Would it be legal/feasible to color your robot red/blue in order to confuse your opponent’s color sensors?
Subsection “g” of section <R8> states
“Decorations that visually mimic field elements or could otherwise interfere with an opponent’s Vision Sensor are considered functional and are not permitted. This includes lights, such as the VEX Flashlight. The Head Inspector and Head Referee will make the final decision on whether a given decoration or mechanism violates this rule.”
Simple answer: You are not able to color your robot as it mimics game elements to interfere with the opponent’s vision sensor
If you have the old red gears then you could use those as functional parts, and you have license plates.
If you are interested in the Turning Point vision targets (the flags), using both the red/blue and green as the target when you configure the Vision Sensor will improve your results. Using only red or blue will subject the robot to more opportunities for confusion. I’m going to ask John TYler to write up the instructions for this.
Codes are actually incredibly easy to set up, once you already have good values for your color signatures. Codes are constructed with 2-5 signatures as parameters:
vex::vision::code mCode = code(mSig1, mSig2);
They are used by a vision sensor just like signatures are when it comes to taking snapshots, so instead of:
mVision.takeSnapshot(mSig1);
you could do
mVision.takeSnapshot(mCode);
. This would populate your object array with things that matched the code, e.g. things with a red signature touching a green signature. It will also populate the angle field of all the objects with the orientation of the code in the camera’s vision, so you could even ignore results that aren’t horizontally aligned like field flags are.
The tricky bit with the camera is getting good color signatures. We’ve got a tool to help with that live on Robot Mesh Studio right now. It also lets you see how the camera sees the world and what signatures and codes it recognizes based on your configuration.
so our robot can’t be part red?
Well, the answer is a bit more complex than just yes or no… obviously the license plate can be red… or blue. The rule concerns visually mimicking field elements. So big vertical sheets of red or blue material located on the top half of the robot are probably pushing it.
Painting the chassis, particularly the drivetrain, in your traditional team colours would likely not mimic the field elements. I haven’t played with the vision sensor enough to know exactly how far one can go using red before it starts to mimic a field element, though. My feeling is that robots using the vision sensor should at least be able to filter out something the size and colour of a team number plate.
Take some masking tape with you… in the event your nicely decorated robot doesn’t convince the inspector that you aren’t mimicking the field elements, then you can tape over the offending parts.
Note that 2" diameter yellow circles on the bottom half of the robot, however, might also be a violation. The flags aren’t the only field element that you cannot mimic.
Jason
Our team decided to just change our color… So sad…