paper: Spanking the Children

[M. Lillis]

So you mentioned "bad design" of the human-player stations on the side of the field. I completely agree with you and I think that if there were a wall near the human player stations, it would solve the problem that FIRST states the (controversial and penalty prone) "safety-zone" tries to solve: safety.

This game is obviously defense-heavy, and there are the necessary ball-intake systems. I have yet to see an intake that does not go outside of the robot's frame perimeter. These two aspects do not play well together. A good driver can avoid most "out-of-safety-zone" penalties, but with ball collection near the side of the field, and then you mix some defense in, things can get hairy very fast.

When the human player inbounds the ball to the robot it is a very precise movement (I guess it depends on the strategy), because if the ball misses or bounces out of the recieving robot, it can roll very far away. Now, they return the ball to the human player in order to give that alliance the best control of their game piece as possible. Yes, the human player can make a better decision about ball placement (strategy-wise) than a volunteer or ref can, but it is not perfect. Human players are now forced to fear the inbounding of a ball. This either involves what our team dubbed, "the T-rex arms", or standing as far back from the field as possible (while still in the box) and lobbing the ball into the field. To get to the point; forcing the human player to fear the field and the ball slows the game down and does nothing to increase safety. (One could argue that it makes it less safe, because some teams tell their human players to keep their hands in their pockets to avoid 50pt penalties. How can you prepare for 3lb, 24in diameter balls moving at high speeds if your hands are in your pocket?)

To get to my suggested solution before this dissolves into a crazy rant: Install a short wall, say 3-4ft tall, that sits on the "safety-zone" tape marks. This wall would be a lexan sheet supported by a metal frame. It would do two things; prevent robots from putting extensions outside of the field (or out of the safety zone, whatever), and prevent the human players from accidentily putting their hands in the potentially harmful path of robots. The human player would still be able to inbound the ball by just rolling it over the top of the wall (which would be relatively easy for anyone over 4ft tall) I honestly think that a physical wall would serve a better function than an invisible plane marked by yellow gaffer's tape.

Just my $0.02
/end semi-rant