Our human player has been pretty much able to do everything we want to with tubes, and is learning the rest. Somehow we got a nerd with a sports backround :D. So far our guy can get roll and land the circle in our scoring zone 19/20 times, the square 14/20 times, and the triangle we have decided to throw trough the feeding hole because it does 7/20 at best when rolled.
I was wondering how everyone else was doing with tubes.
MAX so far I have agreed with you on our human player discussions. But I have not been able to get human players to roll the square or triangle at all let alone with a similar amount of success. Are your tubes, really inflated, is your human player just so incredibly talented, are you using the tomahawk method? … at best our triangles and square land 12 feet out from the tower in the middle of the field.
I applaud you for having your human player practice, but there are a few things to consider that I implore you to if you haven’t already. In the alliance station there will be limited space for a human player to move. And he will likely be under quite a bit of pressure, especially once Elims come along. On the field there are going to be six robots moving at speed, with one probably doing the sole job of defense. Plus, with the towers spaced around the field, are you sure you’ll be able to get the tubes the same way. I’m not trying to bash on practicing, but I am simply trying to help you udnerstand the difference between game conditions and ideal practice conditions.
Hope your season and practices are going well. Cheers.
The amount a tube is inflated doesn’t seem to have as much of an effect on tube throwing as the throw itself. One of our students was able to throw Circles and Squares into the scoring zone with accuracy close to 1676’s, but we noticed that the tubes must roll at least 10-15 feet to get into the zone.
It’s a risky move.
I think our success with the tubes is probably mainly due to our human player’s talent and shear height. Our human player is built LARGE and did a lot of sports before he realized that robotics is more awesome. We try not to reinflate tubes until they are noticeably flat in order to replicate competition settings.
Well so far we’ve used an all but accurate tower base (3/4’’ short) and/or some chairs to simulate towers and they don’t seem to be a problem. We also have a feeder station ect built to spec which hasn’t been a problem yet.
I do think that with all the robots wizzing around the field getting tubes in to the scoring zone wouldn’t be easy. That said there may be a few openings in the game when a tube could get trough (maybe 4+/6 robots are hanging tubes or getting them from the feeder station) and I’d like to be able to take advantage of those. Every point counts.
Something I didn’t mention in the thread starter, we’ve had pretty much total success getting all three tubes where ever we want them in the feeding lane; what about you guys? Also, we haven’t done as much practice with this but how accurately can your guys get tubes in the middle of the field?
Personally, I can throw tubes to the middle of the field within a five foot radius with about 8/9 consistency, but I’m also 6’5" so it’s really easy for me to get them over the wall - sadly I can’t be a human player. 
Haha.
Our prospective human player isn’t too far off with his consistency, I think he’s about 6/9 or 7/9 with minimal practice, though he’s a lot shorter than I am so teaching him to throw is a bit of a challenge.
When you see a full sized field, you’ll realize how difficult it’ll be to throw tubes reliably with 6 robots out there.
It’s funny cause we built a peg wall and a feeder wall to specs, except our peg wall has an opening in it, so no back wall. Our current hp is 6ft 6 and can throw like idk. Anyways he’s been able to throw our tubes to the point where it goes through the gap in the wall. We have also been using the specs for the space they have to an approximation. Only thing we haven’t tried is putting other robots out their or poles. That’s all i have to say.
What if you base your strategy around trying to keep the center of the field clear and staying in your zones and lanes. Also intentionally draw a defender to one side or the other to clear the center for the roll which is soooo much faster than traversing the full length of the field to acquire a tube.
There will definitely be a difference between our little 1/4 field and extra carpet and a field at regionals. We’ve done some testing in the school gym and our human player seemed to be ok at Frisbeeing the tubes to the middle but not reliably enough to use in competition. When we tried to tomahawk them the tubes slipped on the slick floor as opposed to bouncing and rolling.
Our goal as far as human player is concerned is to get him to the point where he can gently hit our robot (or something else) with a tube, that tube will drop, and we can then pick it up. We figure that if we can do this from 1/2 way across the field or more we can save enough traveling time to lower our sec/tube. Which means more tubes/game. Do you think that’s possible or a good idea?
Good idea, worried though, make sure there is nothing that the tube could get caught on because then it would make matters worse.
You bring up a good point, I wonder if you accidently get a tube stuck on your bot if it would be considered possessed. On that note even if you’re not trying to hit your bot with tubes you should probably design it so that flying tubes for whatever reason won’t get stuck. Accidentally possessing a tube and not being able to pick up any without a penalty for the rest of the match could be a big problem.
Don’t forget though, you might need to be an analyst this year.
We’ve done a bit of human player practice and he can pretty much bomb game pieces within arms length of any point up to 30-ish feet - he’s an amazing ultimate (frisbee) player.
Of course, all this practice might go out the window with a slightly more confied tournament setting.
I’m throwing the circle consistently to the scoring zone and can normally send the square and circle in there as well. We’ve been doing speed drills, so far we’re looking at being able to empty the entire feeder station to the scoring zone in under 30 seconds. So far we’ve been pleasantly surprised by how well they fly, at scrimmage we were hitting the ceiling easily.
Im sure that within the first week regionals, there will be a team update giving a penalty to tubes thrown past the caution line [/speculation]