they're over on the opposing alliance's side.