I, and another boy on my team were using hand signals to guide our driver. (Obviously, that didn’t work, because he wanted to do his own thing) who was supposed to use those signals to indicate scores, stacks, and where to go without beating the robot up.
When we heard that we couldn’t use them, my heart jumped, because I couldn’t remember reading about that. I DO remember reading about the two-way radio thing, but NOT hand signals. Maybe I need to go over the rule book again, huh?
Personally, I think that the ‘rule’ is not the greatest, in fact some may say it’s retarded. I really don’t see why the rule exists. I am a driver and, i don’t know about you, but i NEVER look at the audience, i always have my eyes on the robot, whether the real thing, or its image on the big screen, never other people. I also believe that if someone were on my team and they were REALLY excited about the match and got their adrenaline flowing that they might give a few hand signals, that would never be seen by the drive team but noticed by the refs, therefore DQing the team, unfortunatly, even though they would seldom help the driver anyway. If the driver did, have we ever heard of TEAMWORK, and if one team communicates w/ hand signals there would be nothing hindering another’s ablility to give them just as well. So i don’t see why its a problem.
The people in question where sitting alone behind the opposing team. They where seen signaling the mentor or human player. I believe by the reaction of the driver that they had no idea what was happening. This did not alter what happened. The following link to the FIRST forum might help clarify the rule.
As I read this, i have this nagging feeling in my stomach that we did not place the labels for San Jose on the crate. I knew I should of stayed and packed up the crate instead of going off to the stands to watch finals. Oh well…I hope whoever loaded the crate knew what they were doing.
I really don’t see why the rule exists. I am a driver and, i don’t know about you, but i NEVER look at the audience, i always have my eyes on the robot, whether the real thing, or its image on the big screen, never other people.
I couldnt agree more…i hardly hear what my coach says when im driving, let alone pay attention to people in the stands.
Just wondering, but has anyone experienced this at any of the west coast regionals? I think they did it at St. Louis too. In the quarter finals when it was us (45) and 1114 on the field 448 was standing behind us. At first we were going to have them stand right behind us and give us directions, but then we asked the head ref and he said “no, they can’t do that” “they are spectators”.
I agree that i wouldn’t be able to see any hand signals coming from the stands…matches are a blur to me. I just do my job and pay attention to the robot and occasionaly try to see what other robots are doing. I can hear the base driver and i can hear the coach occasionaly, and i even heard the announcer a few times but thats it.
Why are hand signals bad but yelling directions would be okay, that doesn’t make sense.
I think the idea is to prevent any unfair advantages of a team willing to use hand signals to either guide a robot out of a sticky situation (since it’s difficult to see short robots on the opposite side of the ramp), or to ensure the robot is properly aligned in scoring position on top of the ramp, or how much farther to move left or right to make sure a bin is in position to be dropped onto a stack. These situations would alter the outcome of a match by someone other than the 4 legal people in the driver stations, and can easily be used if a driver is told to look at person X in the crowd to figure out where to move.
As a senior member of Team 48 walking into the pit area and seeing all the teams creates had become breath taking, until I looked in the pit area beside us and no robot. My mouth about dropped and I heard echos of where is their robot at. Team 45 walked in like nothing had happened and began to set up their pit area like another day at another robotics competition. Team 48 students helped to assemble their pit area and also tried to make everyone laugh about the situation. Team 48 was more the happy to stand and applaud your hard work and sportsmanship offering your help to any team that needed it. That is what that award was truly meant to resemble. Your an excellent team with an impressive looking robot. I can’t wait to see you in action at Nationals.
