Block Party!

Woo!  New game!  But what all is there to it?  Where are the points?  Where are the penalties?

Allow me to explain:

The Game

The field looks like this:

Screen Shot 2013-09-07 at 3.44.56 PM

It’s divided diagonally, much like Ring it Up!, but now the platform in the middle is hugely complicated and the playing element is dispensed at corners rather than on the sides.  The goal is to score 2″ cubes into Bowled Over! crates (both depicted below)

The scoring element, a 2" cube
The scoring element, a 2″ cube
The scoring crates
The scoring crates

In the autonomous phase, points are scored by putting cubes in crates and driving the robot onto the center bridge.

20 points are awarded to teams that get cubes in crates
20 points are awarded to teams that get cubes in crates
But 40 points are given to teams that can score a cube above an IR beacon
But 40 points are given to teams that can score a cube above an IR beacon
10 points are given for parking partially on the bridge, 20 for being all the way on the bridge
10 points are given for parking partially on the bridge, 20 for being all the way on the bridge
You can also score 5 points by putting cubes a low goal
You can also score 5 points by putting cubes a low goal

During the TeleOp phase, you can put cubes in crates and into the low goals. Cubes in the low goal count for 1 point, in outside crates are 3 points, and inside crates are two points.

In the end game, you have three choices as to how to play. You can choose to continue to do the TeleOp phase (and if your pendulum goal are balanced, you get a 50% multiplier to your score); you can raise your only alliance flag, which will score you 25 points if raised to half-mast and 35 points if raised to the top; and there is the hanging bonus (you may recall this from the FRC game Ultimate Ascent or the FTC game Hangin’-a-Round), where if you’re robot can grab the bar that is atop the bridge and pull itself up off the ground, then you get 50 points.

Penalties

In the past, penalties have been a deduction from the offender’s score. This year, penalties will be an addition to the non-offender’s score. That is, if the red alliance got a five-point penalty, the blue alliance would get five points added to their score, while the red alliance’s score remained the same.

Penalties are scored like so:

  • Minor Penalty—10 points
  • Major Penalty—50 points
  • DQ—Disqualified

These are the game-specific penalties (go to the game manual part 2 for the safety and general penalties):

  • Possessing more than 4 blocks at one time—Minor penalty ever 5 seconds; blocks cannot be scored
  • Harassing your opponent’s pendulum (unless you’re scoring in it)—Major penalty, unless it’s inadvertent, in which case there is no penalty
  • Scoring or de-scoring in your opponent’s pendulum in the end game—Major penalty, and the opposing alliance gets a balance bonus
  • De-scoring (except from floor goal)—Major penalty
  • Touching cubes after the match ends—cubes won’t be scored
  • Scoring non-preloaded cubes in autonomous mode—cubes will not be counted
  • Hanging interference—Major penalty
  • Touching an opponent’s flagpole—Major penalty if intentional
  • Blocking opponent’s flag zone in end game—Major penalty
  • Touching robot after IR beacons are placed—minor penalty, team might not be able to score for autonomous crates
  • Grabbing, grappling, or attaching robot to field components—allowed (not a penalty; this usually is a penalty)

 

Of course, read through the game manual part 2 to completely understand the rules, and read through the game manual part 1 as well (and our summary of it)

The Rock Academy 2.9.13

Attendance


  • Dante
  • Fletcher
  • Evan
  • Hunter
  • Mark

Journal


Tasks

  • Be a chooser in final alliance selection
  • Be the winning alliance captain
  • Get nominated for all the awards
  • Win the Inspire Award, 1st place
  • Qualify for Sand Diego regional championships

Reflections

Getting into this competition, we felt more ready.  In weeks prior, we had been doing nothing but preparing every detail of the team for competition.  There had been driver practice, autonomous work, outreach, and so much other stuff.

We had come the previous night so as to have a good night’s rest before the competition.  We put some finishing touches on our engineering notebook and our poster, and Hunter and Fletcher fixed one quick thing in the code where the jack for the fork lift didn’t go up very fast.

In the morning, we all got up early and had breakfast at the restaurant near the hotel.  After that, we went to the Rock academy, where the competition was held.

When we got to the school, we checked in and began setting up our display.  We had the same display as we had a week before at our own competition, except the photos were of higher print quality and we had logos for all three of our sponsors.

While the rest of the team was assembling the display, Fletcher began scouting.  He collected data from each team using this scouting sheet.  He also asked each team to weight their robot using a scale that Mr. Johnson had brought.  The teams were asked to record on a piece of paper next to the scale their team number and the weight of their robot so any team that wanted to know how much the other robots weighed could find out.

The robot went through hardware and software inspection without a hitch.  Once inspections were over, it was time for judging.  We told the judges about all the outreach we’ve done, from showing off our robot to children at Bradoaks elementary to helping out other teams at the Monrovia Qualifier.  We told them about the conception of our robot and about the applications of each part.  We described to them the notebook, and how it can better be accessed at our website (here).  As the interview came to a close, the judges said that they had been drinking information about us, “through a firehose,” thus far, though they wanted to know if we had any last things to say.  We told them some more stuff about our notebook, but we then left.

Competitions then began.  In our first match, we won 75 – 0, most points being scored by the Suit Bots.  In our second match, we won again, 80 – 1; again, most points by the Suit Bots.  We were not placing well at this point, because although we had many QPs (qualifying points, earned for winning or tying matches), we only had 1 RP (ranking points, earned based on the score of the losing alliance in a match); thus we were currently in 8th place.

At this point, we were very excited that we had done so well in our matches, but Fletcher recalled that we had also done very well in our first two matches at the Webb School tournament, but we did poorly after that.  He suggested we not celebrate yet.

Throughout the day, judges came and spoke to various members of our team.  Fairly early in the day, three judges came and spoke to Mark and Hunter.  They spoke mostly of outreach.  It was a single judge who asked in general what we do for the community and we told him that we always have an exhibit out at most major events such as the Star Party to show people our robot, let them drive it, and get them interested in FIRST and we also discussed how we have fundraised and we told him we got a grant from MASA, we are sponsored by Cosmi Software and Oblong, and our selling of lightbulbs.  Later, some judges spoke to Mark and Fletcher about outreach (again!).  Fletcher and Mark said that we had gotten Mrs. Johnson and Dr. Stroupe to come in, and how we let children drive the robot at Bradoaks and at our Monrovia Qualifier.  We had said that we had done a lot of the outreach in the name of spreading FIRST, but the judges wanted to know how we help the community at large.  We said that we teach them a good way to learn things, that is to do something, check what you did, and then to adjust, and then to repeat.

As lunch went on, a man said on the pit speakers that if you would like to be on the local news, the first four robots to go to the practice field would get such an opportunity.  We were the first to arrive, and three other teams soon followed suit.  One group, though, that did not follow suit was the news crew.  They never came, so we did not get to be on the local news.

After lunch, competition resumed, and our third match commenced.  The IR seeking autonomous worked, and during the match, we scored many rings.  We got a line bonus on the top row, on the middle row, and diagonally, like so:Match 3, Rock Academy

Giving us a score of 235, equivalent to the LA record previously set by us.  We won, 235 – 160, giving us a bunch of RPs, so we jumped into the top four teams.

Before our next match, Fletcher recognized the head judge from the Antelope Valley tournament, so he decided to talk to him as to how we can make better our team.  Fletcher asked why we were selected for the Inspire Award.  The judge said that of all the teams there, we seemed the most with it.  We had a very good interview, a very good robot, and very impressive team members.  He said that we were, in fact, a model FTC team.  Fletcher asked why we were not nominated for the Think Award.  The judge said that, although we were not a finalist, we were one of the top contenders for the award, perhaps in the top eight.  As to why we were not in the top three, he suggested this: imagine being a judge and having to go through 27 notebooks, roughly 100 pages each in an hour and a half.  The judges wouldn’t know where the cool parts of the notebook are without a team member by his side, unless the teams told him where to look.  The judge suggested to go through our notebook and put markers wherever there are cool parts.  He said most Think award winners do this.  Fletcher thanked him and they both went on their ways.

In match four, we did fairly well.  We ended up with a score of around 80 points to 50, we got eighty points from a few rings and a line bonus and that’s it, so we won our fourth match and we remain in the top four, behind only the teams that have more RP points than us.

In match five, we did very well.  We got a line bonus down the right side of the grid which would have probably won us the match by itself, but we were paired up with CCHS who had a robot with a lift that slides of the robot, expands, and lifts up the robot on it with gigantic threaded rod, and they ended up lifting our 45 pound robot about 11 inches, which was extremely awesome!

After match five, the last preliminary match of the day, we were seated first, the best seating after preliminary matches a Monrovia team had ever gotten.  We were the only team at the whole competition that won all of our qualifying matches, which is why we were in first.  Mark and Fletcher went outside to discuss who we wanted for our final alliance partners.  The first list of teams that we wanted were like this:

  1. 135 Fusion
  2. 5279 Positron
  3. 6231 The Dons
  4. 452 Phi Alpha

We sent some people to speak to these teams, and got some non-good news.  135 did not much like us, and would rather have a different alliance partner.  5279 we decided was not a good match because we could not lift them, and Phi Alpha had not done very well throughout the day.  We then revised the list to this:

  1. 6231 The Dons
  2. 135 Fusion
  3. 5279 Positrons
  4. 452 Phi Alpha
  5.  6137 Roboties

Though we were not in love with this list, it is the one that we settled with.

All the teams crowded into the event center.  Fletcher broke to the Monrovia teams that we would not be picking them, much to their shagreen.  Fletcher was talking to some people from the Kings and Queens when Mark came over to show me a further revision to the list:

  1. 6231 The Dons
  2. 4625 the Kings and Queens

The reason we had changed this list is that Mark had been talking with a lot of other teams and figured out that if we didn’t pick CCHS first, then another team in the top four would pick them, and we couldn’t have them as our alliance partner.  Then, Mark discovered that if we picked them first and not any other team we were considering in the top four, then we couldn’t pair with the top four because they would have to pick before we get our second choice and they would become unavailable.  Mark was frantically looking for a second partner barely minutes before the alliance selection.  Fletcher had been suggesting the Kings and Queens throughout the day, and Mark decided that we would want a partner that we could lift.  Fletcher agreed to this and the Kings and Queens got very excited about this.  Mark was called up to the stage to announce his decision, and we got the alliance partners we wanted.  Fletcher was then told to go help the Kings and Queens with their blocking autonomous so that enemies could not execute their scoring autonomous.

During the first match of the finals, our partner was CCHS 6231 The Dons, so Fletcher and the Kings and Queens went to the pits to work.  The Kings and Queens removed their ramp to make their robot lighter for lifting.  They then went to the practice field and showed Fletcher their autonomous.  Fletcher pointed out that, while it worked, it was not to maximum efficiency.  It went too far forward, it turned, and it went too far forward again, and stopped.  He suggested making the forward distances be less.  He showed them how to do this, as their programmer was not present, and also told them that when they tune autonomous like this, that you should only change one thing at any given time.  In the end, their autonomous worked beautifully.

It then came time for the second final match, this time, we were with the Kings and Queens.  Our autonomous did not work, but theirs did prevent the other team from scoring in the autonomous. Throughout this match both ours and the Kings and Queens’ connection timed out periodically.  We decided it was not our fault, because the signal light on our Samantha was on solid, rather than on blinking, meaning the connection was good on our side.  This made us rather cross, so after the match, both teams sent representatives to contest that match (as because of that match, we were out of the final).  A referee spoke to the man who would notice this sort of thing, and he said he saw nothing, meaning the match was good.  We were still unhappy.

6231 The Dons CCHS said that they noticed that, in the match we had with them, one of our opponents began to climb their ramp, which is highly illegal.  He also had video evidence of this, so both we and they sent representatives to contest that match.  The referees refused to consider the video, citing the part of the opening ceremonies that said, “There will be no instant replays.”  We finally conceded defeat, hoping to qualify with awards.

Eventually, awards came and we were nominated for only one:

  •  PTC Design Award

But we also won one:

  • Connect Award

Although we did not meet our goals of getting the Inspire Award, being the finalist alliance captain, or being nominated for all the awards, we were a chooser for the final alliances, and we did qualify for San Diego Championships with our Connect Award.

While we were packing up, Mark and Fletcher went to speak to the Think Award winners and asked to see their notebook.  We saw that they had sections for everything in their notebook, among others they had receipts, a business plan, source code, Bios, General Information, Bowled Over! notebook, Ring it Up! notebook, and several others.  They also had markers at the tops of pages to indicate interesting sections, much like the head judge from the Antelope Valley Qualifier suggested.  We will be applying several parts of this notebook to ours for next time.  We decided we want to use some of these elements in our notebook so we plan to do that in the next two weeks before San Diego Regionals.

We finally got in our cars and drove to Pizza Port for our post-competition meal.

Monrovia (We Hosted) 2.2.13

Attendance


  • Fletcher
  • Dante
  • Erik
  • Evan
  • Hunter
  • Chris
  • Mark

Journal


Tasks

  • Help teams that need it
  • Have a display for the robot
  • Have a generally impressive competition

Reflections

Everyone got to the competition bright and early in the morning to finish setting things up and to make our display.

Hunter and Fletcher started the day off by going to the robotics room and printing stuff out for the poster board.  It had pictures and descriptions of the robot, pictures and biographies for the members of the team, our team insignia, and the logos of our sponsors.  Along with Mr. Porter, Hunter set up the monitor for our display.  Previously, it was completely  non-interactive.  This time, we had buttons powered with a Makey-Makey.  This made it so that a user could indicate what video he wanted to watch.  He could also say that he wanted to pause or play or reset the video.

Teams began showing up at about 7:30, causing inspections to commence.  It was Fletcher’s job to make sure that all teams were doing well with their inspections.  The Flee Bits struggled with getting though software inspection, so he showed them how to configure their NXT to pass.  After that, they passed inspection.  Another team had been denied field inspection, so Fletcher directed them to where field inspection was taking place (they had asked for it in the wrong place) and told them to ask the people there.  One team forgot a piece of plywood that made their ramp work, so he gave them some cardboard to replace it for the time being.

Erik, Dante, and Chris were in charge of the drivers/coaches entrance to the competition area.  They made sure that only the correct people went through that entrance.

Mark was a Queuer, and he made sure the queue line ran quickly and smoothly by getting each of the tams in their correct spots and giving each of them a red or blue flag.  He did this for most of the day and was extremely helpful and efficient.

Evan was a hardware inspector, and he inspected hardware.  After the inspections were over, Evan was around to help anyone with any task they needed which was very helpful.

Hunter was Mr. Bugert’s assistant, and he helped him with various remedial tasks such as running cables connecting displays and replacing parts, this continued until the actual competition began, when this happened there was not much need for Hunter so he helped do other various jobs whether it be film, or helping teams with their various problems.

At lunch, we showed off our robots to some children by letting them drive our robot.

 

Final alliance selection came and went and the finals happened.  The Flea Bits (whose first competition ever happened to be this one) ended up being the winning alliance captain and team Rebelution won the Inspire award.  Congratulations to them.

Setting up for the Regional Qualifier

Attendance


  • Fletcher
  • Erik
  • Hunter
  • Evan
  • Chirs
  • Mark
  • Dante

Journal


Tasks

  • Make poster board
  • Set up competition
  • Make plan for reaching out to other teams

Reflections

Fletcher was the first to arrive and and had a conversation with Mr. Dobson about the rest of the season.  He said that there was one team that went to one of the competitions that we went to (the Rock N’ Roll Robots at the Webb school competition) that only got a small award, but they also went to a competition in San Diego (where the remainder of our regional qualifiers are held) and got the Inspire award.  Mr. Dobson suggested that perhaps we could also do well.  He also said that, because we have done a lot of outreach recently, we might have a problem getting out to the judges what all we’ve done.

Fletcher earlier had taken pictures of the robot on a black background, so he had printed them out at home.  Mr. Dobson allowed Fletcher to use his paper cutter to prepare the photos for the poster board.

Evan and Hunter came later and were assigned to moving parts of both ours and the Rock N’ Roll Robots’ field.  Fletcher was put in charge of disassembling our field.  It was difficult to disassemble the border of the field because none of the people disassembling it had ever taken apart the border.

Fletcher, Hunter, and Mark worked on assembling the field in the old gym where the pit is. They also put together the tiles for the field and taped them.  Hunter found that if you rub the area where two tiles meet that has tape, then it is easy to cut the tape so you don’t have to retape the tiles the next time you assemble the field.

We then had dinner, courtesy of Mr. Dobson.

After dinner, early check-in teams began arriving.  The Flea Bits team from Pasadena High came and so did a team from San Diego.  The Flea Bits found they needed a part for their robot that they didn’t have, so all three Monrovia teams gave them that part, so they gave us an honorable mention in their engineering notebook.

Hunter and Fletcher laid out cable for Mr. Bugert so that the pits would have an audio and a visual feed from the competition area.  The audio cable was difficult because it got very tangled.

The day ended and everyone went home with enough time to get 6 hours of sleep before the next day’s competition.

Antelope Valley 1.12.13

Attendance


  • Mark
  • Hunter
  • Evan
  • Erik
  • Dante
  • Fletcher

Journal


Tasks

  • Get in one of the final alliances
  • Try to win most of our matches
  • Get our name out to all of the other teams
  • Offer help to any team who needs it
  • Have our IR autonomous work at least once
  • Get at least one tic-tac-toe on the top level
  • Pass all inspections
  • Bond as a team

Reflections

We passed all of our inspections with much ease. Our interview went very well too although Evan, Hunter, and Fletcher were still at inspection for the first half of the interview and they came for the second half. Everyone talked a good amount and the judges seemed very impressed.

Then came our first match. The autonomous was about to work but team 4625 pushed us out of the way with their blocking autonomous. Then, once TeleOp started, we lost connection almost immediately and we periodically throughout the match regained connection for a few seconds and lost the connection directly after. We lost this match 60 – 0

In the second match, our autonomous also nearly worked but it was off a little due to the ledge of the center goal area. We lost connection a little during the TeleOp but for the most part we were fine, although at the end of the match our mechanism for moving the hand up and down that’s mounted on the scissor lift didn’t lift up all the way so it made us not be able to pick up rings at the end. We won this match 80 –  30 and we were able to place two rings on the top row. Lunch break, and repairs for the robot. Since we lost connection again we knew it was our problem with the wires. We thought the problem might be that the Samantha was malfunctioning due to a wire problem that made the power to it waver frequently, so we investigated how we might fix that.

The Third Match: This was the most amazing robotics match we have ever participated in in all of robotics.  Our autonomous placed the ring on the IR column on the bottom row, in TeleOp, we did this:

Screen Shot 2013-01-13 at 3.41.24 PM

Come the End Game, we lifted our alliance partner’s robot (which had not been built for more than 5 hours) 17″, getting us the LA area’s highest lift and Getting us a final score of 235, an LA area high.

In the fourth match, we were devastated. Our robot didn’t work at all save one motor.  We had one motor serial that had the motor for our fork lift on it, and it worked, though we couldn’t use it because the forklift was against the wall.  We are yet to diagnose what went wrong.

In the fifth and final match, we did no better; we had the same problem.

We did our best, there’s only so much we can do, but we did score the highest score in LA which is pretty amazing.

We we ended up in 12th place and did not get chosen for a final alliance (though we were second choice for several teams), which is less than what we had hoped for.

When it came to awards time, they were setting the tournament computer up for the Promote award presentation and played the first couple of seconds, which happened to be the same first couple seconds as our Promote video.  Fletcher proceeded to have a freak-out, as he was quite excited, and got told to calm down since we hadn’t gotten the award yet.  After the Awards ceremonie got started, they played our Promote Video and announced us as the winners of the Promote Award.  The rest of the awards got announced and we were finalists for each of these:

  • Rockwell Collins Innovate Award
  • Connect Award
  • PTC Design Award
  • Motivate Award

This happens to be every judged award besides the Think award.  At the end the ceremonie, they announced the Inspire Award.  Third Place went to Simi Valley Robotics, second to Monrovia’s own Kings and Queens Team 4625, and first place Inspire Award went to us, the Suit Bots Team 4628!

8375747844_32a6dfb40d_c