Here’s a video of our robot at the Denver scrimage that was held today at the Colorado School of Mines. The event pointed out some things that have been discussed on this forum this past week. First scoring is not all that easy in either autonomous or teleoperated. No robots scored any keepers in autonomous. In teleoperated I was expecting robots to be able to score at least 3 tubes, but in most instances robots were lucky to score one. We were the only defensive robot there. When we defended the goals no robot could score against us. Parking our robot in front of the opposing alliance drivers was very effective. They couldn’t see the rack and couldn’t score either. The video also shows a pushing match an arm bot tried with us. The video also show two other robots driving up on ours. Our ramp was the only one any other robot could get up on. Here’s the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTu4S9sSAvM
Darn… the video is still processing on youtube.
I have no doubt that there were very few teams scoring in auto, and no doubt the teleoperated mode is very difficult. However I’ve had the opportunity to compete in first weekend (PNW) and final weekend (GTR) regionals the last couple of years. The difference between Friday morning at Portland and Saturday afternoon in Toronto is astounding… heck the difference between Friday morning and Saturday afternoon in Portland is astounding. So what looked difficult at first may start to look, perhaps, less challenging by the end.
You guys have done well to get your first few matches out of the way, so I suspect you’ll hit the ground running for your first match.
Good luck,
Jason
P.S. I believe there was a Q&A response regarding parking a view-blocking robot in front of a driver station. I have no doubt it is effective, but it may not be allowed.
Hi Jason, We fully expect the judges to make the rules more restrictive about how we can operate at the regionals. The first time we blocked the view of the rack by just being on the field (not in their home zone) the opposition was stunned. Our robot is an “outside of the nine dots” design and as such will be the target of a lot of controversy. We have made sure that we are not just a “one note samba” team relying on just one tactic. For example after digesting a lot of the threads, we realized that early on in seeding if we simply deployed our ramps in our home zone at the begining of the teleoperated period and gave our alliance partners the full two minutes to drive up, that move would probably produce more points for our alliance than the opposition could hanging tubes. I agree with you that teams are going to get smarter as regionals progress. Our regional is the last weekend in March so we have the opportunity to be real smart by then. 