Observations from West Michigan Regional

[archiver]

Posted by Ian Mackenzie at 03/12/2001 11:56 PM EST


Student on team #188, Woburn Robotics, from Woburn C.I..



Here are some of the things we noticed at the West Michigan regional (a few members of our team were there as spectators):

1) Near the end of the regional, teams learned to stick themselves under the bridge to prevent over-rotation and help another team to balance. No robot was ever damaged by doing so.

2) Many teams attempt too much in each match. There WILL be mess-ups in the majority of qualifications so complex plans usually do not work.

3) A lot of time was wasted by robots that blocked the ramp, either by falling on it or not being able to get over it / reset it.

4) Most scores in the qualification rounds were under 100 points.

5) It was extremely rare for it to be worthwile to waste a time multiplier for an extra big ball or robot in the end zone.

6) There were a lot of misjudged time cutoffs too early as well; for instance, cutting off at 25 seconds left when one of the robots was just a few seconds from making it into the end zone.

7) Almost no black balls were picked up off the field.

8) Good off-bridge balancers were very effective.

9) The bridge often came off its center pivot, making it extremely hard to balance or reset.

10) Most matches involved two robots going over the ramp at once. This involves some coordination but usually seemed to work well.

11) Robots should power off when they are not doing anything; there was at least one clear case of everything being done and the alliance missing a time multiplier out of simple forgetfulness.

12) Human players were often disorganized and did not coordinate their shots, leading to many misses.

13) Haste makes waste...many teams tried to do things too fast without enough time lining up (e.g. picking up big balls or lining up with ramp) and wasted a lot of time by having to re-align multiple times.

14) Many robots took a very long time simply to push the goal to the human player; many tried to hook on first and then pull it back, which wasted time.

15) The Anderson power connector fell out on a few robots; should be reinforced.

16) Many teams broke their lights.

17) Lack of traction was a major problem on many teams.

18) Very few times was a stretcher ever used, and no stretcher ever scored points; no team had enough torque/traction to push it over the ramp.

19) Very little greed was shown; it was very rare for any team to hurt the alliance in order to get their own big ball scoring.

-Ian Mackenzie