Based on Week 2 data from Ed Law, several teams have racked up impressive litter scores.
48 teams have OPR Litter >10. (five [strike]four[/strike] of these rank in Top 20 for Qual Avg: 1114, 67, 744, 2342, 1876)
4 teams have OPR Litter >20. (2767, 3238, 2342, 5167)
These litterbugs (Litter Aces) are making their impact felt on Recycle Rush.
To emulate: humans practice throwing.
To mitigate: teams add litter plows to robots, drivers practice sweeping. (Is this even worth the teleop time spent? Maybe, in the final seconds without a potential cap.)
I got to give all the credit to my human player. I required him to throw 75 noodles onto the other side of our practice field Wednesday before the competition, by the time he got to 65 he only missed 11 noodles. Also got to give a shout to who I believe was 2959s human player for spearing 2075s robot in the semis. Looking forward to play at St Joe with you and 3620.
I’d like to give a shoutout to 3238 Cyborg Ferret’s human player for putting on a noodle throwing clinic at PNW Glacier Peak this weekend, solidifying their #1 seed. They had an average of 31 litter points per match in quals, which is 13 points higher than the next highest in the PNW (average being ~10 per match).
Here’s a good example of how effective a well-trained human player can be in a match:
I’ll pass that on to Nico (our human player). It was definitely fun to watch and he has been practicing it a ton prior to the Glacier Peak Competition.
Not to my knowledge, but there’s a quick shot in 148’s reveal video of their human player noodling one of their stacks, which is still pretty impressive.
I’d imagine that as the competition progresses in the playoffs, sweeping them into the landfill would become increasingly valuable, peaking at a 5-point swing per noodle in the finals.
I’m not sure that a noodle has the power to knock over a tote stack. However, I have seen a few videos and pictures in which one alliance’s pool noodle landed on top of an incomplete stack, on top of which the opposing alliance was still able to place more totes on top of it. Those totes didn’t count though since they technically weren’t fully supported exclusively by the totes below it.
in the last few seconds of Playoff matches my team would usually push away some litter, since there wasn’t time to start another stack- a good way to gain points while pushing down the score of other alliances… plus it eliminates clutter if one of our allies is trying to make a last minute stack
I don’t know about that, but there have been recorded cases of robots getting their lifts noodled. in fact, FRC 1983’s human player did this to us in a Playoff match, incapacitating us for a good 15 seconds as we tried to get the darned thing out of our robot. whether intentional or not (he was probably the best thrower there, so it is possible that his aim was that good, but it’s more likely that he got lucky), it was brilliant from a strategy point of view.
The HP from Team 1629 (didn’t catch his name) at the Greater Pittsburgh Regional was phenomenal! He was tossing well over 60% into the opposing zone, and I saw several of his throws bounce off the opposing driver station wall. He was definitely a factor in their alliance taking the crown.
I’m really surprised people aren’t dedicating a robot to sweeping by eliminations you think you could train people on the other side to stop littering.
Cory, We have to give credit where credit is due. Your HP was an inspiration to all noodlers with 371 points in littler!!! Once we found out that not only could noodles tip the scales on points but also hinder the opposing alliance robots, it was game on. Kevin our noodler, scored 271 and could stack them up like cord wood so we nick-named him “Rigatoni”.
2959’s Noodler ended up starting to target robots during the finals. Have to give credit to 3620 at on point it looked like they had all our noodles dumped on top of them but they kept on trucking.
