Hello,
We are currently looking for the best practice field in our school. But even tho the full field is 16x8 meters, we have an opportunity for a 7x7 practice field. Do you think this is enough although its not 50% of the actual field or we should look for at least 8x8 fields? We want it to be compatible for autos.
Thanks,
It ought to be but sometimes isn’t.
Half a field is enough for practice when the game is designed with rotational symmetry. Unfortunately, some recent games have been designed with reflective (mirror) symmetry, putting teams without access to a full practice field at a disadvantage.
Hello, I am the lead driver for our team, and we are getting a 27ftx27ft practice area this year. (Prior to this we used a small hallway and barely drove at all) Would you have any recommendations for us for practicing. (Literally the largest possible area we can use in our school without having to teardown every day)
I think you and other drivers on veteran teams know that practice is a key to success in competition. (Other keys include a simple, robust robot design, an organized and efficient pit crew, and a strategy team to collect and distill the key data that drive team needs to prepare for each match.)
To get effective practice you need a plan and the space to execute it. Sometimes your local space isn’t enough. My team was in that situation for several years before a generous sponsor provided a very nice facility. Before that, we practiced by setting up and tearing down a half-field mockup every time practice was scheduled – huge time commitment, taking that time away from practice.
The best advice I can offer about effective use of practice time is to focus on drills that develop muscle memory for key teleop tasks (intake, cycling, scoring) and have separate scheduled times for iterating on auton tasks. Pit crew’s role in both processes is to find and fix weaknesses in the robot and do it FAST, preserving as much practice time as possible. If your team can afford it, building two robots pays off in increased practice time and allows pit crew more iterations to fix weaknesses.
An option to investigate: is there a fortunate team in your neck of the woods that has a full practice field and is willing to host joint practice sessions? Visiting another team’s practice facility can be a mini-drill for the logistics of competition travel, and might influence your team’s decisions about pit design, tool and parts organization, packing, etc.
Having toured the practice space of one of the World Champs teams in metro Detroit, they have basically a hallway/Janitors office as their whole shop and practice space both. It was incredible to see how much they did with so little space. So don’t let a lack of space stop you from practicing. It didn’t stop them at all. It does require alot for work arounds though and giving up on practicing certain things at home and leaving that for the practice field at comp. Practice everything else as much as possible.
Enough is a pretty relative term, so anything bigger than you have is better than nothing.
You do say without having to tear down everyday, is that in the same space as this 7x7m practice space? If so you can plan to be a bit modular, so have the 7x7 space be more permanent, and expand out as needed.
We are in a similar situation where we will only feasibly get a permanent 1/2 length by 3/4 width field setup, but the space might be expanded to full width. But for full field practice a few local teams have spaces set up that have offered their space to practice in, though those definitely need to be scheduled out, especially if students need rides and if the robot won’t fit in the cars that people have.
Why would it be a disadvantage?
A field with reflective symmetry requires reflecting auton routines for red and blue. Practicing auton with only one can mean more difficulty tuning auton for the field at your competition.
GDC should consider this and weigh it against other factors. Many games have been designed on the basis of visual effect from the viewpoint of an audience on one side of the field and field staff on the other. This made sense when events were Regionals where a large curtain divided floor space between pit and field areas. Most events are not like that today.
This is the boat we are in. One thing we’ve done which has helped is to schedule drive practice for Fri Eve & Sat Morn— and for us at least that gets us two practices with only 1 setup and 1 tear down.
As others have said, it depends on the game, it also depends on your robot strategy within the structure of that game.
A 7mx7m practice space is good for most years, but for years where the feeder and scoring locations are at opposite ends of the fields (many, maybe most), it would also be good to have a corridor to use occasionally for figuring out your practical cycle times.
At the end, you need to understand your resources [annual budget, build and practice space, mentors [skills and time], students [time and skills], tools, sponsors] and develop a strategy that optimizes those resources against the game and your team’s goals. The resources and goals combinations are likely close to the number of teams.
That said, if you would outline your resources and goals, people on teams who are in a similar situation could provide you better advice. for your situation. Where resources can be transferred (e.g. dollars for space), an estimate of those costs would be helpful, because these vary widely across the planet.
Whatever space you have is what you’ll have to use. 7m x 7m would probably be enough to test most autos and test all you individual robot tasks, but to run full practice matches will need a full field. remember you also need somewhere for the drivers to drive. If I were you I’d plan on reconfiguring your field for different activities, tape out different configurations with different colors of gaff tape and keep your field elements lightweight and moveable.