Thoughts about future autonomous scoring...

[Brandon Holley]

One reason autonomous isn't as big this year is because less people are going for it.

If no one is scoring keepers, than its not really a big deal if your team doesn't score keepers...but if say 2 out of 3 teams are scoring keepers, then your team might start reconsidering scoring them, EVEN IF they don't mean that much to your overall score....

Just something to think about...

[ldeffenb]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

...EVEN IF they don't mean that much to your overall score....

I beg to differ that autonomous doesn't score much. Rather than considering it to be "just 2 points", consider instead that it "DOUBLEs what I score adjacent to it"!

Lynn (D) - Team Voltage 386 - Winner of 2 Awards for 14 Autonomous Modes

Orlando Regional Xerox Creativity Award
Palmetto Regional Innovation In Controls Award

[efoote868]

Personally, I would like to see a longer, more meaningful autonomous period, perhaps 20-30 seconds, along with a better goal. This year, we programmed an autonomous, but once our robot was in perfect condition, the team didn't want to see us breaking the robot (with several matches, other robots got entangled with the rack, and spent the rest of the match untangling). Hopefully I'll be able to convince them to use it at IRI...

This year, the autonomous (IMHO) looked lucrative, if you got it right, you could place a spoiler on your opponent's side, making it nearly impossible for them to get easy rows. Its just our programmers never got the robot until near the end of week 4, and even then we had to wire, re-wire, and re-re-wire (ending in a nightmarish tangled mess).

Although we didn't get to use autonomous, we did however make the robot much more like a robot... whenever our antlers were empty, it would turn on its kicker wheel, and be ready to pick up tubes... when it got a tube, it automatically went to the previous height specified... when it got near the rack, it popped the tube onto it. Next year we'll do that... and hopefully for years to come we'll do that.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by efoote868

Personally, I would like to see a longer, more meaningful autonomous period, perhaps 20-30 seconds, along with a better goal.

Agreed.

One thought that I intend to start working into Potomac Vex League scrimmages is giving robots an uncontested field for X seconds and seeing who can score the most points in that time.

Insert the word autonomously into the paragraph above, squeeze the action into the breaks between regular matches or do it during an evening (sort of like the home run derby that occurs outside of baseball's All-Star game) (or install a second (half of a?) field at each regional (Yikes!)), and you have decent reason to give out an award called "Autonomous High Score".

Blake