Autonomous Longer????

[Vogel648]

You didn't have your robot done until halfway through your competition?

Otherwise you shoulda just told him/them to crack down and skip lunches.

[ay2b]

I'd love to see something like 90 seconds of autonomous followed by 90 seconds of teleoperation. Or maybe 75/75 or 60/60 if 3 minutes is too long.

Or have an autonomous period at both the start and the end of the match.

--AJY

[Lil' Lavery]

In my opinion, teams that thought the autonomous mode wasn't worth it this year, especially those that see it as only 2 points, really didn't examine the strategy and potential game play well enough. A keeper is worth anywhere between 2 and 132 points. It doubles the value of the row(s) it is in, just like any other game piece. And with this exponential scoring, a single piece plays a MASSIVE role in closely contested matches. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...9&postcount=16
Given the maximum potential score of the game (assuming nobody has found a way to elevate 3 robots, and that no tubes were de-scored and then re-scored elsewhere) is 656 points, the possible 132 point swing of each keeper is massive. In that 656 point configuration (2 rows of 8, 1 row of 5, 5 rows of 3, 3 rows of 2, 2 robots elevated), the value of the 3 keepers ranges from 40 points (6.1%) to 396 (61.3%) depending on placement. Autonomous potentially worth MORE THAN HALF of the max score, I don't think that's an worthless autonomous.
Sure, that situation will likely never happen (I don't think a "max score" has happened since 2001), but let's put it into a more realistic scenario. Redabot is an excellent scorer when left alone, but struggles when defense is applied. BlueAlliance is comprised of rampbots who play defense (and/or fail to score ringers). Redalliance has no ramps/lifts/platforms to score any bonus points. Redabot gets held to a single ringer until the last 30 seconds, when BlueAlliance goes back to score their "guaranteed" 60. During that time, Redabot quickly puts up 3 more tubes, but then the clock expires. One of the Blueabots doesn't make it up the ramp (or falls off, or is supported by a ringer, or is touching the wall, or..), giving the blue alliance 30 points. The Red Alliance has 16. If a keeper had been scored, the final score would have been 32-30 in favor of the other alliance. Well, what if the blueabot didn't fall off? Well, it would have only taken 1 more tube for red to have a 64-60 victory.
Look at the experiences of teams like 1902, 67, and 1114, and see the results they had when they scored and missed keepers. In GLR SF 2-2, if 1114 hits their keeper on the bottom, it would have extended their bottom row to 3, and inhibited the blue alliance from scoring a row of 6 on the bottom. If that happens, it suddenly switches from 68-56 Blue, to a 64-36 Red (the would also have been under a red tube), from -12, to +28, a swing of 40 points. 1902 has already attested how a keeper allowed them to reach the finals, and missing one kept them from winning the regional. Keepers are valuable people, it's sad so few teams saw that.

[Donut]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

In my opinion, teams that thought the autonomous mode wasn't worth it this year, especially those that see it as only 2 points, really didn't examine the strategy and potential game play well enough.

True true. Far too many have thought one tube won't matter, when in fact one tube has decided a number of matches. Of course, this seems to have happened every year in autonomous; everyone thinks it will be of little value, and only once competition starts does the full potential of it get demonstrated (last year most teams still didn't have an auto at the beginning of week 1 and 2 regionals; as the regionals played out though, most robots at least tried to block at the end, because everyone recognized the advantage autonomous gave teams).

Also, even if you're looking at just raw tube value (not the potential value if you put up all the other tubes on the field), autonomous still has the potential to score your alliance up to 24 points; there are 3 keepers per alliance, and 9 ringers on the opposite end of the field, all of which can be legally scored in the autonomous period. I would greatly like to see some of the teams scoring keepers consistently go pick up tube to prepare for tele-operated mode, or even try to score that tube (most teams are done scoring keepers in less than 10 seconds anyways). I know we'll be trying it, and for teams that are beyond us and already had keeper scoring working, this would probably be easy work for their programmers.

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Keepers are valuable people, it's sad so few teams saw that.

But all your examples involve robots that are already proficient at scoring. If you can put up enough ringers to make a keeper very valuable, you're probably the calibre of team that has time during the build period to actually do an autonomous mode without sacrificing other elements of the robot. If a team is struggling to make an arm that can do ANYTHING, spending time to work out an autonomous mode is counterproductive.


Plus, keepers are almost exclusively placed on the near side of the rack (or at least, they would be for a basic autonomous mode). For a team that is capable of scoring reliably, this might save them 10 seconds, but they'll need much more than that to score on the opposite side coping with increased defense and decreased visibility.

I think it is less of an active decision to ignore autonomous, and more of a question of effort allocation: If you've got an arm that you can expect to score 4 ringers per match, and even assuming that a keeper will make it 5 per match, the effort to mount all the autonomous sensors, write, and test autonomous mode might be more than the effort required to simply upgrade the arm or arm user interface. Moving from a driver-controlled arm to a PID-controlled arm is probably worth quite a few ringers per match, and might take the same effort as making an autonomous mode (it's also easier to test).

I suppose with a LOT of good scouting information or SOAP-watching you could determine the expected value of a keeper and determine what the real-world expected value of autonomous is. That'd be an interesting project.

[Tetraman]

Originally Posted by Bongle

But all your examples involve robots that are already proficient at scoring.

Which than comes to the question of "Why are there so few proficient teams?" and that leads to the question of the game design.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Tetraman

Which than comes to the question of "Why are there so few proficient teams?" and that leads to the question of the game design.

Or manipulator design....

[LightWaves1636]

I would love to have a longer autonomous time period. Mainly so our robot can get to the other side of the rack and score but our robot just isn't fast enough. But we're going to try and just score on the rack and if we can't get it dialed in, our robot is just going to hurry to the other side so we can start grabbing the tubes off the wall. But the 15 sec does test the strengths of the programmer. When the robot scores within the 15 seconds perfectly, feels pretty good. Plus with the 15 sec., at least try, or be very creative.

Originally Posted by Qbranch

I can say that in this year's game especially the 15seconds is a really short time to do anything seriously cool...

It wasn't intended but it was so cool to watch it happen.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...&highlight=862

[waiakea2024]

I agree. I am a programmer myself and I find it hard to do something in a time as short as 15 seconds. Our programming mentor, when he first found out how much time we had, told us that it probably was not worth the time. we attempted anyway.

[Eldarion]

I am in favor of a longer autonomous mode. Use one of these http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=56061 and have more tasks for the robot to accomplish in aoutonomous!

[Chris_Elston]

Originally Posted by Pavan

Would you support a five to ten second longer autonomous period if FIRST decided to implement it. I feel that many programmers do not feel it is worth it to spend their time for fifteen seconds and that if there was a little more time than more people would find it more important and thus making more people work on autonomous.

Please give your input on whether you think it should be made longer or not.

Pavan.

From our perspect this year.... Auto mode was not worth 6 weeks of work for 2 points and a keeper...and we gave up the arm idea anyway early in the season.

Auto mode last year was worth 30 points plus a 10 point bonus. SWEET.

The amount of time for auto mode to us doesn't really matter, but what it means to the match play does. It's gotta be worth it or gain an advantage.

Both last year and this year seem good for timing. Last year we had an auto mode with camera, and it worked pretty good. This year, we don't have one. So now we just sit still. We might come up with something later, but for now we sit for the whole time frame. If we had 15 seconds last year, I think we could have done more auto correcting to get the aim better, but we did it in the time required. I like it the way it is.

[Render]

Originally Posted by Chris_Elston

From our perspect this year.... Auto mode was not worth 6 weeks of work for 2 points and a keeper...and we gave up the arm idea anyway early in the season.

Auto mode last year was worth 30 points plus a 10 point bonus. SWEET.

The amount of time for auto mode to us doesn't really matter, but what it means to the match play does. It's gotta be worth it or gain an advantage.

Both last year and this year seem good for timing. Last year we had an auto mode with camera, and it worked pretty good. This year, we don't have one. So now we just sit still. We might come up with something later, but for now we sit for the whole time frame. If we had 15 seconds last year, I think we could have done more auto correcting to get the aim better, but we did it in the time required. I like it the way it is.

well it is worth it if you can score on your opponents side of the rack

[neutrino15]

Originally Posted by Chris_Elston

Auto mode was not worth 6 weeks of work for 2 points and a keeper... Auto mode last year was worth 30 points plus a 10 point bonus. SWEET.
The amount of time for auto mode to us doesn't really matter, but what it means to the match play does. It's gotta be worth it or gain an advantage.

I agree. Autonomous should be a more vital part of the whole game. However, you must remember, even though auton is the progger's time to shine, we also have to make driving the thing as simple as possible. Many techniques used during autonomous can be reused during driver operated period. This makes the extra you must write to "automate" it all minimal. As long as you programmed well, tried to fake OO as much as possible, it really isn't a waste of our time.

[Phalanx]

I've said all this before and I'll say it again and I'll keep on saying it....

The only drawbacks are I've seen and heard from teams that they don't plan the time or invest the time and effort to develop autonomous routines prior to shipping the robot. Then they get to a regional decide they would like some autonomous, but only get 5 minutes on a pratice field or a few minutes between rounds to develop it which just isn't enough time to develop, test and debug a sofisticated and complex autonomous routine.

Even with that being said I still believe the autonomous period should be lengthened slightly with more options and opportunities than a single task or two. I suggest allowing for multiple different challenges with some harder than others.

Some can be done with simple dead reckoning; others will require the use of different sensors or combinations of different sensors to meet the challenge. The greater the challenge the greater the bonus.

This way teams that don't yet posse the technical knowledge and skills for the more complex tasks have a chance to learn those skills and succeed through the simpler ones. Using the success of the simpler ones as building blocks for the future.

The teams that do posse the technical knowledge and skills are now presented with a challenge that will push the limitis and test those skills.

By doing it in this way, everyone is given a challenge and a chance to succeed, as well as being given motivation to improve thier knowledge, skills and performances to meet greater challenges over time.

So I also suggest make it a three tier scoring autonomous challenge... a 1, 3, 5 or a 2, 4, 8 scale or similar for the easy, moderate and difficult task respectively.

This program in my opinion is designed to enhance and challenge the students. Not everything should be made easy, simple or plug n play. It's the learning, the challenge, the knowledge gain and the creativity that comes from it that is important.

[marccenter]

My two cents worth,
I like the idea of having low/med/high difficulty objectives in the autonomous mode. This rewards/challenges the programming team and makes it an integral part of the team (this year, why bother with auto when only worth "golden" two points - the mechanical drivetrain team trumphed the programming team for "robot time"
at the regionals - should have gone home and not spent two vacation days in preparation for limited "robot time")?

I was part of a small team and as a result had no operating robot until the regionals and very little "robot face time". Lesson learned: Only more experienced teams
that finish robot early , before regionals, can really utilize the programming skills necessary for autonomous operation.

Lastly, in 2005 competition with Tetra's, at the end of auto
mode you could continue to score with the Tetra, so having possession and positioning a tetra for quick scoring in tele-operated mode was useful. My recommendation is that this feature be re-introduced into the 2008 game play. This
year the auto tube was worthless and needed to be discarded.