that happened to us once during practice matches, where my borhter (abed), a former member of our team was a volunteer who did the autoload station and he forgot the load the station because he was lookin at our robot on the other side of the field, and the drivers were screaming at him for like 10 seconds
That wasn’t me!! It was the guy next to me…but in any case there was a case where someone did forget to load a station during a qual match and they were approached and asked if they wanted a rematch. (They declined)
The only problems I have seen with the autoloaders are when they get pulled over by the robots using them. This happened at Purdue and I think that loader was gone for the match.
Well, I was frustrated at the time of the incident and I would have been more if it costed us the finals, but the volunteers are just people and they make mistakes. Plus, you have to realize, without them, we would not have a FIRST, so we should all thank them.
We only used the auto-loader to pick up tetras, and I don’t recall experiencing any problems in tetra availability. The Chesapeake volunteers did a nice job of keeping them loaded; I saw them put a new tetra on almost immediately after our robot grabbed one off.
I worked the blue autoloader at UTC with Justin, and same as him, I kept my conscious thought on the station itself, as long as there was a robot on the blue side of the field. It’s true that it is the best seat in the house as far as viewing the action goes. There were times where I’d have to jump back for fear of getting impaled or smacked in the head by a robot arm. But, it is easy to loose track of where you are, especially if you don’t get as much sleep as usual. Standing that close to the action, it’s very easy to just stare at the robots and watch the magic.
There were times when I had to wait a few seconds before putting a new tetra on the loader, because the robots didn’t back away. It’s important to keep in mind field attendants can’t reload the tetras until the robot has backed and cleared away from the loading zone. This is for the safety of the attendant, and to prevent the attendants from helping the robots by effectively dropping the tetra into the robot’s arms. All in all though, it was a great experience, and I’ll be doing it again at the NYC regional next week.
If this happened to me while I was driving I would (make the robot) charge the side of the field to get their attention back where it should be. 
I also did this at the UTC regional and found a similar experience. One time during a qualification match a team picked up a tetra and backed up, but their zip tie fingers used to make sure they were touching the loading zone were still touching the loading zone. After a couple of seconds I glanced over at the driver station and the drivers of that robot made some gestures kind of wondering why I was not loading the tetra. I did appraoch the drivers and coach after the match to explain that (since they couldn’t see the zip tie fingers from their angle) so they wouldn’t have a bitter memory of that match and so they knew for the future. The drivers and coach graciously listened without complaining.
The only problem we had with the auto loaders was that on thursday, we were picking up tetras without being in the loading zone, and no one said anything to us about it. That became an issue on friday in the first match. From one side, I say I don’t care, if were not in the zone, but loading go ahead and let the other teams mess with us, we can deal with it. I understand where they are coming from though, safety of the attendants, we had a 6’ arm (5’ beam and a unfolding hook) that would have to be out horizontally when loading, get rammed by another bot, not a pretty picture for the attendant.
Thats ok, we have a human player that is awesome, we have come into the zone with the arm sticking out in the most akward of ways and she twists and turns and limbos and never got us a penalty once. Our arm backdrives with the tetra on and once she put the tetra on and got out of the station underneath the arm. I nearly crapped myself when she did that, but she didn’t touch it… So the human player is working out even better than the autoloader, I’m definitely happy with that.
I don’t think I saw too many autoloaders knocked over at the Chesapeake regional, but then I was in the pits a lot, so that isn’t saying that much.
i have not seen any problems with the auto-loaders yet. the volunteers at the central florida regional were very quick to reload them. the only problem i have with them is that triangle you have to be on while loading. i wish it was bigger!!!
Your brother’s innocent. But, although it’s OK to work practice matches, a volunteer should recuse themself from all matches that involve a team to which they are affilated. It’s best to sit it out, to include the entire eliminations, than to give even a hint of a conflict of interests.
In eliminiations I had to sit out some of the matches they were in (I had a backup right there with me) because I didn’t want to be watching something on the other side of the field and forget to put a tetra on (I did do all the qual. matches and didnt have any problems). The swampthing, pink, and bionic tiger alliance gave some of my co-volunteers on the red side much more work than what we ever had on the blue! (oh and I don’t think we ever ran out of tetras on either the auto load or the hp zones)
on a side note: I saw at least 20 tetras break during the course of the regional. This included many VT’s. If any of you were watching the practice matches you might have seen some with only one real Vision tetra and one regular one.
Consider this: Supposed something happened, whether real or imagined, that caused your team to win a Q-match, or caused their most feared upcoming opponent in the eliminations to loose. How would you or the field reps. convince them that you were impartial when they had reason to suspect otherwise. You most likely can’t convince them. The best way to get out of that situation is to not get yourself into it.
In one of the qualifying matches at VCU (I was driving, red side) I picked up a tetra from the loader, backed away and placed it on a goal. The volunteer was so busy watching our robot that he didn’t replace the tetra. When I turned the robot around and head back to the loading station, he realized he had forgotten and replaced it quickly but I still had to drive a bit slower to keep from getting to the loader before the tetra was placed. I didn’t make a big deal out of it because it did not cost us the match.
This happened once at FL during one of the qual matches. They actually pulled the refs and a representative from each team down on the field to discuss it, and the team it happened to was offered a rematch. I’m surprised the same wasn’t offered to your team at your regional. How did your team do other than that match, though?
At FLR, the autoloader volunteer was watching the game and not the autoloader. We went to load and had to wait for him, while we tried yelling at him and getting his attention. He finally put it on and we kept playing like normal. We won so it wasnt a big deal.
This past weekend at Detroit the volunteers were very good about everything, and we had no real problems. The one autoloader was a little slow though and we had to wait about 2 seconds while she was putting it on straight.
My team, 492, attended the PAC NW regional and I am pretty sure that this never happened during the quali+final matches for us.
This happened a few times during the practice matches, but some thing happened between the practice matches and the quali matches, maybe they got a talking too.
Another thing that happened a few times (more than them forgetting about the auto-loader) in the practice matches was that they forgot to remove the hanging tetra until long after autonomous was over. I have a feeling that this was never taken issue with due to the fact that it did not really impede anyone strategies as not being able to get a tetra from the auto-loader would have.
I saw autoloaders that weren’t even manned in the practice rounds :ahh: The team that mentored us our rookie year sat with no tetras to stack for half the match becuase they had no one manning the autloaders. That practice is really important at your first regional.
I mean…there is very little that an autoloader who is being as fair as possible can do to influence the outcome of the match. After a while you get into a rythm with the speed and distance that you feel comfortable with at putting tetras on the station. Alo consider the fact that many of the volunteers are alumni of teams or parents of kids on teams so it it happens sometimes that your old team or current team could be on the field. One of my old team’s mentors was actually worried about me being up there and my lil’ brother driving at the same time, but after a couple of matches it was very clear that there was no problem.