Week 1 Impressions of Rack 'N Roll

[LocknLoad]

I found the Granite State Regional to be very exciting and entertaining. There were a vairety of robots competing and it discourages me when I hear of teams tying at 0-0 at others.

Watch some of these videos, especially those with teams 501 or 40 in them.

http://soap.circuitrunners.com/2007/movies/nh/

Even though you can't hear the crowd you can be sure their teams were cheering their heads off. Hopefully this will bring some light to this so called 'booring' competition.

[VanMan]

At first the game seemed silly because teams were not scoring too much, but this year defense is key. Our robot was a crazy defense bot. We could stop any team from scoring ringers. According to the stats the ramps gave the most points for the rounds. We also had incredible ramps that did not fail. Currently we are trying to get the money to go to Championship. So overall I really like this years game.

[Ben Piecuch]

This is week 1 of a very dynamic game, where the robots (and their drivers) need a bit of practice, and a better understanding of the game. The Thursday practice rounds practically put me to sleep, saved only by the slew of ringers thrown around the field. I was shocked by the 2-0, 0-0 scores in Friday's rounds. But Saturday and the eliminations, whoa! If anyone thinks that this is a one-dimensional game, I suggest you watch the QF rounds at BAE. Seeing the #1 seed alliance play the game perfectly, made me a believer!

I'm now excited for this game, and can't wait for our chance to play during week 3. By then, autonomous will be much more prominent, rack scoring will be a vital part of the game, and 2x 12" lifters should have all their bugs worked out. History has shown that week 1 is always a low-scoring, defensive stand-off. But by the end of the regionals and the championship event, the game has played out as it was designed, with plenty of offense, defense, and amazing plays.

My prediction for the finals in Atlanta: 2 opposing 2x 12" lifters, and a shoot-out around the rack with 4 bots who can each place 5-7 tubes (be it keepers, ringers, or spoilers.) This will require the use of all 3 levels of the rack and tubes from both sides of the field. You can count on a lot of scoring, and the most excitement we've seen since FIRST Frenzy. Get ready!

BEN

[razor95kds]

i see this game as starting slow but will definitely pick up at nationals, just like triple play. Tube scoring will be important as the rack will be filled and ramps will be less important and will seperate the good from the great alliances.

[dbell]

i see this game as starting slow but will definitely pick up at nationals, just like triple play. Tube scoring will be important as the rack will be filled and ramps will be less important and will seperate the good from the great alliances.
Reply With Quote

I agree that the game will pick up at nationals. but when the rack is full that sometimes means that the ramps will make all the difference.

[T3_1565]

I will be shocked to see a full rack. I mean it might be done if there were no defence, but from what I have seen defence is becoming very important. It seems fairly easy to stop a bot from scoring all round and winning through that method. But Week 1 has had some nice matches, but expect so better ones to come for sure!

[dangerousdave]

It was a little disappointing to see a few robots that just unfolded in their alliance zone without even playing a little defense.

Concerning the on-screen scoring and timing; I would like to see a return of the actual number of seconds left in the match instead of or in addition to, the little green line indicator. Granted the announcer usually told us how many seconds were left but it would be nice to see the actual time.

As others have said here, the lack of autonomous mode scoring was disappointing.

However, the game was exciting especially in the playoff rounds.

Dave

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by dangerousdave

Concerning the on-screen scoring and timing; I would like to see a return of the actual number of seconds left in the match instead of or in addition to, the little green line indicator. Granted the announcer usually told us how many seconds were left but it would be nice to see the actual time.

I wholeheartedly second this request. I'm surprised it wasn't a natural part of the original scoring software design.

[dpraedan]

Originally Posted by Neo3One3

I agree greatly with this. During the BAE Regional we faced one of our opponents four times throughout qualifiers, and another three times. Truly, something needs to be done about this scheduling.

Indeed, we faced you guys four times, and it seems like you were either facing us or 172. We have some alumni who were volunteering during GSR and we learned from them that the alliance selections are actually not random. There's an algorithm that is essentially dependent on the team numbers themselves, and it pitted lower number teams against one another and vice versa, with the idea that the more experienced teams would be performing better than the newer teams. This, of course, is quite untrue, but that seems to be the way it played out.

[meatmanek]

Originally Posted by platypus

6. Autonomous is a bust, which is kind of sad but completely unsurprising. One keeper was scored today. Just one. As a software guy, I know that it's not an easy autonomous to write this year. Last year, you could use the light to align a shooter and fire from the starting position. This year, you have to move while tracking the light, and move a manipulator to the proper height. This is not easy, and there really isn't much incentive to make it work. Since spoilers aren't used, keepers are basically ringers (and even if spoilers were used, it wouldn't matter very often as spoilers would break the row on the ringer next to the keeper). That's 2 whole points for your trouble, which is why teams just aren't bothering. (My team for one instead focused on an advanced teleoperated control system with preset postitions recorded into EEPROM, and relegated autonomous to that bottom part of the software todo list that never sees a share of the limited integration time.)

I have to agree that autonomous isn't worth as much as it could be. At St. Louis, maybe one or two spoilers were placed ever. I thought we would be spending most of our time working on autonomous, when in fact we spent most of our time working on perfecting our teleoperated code. We do plan to write an autonomous mode, but we think it will mostly be for show.

This year, more than ever, a sophisticated teleoperated mode is incredibly useful, particularly on 868's robot. Our tube handling system has 3 separate controllable parts, and a simple switch-on-the-OI system would make the job of the operator incredibly complex. Fortunately for me, depending on the job at hand, there are only a few distinct setups that the system should have. (The grabber should never be open when the arm is up in the air unless you're trying to take off a spoiler, or you've hit the rack)

[Eldarion]

As a programmer, I am very disappointed by the lack of emphasis FIRST placed on autonomous. 2 points is something that can be gotten far easier by making the arm a little faster, playing a little better defense, etc.

According to the scoring for this year's game, the most important thing is to lift two robots 12". Problem is, everyone decided to make a ramp bot, with a few exceptions. This makes it difficult to get ramp bots on top of other ramp / lifting bots, and as an added 'bonus' decreases the amount of scoring on the rack.

I think that the autonomous period should have been emphasized much more strongly (maybe a 15-point bonus per autonomous keeper? This would have made autonomous worth almost as much as lifting, and would have decreased the amount of ramp bots out there in my opinion.)

Also, a little note as to the rack. There are several times when the rack was moved such that both lights were out of the field of view of the camera. There probably should have been lights above all 8 columns, not just the four columns. This would also have allowed semi-automatic scoring during manual mode, and may once again have increased the number of ringers and spoilers placed on the rack. 90 seconds or less is not much time to be able to manually place more than a couple of tubes! (I am assuming a minimum of 30 seconds to be able to set up to lift / drive into position to be lifted)

So, there you are. I don't mean to bash this year's game, but to offer constructive criticism of it in the hopes that next year's game will be better.

[PandaMan]

Although autonomous may not be as vital as it was last year, a dependable autonomous can play a key role in winning heavy defensive matches. (We tied our last qualification match 4-4; an autonomous cap would have been very nice at that point). Also, autonomous makes it much easier to start building a ring, as opposed to starting from scratch during the teleoperated period. I agree that autonomous should be given more importance like last year, but it isn't a total bust this year.

[Eldarion]

Originally Posted by PandaMan

Although autonomous may not be as vital as it was last year, a dependable autonomous can play a key role in winning heavy defensive matches. (We tied our last qualification match 4-4; an autonomous cap would have been very nice at that point). Also, autonomous makes it much easier to start building a ring, as opposed to starting from scratch during the teleoperated period. I agree that autonomous should be given more importance like last year, but it isn't a total bust this year.

Yes, but the mechanical team can probably improve the scoring rate during the teleoperated period in less time than it would take to fix the broken autonomous mode!

And they would be right in sacrificing autonomous for other mechanical improvements; autonomous usually works at best 75% of the time due to the random rotation of the rack, whereas a faster arm or better defense will work 100% of the time.

In a perfect world, the robot could be perfected mechanically to be the fastest it can possibly be, and then programming could add that extra tube in automomous, but it never works out that way because there is only so much time in the fix-it windows and the practice field.

[PandaMan]

Originally Posted by Eldarion

Yes, but try telling that to the members of your team who could mechanically improve the scoring rate during the teleoperated period!

I was talking about teams in general.

Originally Posted by Eldarion

And they would be right; autonomous usually works at best 75% of the time due to the random rotation of the rack, whereas a faster arm or better defense will work 100% of the time.

Even so, Having an autonomous that works 75% of the time would have made a huge difference in many of those 0-0, 2-2, 2-4 type matched. In such cases, similar to last year, low scoring matches can be greatly affected by autonomous.

[Frinkahedron]

Originally Posted by Neo3One3

I agree greatly with this. During the BAE Regional we faced one of our opponents four times throughout qualifiers, and another three times. Truly, something needs to be done about this scheduling.

612 played 611 in every single qualification match at VCU on Friday and early Saturday.