Drivers' Meeting

[sw293]

What were the interesting questions, answers and interpretations? Is anything going to be remarkably different from the regionals to the championship?

[sw293]

What was said regarding extensions and contact outside the bumper zone?

[Swampdude]

Basically you're screwed if you have an apendage outside the bumper zone and someone either hits it or you hit someone with it, you get a 5 pt penalty every time theres contact. Also if you have an apendage that goes more than 3" into the ball chute your alliance gets dq'd, and that even if someone else pushes you causing the thing to go in. So if you have a thingy outside the bumper zone you better take it off or risk losing every match because of it. These are 2 brutal rules that will ruin many teams design strategies, that are being executed on late Thursday/Friday morning basically, giving these affected teams no time to make the needed changes. Too much too late IMO. Also you can't ride up a bumper on top of the bumper zone etc. But if a bot is on its side you may push them wherever you like. They also clarified pinning to exist everywhere on the field except when a bots wheels are all entirely off the carpet (on the ramp) then they are fair game.
The q&a got a little coarse where some students weren't too happy with these rules and Dr. ???Aiden took the abuse well. These rules acoording to him always existed, but to my knowledge were never enforced.

[henryBsick]

The drivers meeting was good, in the beginning. Dr. Brown did a wonderful job at doing what he is supposed to do in explaining the basic layout and gist of things as per the national event. He answered many Chiefdelphi questions promptly and concisely. However, when it came to the live QandA period, I was shocked. So many questions asked had already been answered or were what I consider common knowledge. There were however a few diamonds in the rough. On of which was from a member of team 4 who asked if an appendage broke and was the first part of said robot to contact another robot (being outside of the bumper zone) would there be a penalty. There answer was yes, a penalty would ensue. I don't know why I typed that entire question out, just an example I guess of one of the good questions.
I ended up having to leave early however when a member from a team not to be mentioned here, repeatedly asked for non bumper zone interaction clarification. Many of his questions were to the point of "if I repeatedly hit an opponent in an area where they were outside of the bumper zone will they continue to rack up penalty points?" I have no problem with the rules, they haven't changed, but this person's questioning over and over which lead everyone there to believe that this is their game plan for tomorrow (whether it is or isn't I will have to see) disgusted me, that is when my drive partner and I left.

Teams, drivers, coaches, read the rules and play with gracious professionalism in mind. I understand that the game is the game, but lets not turn this game to a 2005 who gets the most penalties.

Maybe I am over-reacting, maybe not. I have had a long day of making my robot the best SCORER (not de-scorer) it can be. I am off to watch match video and sleep.


-$.02 de Henry

[sw293]

Originally Posted by Henry_222

Many of his questions were to the point of "if I repeatedly hit an opponent in an area where they were outside of the bumper zone will they continue to rack up penalty points?" I have no problem with the rules, they haven't changed, but this person's questioning over and over which lead everyone there to believe that this is their game plan for tomorrow (whether it is or isn't I will have to see) disgusted me, that is when my drive partner and I left.

Well you must have heard enough to get the answer to this question. What was his answer to this question?

Did he address the idea of incidental contact? They don't mention "incidental contact" four times in <G22> for no reason, so any discussion on the rule without mention of what constitutes incidental contact is incomplete.

[sw293]

Also: did he address extension contact inside the bumper zone?

[StephLee]

One new thing they're doing is putting a minor delay (about 10 seconds, we were told) between autonomous mode and the regular game, when they'll check the score and verify which alliance won. They said this was to eliminate matches where an alliance gets an unfair advantage because of a scoring screw up, and I completely applaud this change. We very nearly lost a match at Chesapeake (one point difference) because of that.

[Andrew Blair]

Well, that can go down at least as the most entertaining driver's meeting I've attended though...

[Guy Chriqui]

yeah the q&a got real harsh especially when that one guy asked for replacement cameras
the questions on a whole i felt were already answered in the beginning and just dragged on for some reason
btw i was that team 4 member and the fact that you can remember my question word for word astounds me =.

[sw293]

If contact inside the bumper zone precedes contact outside the bumper zone, is the contact considered incidental?

[Lil' Lavery]

The bumper zone rules have not changed since January 7th (with the exception of a Q&A clarification that stated a robot on the ramp that has contact, iniated by either party, outside of the bumper zone does not suffer a penalty for either robot, due to the unlevel surfacing), they just were not enforced very well at msot (if any) regional competitions. Go read the rules again, and ask a head ref tomorrow if you still have questions.
The spirit of the rules, at least how I and my team interpreted them, was to minimize any potentially harmful contact by forcing the elimination of contact outside of the bumper zone. This was mean to keep all hits "clean" body-on-body hits, nothing that can spear, impale, tip, trip, flip, dent (if you actually have your bumpers mounted, our .75" bend into our right side lower box channel shows why you should have them, and we now have them attached again), or otherwise harm another robot.

[sw293]

Originally Posted by Henry_222

On of which was from a member of team 4 who asked if an appendage broke and was the first part of said robot to contact another robot (being outside of the bumper zone) would there be a penalty. There answer was yes, a penalty would ensue.

This contact would certainly be more incidental than one robot with an extension deliberately hitting another robot with an extension, extension-to-extension. However, the former is not incidental (if it were it would not be penalized), and it seems that this answer from the Q&A implies that the latter is incidental (It reads:"The second bullet of <G22> states "incidental contact will not be penalized". If two robots with extensions contact exclusively outside the bumper zone, there would be no penalty.")

I'm confused .

[sw293]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

The bumper zone rules have not changed since January 7th (with the exception of a Q&A clarification that stated a robot on the ramp that has contact, iniated by either party, outside of the bumper zone does not suffer a penalty for either robot, due to the unlevel surfacing), they just were not enforced very well at msot (if any) regional competitions. Go read the rules again, and ask a head ref tomorrow if you still have questions.

The rule might not have changed (actually it was changed on Update 12) but interpretations of the word "incidental" may well have, and I would like to know what incidental means. I've read the rules enough to know that "Rule <R35> in Section 5.3.4 establishes ROBOT BUMPER ZONEs" is not the case (Robot bumper zone is defined in section 4).

[Tom Bottiglieri]

What was the ruling on drivers stepping over the line? 0 or the buzzer?

I couldnt make it to the meeting.. team dinner..

[Mark McLeod]

Our driver relayed to me that you aren't to go over the line until the clock changes from 0 to 40. Then you can go.

We got to the team dinner late