We were having some fun on Saturday, and put a new driver on the defensive sticks (infinite recharge robot, starts on the right).
Is the hilarious pile up at the end of the video a defensive foul?
I can see an argument for offensive foul by strict reading of contact inside frame perimeter, but wouldn’t necessarily want to call one (defense clearly initiated contact).
We had to manually separate the robots, both were up off their wheels.
How would you coach the defensive driver after seeing this match?
To me this looks brutal but ultimately clean. Sure, I’d like to see shorter run-ups with more surgical precision hitting the corners of the offensive robot, but I don’t see any explicit errors?
(Keeping in mind, new driver. Our lead mentor can use the same robot to get our comp driver in a really solid t-bone, but that’s less common than playing “tag the corners”)
To make it extra spicy, inspired by that other thread - is this defense that is “overly aggressive and non-GP”?
If it was determined that the brake-check was a purposeful strategy, then it is possible the robot on the right broke G201.
I do not see a violation of G204 as it says (emphasis mine): A ROBOT may not use a COMPONENT outside its FRAME PERIMETER (except its BUMPERS) to initiate contact…
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Also, I see no apparent violation of G205.
I don’t think G206 applies as the robot tipped itself.
To answer the topic of the thread: No I saw nothing here that would constitute a foul
My 2 completely unsolicited takeaways from this video that you can take with a grain of salt:
Your defensive driver backing off on the first instance of nearly tipping the offensive robot would have been something my scouts would have noted and made me rewatch if I was busy and did not see it for myself. That is what we call “smart” defense as tipping them over would get our alliance carded in elims so for a defense pick you would have shot way up our rankings because “brutal but legal” is our second favorite defense. Your defense driver whether on purpose or not also backed off the offensive robot when they were near the safe zone on the outside of the hangar. “Penalty free” is our favorite defense so honestly as long as that thing could move and get a 1 cargo auto it would have been my top 2nd round pick at any prechamps event this year.
Your offense robot being so tippy would worry us whether we were looking for offense or defense. If this was an actual match not using the safe zone or any sort of wall to allow you to shoot would worry us and you would go down in our picklist because of this. If we were looking to try to get you as a 2nd round pick we probably would approach you asking if you would be willing to put your robot in coast and not break mode on the drivetrain to see if that would help with the tipping since it happens even when no one is around you.
Either way all things being equal if this was a fair representation of the two “teams” capabilities at our events your defensive robot would rank much higher on our picklist than the offensive one
There’s an argument for contact inside frame perimeter, or an argument for entanglement. But based on what I’ve seen here, it’s a design issue with both robots being able to out-accelerate their respective CGs.
In my opinion i would say that is not a foul for the defending robot but might be a foul for the robot being defended if it look like a strategy to hurt other robots
Also and more importent make a robot that is more stable!!!
You can do that by having a low centere of mass or if you are not able to make it more stable you should slow down the robot or make it slow down a little before stopping completly
Sorry about this, but that is really bad. I’d be scared to be on the field with either bot. Bumper to bumper I’m cool with. Bottom of robot on top of mine… not so much.
Agree with consensus opinion…a top heavy design will come close to tipping with vigorous but legal defense. That being said…the defense robot darn near tipped the other robot once. Good drivers would not run that risk a second time. And if the second near tip came after a longer than usual run in approach you start to wonder. Doing it a third time and/or tipping it the second time might get the thumbs down.
I was more confident in such pronouncements before I started working as a ref. Sometimes you don’t see it from the omniscient angle, and your fellow ref across the way might have had his/her eye on something else. And the call is in real time, no replaying it and studying.
Train your drive team to not hit a robot a second time in the fashion that almost tipped it the first.
G202 Pin?
The carpet is a field element. The defensive robot is preventing movement using a field element, and initiated the contact. Nothing in there about being able to exit a pin for it to be a pin, so you could keep stacking counts & fouls until the end of the match?
Lots of people touched on this - this is by far the tippiest driving we’ve had out of our comp driver in several weeks, driven by the newness of both having offensive power and a hound-dog chasing him. Purpose of practice and all that.
They’re both WCD, two falcons per side and four colsons, ~17fps & ~19fps and 76 & 78lbs on the scale. 28" long. We’re likely running the same thing next year, we love this architecture.
I don’t want to nerf the controls in software, stylistically that feels wrong. I’d rather give the full potential to the drivers, and let them pull the machine to it’s limits.
Given they both weigh about 80 lbs, I guess we do have the ability to ballast the bottom end?
Again, I don’t love it. Weight should have purpose.
Stability is a purpose. Maybe steel plates bolted under the bellypan.
There’s also some physics constants to tweak in the old school cheezydrive, but I don’t want to change our driving dynamics two days before we leave for MTTD.
As to coaching, I would say tell the driver: If you are in contact and the other robot goes over, you will get a card. I guess my question would be are they scoring well enough (and the best on the opposing alliance, that they should be defended?
And it’s a win-win for everyone to improve your stability. Your driver can drive harder and faster with improved pushing power. Defensive robots are less likely to unintentionally draw a match costing penalty. Refs don’t have to make judgement calls about intent or fault.
Unless you’re trying to draw fouls (which I doubt you are), I’d use that extra weight.
But regarding the original video, it looks like it’s not a foul to me.
So I did look through some of your matches this season and while not as tippy as shown in the video it was still worryingly tippy from my point of view, especially when contacting other robots. Getting stuck on a cargo in pivotal elims match is also a big worry, even if you went on to win this match via tie breakers.
I do think investing in weight near the bottom of your robot to make this tipping not happen is worth it and not just weight due to weight. I speak from experience changing your cg to be lower or in a different location can result in amazing results.
I didn’t see any fouls for the defensive bot. However, depending on when a ref focused their attention to the two robots, you could either get zero, one or two fouls on the offensive robot for being inside the frame perimeter.
Since both bots were tippy I would task the programmers to limit the acceleration curve, especially when reversing direction.
