BAE FINAL REMARKS

Competition Regional Competitions
1

Ok, so its over…for another year.

121, 126, and 350…you guys earned your spot without a doubt as regional champs.
501, you guys certainly are well deserving of Chairmans, and its been a long time coming.

To the rookies: you guys have a year under your belt…take this past weekend, build off your experiences and come back out fighting next year.

Now for my rant.

BAE is always a great competition…however, i think there was a huge lapse in coordination. Last year, the traffic flow of people around the arena was managable…this year, it was a safety hazard. TOO MANY PEOPLE tried to walk down the front aisle of the stands, while the teams where in the next row from that cheering their heads off.
Whatever they did last year, should be thought about long and hard for next year.
I think BAE needs a few more things…like less security personell. i swear i’d walk wrong and there was a “yellow jacket” was there to give me lip about it. They also need to TURN THE MUSIC DOWN. It was seriously DEAFINING in the arena today.

those are a few of the things that i would like to rant about…and we will see what happens in march of 06

2

Well as long as everyone wearing their safety glasses as they walked down the front aisle they would be fine I imagine :stuck_out_tongue: J/p

:stuck_out_tongue:

Heh Congrats to the BAE CHAMPS

3

Greg, jot down a few notes about the concerns you have. Be sure to add a couple of things that were done right too. Mentors will be invited to a team forum this spring. Give to mentor. If no mentor going, send to me and I will make sure your voice is heard.

4

I would agree, Clinton/Nypro had an awesome robot, and paired with 350 and 121, they were literally unstoppable.

As for the walking…I spent a lot of time in the pits, but when i was out, i agree. They should rope of the first row in fron of the aisles…i mean, it’s bad enough trying to get a flow of traffic both directions, but when people have their feet sticking out in the way it makes it even harder.

AS for gameplay, it was rough…very rough. The final matches had lots of hard hits, but what my question is, is what exactly is “intentional ramming” count as?? In 2 matches yesterday playing against the same team, our robot was repeatedly hit from about midfield, until we literally we stuck under a goal(luckily our arm was good enough to get us out). It had happened the match before, and the ref. didn’t say anything, so we let him know that this team would probably try and do it to us, or team 126 (nypro/clinton) Gael Force, because thats what they had done. When we were playing we had to actually ask the ref to look at them ramming us, it was THEN that he threw a flag, but i wonder, after the match they said they couldn’t count it because they had to give them a warning…does that make it ok? Thankfully we fort knoxed our bot, but if it was a less fortunate team getting hit, would it be ok for them to potentially damage a robot enough they couldn’t drive (these hits were HARD), but not get any type of penalization for it?. SOrry for the rant but i was pretty heated when we got off the field and i told them they should stop hitting so hard, and their drive menotr told me “the drivers didn’t know they were back so far”. four times it happened in just that match though. but oh well, thats the game. sorry for ranting.

5

Congrates 501!!! From your alliance partner from last year. Team 176

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1st (WinCE).JPG

6

The parts of the competition that I saw were quite exciting. I agree with the claim that the music was too loud, and since I didn’t spend a lot of time in the lower level of the audience, I don’t know about the crowding problem.

Some highlights:

126- amazing robot, and they obviously deserved this win
121- see above
175- although they were a little tippy and their robot unfortunately suffered some damage throughout the elimination rounds, they had a very cool arm with a good range of motion
133- capped the center goal in autonomous occasionally (started with tetra, not a vision system)

No one seemed to have a working camera, and for the qualifiers, autonomous wasn’t important. However, when eliminations hit, the autonomous became a lot more important. The winning alliance’s combined autonomous made it so that they had 5 points before the end of autonomous, and only one goal needed to be owned to make a row. In addition, 126 was in position to grab two tetras and make that row.

7

The final matches had lots of hard hits, but what my question is, is what exactly is “intentional ramming” count as??

Ahhh a tricky question but I would say as long as the team stopped ramming you once you were stuck they were legal. Ramming into a disabled robot is intentionally trying to do damage to it.

I think BAE needs a few more things…like less security personell. i swear i’d walk wrong and there was a “yellow jacket” was there to give me lip about it. They also need to TURN THE MUSIC DOWN. It was seriously DEAFINING in the arena today.

Actually the security was excellent there. I saw some pretty idiotic and dangerous things happening that the security needed to prevent. I saw quite a few people think it was ok to play balancing beam on a wall just to get to the pits faster even though they would crack their heads open if they fell. People sliding down the stair handrails. People not where they were supposed to be despite the fact that there were signs saying Do not go here.

8

Great job teams 121, 126, and 350!!
I had the opportunity to watch BAE today, and it was very exciting, especially those last few matches. Excellent job!

I think there was a new record high score today for this regional… of 79 points. Unfortunately, the alliance teams’ names/numbers are escaping me.

The highest amount of penalties given that I saw today was 40 points… I believe it was for pushing a robot in the loading zone, among other things. The magnitude of the penalties really seemed to be the downfall of many well performing teams… but that is how the game goes. It is very different from previous years (at least recent ones).

It seems like an even balance between offense and defense was the key to success. Offense without defense was not very effective if other robots were trying to harass the offensive ones. Also, without some defense, you are leaving the opposing alliance completely unharassed and are allowing them to score easily. But then again, pure defense simply could not score enough points to win the game. A nice combination of the two seemed to be very effective… team 501, the Power Knights (very effective defense), and their alliance (very effective offense), comes to mind.

Here, as it has also been reported at other regionals, there were very few teams with autonomous modes that were effective, and I did not see any team cap the vision tetra in autonomous mode once. It seems like the majority of teams with an autonomous mode are going for the hanging tetras, which in my opinion, is smart because it gives you the beginning of a row, and is relatively low risk in terms of interference from other robots.

One thing I noticed that teams need to work on, is realizing the best strategical place to cap next. I found myself screaming, “No! CAP OVER THERE… NOT THERE!” Teams often wouldn’t recognize where the best place was to cap… and I understand this, as there is so much going on on the field at once… but if you are looking to improve your strategy, try to focus on recognizing where the most advantageous place is to put your next tetra.

 Great job everyone...it was an enjoyable event to watch.
 
 -- Jaine
9

<off topic>
See Highest Score thread on CD, 98 in Peachtree I believe. (Originally was 108 but with a 10 pt penalty.)
</off topic>

10

I meant high score for the regional, not internationally. :slight_smile: Thanks though.

– Jaine

11

Gotcha.
My bad! :ahh:

12

Hard hitting… and bots were breaking? I don’t know what to say… our robot and arm got a severe beating almost every single match and we didn’t have any real mechanical issues besides some loose chain. Maybe our arm was a design fluke (it can lift my up from horizontal at near full extension) but it didn’t look as beefy as other arms out there… who knows. I think the amount of hitting and such was appropriate, robots have to be designed for it. However, the amount of pinning was a bit too much… I’d like to see less of that.

13

Yes i agree, the robots should be built for it, but there’s a point where it’s too hard. I forgot the #, but a team actually lost a chain hitting us, and team 155 (thank you for playing with us) had their frame get bent and lost a chain in the next to last match of our semifinals.

14

BAE was my first regional and I enjoyed it so much.

My team 1027, THE MECHATRONIC MANIACS, we were an offensive machine. We had the highest average score (of 19 per match) at the end of the qualifying. In the finals our alliance of Team 40 (Trinity High) and 501 (see above) we were slated to go all the way except a holding penatly by 501 allowed 175’s (AKA Buzz) alliance to move on.

At the end of the qualifying we finished in 3rd place with a record of 7-1-1, and when everything sorted out we finished 10th.

Congrats to the Rhode Warriors and their alliance!!!

BUT WATCH OUT FOR TEAM 1027 at the Chesakpeake Regionals!!!

-Also, I left early but does anyone know what was up with the fire alarm at the regional??? Dean Kamean was in the middle of presenting the Chairman’s Award to the great defender team 501.

15

Congrats 1027!! It was awesome just talking to your whole team, and playing with you guys was really great. I loved your openness to listen to our strategy, and adapt with us so that together we could win. I was rooting for you! Good luck at Chesapeake!

16

Does anyone have or found pictures of the better bots of competition such as 121, 126, or 350. As well as the Finalists, 175, 138, 58 and any other standouts?

Congrats to everyone that went to competition. You survived!

17

This is my First year in the program i loved every min of it. I do aggre with there being too meny yellow men in the Verizon center (i took a nap and the man is yellow woke me up how rude) but i liked how everything was set up and the safety in the place was unbeliveable i never thought that all thouse people in the pits could all have on safety glasses on at all times. just waiting for next year its gona be great

18

Someone was smoking in the bathroom which set off the fire alarm. I felt so bad for team 501 because this is the most prestigious award you can win, and they were interupted in the middle of it. When we all came back in the building, hardly anyone was left to see them get their Chairmans Award. Congrats team 501 on winning the Chairmans Award.

19

:smiley: I agree with what was said earlier. The bass at the event was DEFINITELY WAY TOO LOUD. It was piercing my head and chest. They had two subwoofers that where each the size of my car. I also agree that there was too much security personnel. I was interrogated when I tried to walk over to a vending machine next to the machine shop. The Verizon Center security staff had little knowledge of the event and didn’t realize that some people had to access certain areas of the arena. This was also true during eliminations, when there were little seats available on the playing field side of the curtain. Some people, who had no choice but to stand in the stairwells and entry doors, were harassed by Verizon security staff.

I also agree that the referrees definitely held their flags when it came to “intentional” ramming. Our robot was rammed repeatedly above very high on our robot when our scissor lift was up. This is clearly against the rules as teams are only allowed to hit “low” on robots. In one match, an unnamed team even place their arm between the scissors in our lift and prevented us from moving our lift. We repeatedly, yet politely, pointed this out to the referees over the course of the two days of competition. Unfortunately, no action was taken by the referees in any of the matches in question. I understand that the referees have a busy job and there is a lot that they have to watch, but a line does have to be drawn when it comes to ramming and striking other robots. The referees can’t on one hand be quick when it comes to interference penalties and on the other hand turn a blind eye to robots intentionally hitting other robots high. This is especially true when the robots being attacked aren’t even carrying tetras.

I was also wondering why teams weren’t allowed to have their robots in the team photo, especially when we did last year. However, our team faculty advisor became extremely angry when he heard this and completely ignored the staff at the event. He forced his way through angry BAE volunteers to bring the robot to the photographers. You’ll notice that on the BAE website our team is the only one with their robot in the picture.

On a lighter note, it was very funny when the fire alarm went off at the moment when Dean Kamen was announcing team 501 as the winner of the chairman’s award. All of a sudden power to the video screen, lights, and microphone goes off and a siren starts going off. The building had to be evacuated. Dean seemed extremely annoyed when this happened. There were other issues as well, such as the leader board being inoperative throughout the first day, no one having success with the camera, and other minor problems.

Other than that, the BAE regional went along perfectly fine and without any problems. :wink:

20

It might have been us (529, rectangular green box with an unused arm on top) Doing all the intentional ramming you’re talking about. This is simply because Our engineers were lazy and didn’t figure out how to make the arm retract (still haven’t, actually), So we were forced to play defense. According to our driver, the 4 penalties we go that match was from us being bumped by another robot (into the robot in the loading zone), but I think it’s just because he’s never used a 1 joystick drive before, and slipped.

I agree that people were hitting each other way too hard though, because everything not entirely inside the lexan “armor” (including the armor itself) was beat to crap, and has to be replaced.