Week 6

The final week of district events and regionals fast approaches. Be sure to use your unbag time to make improvements to your robot. Continuous improvement is crucial as the season progresses.

North Bay District Event

This weekend is the North Bay District Event! 1305 is super excited to welcome teams to our hometown! The robot invasion has begun and North Bay is ready to receive the amazing teams that will be competing here! Check out the public schedule here: https://www.firstroboticscanada.org/new/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/NorthBay_2019_FRC.pdf

Pit Safety

As district competition Week 4 comes to an end and Week 5-7 begins, make sure to ALWAYS follow the safety parameters for putting up and taking down your pit. Here's what it says from the FIRST 2019 Safety Manual:

Setting Up the Team Pit Station
• Bring and use work gloves for uncrating and re-crating, if a crate is in use.
• Design and set up your pit station safely and use proper tools to construct any components (displays, shelves, banners, etc.)
• Use ladders; don’t climb on items not meant for the task, such as tables and chairs.
• Observe the ten-foot height limit for all portions of your pit station, including banners.
 • Small, bench-top band saws and drill presses, with appropriate guards, are allowed in team pit station.

Please ensure the safety of yourself, along with others around you :)

Elimination Matches Strategy

Coming off of our week 3 District even win I would like to congratulate our alliance partners 4476 and 781, as well as the event Finalists 1325, 4903 and 7664! One thing that you may have noticed upon entering the elimination rounds was that we changed our match strategy. In qualification matches we attempted to complete a rocket to gain an extra ranking point. However, in the elimination rounds we changed our strategy to be geared towards placing hatches on half of the field,  while our alliance partner 4476, placed cargo on the other side of the field. At approximately half way through the match, we switched sides of the field, so that 4476 could place cargo on the other half of the field, while we placed more hatches, and eventually cargo. We went with this strategy because upon entering elimination matches we realized that to reduce cycle times we should focus on the cargo ship. This allowed us to maximize our score and to win our first event in the 2019 season!

Continuous Data Collection

Gathering data for award submissions and other documents can be challenging. Recording collected data in easy to reach locations can reduce the time it takes to find it later on. Also, setting specific days to do this can help stream line this process.

Just Because the Robot is Bagged Doesn't Mean You Stop Improving

As the title says even if the robot is bagged you can still keep making improvements, especially to the robot code. There are many great resources lying around that provide good code or even a great place to get started working with unknown features, just like how we are using this to help provide our code for a PID loop for our improved tower.

Always improve

After your first competition it is a good idea to fix any problems you had. whether it was a broken piece or something you can do to make your robot better. Always try to improve your robot for a better experience at competition.

Safety at Georgian!

The event went great! Everyone was safe, they wore their safety glasses, had all the necessary PPE, and followed all safety rules. We won the Pit Safety award, which means that our pit was organized, clean and able to be worked in. To win this award, make sure to keep your pit super clean and organized! Also, we actually used our Battery Spill Kit at the event! always make sure to have a Battery Spill Kit in your pit in case someone needs to use it!

Keep having fun at all the events you're attending, and keep being as safe as you can be :)

 

Pre-match Checkups

To ensure your robot is match ready it is a good idea to check parts that frequently break and to make sure that everything is in order. You can make a physical checklist of things that you might forget to do or even have a mental checklist.

Check out our "We Belong in FIRST" song!

Buttons!!!

Team buttons are a great way to attract people to your pit and to promote your team. Many people will collect them and wear them which gives your team exposure. A button maker is a great investment but if you don’t have one ask other teams in your area if you can borrow theirs. When others visit your pit you can ask them a question about FIRST and if they don’t know the answer explain it to them then give them a button.

Safety at FIRST Events

As competition season is happening, always make sure to be keeping you and your team safe! Remember to always wear your safety glasses in pits, on the practice and competition fields, and in designated areas. Always have an Evacuation Plan and a Fire Plan in case of emergencies!
Hope everyone has a safe and successful season!

Judged Awards

Judged awards are a big part of FIRST and give valuable points needed to make Distric Champs, and eventually worlds. It is a good idea to plan out your platform for the awards so you know what you will tell judges. Judges also want to hear about problems you encountered, but then how you overcame them. So don’t be afraid to tell judges the hardships you have endured. Today before our first event (week 3) we planned out what we will tell judges based on the criteria for each award. Best of luck to all teams for your pit awards! #Webelong

The Blue Alliance

There are lots of week 2 events that are happening this weekend. To watch these events live you can go to thebluealliance.com Scores and schedules will be updated as they are made available.

Thanking Your Sponsors

Thanking and showing appreciation to sponsors is great way of creating a good relationship with them. Some methods of doing this are sponsor appreciation nights and inviting them to events.

Judged Awards

As competitions near it is important to know about the requirements for judged awards. The important thing to remember when talking to judges is to be yourself. You are a part of the team and you know about your team. It’s easy to talk about stuff that you already know and there is no need to make stuff up. Check out the link below for a list of awards.

https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc/awards

Its all about Strategy... My favorite part

Good Read here
https://www.chiefdelphi.com/t/mittenreview-fim-2019-week-1-preview-ready-to-launch/348346

Cycle Time
Make no question about it, this is first and foremost a cycle time game. The alliances that can out-cycle their opponents will win most matches, short of some spectacular end game shananagins or incredible defense. The goal for most teams during quals will be to be able to secure the rocket and climb RP as much as possible, so of course robots with faster cycle times will be able to fill up the rocket quicker and more consistently in matches across the length of a tournament.

So let’s break this down a little, in order to achieve the rocket RP, a total of 12 game pieces need to be scored. I think that it’s safe to assume that an average alliance should hopefully be able to get 1-2 hatches scored on the rocket during auto (sandstorm), this leaves 10 or possibly 11 cycles left to do this with the 135 remaining seconds. Will a robot be able to do this themselves? Maybe, but they’ll have to be quick. The graph below gives a breakdown of the time it takes to score game pieces based on a couple sample cycle times with either 1 or 2 robots working to score them.

Week1Graph.png852×619 94.6 KB

You can see that unless you are in the range of a 12 second cycle (get game piece, score, get game piece), filling a rocket yourself won’t be an option. With two robots working a single rocket, it becomes more manageable, allowing more than 20 seconds per cycle and still obtain the RP with enough time to get on the HAB platforms at the end of the game. I think with any week 1 and early weeks, this rocket RP will be less than common (see discussion below), but as the weeks progress then I think we will see them pretty consistently. However it also depends on how the defensive game evolves.

Average Week 1 Score
The cycle time discussion brings us to an interesting topic that always has some discussion prior to the start of competitions, which is “What will the average Week 1 score be??” Well this game is unique compared to other games, but also somewhat similar in scoring fashion to 2016. However, in this game every alliance should start off with between 6 and 9 free points to begin with since there shouldn’t be any reason to have the enormous percentage of non-working autonomous this year…let’s call it 6 and assume that 2 of 3 robots can even drive off the level 1 platform that’s it…just drive off, 6 free points. Will teams be actually scoring during week 1 during this period? Debatable. Go take a look at some early week 1 video on TBA from 2016. So let’s assume 1 game piece (hatch) on average gets scored during the sandstorm period…2 more points, we are up to a total of 8. Now, for teleop mode. In 2016, the average number of balls scored per match in week 1 was around two or three…that’s it but you were also driving over defenses. Going out on a limb here and saying we won’t see many matches with more than 5 game pieces scored during teleop, call it 3 hatches, and 2 balls. That’s another 12 points. Now we’re up to 20 total. Endgame is similar to the sandstorm period where it should be almost a guaranteed 9 points, but we know not everyone will make it back to the HAB in time, or break down. So we will say an average of 9, giving us a total of 29 points. Our prediction is that the average qualification score will be between 26-32 points in Week 1 . I hope we are wrong and average scores are much higher, but based on 2016’s week 0 to week 1 progression where the average score raised only ~20%, that lines up with the week 0 average score this year of 22 *1.2 = 26 points. Regarding the extra rocket RP, we assume very few teams will be able to complete it given that the tower in 2016 where 8 balls needed to be scored to get the RP happened in a whopping 1-3% of matches depending on event. This year, we need to score 12, split between hatches and cargo.

Defense
This 2019 game switched how defense is able to be played, with allowing only a single defender past the midline and with having to stay inside the frame perimeter, it makes acquiring game pieces a non-trivial task unless specifically designed to do so. With that though, the defender enjoys free reign to interfere with robots looking to score on both the rocket and cargo ship. This means that a relatively simple robot with a strong drivetrain could be enough to disrupt the scoring ability of robots. Even so, there are 12 scoring locations at level 1, and a coordinated alliance can force the defender to waste time travelling between robots. I’m excited to see how DEEP SPACE develops come eliminations begin on Saturday, and will be on the lookout for insightful and effective defense in the state this week.

End Game
Ah, the end game. The part of each game it seems that can make or break the match for your alliance. A level 3 climb will nearly ensure the RP is achieved requiring only one of the two remaining robots to be on the HAB level 1. However, this is not necessarily an easy task. We look forward to seeing how many robots can successfully achieve a level 3 climb. Success in this area will be a trade-off between how long it takes to climb to each respective level vs. additional points that could be scored by cycling cargo or hatches. If your team managed to get a level 3 climb together but it takes an enormous amount of time to pull off, the alliance will have to weigh their options which are obviously match dependent. The much rumored level 3 buddy climb turns a challenging task into one that few teams in the world will be able to execute effectively. However, if pulled off, could easily turn the tide for many qual matches as well as make the difference for elims.

Quals vs. Elims
Similar to the past few years, there are no bonus points, or change in point structure associated with elimination rounds vs. qualification rounds. Simply the removal of the ranking point bonuses for certain objectives. This is important because tasks that may be more difficult but provide additional value during qualification rounds (see level 3 rocket), are suddenly less valuable during elims where an easier scoring location may be more beneficial and provide the same amount of points. We foresee scoring priority shifting from filling a rocket to try and get the RP, to filling the cargo ship. With a total of 40 scored positions (24 from rockets, 12 from side cargo ship, 4 front cargo ship) game pieces able to be scored on the field, for all but the most skilled alliances it will be near impossible to score everywhere even if you have all three robots playing offense even with the preloaded game pieces.

Hatch Placement
Early on in the build season there was a lot of hubub about how difficult it was to place hatches onto the cargo ship. Will we see this play out in practice? How many teams will opt to place null hatches on their cargo ship to help alleviate the potential for this issue? Many reveal videos have shown that there are many effective hatch mechanisms out there, but we need to remind ourselves that these videos are from a lot of top tier teams and may not represent the abilities of the rest of the community. Which leads us into…

Ground Hatch Pickup
Much like 2017; even though all hatches are introduced to the field from the human load station, we are still seeing a lot of robots with ground pickup mechanisms. Will this year be another case where picking up from the ground will be useful early on, but taper off in advantage as the weeks go on? Only time will tell.