If it was amazing on the field, it was doubly so elsewhere. I saw very few matches, but met many new people and talked with many I’ve known for years.
Here’s a couple of observations:
Our team hoped to give out a “Dirty Hands” award for the most involved students in the pits. It was very hard to pick one. Once we made a pick, printer and other issues prevented us from presenting it. Team 2197, we were impressed with how your team worked on the robot and supported each other during repairs and maintainence.
The only way to tell rookies was by their team number. There was very little rookie panic or rookie shyness.
I was extremely impressed again at the Judges that Terry Stevens recruited. Their titles are impressive but observing them interact with the teams was amazing.
It was awesome to see four National Woodie Flowers Award winners presenting the WFA.
I’m still trying to figure out how a 54 team regional felt so comfortable.
I’ll probably write a congrats and thank you in that section of the forum so I’ll just finish by saying I had a blast.
I just want to give a congrats out to 703, 469, and 494 it was tough and you guys pulled through the victory AMAZING JOB GUYS. Also want to throw out a thanks to 1504, and 111 we tried out best and gave it everything we had, we were so close…see you all in ATLANTA!!!
Congrats to the winners. I’d also like to congratulate Wild Stang for getting an autonomous working between competitions, I know how hard it is to test and finish an autonomous mode with limited time. I was just wondering why you did not attempt to score in autonomous in your first final match. We’re glad to have your competition in autonomous mode, also nice job getting to the finals, it looked like those could have easily gone either way.
The reason they didnt on the first match was because they knew that 703 was targeting them and they did not want to have and broken parts at the begining of the match
this was an amazing regional. there were tons of unexpected outcomes that kept everyone excited and on edge. i want to give a shout out to more martians and foley freeze. we gave it one heck of a run. congrats to 469, 494, and 703. there was never a dull moment. see you guys at NATIONALS! WOO-WOO!
Thanks for the kind words. To answer your questions, when we began this season, we made a conscious decision that we weren’t going to dedicate as much time to autonomous (the last 4 years have been grueling). With the new clarified software rules, and the minimal impact on the game, we focused on making a machine that was easily controlled that could play the game well. We did play with some sensors to see what could be done, but we didn’t have too much success. We knew up front that this decision would turn a lot of heads, but it just wasn’t worth it.
There were two things that changed our minds
We overestimated the way that the refs were going to move the rack. When we saw how this was being done in reality, the wheels started spinning a little bit.
At Midwest, we saw 71 perform a maneuver that hadn’t crossed our minds. They faced the rack and drove in an arc around the rack while facing the center of the rack. This got the wheels spinning faster.
After Midwest we began to see some of the benefits of scoring the keepers and put a little effort into autonomous (less than a fix-it window). We combined a single sonar sensor with the newly found arc maneuver and nailed it.
At West Michgan, we tuned some parameters for the real robot. It worked perfectly on the practice field, but would not work on the real field. The sonar didn’t pick up the real spiders on Friday. At the end of the day, we made a realization that we weren’t taking into account the difference between the wood spider feet and the diamond plate ones. FIRST graciously allowed us to use one of the feet for about 10 minutes at the practice field. With a few tweaks, we got it locked in.
The reason that we didn’t run it the first match of finals was because we knew that 703 was going to come after us. We knew that they had the capability, but we didn’t know the route(s) that they were capable of running. Once we saw what they did, Raul made the decision to try to run it.
You not only gained our competition in autonomous this weekend,. There were many teams that were impressive on the field. 33, 67, 397, 469, 1718 come to mind.
That said, thanks to 1504 for picking us, and to 302 for helping round out a great alliance. To all the teams that we faced during elims…thanks for the awesome competition. It was by far the most exciting tournament that I have experienced. Any of those alliance could have won at any time.
Actually, while the diamond plate/wood issue was one of the potential problems we looked into, it ended up being a red herring. We never made any changes for that. The actual root cause ended up being the way the rack was assembled on the real field: the center piece of the bottom spider was hanging lower than the ends of the feet by a significant amount. This made the spider feet point upwards a little bit. We had to point our sensor down somewhat to account for this discrepancy.
Anyway, I too would like to thank 1504 and 302 for letting us take part in that great alliance. Looking at the amazing list of teams that we were able to get past in the quarter’s and semi’s and knowing that we had actually won the last match if it hadn’t been for a penalty tells me that it was really an awesome partnership! Hope to see you all again in Atlanta.
Additionally, I would like to really thank all the staff and volunteers at West Michigan as well. Our whole team really noticed how nice everyone was at the regional and what a positive impact that had on our experience. This regional along with Boilermaker in 2005 are by far my top two favorite regional events that I have attended. I hope we get the chance to return next year!
Hey Dave how did you manage to clock your post at 1:11? I have to agree, the folks in Western Michigan made this one of the nicest regionals I have ever attended. Thanks to all the great teams who attended, it turned out to be as hard as everyone expected. Thanks for exhibiting all the spectacular talent and helping everyone get ready for Atlanta. As Dave V said, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see a Championship winner among the WMR attendees.
Good luck to the Chairman’s Team, Rush (27) who have had a spectacular team for many years.
You had problems with the camera? I think we all did, at least at first.
do you mind explaining to me how this manuever works, or is that too top secret until post-Atlanta?
Also, I would agree that last year when we went to West Michigan is was a great experience. At some point I could see our team going back there for the high quality of competition and fun.
We had problems with autonomous the whole weekend, then after the finals were over, we had the bright idea to change out the camera with a new one, and voila, it worked almost flawlessly
They faced the rack and drove in an arc around the rack while facing the center of the rack. This got the wheels spinning faster.
We call it “circlestrafe”, and as far as I know, it is only possible with Swerve/Crab drive. It is basically like driving a car in a circle (with the side always facing the center of the arc), except that the front or back of the robot faces the center of the arc. It is quite useful for scoring on the rack, as it is one continuous movement and not a series of driving and turning maneuvers
We actually never planned on using the lights. We thought that it wasn’t really worth the effort to figure out how to track two lights with the CMU cam (I don’t even think we unpacked the camera). We had camera experience in 2005 and 2006, so had it been a single light case, we may have tried it.
tdlrali’s post describes the maneuver well, however, 469 has the advantage of having independent steering on their wheels. We have front/back crab, so we turn the wheels 90 degrees and only drive the back wheels. By varying the speed that we drive, the radius of the arc changes.
We call it “circlestrafe”, and as far as I know, it is only possible with Swerve/Crab drive
One could possibly emulate it with a tank style drive if you had a turret. Just do the same trick wildstang does, drive one set of wheels faster than the other and you will go in an arc. The trick to using it with tank drives is that you have to turn your robot sideways and swing the turret perpindicular to the original front. Then you drive sideways keeping the turret pointed to the rack. Essentially you are treating the turret as the front of your robot and your chassis is doing the “crabbing”. This requires the turret to have enough rotation to keep it facing the rack but if you only want to translate across 3 legs that means 105 degress of rotation either way. (90 to turn it at a right angle to your robot’s “front” plus the 15 degrees apart for the legs) Mind you my math may be off but the point is, this circle strafe is NOT owned soley by crab drives. Anyone with tank drive and a turret can do it. I apologize if that is unclear. Short version, just drive in a huge arc around the rack and keep your turret pointed towards the center.
Oh and West Michigan was amazing, Ive never seen so many great teams at one regional. Congrats to 469 494 and 703. You guys were amazing.
