Autonomous scoring - How many?

How many teams (total), will successfully score their keeper during the 15 second autonomous period? (For sake of arguments, let us say successful in more than half of their attempts)

This doesn’t seem like a very easy thing to do, so I’m going with 1.

Im not sure exactly how many it will be but a safe guess will be 50% of the bots will score keepers. Last year some teams never used the camera so they have to actually try and get it working perfectly to score in autonomus.

We’re working on it…we’ve decided we want that to be a goal of ours, but don’t have a reasonable estimate yet. Show me a team that can do that after only two days, and I’ll be impressed.

2005 - Dynamic game piece, static goal
2007 - Static game piece, dynamic goal.

I expect better results than 2005, but not as good as last year. I voted 1.

I also think that only one keeper tube will be successfully placed during the autonomous period. Autonomous will be very difficult because your robot can sense vertical alignment but horizantal alignment may be difficult depending on the accuracy of programming. Many ringers will be scored during the teleoperated period because the game plan will be on the spur of the nanosecond.

I voted 0.
Every once in a while you’ll see a team get one on but the first robto that gets there is going to affect (as in hit) the goal and cause the whole thing to sway like mad and it’s all over for everybody else no matter how well you programmed it.

I think 2/3 of teams will be able to place keepers reliably IF the camera works the way it should. The spiders should not be moving when the game starts so I don’t think that will be a problem.

Now I have to get back to testing the camera. :ahh:

I said 6. I figure that with roughly 1200 teams it is fully possible that 6 will be capable, its only 0.5% of teams. As for the task, it sounds really, really, really hard at first, but a lot of issues in '05 seemed to be lighting problems that should be fixed now. Plus, with the additional experience of using the camera on something pretty easy to track last year, I fully expect to see at least six do it.

That is true for the first tube, but after that they will start moving. If you assume it isn’t very severe, the second shouldn’t be horribly affected. The third would have a harder time and so forth. Plus they have to try to score them in the first place. Finally, some robots will interfere with each other, and that negate 2 tubes. I voted for 3, but I think the average will be around 2.5 overall.

I was at the original kickoff (Manchester) and it’s really hard to start the spiders rocking. The arms are gimbled side-to-side and the usual result seemed to be the center wheel turning a little bit and the arms not moving. I vote 5.5 of 6.

Even if the camera locks on, there is no guarantee that the robot will be able to move towards the target and place the keeper accurately in 15 seconds.

My guess is that keepers wil be as rare as hen’s teeth. I think the question you should ask how many per competition, not per match.

I don’t think the camera will be all that useful, except to maybe let the robot end up in the neighborhood. The real targets are the spider feet, only half of which are below a light, and will seldom be directly below the light because they’ll be swaying for all but the first bot to reach the rack.

I’m guessing that by week five, we’ll only see one keeper every three matches, which equals .33/match = zero in this poll.

I believe there will be four keepers scored. I think that 2 for sure because of the light and 2 from more advanced teams that will use the side lights instead of the one right in front.

Pavan.

After simulating this game with humans today, and some more discussion and thought, It may not be that hard to score keepers as I first anticipated. It can be done without use of the camera. Students with their eyes closed had about a 50% success rate once they figured out from what angle they should attempt to approach the rack (even with rack migration before each match). Even reducing that for real robots, it should be 1-2 bots per match on average could possibly hit it with dead reckoning. Then there are the ones who take full use of sensors to aid them (camera and others).

  1. I don’t know if it will be worse than last year… I’m expecting it to be about the same (you know, not that many teams could score through the 3pt goal in autonomous last year…)

You guys are spending a lot of time figuring out how to do it. I wish you’d spend about 1/10 of the time figuring out if you should do it. What’s the maximum payoff? So you have an alliance of three robots that each can score a complete row of three in Autonomous, but have sacrificed other capabilities to do so. Say they are up against an alliance of three robots that can’t score a single autonomous goal, and is really good at defense. They inhibit scoring so the margin on the rack is less then 30 points. Then they return to home zone and get one robot up for 30. Who is going to end up winning more frequently?

While be able to score in autonomous is cool, I just don’t see it being the key to victory even if you are 100% effective at it.

My Predictions:

A single scored keeper <10% (at Nationals)
Both Alliances scoring single keeper each <5%
Any Alliance scoring 2 keepers <1%
3 keepers any combination <0.5%
4 Keepers <.1
5 keepers about the same as the California lottery <.0000001
6 keepers about the same odds as all the atoms of air in the room suddenly being sucked out of the room and you suffocating, while a massive earthquake strikes you as the solar system is destroyed by a giant black hole.

I’m pretty sure every match will feature at least 1-2 teams scoring. As one of the programmers for our team, I’d be really surprised (and disappointed) if we don’t end up being able to score in autonomous.