For the the week 1 people, how has it been?
-Did the ir board work or did a lot of robots do nothing?
-What seemed to be the most dominating robot? (arms, lifts, launchers, basebots, other…)?
-Were there a lot of penalities (especiallythe 80 inch rule, and impeding)?
-High scores or low scores?
Most teams didn’t seem to be actively using signaling devices, but I’m not really sure as I wasn’t involved with a team competing this weekend, just watching.
Of the two regionals I saw, 1114 and 1625 were the most dominant. Both of them combined aspects of the arms and shooters (probably closer to the shooter end), but their biggest advantages were their speeds (both of their physical robot and of their ball acquisition).
I don’t think I saw a single penalty called for 80 inches or impeding, but I saw countless line crossing violations and a few high speed ramming/aggressive driving.
Qualification matches generally had low scores, but the eliminations picked up it substantially.
I was at the midwest regional, and overall I was impressed, now to your questions:
EDIT: I’m not sure, but I dont think the 80in is a penalty. I thought is was something that they would check during inspection. Could some please correct me if I’m wrong?
Joey
During inspection they mark whether it is physically possible for your robot to exceed 80" (regardless of programmed stops). If your robot exceeds 80" in a match, that is a penalty.
I have another question. Did anyone that competed this weekend use rose, amber or blue tinted glasses? If so did they help with the glare/reflection off of the lane divider?
The glare is definitely killer on the lane divider. On the two outside player stations, at least 1/4 of the field is practically blind to the driver. It would be interesting to run the stats on the center player station, to see how much it affects the scores.
also did anyone use like a line or reflective sensor
how many pts scored during hybrid
Well, I only watched the webcasts, but here’s my best shot at this.
Launchers with a “roller gripper” to pick up balls were shining. Teams like 1114 fit into this cataglory.
The 80in rule wasn’t called (at all) from what i saw. Even tipped robots didnt get checked/called. Impeding wasn’t called either.
High scores were 130+. (I think MWR QFs). Lowest ones were 10ish without penalties
More important than how you hurdle, though, is accuracy. I saw a lot of shooters nail the overpass and fail. I’ve also seen arms ram the overpass and fall >.>
We found that regardless of how you hurdle it is important to do it without stopping or if you do stop only for a second.
Line violations, Line violations, and more Line violations
Watch those lines, thats the most popular penalty to be called.
A good Hybrid is important to winning…
i’ve been watching on blue alliance; the lifts are extremely slow. The arms are too tip heavy and the lauchers are doing well. The hybrid is extremely important and most teams are not doing it.
also the thefro526 is right. On the vids there are a lot of lane violations
Three things are important in this game
Speed
Speed
and
Speed
Fast bots for laps and hybrid.
Cycle time to acquire ball, move ball, and hurdle, doesn’t matter if you lift shoot or a combo of both, the need to do that cycle quickly is what separates the bots.
80" rule was called in St. Louis, line penalties were big, hurdling interference was called a lot on Saturday, impeding not as much. Also extension outside the box contact was called a lot more on Saturday.
Also go to your local craft store and buy LOTS AND LOTS of velcro, teams are shooting down full speed in hybrid/auto and one of our teammates today got their control board broken. Use the hook end of the velcro to keep your board secure and be ready to catch the board should it fall.
Use your coach/robocoach as extra eyes, there is a reflection off the lane divider that can cause confusion.
And once again watch those line penalties!!!
Woot 300th post
so what is the problem with the lane divider?
This little magic trick is the problem with the lane divider:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=710555&postcount=52
Wow. Thanks for the pics, my team did not tell me this.
Beware the flags/lap counters. They are IR transmitters! Our autonomous failed miserably until we relocated the flag holder, then it worked 100%. Thanks again team 25 for diagnosing this problem, and helping with the repair.
The plates on the center dividers are an issue. Even with over 3/4" ground clearance, our bot was hung up on the carpet once. (it must have been loose or pulled up)
Bots with forks - Be aware of the fencing material in front of the robo-coach. We had to modify the forks 1st day.
that exact reason is why i accidentally knocked over 2022 twice during a practice match after 1114 did it in hybrid they kept putting it back up.
its also an effect not noticeable from the stands which i got crap for driving weird down there. lookout drivers.
As said by Dad1279 you should place something on the end of your forks so that they cannot go the the fence on the robocoach station, we found that tennis balls work great and that you can get colored one’s from a teacher/classroom supply place.
Well. I guess region affects how teams play.
There weren’t any dominant launchers at GSR. What really played a role in how well you could score was how easily you could pick up the ball.
I don’t think the actual launching aspect makes much difference in hurdling performance of launcher vs arm/lift. I think it is how quickly you can start moving after hurdling. Most teams have to stop, wait a little bit to get their arms/lifts low enough to just drive under the bar, launchers are already low enough. That is the advantage.
At Oregon, it was obvious that getting the ball quickly was key regardless of how the ball was hurdled. Many robots could hurdle but the best were very quick. Team 368 could get the ball on the run, hit top speed running down the lane, turn and zip their elevator up, spit out the ball quickly and get it down quickly - they were a hurdling machine. That being said, I think a launcher could be even quicker since they don’t have to slow down to hurdle. But getting the ball is usually a problem for a launcher so a good design makes a difference. Team 473 was affective in pinning the ball on the wall to pick it up - launching was no problem for them and very cool to watch.
Hybrid mode was a real mixed bag. We used the IR board pretty well but it sometimes was blocked or out of range. only one team made it a full loop, we made it close to 3/4 loop twice and almost always 2 lines. most teams either crossed one line or not at all. one team knocked down two balls and had 3 lines (team 1540). teams that didn’t move were in the way most of the time.
placing the ball on the rack at the end was key as was being able to knock them down (which was our specialty). A lot of bots tried to knock the balls down but many many of them struggled and some just plain couldn’t do it.
Line violations was called ALL of the time. even a corner of a bumper that passes back over a line will get you a penalty - I really hope they revise this for the rest of the regionals. It seems odd that you only get points in hybrid mode if your bot totally crosses the line, but you get penalized for even the slightest bit over.
Impeding was called a lot but I think, again, it was due to interpretation. Slowing down in front of a hurdler to keep them from hurdling was called every time. We thought this was a legal move since they would then need to bump to pass. but, we were wrong and learned the hard way as did many other robots. However, you could impede pretty well if they were not trying to hurdle.
no 80" rule violations that I know of. And no violations during Hybrid either. In several cases, controlers were knocked down by speeding bots in autonomous but they did not get penalized - which I thought was a shame since the affected robot would be out of action while they reset their controllers.
reflections from week #1 Regional…
Sadly, our design seems not to be very effective in the hurdling aspect. It is too slow and very difficult to consistently control.
In NJ, Hurdling combined with speed ruled the roost. The winning alliance had 2 wicked hurdlers & 1 little wicked fast lap bot.
I STILL think that choosing an alliance that is IN the top 8 as an alliance partner during the Alliance Selection should be OUTLAWED (just my opinion). The winning alliance in NJ had the #1 & #6 team in it, and honestly I think they could have won without a 3rd team. They were very generous and picked a 3rd partner that was ranked #13.
Penalties - the line violation penalty was called nearly every match. It must have been close to 80% and in many cases affected the outcome of a match. Would basically agree that this rule becomes REALLY hard to abide by, if you get more than 1 robot in a zone, it gets congested REALLY fast. Think the best thing would have been going COMPLETELY back over the line as opposed to just “touching” it.
I was disappointed to see that there was not much made of the 80 inch rule. Our team went to great lengths to abide by this, but I saw numerous instances of other robots that I am fairly certain violated this rule. I know this is hard to see during a match, but think it could have been enforced during the inspection process.
Thanks to teams 816 & 836 for the partnership in the playoffs, think we worked well together, just came up a little short.
Congrats to teams 25, 103 & 381. You guys played the game great, I have no hard feelings towards your teams, just do not like the rules as they are. CONGRATS!!!
Onward to Philadelphia 