Drop test in the finals

[Raymond Sheh]

Hi All!


I've had a couple of people comment in the rules document (or perhaps
the same person but Google didn't realize? The comments show up as being
from "anonymous") to suggest that we should have an autonomy bonus for
the drop test in the finals.

Note that the drop test is not a whole lane. It's literally just
(another) lane with a wall panel removed and a drop into another test so
there is no navigation challenge (apart from driving a few centimeters).

I must admit, I'm somewhat confused as to how we could award an autonomy
bonus for this.

I guess the closest I can think of is something that detects the robot
falling and puts the robot into a safe mode (e.g., tucks the arm and
cameras in - I know it sounds silly but actually the robot I built for
the Major RoboCupRescue Robot League way back in 2006 did that!) but I'm
not quite sure how we would actually incorporate measuring that into the
test in the finals (and if it should be worth the multiplier given that
it was basically looking at the gravity vector and executing pre-set
joint angles ... actually ours was incorporated into some other
autonomous behaviors that also tried to prevent sensors and arms from
getting knocked by debris but that's a bit beyond the scope of this
discussion).

Could the commenter(s) (or anyone else) propose a good reason for an
autonomy bonus specifically for the drop test over the next day or so
please? Note that the autonomy bonus is per-test.


In related news, we are incorporating some last minute comments before
locking down the rules. These are all clarifications and fixing some
inconsistencies so we plan to have this locked down in the next day or so.


Cheers!


- Raymond

--
https://raymondsheh.org