I remember looking at my 'bot after a match, and pulling a nice size bit of retro tape off a bolt on the side panal. I had the offending bolt (it must have been at just the same hight as the top goal deck) filed down. Despite taking off all the sharp edges we could find, the odd bit of retro tape would still show up on our bot or stuck to our wheels and what not.
Several times when taking our 'bot off the field I noticed just how little of the tape was still on the goals, and this was only a few matches into the day. It was like this at every game I’ve been to so far. I’m rather sure it wasn’t just us chewing up the tape, there was a lot of damage, enough that some faces of the goal had virtually no tape left.
So my question is this: For teams that used the retro tape and sensors in some way, did you notice problems due to the tape being stripped off?
*Originally posted by Stephanie *
**i think there were only a handful of teams that had the sensors. whether they actually used them, i don’t know. **
Aces High 176 used the sensor for grabbing one of thier two possible goals. It seemed to work, even at the end of the day (i.e. Newton Divisional Playoffs).
A number of teams used sensors for traction control (IE, making an encoder wheel, and watching for wheel slippage) or other non-goal-related things. As somone who worked field-reset at the Southern California Regional (and who had to re-tape the goals every day) I, too, can say that the tape did indeed look pretty bad after a few matches. It sounds like everybody "ooo"ed and "aah"ed over the tape at kick-off, but later discovered that it wasn’t as cool as it had orignally seemed. Just my take…
At MMR, my team stayed after each night to help repair goals, take off snags/duct tape carpeting, vaccuum, clean the stands, etc… but I was surprised how much of the tape wasn’t there when we went to put fresh tape on (every night)… and that tape is expensive too!! Maybe FIRST will think of a better way to do that next year if they use sensors again…
