So I had this thought today as we were reviewing out prototyped shooters and I realized that we had a lot of force coming out of these shooters. My concern would be what would be the ruling if we shot the ball into the high goal, but there was so much force on the ball that it bounced off the backboard and rebounded back into the field. Would that still count as a score or would we have to shoot it back into the goal again?
The BOULDER never counts as scored.
There will be chains hanging inside the goal to absorb force, which will (hopefully!) prevent this from being much of a problem.
However, based on previous years experience, I believe that shots that bounce out will not count towards your score.
There are chains like in 2013 and 2010 to help mitigate the boulders bouncing out. That said, in your scenario, when the ball bounces off, it doesn’t count as scored.
Have you considered shooting with less force?
It’s a lot like 2013 when frisbees routinely bounced out of the goals - either from hitting the target with too much force or from over-filling the goals to the point they spilled out… If it doesn’t stay in, it’s no good.
I feel sorry for the team that that happened to in 2014. They shot a high goal, then it bounced on a table edge or something and came right back through the goal onto the field. Even that didn’t count as scored…
At least this year it’s really difficult to overfill the goal. I’m interested to see the return of the pokey stick from 2012.
Thanks for the help. Yes we will be shooting with less force so hopefully that will not be an issue.
Yeah, the scoring system counts all boulders that fall into the corral, with some counters at the bottom of the tower. There are no counters at the entrance of the tower. They showed the counters in one of the intro videos.
Also, the backboard will also absorb some of the impact as shown here
There must be some sensor before the corral, or else the scoring system wouldn’t know to add a high goal or a low goal.
There are separate sensors used for scoring balls entering the corral from the high and low goals. See the attached picture:
I thinkthis is what you were referring to.
That be it.
At the very least, it would be helpful if FIRST increased the amount or mass of the chains so that this would not happen as often. While we have been considering lowering the power of our shooter so that this does not happen as often, it just seems logical to ensure that shots made in the high goal are counted as accurately as possible. In the last competition, 107 experienced this issue recurrently, sometimes occurring up to three times in a single match.
We also ran into problems with balls bouncing out of the high goal, and for us it always happened the same way.
If we lined up just to the right of the center goal (the same thing would probably happen from the the left of the goal), the ball would hit the back corner and bounce out the right goal. I believed this happened three times in Boston, and it caused us to lose our first quarterfinal match when it bounced out during auto. This video shows what happened.
A BOULDER is scored in a GOAL if it passes through the opening of a GOAL and exits into the CORRAL.
FIRST is correctly counting scored BOULDERS. You are simply not scoring them because they are not exiting into the CORRAL. Field is working as designed and spec’d.
I wish FIRST had modified the goals to reduce or eliminate bounce-outs early in the season. I think it is a bit late to do it now. Although the definition of a “scored boulder” addresses bounce-outs, I really hope that FIRST didn’t intend to see this many. In an ideal world, you get credit for putting the boulder in the goal and not just for doing it with some preferred trajectory.
We have struggled with bounce-outs, but of a different sort. We shoot a high angle shot from the batter (like a lot of other teams), and unless we hit the top of the window, the backspin on the ball makes it roll down the chains, bounce off the framing at the bottom of the angled face of the castle, and then out.
Just watching the auto shot that didn’t stay in, I can see that your robot fires pretty hard. Does it also fire with a significant horizontal spin? The resolution of the video doesn’t let me see if the boulder even touches the chains at all, or just hits the opposite inside of the tower and then runs along the back plastic and comes out. The chains are there to absorb some of the energy of the boulder and attempt to keep the boulder from coming in one side and bouncing out the other or coming into the center and bouncing off the back right out the center again.
My unscientific observation, after watching 314 Qual/Elim matches and ~100 practice matches field-side, is that a very hard shot causes the chains to not have time to move or absorb and actually act as a solid wall. More mass would actually cause that particular action to occur more than it does. They need to have some mass, or the boulder is going to blast right through them, but too much and they don’t move at all.
That missed shot wasn’t what solely lost the match. After auto, you spent 23 seconds hung up on an alliance partner and then fired two high goal shots off of the tower facade (with one low goal in between). The red alliance also missed an auto shot on high goal. Two blue robots rolled off the batter at the end. Red alliance “should” have had a capture if one bot hadn’t gotten stuck on the moat. Red also fully depleted the tower but didn’t breach the defenses, which I can’t think I have seen first hand in any of the 3 events I’ve FTA’d. The score (individually and combined) for the match was a good deal lower than the 2nd match of the series. Both alliances had a cavalcade of errors to point to for how it was lost and won.
Have you considered reducing the amount of back-spin you are imparting on the Boulder.
In the real world, you get credit for finishing the job you are asked to do. In this case, your true objective is not really to get the Boulder to enter the opening of the Goal. It is to get the Boulder to trip the Counting Mechanism that is several feet below the opening of the Goal.
As Andrew stated, “Field is working as designed and spec’d.” This means that certain solutions will work successfully and others will not. It is up to those competing in this game to find the solutions that do work.