Did Lunacy really level the playing field?

[IKE]

Personally I think the field/standardized wheels did less for leveling the field as the amount of Human Player participation. There is a high concentration of good machines in our area. That being said, this is one of the first years in a long time that a good human player could outscore a good robot.

When looking at a leveling of the field, I would say look more around the middle than in the top. The variation and deviation in OPR analysis shows that this year was more of a toss up match to match. There were a few standouts at the top, but the middle band had a tighter distribution of averages with a higher standard deviation than in the past.

Also, this year was a huge penalty for any duds. If you had a dud on your team, a decent human player would load up 16+ points in Auto, and usually get 20+ before the dud got moved. had we played this game in the pre-kitbot days, it would have been a whole different ball game.

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by Cory

We spent very little time redesigning our drivetrain

Originally Posted by waialua359

I just want to add for '09, that drivetrains didnt make the difference, but man, the orientation sure did.

These two statements, in the same thread, made me chuckle.

Anyways, as in past years, teams who figure out how to play the game effective, and build a robot that can do it, and learn to use that robot well, will end up doing very well. The game challenge changes each year, but there will always be teams that do better than others. It's not a problem.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by squirrel

These two statements, in the same thread, made me chuckle.

Anyways, as in past years, teams who figure out how to play the game effective, and build a robot that can do it, and learn to use that robot well, will end up doing very well. The game challenge changes each year, but there will always be teams that do better than others. It's not a problem.

Now that Glenn brought that up, it reminds me that I forgot to mention this.

This was the one drivetrain related decision that did take a long time. We spent the entire first week debating long or wide. Ultimately we went with long because it made designing our ball handling system easier.

[Lil' Lavery]

A semi-related tangent based on some of the discussion on the last page about dumpers vs. shooters.

I was talking to some other mentors before Einstein started, and the general attitude among the group was "I wish I built a turreted shooter instead of a dumper." Granted, these were teams who were very capable of building shooters with high rates of fire (one of these teams did just that in 2006). But given the style of play, particularly in Atlanta, the ability to aim without repositioning your robot was very valuable. The amount of time it took orienting and lining up with some of the dumpers was a definite disadvantage, even if they had a slightly higher firing rate than the shooters.
After all, in many ways it's cycle time that matters, not just firing rate.

[Steven Sigley]

Originally Posted by EricH

The more options you have, the more challenge you have--and a low-resource team can determine what they can and can't do and do what they can just as fast and as well as a veteran who can do more, but has a harder time deciding what to do because they have the extra freedom.

Just like Rack n Roll: you do ramps, you do defense, or you do scorer, and if you're veteran try both.

[Akash Rastogi]

Do people want the field leveled?

Why?

How would you do it?

Don't answer any of these on here because they've been beaten to death in other threads.

If Dave says that the GDC had no intent of leveling the field, then that's good by me. I do remember hearing that specific phrase used as well though. Will have to dig through to find out where.

I for one don't want anything "leveled." This is a real competition environment and I'd like to keep it that way, regardless of team capabilities, money, blah, blah, and blah. This is my honest opinion and not my team's: If people want a "leveled" and "fair" competition, step down to a lower field like VRC or FRC overall. IF that sounds mean/whatnot, PM me.

[Thermal]

FRP Glassliner doesn't level the playing field, nor was it ever intended to do so.

[waialua359]

I'll go out on a limb and say that the FRP Glassliner didnt level the playing field, but instead limited what veteran teams either did in the past, wanted to continue doing, and/or what they wished they could do because of their capabilities.

[hillale]

I'm fairly confident in the ability to factually say that the FRP actually made the playing field kind of bumpy, in a small, consistent fashion across the "crater." The levelness of the field in relation to what? Tangent to the Earth's surface?

On a more serious note, I think that the game challenge every year is to drive teams to innovate and strive to better play the game. I know that we never stop thinking of ideas to make our bots better and more efficient. Leveling the playing field should be the last thing that the game should try and do. Making every team equal (leveling the playing field) sounds kind of like socialism, and with the human thought process and flaws, it just doesn't work.

[GaryVoshol]

You cannot point to any one individual team and say their results this year proved or disproved any "leveling" concept. Teams change from year to year all on their own. Case in point, a couple years ago we got down to the final pick by the #1 alliance at GLR. I suddenly realized that two unpicked teams still on the sidelines had been on the Einstein winning alliance the previous year. At least one of them wasn't going to be in the finals at GLR.

How teams adapt to the challenges given each year by the GDC determines whether teams are a perennial powerhouse or a one-flash wonder. Or anywhere in between.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Cory

The gap is not all that big in the first place. Since 2005 and the advent of the then IFI kitbot (Now AndyMark), the gap was narrowed dramatically. For those who were not around prior to 2005, the kitbot was a complete joke. It was nearly useless. This meant teams all but had to make a custom base/drive train. Many teams failed. I'd estimate that perhaps 20% or more of the teams could not drive reliably. Post 2005, everyone can have a reliable, robust base driving in under a week (and normally 2-3 days). Immobile robots are far less common now.

The introduction of AndyMark products in 2005 narrowed the gap even more. You wanted a shifting transmission prior to 2005? Well you had two options. Option one-use the drill motor transmissions that came in the kit and shift them with a servo. These were not shift on the fly. Option two-design, build, and test your own custom shifting transmission. Both of these options were labor intensive and were not trivial. Many teams who tried option number one couldn't do it reliably. Option number two was a LOT of work.

Along comes AndyMark in 2005. Suddenly anyone with $700 to spend can buy reliable two speed shift on the fly gearboxes for their robot. Now two speed robots are the norm, not the exception. Teams who normally made custom shifting transmissions can now use some COTS components to lessen the labor involved, or purchase the entire assembly to focus on other components of the robot.

I wasn't going to comment on this before, but why not.

973 wasn't a "have" team at the end of last season, and we decided we weren't happy about that.

Did we sit around keeping everything the same, the only action we take being complaining about large corporate teams and waiting for a sponsor to fall on us? No, we hit the pavement hard, in all aspects. We raised more money this season than any other, and with the exception of a NASA grant, actually LOST many of our main large sponsors (Big thanks to Laron for sticking around). We threw all conventional wisdom on the team out the window, and replaced with hard work and a focus on continuous improvement.

Our shop is one of the smallest (and leakiest) I have ever seen teams work in, our machine tools are extremely temperamental (and I think we actually lost more time with their temperamentalness than any progress we made with them), our neighborhood is poor and agricultural, our team is small, etc...

We used a lot of the money we raised to buy nicer tools and equipment (not machine tools, that's later on the list), and plan on continuing this process. We have some of the nice things the "haves" have, but our goal is to eventually have all of it.

We also started stressing that you have to do all the little jobs right for the big picture to add up, and the quote in Akash's sig from Paul Copioli sums that up great;

Be excellent in everything you do and the results will just happen.

So, if you feel your team is at a disadvantage, or the playing field isn't level.... Do something about it.