Am I reading this right or has my printout failed? Auton WP is one ring in each alliance goal and pushing the one goal off the line?
With two push robots built in one day, the kids were able to set one ring on their robots, let it fall into a goal and the one robot drive forward 5 inches (pushing the one goal off the line).
Last year, I thought the AWP was perfect. The really good teams were able to do it all, but even the others needed to have some serious coordination and skill to be able to do it.
This year it seems like everyone is going to get the AWP. Seems more like a penalty if you don’t get it instead of a bonus if you do.
You are correct 8n the rule interpretation. An alliance must put a ring in each goal and move the goal off of the auton win point line. As for why, many teams don’t even bother doing any autonomous. With a simple task with huge reward, it incentivized teams to learn a little bit of programming.
My view is that it presents an interesting strategic trade-off. Given the importance of the yellow goals to a match, does a team prioritize getting those in auton (at the expense of the AWP), or does it prioritize getting the AWP? Do you allow yourself to rely on your partner to do the action you didn’t prioritize?
That is what the autonomous bonus is for. The autonomous win point should be harder to get. Two push robots barely moving 1) both pushbots literally move backwards a .5" causing the ring to fall into the goal, 2) then the other is more “advanced” and moves forward about 8" pushing the goal. That’s it.
At the one in-person Change Up tournament I reffed, teams earned the Auton WP a grand total of 3 times in 70 qualification matches.
Granted, it was probably more common than that at most events, but I don’t think it’d be the end of the world if the Auton WP were a bit more common.
It’s probably possible to do your half of the auton win point task (assuming your partner can do the other half) without taking any extra time. Perhaps putting your preload on a small, passively triggering catapult to sort of toss it into the alliance goal that doesn’t need to be moved at the very start of auton.
I do think the task can be easier than change up’s, however it seems like it will rely on your partner more because of how spread out the task is. And the fact that completing your task is not going to be the best way to get a good advantage going into driver control or winning auton.
It was already greatly put by @9MotorGang and @Mentor_355U, explaining how it encourages early autonomous for some teams and a good trade off for more advanced teams. @Xenon27 is also correct that it might not even need a trade off if the team can work it out, pushing teams who want an even greater challenge. So just from those posts it should be apparent that the win point is fair for every skill level taking the field.
But if you want more challenge don’t forget that some teams don’t have autonomous programs. Will you scratch the WP entirely and go for neutral goals? Did you even prepare a program to put rings in both goals? This is an extended version of the trade off @Mentor_355U talked about. You could lose the WP and get center goals or you could lose the center goals and lose the WP, this creates an even more exciting challenge for teams to execute both.
Long story short, whatever your alliance has the capability to place a ring or not, this is a very balanced AWP challenge for all levels.
Not sure that I agree. With 20 minutes building a drive base and two lines of code, the kids already do the harder of the two (putting a ring in AND pushing the goal). I’m not sure a two line auton should be rewarded with 1 WP.
It will turn into a penalty for not getting the WP. Whatever matches don’t get the win point will be severely disadvantaged.
Here is the “harder” of the two autons … not sure that I consider that "balanced"Video.mov.zip (2.8 MB) .
I do tend to agree that the AWP is easy to achieve. Likely too easy, though some partner co-ordination is necessary for 2 robots each to have some sort of 2 line auton to get the reward. Maybe that will help foster pre-match partners helping their peers who don’t have one. Maybe that’s me being overly generous. As a ref, I’m always disappointed to watch matches where no robots move during auton. At least doing a solo AWP routine is more than 2 lines…
That said, I do still think it presents some potentially interesting strategic trade-offs, including the fact that AWPs are irrelevant in Elimination matches, potentially leading teams to develop multiple autons.
I still think it would be easy, but at least make them put it on the branch. That would, at least, make it so that the push robots can’t do it and would involve programming some sort of arm.
I don’t disagree. That said, there are teams that are only able to build push-bots, many of which don’t have an auton (many don’t even know about the auton period). I do like that there is some way for these teams to be needed to achieve a common goal, with a reward in the standings.
Assume matches have a 95% AWP award rate. That means that the AWP roughly doesn’t matter, and that AP becomes the next ranking tie-breaker. Presumably 2-line autons such as these aren’t going to get the AP, so there’s some differentiation.
I think the idea with the auton win point was to create a tradeoff decision between either scoring the auton win point, scoring as many points as possible to win the auton bonus, and grabbing the neutral goals.
The last two objectives align rather nicely and a robot can do both optimally with the same route, but I think it might also be possible to do all three objectives in auton without sacrificing speed or reliability with any of them.
Perhaps the auton win point will be less of a reward for a complex routine and more of a tiebreaker that favors teams with the highest levels of consistency.
doing the task after a goal rush seems like the easiest option, although it might be slightly less consistent than doing it passively at the very start of auton, because you’d have to make more movements after grabbing the goals, during which you could definitely be knocked around a lot, either by the goal or opponent robots. You could account for this with some advanced position tracking and position correction algorithm but seems better to just do it during your dash to the center if you can figure out how to make it take no extra time.
That video that was shared by RoboDawgs is not a part of a successful WP:
From the game manual:
Cleared - An Alliance Mobile Goal state. An Alliance Mobile Goal is considered “Cleared” if, at the end of the Autonomous Period, it is not contacting its AWP Line or the Neutral Zone
That Mogo is contacting the Neutral Zone…
It looks pretty difficult to push that Mogo forward and get it off the AWP Line and keep it from going into the Neutral Zone. Which does make the WP difficult for any robot that is just pushing the Mogo. Most robots will have to intake the Mogo and back up and sit it down.
The test will be “how often does this happen?”
I looked through the last few events, and you can see how often teams get the AWP… And it was pretty low. I think a good AWP challenge would have certain benchmarks:
Time
% of AWP rewarded
September
25%
December
50%
States
90%
WORLDS
95%
I would actually like to see the information from robotevents.com to how often teams get the AWP by month. I know the last year would probably not give us the best data set, but if events in September are awarding 95% of the AWP opportunities, then it’s probably too easy.