How bad is the plastic as far as viability? Is it just scratched or dirty? If it is mostly from dirty hands banging on it could a team bring some glass cleaning wipes with them?
As far as I know, it isn’t glass, but rather Acrylic.
Scratch marks and smudges have been visible (at least in my experience), but it won’t do much to hinder your view. You should be more worried about the big defenses, and other robots, in the way.
It’s not acrylic, it’s polycarbonate.
After driving the past three days, I would say that the glass isn’t that bad, I believe you can see the field just as well as years past, (not to say that it doesn’t have a few scratches/marks though). What you really need to worry about is your approach to crossing defenses, whether its using a camera or lining up by eye (lining up by eye seems to be alright for crossing defenses except for when you have a portcullis, or drawbridge in your line of vision). Lining up by eye for shots in the high and low goals are going to be difficult for you unless you have a sure fire way of lining your robot up with the field, for example one of the edges of the batter. Lining up shots with a camera is a bit easier (if you have one).
Thanks we do have cameras on the robots and are considering a pole cam as well
Actually, the FIRST field perimeter does in fact use acrylic, albeit quite thick.
The AndyMark field perimeter uses polycarbonate panels, however they are thinner.
-Nick
Don’t worry about bringing glass cleaner either, the field crew already does that each day.
Last year the field north star was getting kind of banged up in spots. But you could still see without much problem. I think they reused that field from northern lights.
I remember that for Aerial Assault it seemed like they did that after every match. Spinning Frisbees left a bit of themselves on the alliance wall.
We did not have any issues seeing through. The field crew at our event was awesome. During any sort of break they would clean it and shine things up.
From my experience, the “glass” shouldn’t negatively affect visibility. It seems to be a bit resistant to fingerprints. I would recommend cleaning your safety glasses, though, as smudges on those will severely negatively affect visibility.
Wait a second…
We used exercise balls to play Aerial Assault, not frisbees.
On topic: Visibility seems pretty fine glass-wise, as Jaci mentioned you’re probably better off worrying about the drawbridge or portcullis right in front of your driver station.
That being said, the glass occasionally gets footprints from flying kicks at recent Canadian events…