What went right?

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by SURVIVORfan44

This year's game embraced teamwork unlike any other.
Teamwork is very valuable every year, I know, but this year seemed different to me. At VCU, I saw the teams work together like never before. I was impressed. The teams that worked together the best won easily.

From being down on the field, I can definitely say you are 100% correct. I'm not sure if anyone saw me, but it was such an incredible experince as coach leaving my drivers behind and hopping over to the partner teams to make sure they had the information and direction they needed. I really was all over the allaince station, because that's what it took to get the job done. And to watch our partners keep our opponents off of us, and to push us back into the homezone when our drivetrain died, and to make that last minute dash onto our platforms, and to level out mid-lift, it was all just so incredible. This is a game that truly does take teamwork to succeed. The coordination we were able to achieve behind that window was just remarkable.

[MrForbes]

Pretty much everything went right.

Something specific that went right: I got to personally thank Ian Lao, Don Knight, Jeff Seaton, Steve Sanghi, Carol Popovich, and several others who helped make the Arizona regional happen.

[Luke]

I loved that in eliminations all 1st rounds of the 4 quarter final matches are played before moving to the 2nd rounds.

[Jeremytice]

This year at FLR everything ran very smoothly. There were no field problems and no scoring problems like Ed said. Also the matches were basically on time like scheduled! Great job FIRST!

[Bongle]

With just a few hiccups, the webcasts worked excellantly, though I wish that GLR had one.

The end-of-game ramp climbing is more exciting than last year, since you don't know if the robot can climb, or if the ramps will deploy.

[ChrisH]

The only restart we had at SoCal was due to human error. The announcer started the 3-2-1 while the IFI guy was still on the field and the guy pushing the button didn't notice. Since the robot he was checking out was one of the few with an automode and it went forwards, he left the field rather quickly when the start sounded.

There was a field problem but the IFI guy had not worked out just where it was before he beat a hasty retreat and he signaled us to stop the match.

Since it was the only time we restarted, we forgot to have teams reset their robots. Which resulted in another restart ...

Such a change from previous years when humans had nothing to do with causing restarts.

[Donut]

Relatively few field problems this year, the only time the fog horn sounded was in the second Qualifier at AZ (a robot didn't initialize to move, the same thing happened in the first match so both had to be replayed). Other than those delays, the times went smoothly as well; they were on time for all the alliance selections and ceremonies, and we were actually 15 minutes ahead of schedule on Friday and got an extra long lunch (something I've NEVER seen before, usually we're having to cut 15 minutes out of lunch to make up for lost time).

I also like the new ranking/scoring software, no crashes in the system, ever, plain and simple.

[Steve S.]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

There were no scoring software problems at FLR or field problems. In face I haven't heard of any of those problems at all this year.
FIRST deserves a pat on the back for that.

i do believe there was one problem where they had to restart the match...

Originally Posted by Jeremytice

This year at FLR everything ran very smoothly. There were no field problems and no scoring problems like Ed said. Also the matches were basically on time like scheduled! Great job FIRST!

They were actually running about 10 mins ahead on thursday

[Alex Cormier]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

There were no scoring software problems at FLR or field problems. In face I haven't heard of any of those problems at all this year.
FIRST deserves a pat on the back for that.

Actually yes there was.

Friday's last few matches had a issue because of the palm pilots which did the real time scoring had kept restarting themselves. The reaosn was because of a earlier match which had a penalty so they had to put it back into the system, so the system saw two of the same match and freaked out. but by staurday they fixed the issue. other then that FLR ram very smooth and we were actually on time for 90% of the event. i never thought that would have happened.

[Dan Petrovic]

The real time and final scoring.

It's outstanding this year. We were taking robots off of the field and the scores were up. I was very impressed with how fast they got the score up the first time they did.

[Cuog]

Well I'm glad that there are still things in the game that everyone enjoyed, I certainly enjoyed the amount of team work this brought about. Its really fun to have teams try to deal with differences in design and how to overcome not quite compatible designs(Omnis + Ramp = true challenge).

[JaneYoung]

One of the stories I'd like to share is from the Florida Regional.
I was taking a lunch break and one of the great referees who has been volunteering there for 11 years - asked about his PDA. He wanted to know who came up with that idea. He commented that it was fast and accurate and he loved it, just loved it. He said, "someone needs to tell whoever designed this that it is great!" He called it his PDQ (pretty darn quick).
Jane

[J Hayashi]

Our team loved that the gameplay required closer cooperation with the other teams. As mentioned before, the practice field at the PNW Regional was larger than past years. This allowed us and other teams to practice with each other. It was helpful in giving our driver the confidence to get up some of the narrower ramps.

The Gracious Professionalism showed by the teams at the Regional. Team 1318 gave us pointers on autonomous strategy and Team 1280 provided us with Anderson connectors to repair our backup battery connection. We played against Team 1280 in every match and they were still willing to help us.

On a more personal note: Our team had a great season! We were able to use pneumatics, learned how to create several new mechanisms, got the camera to work at home, and have students that want to stay involved in robotics year round.