And now we know what the 2019 equivalent of Auto foot faults will be. Accidentally breaking the loading station plane during auto.
Hopefully the fact that they gave a 2-second lift period when they actually take just under a second means that even when they are slower, they still fit within that period. Hopefully they’ve tested the blinds a lot though, because we know there’s always something that just stops working week 1 hahaha
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Looks like they actually brought it down to 4 Mbps
rip. That’s going to make vision fun. :sigh:
Should be a good game to build a robot for. That said I don’t like that the game discourages any interactions between alliances and how there is very little reason to do auto or vision. Finally I expect the sandstorm to fail at least a few times and that the loop side of hatches to get worn out quickly… Oh also I expect many low level teams to just be drive their robots straight without vision and in turn just smashing their team mates, the field and causing a few G3 tech fouls.
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Some of the more well off teams should really bring some extra web cameras to their events to help those teams get vision going on their robot enough to at least drive their robots during the sandstorm period. Imo crappy driving with vision is much more beneficial to everyone involved than autonomous driving without safe routines. If I had to guess, the only real useful autonomous this year will come from those teams who can program in autonomous routines that are more consistent and effective than what their drivers can do with limited vision. The rest will just hurt everyone.
I like the fact we don’t have to code for auto anymore. We already use cameras so 15 sec of only cameras is very great. We have a bad history of auto so this is a wish come true.
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The bandwidth cap got dropped from 7Mbit/s to 4 Mbit/s. Based on our experience, the video stream even with the higher bandwidth suffers from low framerate and poor video quality.
It almost feels like this is FIRST’s attempt to prevent Autonomous routines from being completely useless. When video is too difficult to use during the sandstorm period, teams will have to resort to at least some form of autonomous control, at least to help their drivers be more precise with their crappy vision. Hopefully it doesn’t also negatively affect the performance of midrange teams during the rest of the match as well.
With the hardware they are currently using, it would be really nice to see the bandwidth cap move in the other direction, but alas that is not going to happen - at least in 2019. Prayers for 2020.
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It’s going to be terrible for everyone involved. I can only think of one or two teams in my entire region who can run good vision without hitting the bandwidth cap. Now, every team is going to try to run vision, all of them are going to hit the cap, all of them are going to have their video feeds freeze, and all of them are going to try to blame the field staff for it.
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Just blame it on the SANDSTORM interfering with the robot’s vision systems…
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Seems fine to me, you can play around with the AXIS Design tool to see what the video would look like at different bandwidths.
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If their vision is good enough, not every stream has to make it back to the driver station. To my understanding, LAN within the robot isn’t restricted, just communication wirelessly to the driver station.
I like it, but I’d love to have had a fully autonomous period. Having vision targets is going to be nice.
I’m interested to see how this year turns out. I’m wondering if the modified auto is a test by FIRST to see how it affects newer teams, or teams who don’t usually feel as confident doing auto. I think that more experienced teams will probably still do the “traditional” auto but I’m curious what innovations might come from this new approach. 
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i think the one piece at a time philosophy really polarizes the design of the robots. after many years away and seeing the game again last year, the thing most striking to me was how similar so many of the robots were, i have a feeling this year will be the same.
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Even though I think the best robots will pretty much be autonomous for the first 15 seconds of the match, I’m pretty disappointed that autonomous mode is gone. The sad truth is that for 80% of teams, putting on a POV camera and telling your drivers to practice, practice, practice is going to wind up being more effective than spending time on autonomous programming. I strongly dislike any game mechanic that disincentivizes ambition.
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I was a little surprised that the game didn’t move away from traditional (and well understood) objects like discs and balls to more challenging game pieces, like bean bags or some such. It feels like a bit of a rehash of games from our recent past, with elements of 2016, 2017 and 2018 reappearing in very similar form. There may be some lessons from 2014, 2004, and 1999 tucked in here too but less so than the newer games. Once again, the GDC has made a game with opportunities for specialization, where strategic play and alliance selection will be key. These last several games have been among the better ones in FRC history so it’ll be be a good one.
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its first trying to handicap the game for the weaker teams against the super teams that can effectively utilize auto. theres still plenty of room for auto to dominate in scoring efficiency.
I strongly agree with this sentiment. I was shocked and disappointed to hear that the autonomous mode was gone. I think that teams who do autonomous routines will do better compared to those who try to do driver operated control during the “sandstorm” period.
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