Quite correct. No camera on the robot, just take aim and hope the refs turn the rack right for us.
Team Voltage 386 in the Central Florida Regional:
Center Best: 6 of 7 attempts (sweet spot)
Reverse Score: 0 of 1 attempt
Side Score: 0 of 3 attempts
We won our first qualifier (Q9) with a score of 2 to 0 with only the KEEPER on the rack!
The one we missed was due to the foot swinging side to side in time with our autonomous retry. We went at it 2 or 3 times and it was always not in the center of the swing. An opposition 'bot had slammed the rack from the other side.
Reverse Score was driving backwards to the FAR side of the field, turn to face the rack, locate the light and go to score. We ended up coming in the edge of the side foot and missed our EASY button scoring trigger. We ran this Friday in our last qualifier as we were allied with Exploding Bacon (1902) and we knew from a practice with them that we’d collide in the center if we did our preferred approach.
Side Score was a newly written mode Saturday morning just in case we ended up in the finals with an autonomous partner (like 1902, which we did as a substitute for 108). We were supposed to back out, back turn into the rail, locate the light, and go in to score. Unfortunately, we turned forwards into the rack and were too close to maneuver to score. Came REALLY CLOSE all three times though!
We will be in Palmetto with corrections for the spider side miss and will have corrected the turns for Side Score. Watch for us!
Lynn (D) - Team Voltage 386 Software & Coach
PS. According to Dennis, the field chief, we had the best autonomous mode in the competition, but I’d have to say that 1902 ran a really close second!
We made an attempt every match, but only once did we actually put it over the spyder leg.
Today 1629 scored the first keeper at Chesapeake.
165 also scored in the same match. Then we scored again during our second Quarter-final match.
648 scored 6 keepers throughout competition at the Midwest Regional. However, we were the only team to successfully move towards the rack with a keeper, I believe. We also got three in a row during eliminations.
I believe that we scored a total of 6 or 7 times at the UTC regional… i don’t really know.
thats pretty good considering that our robot’s drive train and arm were shot for the first 5 matches…
1369 got on 4 keepers (that I saw/recall) in the elimination round at peachtree today. I’m sure they got on others that I didn’t see too.
Detroit regional, based on what matches I could see (because my duties usually made me very busy around the start of the matches):
1718 scored frequently
33 scored at least once
314 at least once, after an agonizingly long wait till the last seconds of auton before they dropped
397 - did they score?
217 and 2283 tried, but never scored
I think I’m forgetting someone. Sorry.
At the Florida regional I kept track of the wins versus keeper hanging. I discovered that every time a keeper was hung on the rack, that alliance won the match.
There was only one exception during the qualifying matches. Thus for 68 matches played, only one time that a keeper was on the rack did the alliance lose the match. This gives a 98% win record for an alliance that hung a keeper.
Now, we only saw about 20 successful keeper hangings. Thus, using this as the statistic base, an alliance still has a 95% chance of a win by hanging a keeper. With such a high percentage, I am surprised that more teams do not at least attempt the keeper hanging.
Does anyone have statistics on the other regionals?
I predict that hanging a keeper will be attempted at the nationals on every match.
Jerry w
I suspect that robots that can hang keepers are pretty good robots. There is likely a correlation due to that, more than due to the importance of keepers on the final score.
I predict that hanging a keeper will be attempted at the Championship on every match.
fyp 
I’d guess something like 20-40% of the teams at the Championship will be able to score keepers more or less successfully. There’s a lot of ramp-bots that have qualified, and a lot of hanger-bots that don’t have auto. Given 6 teams on the field at any time, chances are one of them would have an auto-mode. But there will be a significant number of matches without any keepers attempted.
Us (67) and 1114 were very consistant with Keeper scoring at GLR, hopefully it can be kept up at West Michigan. Although I don’t remember the actual percentage, I believe 33 attempted everytime, and scored many times as well (A lot has happened since GLR)
I hope we can stay consistant at West Michigan.
At Silicon Valley Regional, there was only 1 keeper scored the whole regional. This was by team 846 the funky monkeys
Alot were scored at UTC. 230, 1124, 716, 25, 40, and a few others got them onto the rack a few times.
1718 was very consistant with their keepers. I believe i saw 1 time that they did not score in auto
The best autonomous score I’ve seen was 648. The robot had a crab drive system, so it went up to the rack, and then tied to put down the tube on the 2nd rung. The tube dropped vertically off it. The announcer had the time to say, “Oh, looks like it won’t be scored.” The tube then hits the ground, bounces up and onto the first rung. It happened to also be the first score at the Midwest regional.
At Boilermaker, the #1 seeded team (1730, Team Driven from Lee’s Summit, Missouri) was also the most effective scorer of keepers. I don’t recall the number of keepers they scored, but I do recall that they attempted a keeper every time they took the field and succeeded much more often than they failed. Their 10-1 qualifying record and their regional win with 234/1555 speak (loudly) to support Gary’s suspicion.
While I have no actual data to back things up, Gary’s data does seem to suggest that the extra ring on the rack is very important.
It would not surprise me to see keeper defense being played at the championships.
Actually I was arguing the opposite. That individual keeper wasn’t the deciding factor, although it certainly can help. I saw one match at Detroit where the opponents were going to attempt to put on a spoiler, and the best place for it would have been in the keeper position. So the keeper made a small portion of the score (row of 3 plus a single, vs 2 rows of 4). I don’t recall whether the spoiler actually was placed, though.
My point was that a team that had time to program keeper placement, and do it well, probably built a good robot that could score a lot of ringers in tele-mode.
It would not surprise me to see keeper defense being played at the championships.
903 had a good defense pattern that they ran at Detroit - but with the few attempts at keepers, it had no effect. I would also expect to see a lot of defensive bots run a keeper-intercept pattern.
To correlate with Gary’s information, we won all but one match that we scored a keeper on and that loss was the first match (by 2 points) in which we were the only ones that could score.
We definately felt there was a momentum shift (or drive) when we scored keepers vs. when we missed. There were only a couple time when we missed by a lot (ie. the keeper fell on the way to the rack) but most times we were inches of making it- if not actually making it. Twice our suction cup didn’t release and the keeper didn’t drop- but we got it the entire way there. We have the distiction of being Cut-off twice- Once in the Regional and once during the Winter War Zone Scrimmage. (Not sure who else can claim that this year!!! 
)
So momentum and excitement seemed to play a big part in the rest of the match and that “ahhh… almost made it” let down may have helped do the opposite.
All in all- I was surprised to see so many teams not even try. FIRST should have made them more worth the time, effort and accomplishment- Point wise. (this may have given the proper incentive for more teams to spend the time perfecting autonomous scoring)