Posted by Allen Smith, Engineer on team #7, Knights, from Parkville High School and Black & Decker/AAI/Raytheon.
Posted on 3/5/99 9:46 AM MST
I was watching tapes of the Chicago competition and I
have a couple of suggestions for making the game more
spectator friendly.
First, when the referees are on the playing field scoring
the match they should give hand signals as to whether a
robot is off the ground or not, which side of the line the puck
is on, and the number of floppies held. Ten fingers - ten
floppies, coincedence? Sometimes you could see them knod or shake
their heads but a big hand signal like baseball’s safe or out
would be nice. After one match I overheard a student grousing
“I still don’t understand how they got 63 points” The hand
signals would go a long way to eliminating this kind of consternation.
Second, if the teams could make the red or blue alliance panels BIG
it would held make the game more understandable. I saw a
couple of instances where it looked like the drivers
themselves didn’t realize a robot was on their team.