[moderated] You write <G34> and <G35> [Archive]

KenWittlief

19-04-2004, 20:20

pushing and pinning vs ramming. Robots may push, shove or be pinned only if contact is confined to the bumper zone that extends from 2" to 8" above the playfield on all sides. If a robot pushes against another above/ below or under this area and damage results, or the other robot is toppled, the offending robot will be disqualified for that match.

Ramming is defined as driving into another robot from a starting position of more than 5 feet away. Drivers that intend to push or pin an opponent must first stop within 5 feet of the other machine, then proceed. Any robot that backs away more than 5 feet and then accelerates into another machine will be called for ramming. If any damage or tipping results from ramming, the offending robot will be disqualified for that match.

Tipping. A robot is in a defensive postion when it is physically between an opponent and the opponents intended scoring objects or a goal. A robot is in a offensive position when another robot is blocking its path to desired scoring objects or a goal. If a pushing/ shoving or pinning match ensues with two opponents in defensive/ offensive positions, and the rules listed above are not violated, and one or both robots are toppled, then no penalites will be called.

However, if a robot attacks another machine from the side or back, when they are not in offensive/defensive postions, and causes it to be toppled, the offending robot will be disqualified for that match.

example. Red bot is between Blue bot and its stationary goal. Blue bot is attempting to place the 2X ball on the goal. These machines are in defensive and offensive positions. If one or both fall over as a result of the enusing pushing match, no penalties apply.

Blue bot is directly infront of its stationary goal and is attempting to place the 2X ball. Red bot pushes it from the side, attempting to push it away from the goal, or Red bot gets behind it and attempts to latch on and pull it away, and in either case the Blue bot is toppled. Red bot shall be disqualified for tipping, even if no contact outside the bumper zone occurs.

meaubry

19-04-2004, 21:42

(G35) Ramming, smashing, and overly agressive driving shall not be permitted. Defensive manuevering is allowed in the form of obstructing the path and reacting against another robot for no more than 10 seconds. This defensive tactic may not be employed more than twice per match. Robots must not initiate the interaction with another robot by continuously driving from a distance greater than 5 feet away. Continous repetitive interactions will result in a warning to cease the action. Either time, distance, or number of interaction violations will result in 1 warning, and disqualification of the match if a 2nd warning occurs. 2 disqualifications during the seeding rounds will result in disqualification from competing in the elimination tournament.

Chris Hibner

20-04-2004, 09:51

Boy Aidan, that's a toughie. I really don't think you can write a band-aid rule very well without the rule being too subjective to officiate. I see it causing more controversy rather than less. What one official sees as acceptable, another will see as overly aggressive. It's easy to see when a robot tips, but it's difficult to say "that ramming was just too strong." Ken had some good ideas to add some quantification, but I still say it would be difficult to officiate.

I really think any non-aggression rule needs to be designed into the game. Therefore, I would like to suggest two potential new game features to cut down aggressive play.

Idea #1: non-contact zone
Some areas on the field (perhaps near the goals or near the scoring objects) have a different color of carpet. The area of the field with the colored carpet is the non-contact zone. It is illegal to contact a robot that is attempting to score or collect scoring objects in the non-contact zone. Each instance of contact will result in a X point penalty assessed to the non-scoring (or non-collecting) team.

Idea #2: Contact allowance
Each team has a total of N seconds worth of contact/defense time (the actual time can be better determined at a later date). One official is assigned to each team and they carry an electronic stopwatch that is tied to the official scoring system. When contact is initiated, the official starts the timer, when the robot backs away, the official stops the timer. Everyone would know how much contact/defense time is left for each robot by the "Defense Remaining" bar (like a bar graph) underneath their team number at the driver station. Once the bar shrinks to zero, the team is no longer allowed to play defense. The penalty is Y points per extra second of defense that is played (the extra defense time is kept track of by the official scoring system and by the official starting and stopping the official timer).

KenWittlief

20-04-2004, 10:11

this thread is getting interesting. In other contact sports the rules were created and evolved over the years because players were being injured and some sense of fair-play had to be explicitly spelled out. In this years games Im seeing posts from several people who went home from events very upset after their bots were damaged or toppled during play, and they were not able to complete their matches.

In terms of other sports, there are many parallels that can be drawn with a FIRST game: illegal use of hands => illegal use of arm/hook/claw...

late hit => bashing into a bot when it is not in the process of attempting to score points

hitting a player in the end zone or when they are out of bounds => non-contact zone ideas in Chris' post

unsportsmanlike conduct => doing a victory spin at the end of a match?! :ahh:

MikeDubreuil

20-04-2004, 10:30

Lets wind the clock back -- it is now the Monday after the first week of regionals... you are on the Game Committee... you decide that two new rules are needed for Tuesday's team update:

I don't think new rules need to be written I think FIRST needs to demonstrate violations of the rule. What does intentional entanglement look like? What does intentional tipping look like? What is malicious damage? Most people would agree it would be very difficult to quantify what a violation to those rules would be.

FIRST should put together a video of what violations of the "standard rules" look like. Standard rules are tipping, entanglement, damage, destruction, etc. which are included in the game rules every year.

The standard rule set is currently enforced by using personal judgment on the part of the referees. This very easily lends itself to inconsistent calls between referees. Very respected people on this forum disagree as to when a certain rule has been broken. It's obvious that the current system doesn't work.

If referees had an example of what to look for it would make their calls much more consistent. Currently, a referee makes a personal judgment on whether a rule was broken. The video will give them leverage in being impartial, in their minds, as to when it's appropriate to flag a team.

Teams would see the video of violations to the standard rules and have a better understanding why the referees made a certain call. There wouldn't be as much debate as to whether a team was wronged by a referee because it would be less of a personal judgment call and more of a "did this action meet the example" judgment call.

In baseball, it would be tough for an Umpire to call a balk, if he had never seen prior examples of when a pitcher does balk. It's rules where personal judgment is used that need examples in order for them to be enforced consistently.

Aidan, the rule you are asking for is impossible to write. You can't qualify or quantify the spirit of FIRST, you need to see it by example.

KenWittlief

20-04-2004, 10:58

but if you can put together a collection of video of examples of rule violations, then those videos become the written rules

can you explain what is happening in those videos to a person who can not see? ok - write down what you are seeing and you now have written rules.

I think one of the biggest problems this year is the word 'intentional' in the rules. Its very much like the word 'premeditated' in the laws for 1st degree murder - its much harder to prove that someone planned or intended to do something ahead of time than it is to prove that they actually DID the thing.

Ive seen lots of posts this year where one team says their bot was tipped or slammed or damaged, and another team comes back and apologizes and says we didnt intend to do that

ok - I accept that at face value, but it reminds me of the sport in the Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy, where two opponents are placed in an arena, you attack your opponent, then retreat to a neutral corner and apologize. You are scored both on the viscousness of your attack AND the sincerety of your apology.

(im not saying the apologies on CD are not sincere)

but this is why 'intend' needs to be removed from the rules and replaced with 'result'. If you are not able to control your robot very well, then keep away from your opponent. Why should you be allowed to topple or damage another teams machine, and win a match - you have in effect disqualified their robot by taking it out of the game, why should you not also be penalized?

if I hold a sharp stick right next to your face, and someone hits my hand and I poke your eye out, do you care if I indented to poke your eye out? no. that would be a careless and irresponsible act on my part. If you are going to play in a wild, uncontrollable or rough manner, and you cause the other team to not be able to play the whole match as a result, then you should be penalized, not them.

thats whats missing from the current rules - what would it take for a ref to know what a driver intended to do? would he have to hear him say 'Im gonna knock that bot over' before the match?

in the end results are what matters - you bean a batter with the baseball then he walks to first base, ALWAYS - it doenst matter where you intended to throw the ball - if you cant throw the ball over the plate, you are going to lose.

if you cant drive your bot around the playfield with out reeking havock on the other machines and the field itself, you SHOULD lose!

Joel Glidden

20-04-2004, 11:00

Honestly, I think this issue is pretty clear cut.

If agressive maneuvers achieve any game objective, including preventing an opponent scoring, such maneuvers should be allowed. In the "real world" our designs have to be robust! It is the environment that constrains the design space, not the reverse.

If aggressive maneuvers are deemed to achieve no game objective short of disabling / damaging an opponent, then they shall be handled according to the rules already in place.

My opinion.

Joel Glidden

20-04-2004, 11:08

As for entanglement, I think that there needs to be a mechanism for identifying trends.

An example
If a robot entangles an opponent during a match, they should be warned, and perhaps a sticker could be placed on their robot.

If a robot with said sticker engangles an opponent during a match, they should be required to remove / correct the offending mechanism / feature. They should also get another sticker.

If a robot with two stickers engangles an opponent during a match they should be disqualified.

That's how it would work in Joel-land.

Andrew

20-04-2004, 11:37

My understanding of the "strategy solely aimed at damaging" rule is to prevent saws, spikes, blow torches, etc. Not to prevent aggressive pushing. Likewise, the intentional flipping rule is designed to prevent "scoop bots" who can go out and up-end a robot with some kind of pneumatic flipper.

So, <G34> is OK as written and as enforced.

The intentional entanglement rule is also there to keep teams from throwing a lasso around another robot and immobilizing them due to entanglement.

So, <G35> is OK as written and as enforced.

What many people seem to want is a couple of new rules to influence style of play.

<G50> If two or more robots become entangled with each other, the referees will disable all entangled robots until the end of the match.

<G51> Charging. If an offensive robot drives through a defensive robot on the way to a scoring object (while in the scoring zone as defined by a different color of carpet), a "charge" will be called on the offensive robot. 5 point penalty.

<G52> Blocking. If a defensive robot drives into an offensive robot on its way to a scoring object, a "block" will be called on the defensive robot. 5 point penalty.

<G53> Late hit. If a robot intentionally runs into a disabled or immobilized robot, a late hit will be called. 5 point penalty per offense. Repeated offenses may result in the robot being disabled at the discretion of the referee.

BTW, for those offensive minded teams, if FIRST limits or eliminates "vigorous interaction," it becomes much easier to play defense. There was more contact initiated by robots trying to get to the scoring objects then by robots attempting to prevent them. If contact is limited, the defensive bot just has to get to the scoring zone and drop a flimsy wall around it. The offensive bot would have to "stand off" in order to avoid penalty, resulting in a very boring match indeed.

Ramming...how do you decide whether a robot was driving across the field and encountered another robot in its path (due to limited vision, driver reactions, etc.) or a robot built up speed in order to hit another robot?

If a ramming rule were put into place, teams may put themselves into harm's way, just to get another robot disqualified. In order to defend a position, a robot just has to get into the vicinity first. Any other robot would have to slow down and inch around the defending bot, in order to avoid a ramming call.

Solace

20-04-2004, 12:03

defensive play is a part of the game. it is and always will be part of the game. it is only when that defensive play starts to damage other robots that it crosses the line. if a team is habitually tipping or damaging other robots, then action needs to be taken. I really like the idea of the yellow card/red card notion

Andrew

20-04-2004, 12:05

but this is why 'intend' needs to be removed from the rules and replaced with 'result'. If you are not able to control your robot very well, then keep away from your opponent. Why should you be allowed to topple or damage another teams machine, and win a match - you have in effect disqualified their robot by taking it out of the game, why should you not also be penalized?

This was raised in another thread, but...

A rule which bans tipping based on result will encourage teams to design tippledy-toppledy robots which run into other teams and fall over. In basketball, occasionally players "do the flop" in order to draw a charge. If the rule states that "two robots run into each other, one falls over, the other is disqualified," then robots and teams will "draw the foul."

if I hold a sharp stick right next to your face, and someone hits my hand and I poke your eye out, do you care if I indented to poke your eye out? no. that would be a careless and irresponsible act on my part.

If you're holding a stick and I put my face next to it and bump your hand and get my eye poked out and then sue you and win $1M, maybe it is worth it. In other words, I can use the rules to prevent you from even holding a stick.

in the end results are what matters - you bean a batter with the baseball then he walks to first base, ALWAYS - it doenst matter where you intended to throw the ball - if you cant throw the ball over the plate, you are going to lose.

The batter also has to make an effort to get out of the way and is not supposed to lean over the plate. However, this does not always happen.

The thing that makes this rule work is that the benefit to the batter (taking first base) is usually not worth the punishment to the batter (broken ribs, concussion, etc).

If the penalty for tipping is disable or DQ, then it is worth my while to design a robot that tips and to design a self-righting mechanism. I can disable one robot by bumping into them and tipping, then right myself, then bump into the other opponent, tip, disable them, right myself and continue the game.

Even a five point penalty to the tipping robot would encourage me to do this. Thus, the word "intentional."

Another example (from a real match).
We were defending the steps, an opponent attempted to drive up the steps, rode up onto our robot and tipped over. Should we have been penalized?

According to your definition, we should have been. However, we did not initiate contact, we were not driving around wreaking havoc, we were holding a defensive position.

The point is, you cannot ever write a rule which covers every situation. You need referees. They need to interpret and apply the rules. Perhaps there needs to be an evolving training as the contest proceeds (such as the video-tapes).

Don Wright

20-04-2004, 12:16

This is a very interesting subject. If FIRST does go down this path (I hope it doesn't...see later in my post), then I suggest looking at professional sports like otheres here have mentioned.

Rules in these sports cover all aspects of what seems to be bothering people here. But you have to pick and choose rules from which sports for what. For example, picks (where your teammate blocks your opponent from following you) are allowed in basketball, but not in football. You could have the charging rule from hockey. Maybe impliment the 3 second rule from basketball where an offensive robot is only allowed in certain areas for 3 seconds. No holding...that's a pretty standard rule in all sports. Tripping? That's kind've like flipping in the robot world. Maybe FIRST can supply shock sensors (like those used in airbags on cars) and we place these on our robot and if another robot hits us and it causes the shock sensor to go off, a big light goes on or something and the attacking robot is assessed an "aggressive play" penalty.

But, I thought FIRST didn't want to be like professional sports.

What I would really like is for the FIRST community to work on this ourselves and not need all these rules stating every little thing. This is a rough game. When you are trying to score through another robot, you better expect they are going to fight back. And if you want to stop another team from scoring, expect the same. If your robot can't handle it, then you better figure out another way to score. That was the beauty of this game. The stationary goal being blocked all the time? Work on a strategy to get the mobile goal into play. Or go hang...

I know most of this is starting from the agressive play from 469 and 494...both great teams which I admire greatly. Both had awesome robots, but really the only way I could see 469 get defeated was by playing very strong defence. So, that is what 494 had to do...and they did a great job. There was nothing wrong. They played 469 EXTREMELY hard and aggressive and guess what...469's robot didn't break. It was robust. Very robust.

Our robot this year worked fairly well, but it broke very easily upon contact with others. And I know if we went to hang and another robot wanted to stop us, they could easily move us... So, we are using the experience and observations from the Championship to try and design and build something that won't have those issues next year. Some strong, easily repairable, and robust. Will it look as pretty as ours did this year...probably not. Will it have all the fancy gadgets and stuff to do whatever we need to do...probably...but they will be basic, robust things.

So, I think these gaming rules shouldn't be changed at all because it will always come down to the refs judgement, which differs from ref to ref, Regional to Regional, and at the Championship. And that's not really fair to any of us. It's not their fault and they do a great job, but it comes down to peoples perceptions of things and that is very hard to qualify. I do like the idea of a video or something on the FIRST site explaining where each rule comes from so we all understand what they are trying to accomplish with each particular rule.

Besides, there are other material rules that should be reworked instead.

Rick

20-04-2004, 12:18

The only time aggresive behavior should be stopped and penalized is when that behavior goes from defense to destruction. If a team can get in your way to prevent you from scoring thats great.

Aggressive robot behavior has to do with 2 things: the drivers and the robot. The driver makes a concious decision to do the things they do. The robot can only follow commands. But sometimes a sharp edge or other dangerous device passes inspection and gets to be on the field. The robots need to be inspected by experienced people to deem a device destructive or not. I don't know what can be done but a warning like that explained above (cards) is cool.

When defense takes away from the game for everyone, we all lose and that offending team or alliance should be warned.

MikeDubreuil

20-04-2004, 12:48

but this is why 'intend' needs to be removed from the rules and replaced with 'result'.

Take a look at the video (http://www.soap.circuitrunners.com/2004/movies/arc/arc_qf4m3.wmv) of Quarter-Final 4.3 on Archimedes. Coincidentally, the play happened right in front of Aidan :D

With 23 seconds left in the match 56 drove into 45. The result was 45 flipped. With your reasoning 56 should have been assesed a penaly. Correct?

KenWittlief

20-04-2004, 12:55

I thought I did cover that situation - if you are already on the steps then you are in a defensive postions and any tipping that results is fair play

for other comments on ramming... I stated a bot is only disqualified if the other bot is damaged or toppled - If you think you can run across the field at 5mph and bump another bot, and no damage results, and they are not knocked to the ground, then that is your judgement call - no harm, no foul

but if you can clearly see that your opponents is a wobbly goblen, or they have a 2X ball 9 feet up in the air and out to one side, and your drive into in while it is not in a defensive postion, and it goes over - that was your decision to take that risk - if you dont think you can push it away without knocking it over, then havent you really made a conscience decision to push it over ? think about this for a while - Ive seen so many bots get knocked over while trying to place 2X balls this year, did the driver REALLY think they could push that bot away from the goal - sideways - without knocking it over?

also as I defined the suggested rules, you cant run into someone else and fall over yourself and cry foul - there must be agressive action on the other teams part against you

and if you deliberately build a top heavy bot then it will be useless in the legitament defensive/offensive situations I defined, in which toppling is not cause for a DQ

also (preemptive answer) if you build your bot out of glass, and someone hits you within the bumber zone (2 to 8" high) and your bot shatters - too bad for you, the other team can push you around

if detroit can build effective 5mph bumpers on 3000 pound cars, FIRST teams can build them on 130 pound robots.

Steve W

20-04-2004, 13:03

To remove defence or offence from the game will kill the game. Intent to injure is another matter. If you watch this game on Friday of any regional you fell asleep. If I hadn't known that things might change on Saturday then I would have gone home and not come back, BORING!!! As the offence and defence built during Saturday the games became better and more exciting. More pushing and shoving is good. Violence and distructive behavior is not. I am not into touchy feely type of robotics. Build it strong and efficient. I don't want Battlebots but competition is good. Yes there is a fine line that gets crossed. It doesn't matter what you do you will always have someone who crosses the line. To win you must ride the line without going over. It tweeks interest and hones the senses. Keep the game lively but stop the intentional attempt to damage. It is easy to see and totally unnecesary to have a good game.

KenWittlief

20-04-2004, 13:03

Take a look at the video (http://www.soap.circuitrunners.com/2004/movies/arc/arc_qf4m3.wmv) of Quarter-Final 4.3 on Archimedes. Coincidentally, the play happened right in front of Aidan :D

With 23 seconds left in the match 56 drove into 45. The result was 45 flipped. With your reasoning 56 should have been assesed a penaly. Correct?

since we are expanding or maybe even altering the rules in this thread, I think is dangerous to pull up examples of play from matches this year and say they should or should not have been penalized

but for clarificaiton of what we are discussing, from what I could see in that clip 56 was not between 45 and its goal, so it was not already in a 'defensive postion' when it shoved 45 over - it shoved it from the side

so as i have redefined these, what shall we call them, new rules? that would be a DQ.

MikeDubreuil

20-04-2004, 13:05

also (preemptive answer) if you build your bot out of glass, and someone hits you within the bumber zone (2 to 8" high) and your bot shatters - too bad for you, the other team can push you around

Who is to decide what is robust enough?
Are referees going to get a sheet that says, "if the following robots become broken, it's their own fault for not making a robust enough robot, do not give the other team a penalty."

Steve W

20-04-2004, 13:10

To be playing defence does not mean that you can only approach from a certain side. Don't forget that the best defence is a good offence. By harrassing a robot and not letting it get to a goal is easier than letting it get to the goal and bashing it to pieces as you try to defend.

KenWittlief

20-04-2004, 13:18

Ive tried to define the rules so you can push and shove, and even bump into other bots within limits

as long as contact is restricted to the pre-defined bumper zone on the bot

so if a bot breaks while those rules are being followed, it was not tough enough for the game

but if someone backs up 20 feet, puts there angle iron arm up at 2 feet, flys across the field at 15mph and puts its arm through the side of your bot, they are DQ'd

Steve: we are attempting to suggest ways the offensive and defensive play CAN remain in the game, so that teams can design machines that are able to slug it out, as long as their opponent follows the same rules

it might be fun watching your bot fly across the field and send another bot dashing to the floor in pieces, but its not fun from the other side of the field.

a lot of that happened this year, and so far no one has been able to recall a SINGLE TEAM getting penalties or getting DQ'd for it at ANY event anywhere this season - the refs most often said they didnt call it because there is no way to determine the drivers 'intent' as called out in the rules. Thats why we are trying to see if we can come up with clearer rules - so the judges will have a clear guideline for when someone has gone too far.

To be playing defence does not mean that you can only approach from a certain side.

can you do that in other sports? can you run into a basketball player from behind and knock them to the ground to keep them from taking a 3 point shot?

hockey? soccer?

can you punch a boxer in the back of the head? in the spine? can you kick them in the knees?

UCGL_Guy

20-04-2004, 13:58

Good topic as our team suffered at the both regionals and nationals due to "aggresive behavior". Don't need a new rule or definition, if a team plays too aggressive then warn them and if they continue DQ them. The aggressive behavior will stop. Just like every basketball game is different because of different refs so can this - but for each set of refs the interaction would be similar, correlate the out front fouls vs under the bucket mugging.
Maybe we need better ref training like the videossomeone else suggested.
FIRST has now become Battlebots in my opinion unless they curtail this aggressiveness. There is little advantage to building a well engineered bot versus one that is just a tough rolling box that quick and powerful that plays only defense.

AmyPrib

20-04-2004, 14:04

Yeah, I agree with those that say you really can't write rules for these kinds of things, aside from what's already in the current rules, so I'll just say some thoughts.

I wonder if one of Aidan's intentions was to show us how hard it is to write and interpret the rules. Whether it was or not, I think this thread has shown it.

For tipping, I would say you can't really make a fair DQ for someone that tips a robot playing defense. The only easy way to fairly DQ them is if they have a scoop or lift that intentionally picks up a robot and flips it. If a robot is top heavy, you should probably expect that you could end up flipping. But I would hope that any team in FIRST would not consciously decide that they will aim for them at their most unstable condition and take that opportunity to flip them. They could have most likely just pushed and shoved to keep them at bay rather than flipping them. I have seen robots become just a little unstable and the opp seemingly comes in under them for the kill and finishes them off. Intentional? Don't know. Who's not to say it was an accidental wrong joystick movement? Or maybe they couldn't see you were slightly unstable and thought they were just pushing you around.

For agressive play, there is one match that stands out in my mind as overly aggressive moves. Keep in mind, my intention is not to single out or bash teams, but providing and example of my opinion of overly aggressive play.
Q111 in archimedes, 494 was against 111. Wildstang was on the mid-platform and hooked. 494 came flying at relatively high speed from the floor, across the mid-platform, "rammed" into Wildstang and went flying off the other side of the platform, taking Wildstang with them. Now 111 was off the platform and a corner of them was on top of 494 due to how they landed. So 494 reversed and went flying back onto the platform, across, and off the other side taking 111 with them the whole time, and in the process breaking their hook I believe.
Now, 111 went on to win that match I think by capping and other things, but I feel that it was unnecessary to make a couple high speed passes "bashing" into the side of them, seemingly dragging them along like a ragdoll. But that's just my opinion. Now how do you write that into a rule? I don't have any idea. I guess you can show a video of it, as suggested before. I wouldn't say either that 494s intention was to break 111's hook. So aggressive play calls comes down into the hands of the refs and their interpretation of the rule. You can only write a rule that satisfies so many people. But maybe they can become more and more satisfying to more and more people in the future and hopefully this kind of collaboration helps that effort.

I don't necessarily think that we need to have "no contact" zones on a field to prevent this type of play, but there could be an aspect where it fit. That takes some fun out of robot interaction, especially if the scoring object is in that zone. I feel one of the main objectives in this game is, besides scoring your own points, is to keep your opponent from scoring more than you. I would hate to see the rules become so restricted that it limits robot interaction.

Blue bot is directly infront of its stationary goal and is attempting to place the 2X ball. Red bot pushes it from the side, attempting to push it away from the goal, or Red bot gets behind it and attempts to latch on and pull it away, and in either case the Blue bot is toppled. Red bot shall be disqualified for tipping, even if no contact outside the bumper zone occurs.

I don't think this should be true either. If team 45 or 71 are in front of their stny goal trying to cap, you better believe someone's gonna try to push us out of the way, and they have. I know that 71 had been pushed a lot from the side in order to keep them from capping and it worked. But they didn't tip, and there was no ramming involved. Now you're saying that if 71 was tipped, the opp should be penalized? So they're supposed to sit there and watch as 71 doubles their points? No. There's some robots you don't know which is the front/back/sides. So how do you call that now? We could cap the stny goal with any of our sides facing the goal. So now a team has to be able to physically see my robot and determine which side I'm facing in order to play defense.
Teams also don't necessarily know that if they push from a certain side that the other robot will tip. If someone pushed 45 from the side while a 2x in their arm was 6 feet off to the side, we might flip, but we could have had our arm in a different position to keep from flipping. So, it's not necessarily the opponent's fault. It's the nature of the game - to keep someone from scoring.

Entanglement - Unless a team does it habitually against another team (as with any of the ramming/tipping actions), you can't call entanglement intentions. You can disable due to safety hazards, but I think there are many entanglements that can be freed. With arms and grippers like in this game, that's one tool that can be used to keep someone from scoring a 2x, by holding their arm down. If our arm becomes entangled somehow, we should be allowed some time to free the entanglement or remain entangled for defensive purposes as long as nothing's on fire.

I just keep coming back to common sense. There are so many ways to play offense/defense aside from ramming/tipping/etc. I think the rules are ok as they stand, but I'm sure there can be improvements. The judges do a pretty good job on these types of calls, whether we think so or not at times. If you see a trend of mean-spirited driving habits (there should be none in this organization), then warnings and flags should be flying. The idea of handing out warnings, yellow, red, etc, I think is a good one, but should apply for all their matches (vs bring the yellow ones to your next two matches only). Tangible warnings would at least let the team know their actions are questionable and on the verge of DQ.

That's my xx cents.
And I just realized how long this post is.. Sorry.

ngreen

20-04-2004, 14:17

I keep coming back to how hard it is for a ref to call a DQ. There needs to be a lesser penalty that sticks with the team. That is why I offered a card system kind of like soccer where the yellow card is a warning and two add up to a red and dismissal from the game. I've lifeguarded for 3 years now so I get to see how kids work. When you give someone a warning for say dunking another kid and then wait until they do it again to make them sit out they will go to another area of the pool and do it or wait until you rotate stands and rely that the new lifeguard hasn't gave them a warning yet. So that is where making a warning carry over for at least one match, maybe two comes in. Then they can't just take their one warning every match and stay out of trouble. Teams would play less aggressively if they were on the verge of a DQ. Like a basketball player with 4 fouls. So that is where I stand. I think the rules are adequate. I agree a video of bad behavior would be good to be made so ref would no behavior that should get a warning or yellow card. And I more visible system of penalizing where the consequence can follow you to the next round and ref have an easier job of making the tough call should be implemented.

Don Wright

20-04-2004, 14:22

I still think that comparing "aggressive behavior" defence styles we have seen to battle bots is like comparing karate competition to the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship).

Battle bots have one objective...destroy the other robots by whatever means necessary. They have devices made specifically made to destroy another robot. Period.

You can really, honestly say that you think any FIRST team this year designed and built that? Come on.

I'm sorry, but I for one think a pushing match that ends up with a robot tipping is expected. Or, another robot waiting for a robot to start to climb the step to go to hang before they push them because they will be unbalanced is a good strategy. We never did either, because we didn't want to tip over ourselves so we avoided contact as much as possible.

I think teams that build large, top heavy, robots have to accept the concequences that they will be tipped over instead of trying to get the rules changed to make it so they can't get tipped. And it you build a great offensive robot that can only be defeated by a rough defensive strategy, be ready. Every design has it's strengths and weaknesses. That's the name of the game...find the opponent's weaknesses and exploit it to win the game.

JVN

20-04-2004, 14:23

I like the idea of yellow and red cards being handed out at a head-refs discretion. But maybe, that is just because I trust the current referees 100% and would abide by their definition of "overly aggressive".

It is no secret that I enjoy the defensive element present in FIRST. However, I would also be more than willing to have a line drawn by Aidan, or Benge (or whoever the head ref at the time is) in the form of a yellow card.

I feel the referees have made great strides forward in terms of consistency from event to event, and accuracy in calling the rules as interpreted by FIRST. I know they are working to better train vounteers at all levels, especially field officials.

I also believe that the refs have made a strong effort to communicate to teams how things will be called, both through the driver meetings, and through verbal warnings. They tell us how they're going to call it, so how can we complain when they do?

So basically the way I see it is:
I like the current "refs interpretation" system. I think any attempt to quantify it would get a little crazy. I only wish the referees had a more solid way of warning a team than a verbal smack on the wrist. The yellow cards would be a good way of doing this.

I don't think we'll be able to get a completely quantitative system in place. I like defensive play, but agree there needs to be a line drawn for "too aggresive". I'd like to see the current system refined, not replaced.

I <3 Aidan & Benge. ;)

John

Chris Hibner

20-04-2004, 14:41

Andy Baker

20-04-2004, 15:04

Most likely, I will be head ref at IRI. As long as I get approval from the IRI leadership committee, I would be willing to run a "test drive" of a yellow & red card system.

But, I am not going to wear one of those goofy soccer ref uniforms. :)

Andy B.

MikeDubreuil

20-04-2004, 15:19

I like the yellow and red card idea. It will help teams drive their robots according to the rules.
I don't particularly like the idea of the referees deciding what violates such ambiguous rules as tipping, damage, and agressive. They are great people, but I would rather see some official examples shown to all before the referees rule on a play. The referees are human volunteers (like a lot of us), and only "FIRST officials for a day."

AmyPrib

20-04-2004, 15:37

KenWittlief

20-04-2004, 19:08

If team 45 or 71 are in front of their stny goal trying to cap, you better believe someone's gonna try to push us out of the way, and they have. I know that 71 had been pushed a lot from the side in order to keep them from capping and it worked. But they didn't tip, and there was no ramming involved. Now you're saying that if 71 was tipped, the opp should be penalized? So they're supposed to sit there and watch as 71 doubles their points?

I dont understand why you feel this way? do you play any sports in school? do you take gym class?

if you dont get between a bot and its goal and it gets into scoring position, then you lost your chance - its too late - why do you think its now ok to push it over and 'take it out' for the rest of the match?

put it in the perspective of other sports. If a batter hits a ball far out into the field, and is rounding 3rd base, do you expect the 3rd baseman to just stand there and watch him score a homerun? why not run into him as he goes past? why not knock him down to give the fielder a chance to throw the ball to homeplate before he gets there?

cause if a player is in 'scoring postion' then they have already played the game better than you. I defy anyone to build a bot that can lift the 2X ball up into the air and cap the stationary goal that is not vunerable to being knocked over, seriously - it cant be done

and the rules state that 'any strategy aimed solely towards tipping... is not allowed'. But Ive seen match after match where this happened, so I dont see how anyone can say, we only intended to push them sideways, we expected there wheels to skid sideways and the bot to NOT fall over, but for some reason it fell over.

I think after this year you are going to see more and more teams who tried to build machines with complex articulated arms for capping, or ball collectors simply come back next year with tanks, armored vehicles that savage anything on the field, cause they tried to play the game to score points this year and ended up watching match after match with their bots knocked flat, and no penalites called.

if thats the way the game is played now in FIRST, why bother trying to cap or score points?

seriously, why bother to build an arm to place the 2X ball if you know you will be toppled over and over if you make it to the elim rounds? Why build a ball collector if someone can fly across the field at full speed and smash your rollers? why build a ball capture machine if someone can stuff their sky hook or claw into it and pull you over

and like I have said several times now, not a single team was DQ anywhere this year for tipping or damaging another teams bot, anywhere.

all those teams who lost out after being knocked over, or who could not continue to play due to severe damage - what have they learned this year?

Steve W

20-04-2004, 19:59

I know that our robot can lift the 2X ball 13 feet in the air and we only fell over 1 time during practice and we popped right back up. We built our robot with the lowest center of gravity that we could. All motors were kept as close to the ground as posible. There is a chance that we could be pushed over but ANY robot can be tipped given the right circumstances. We also built for power and a rough game. When looking at the game we figured that there might be as much pushing as last year. We also built to hang from the outside so that we could keep our center of G low and not have to worry about fighting for a very small place at the top.

In other words we came as prepared as we could. There seemed to be more problems with teams flipping or getting hung up on those stupid purple balls than by other robots. Remember, engineering is not about building an object with the least amout of tolerance. You need to test beyond what you feel is normal. FIRST tests us in so many ways. I personally feel that we should have been allowed more weight because of the complex nature of this years game. FIRST did notgrant this and so our robot needed a diet to lose weight. We had to decide whether we wanted to lose strength or function. The robot ended up losing mostly strength but also some function. We knew what we wanted and hopefully came close.

We need to play the game as it was written just as we have to build to FIRST's specs. To be aggressive and rough is one thing but to deliberately damage another robot is unacceptable.

Alex Golec

20-04-2004, 20:07

There is a line between defense and agression (as mostly seen from my team's robot 469). For instance: robot A places its arm above robot B's open hopper.

Defensive: rbt-A holds its arm above rbt-B and trys to block balls from falling in.
Agressive: rbt-A bashes its arm continuously into rbt-B's hopper, hopping to damage some system and cause damage.

Most of the current judging is based on how "intentional" an action is. If you look at some of the matches, you will see shoving matches, robots falling over everywhere, etc. The referees had a difficult job this year, especially with all the arms and large box robots that could be prone to tipping. Personally, if FIRST were to remove all defensive maneuvers from all games, then there would be much less variation to the game, and to me, it would be boring to watch
>>"hey joe! look! rbt-C is going to cap the large goal and gain 40 points! shouldn't rbt-D go and block them?"
>>"they can't touch any other robot on the field, so they can't do anything about it."

As for the entanglement issue (see this controversial match (http://www.soap.circuitrunners.com/2004/movies/gal/gal_sf1m2.wmv)), it is not clearly defined. ANY fabric on a robot is prone to entanglement with other teams, so how can this be sorted out? should teams not be allowed to go anywere near fabric-teams because they could get caught? Most teams do not wish to be intentionally stuck on another robot, and unless the action looks clearly intentional the judgement is left to the refs (thus making their jobs more difficult)

overall I believe the current rules are fine for the purposes of defense, but it is difficult to definfe how intentional an action is.

_Alex

MikeDubreuil

20-04-2004, 20:15

if you dont get between a bot and its goal and it gets into scoring position, then you lost your chance - its too late - why do you think its now ok to push it over and 'take it out' for the rest of the match?

I think what you're looking for is something like football's pass interference.

<G36> Defensive Interference-
A team may only defend a goal if they are directly in front of the goal or will be interacting with the front of the opposing robot. If the defending robot interacts with the offensive robot in any other way a 10 point penalty will be assesed.

Definitions:
FRONT - The front of the robot is considered the side which is the first part of the robot to arrive at a destination if the robot was driving at something. Crab steering robots FRONTs change dynamicly and will vary in different situations.

Don Wright

20-04-2004, 20:19

seriously, why bother to build an arm to place the 2X ball if you know you will be toppled over and over if you make it to the elim rounds? Why build a ball collector if someone can fly across the field at full speed and smash your rollers? why build a ball capture machine if someone can stuff their sky hook or claw into it and pull you over

Ask 469 and 71... They seemed to do pretty good...

Honestly, this is a big debate right now, right after the Championship, among a few people (compared to the total number of FIRST people out there).

I firmly believe that by the time FIRST 2005 comes around, great ideas of innovative mechanisms will take over and we won't have a bunch of tanks driving around...

Matt Adams

20-04-2004, 20:48

As a preface, our robot played zero defense. I hated teams playing defense against our machine - it was very effective. However, it's part of the game. Getting hit from the side, having arms fight one another during capping, and being rammed on the 6" platform were obvious implications of this years game. I'd like to comment on some of Ken's remarks.

I defy anyone to build a bot that can lift the 2X ball up into the air and cap the stationary goal that is not vunerable to being knocked over, seriously - it cant be done.

and the rules state that 'any strategy aimed solely towards tipping... is not allowed'. But Ive seen match after match where this happened, so I dont see how anyone can say, we only intended to push them sideways, we expected there wheels to skid sideways and the bot to NOT fall over, but for some reason it fell over.Ken, I'm not a practicing engineer, but I've taken a simple class on static bodies. Any size robot can be tipped over if you push from a height tall enough with enough force to cause the moment force about it's edge to be greater than it's weight.

My point is that, most robots do indeed push from the floor, perhaps 2 - 8 inches above the ground. Robots can be pushed sideways safely, just like you can push a bottle of coke across the table when you push on its base, or it can tipped if you try to put it over at the top.

<R10> Teams are expected to design and build robots to withstand vigorous interaction with other robots.

I believe that being pushed from the side isn't vigorous... it's defense. If you don't want to get tipped over when hit from the side.. you have a few options. You can have wheels with low traction, lower the machines center of gravity, use casters that will cause the robot to pivot instead of turn. I think the major problem that teams had this year is using big wheels. Because they were using bigger wheels, their effect wheel base was smaller, causing them to be much more prone to tipping.

There are engineering choices every year that each team needs to decide for themselves. How to avoiding being tip-prone is one of them.

if thats the way the game is played now in FIRST, why bother trying to cap or score points?

all those teams who lost out after being knocked over, or who could not continue to play due to severe damage - what have they learned this year?Isn't it obvious? You don't get 50 points for tipping a robot, you get 50 points for hanging on the bar. You need to build an arm so you can do so.

Hopefully teams that had problems tipping learned that having a lower center of gravity is critical to ensure that you're stable. I also hope teams have learned that if you're going to have a big bad arm, you better design it such that you can pick yourself up - you look really dopey if you don't.

In conclussion, I think that there are a lot of defensive plays that people can do effectively. I think that repeated ramming isn't effective or gracious, but I think that engaging machine robots when they are prone to weaknesses is fair game, ESPECIALLY in the finals. FIRST is a competition, and tipping, though potentially devestating, has been and always will be part of the game. Well prepared teams should be able sustain vigerous interactions.

Matt

Joe Ross

20-04-2004, 21:24

I defy anyone to build a bot that can lift the 2X ball up into the air and cap the stationary goal that is not vunerable to being knocked over, seriously - it cant be done

Ken, I am not an ME, but I think I can design a robot that is extremely hard to tip. I would start by looking at team 67's design. Their entire base is shaped like a wedge. If someone were to run into them, they would more likely drive up on top of 67, transfering weight to 67 and helping to keep them from tipping. They also had a very low base and a thin arm, which means it would be very hard to to push on anything high enough to counteract their low center of gravity.

(I should say they never tipped over, except when they wanted to at the beginning of the match ;))

JVN

20-04-2004, 21:25

Ken, I am not an ME, but I think I can design a robot that is extremely hard to tip. I would start by looking at team 67's design. Their entire base is shaped like a wedge. If someone were to run into them, they would more likely drive up on top of 67, transfering weight to 67 and helping to keep them from tipping. They also had a very low base and a thin arm, which means it would be very hard to to push on anything high enough to counteract their low center of gravity.

(I should say they never tipped over, except when they wanted to at the beginning of the match ;))
Joe,
You beat me to it.

John

MikeDubreuil

20-04-2004, 22:02

Al Skierkiewicz

20-04-2004, 22:39

I like the idea of yellow and red cards being handed out at a head-refs discretion. But maybe, that is just because I trust the current referees 100% and would abide by their definition of "overly aggressive".
John

John, I like where you are going with this. I think that most of us could decide by watching a match that a team was stepping over the line into "agressive" behavior. If most of us can tell the difference then we don't need specific rules. A questionable act is warned by a yellow card and that team now knows that at least one other person thinks they have stepped over the line. If they continue then the warning becomes more agressive. Of course, referees need to be knowledgable of the game and it's strategies. I do not envy referees, it must be the hardest job in the organization.

"But, I am not going to wear one of those goofy soccer ref uniforms.

Andy B."
But Andy, the black and white makes you look so official!

kmcclary

21-04-2004, 00:46

I defy anyone to build a bot that can lift the 2X ball up into the air and cap the stationary goal that is not vunerable to being knocked over, seriously - it cant be done

I think it is possible. Simply make a set of deployable outrigger "lunar landing feet". Given one at each corner of a 5 ft high robot, that is one HECK of a lot of outrigging... :D Add linear extensions and you can span even more. A Backhoe uses this technique. One can lift a LOT, very offset from the base, without fear of tipover. In reality (just like a backhoe), you probably only need one pair of landing feet on the arm end.

But back to biz...

My biggest problems with robot interaction this year focused mostly on things like an arm machine using its big ball claw to deliberately entangle a bin machine's loose netting and yanking in an attempt to drag it away from the drop. Though (to us) an obvious "entanglement move", no DQ's were given at GLR for it, which surprised and bothered us. We had a bin machine that "as delivered" would only be using thin material for the box frame, and a few crosslinked ropes for the bin. VERY vulnerable to COMPLETE destruction from that move. When we designed it, we never dreamed FIRST would allow THAT level of robot interaction.

Luckily, our first regional was Buckeye but we attended GLR and DET just to watch and see how things were run. That revelation prompted us to immediately go out and solve it before OUR regional. We bought some strong ripstop camo netting, and took the raw material with us to cut and overwrap the bin Thursday AM, right after uncrating. It only had tiny holes, which wouldn't allow that move. (FYI, it worked VERY well. Several robots DID try to grab us, but slid off... No one could get a good grip on our now "slippery bin".) :D

Anyway... MY feeling on this whole subject is NOT to bar drivetrain fights and potential tipovers, but instead to simply define some sort of "personal space" AROUND and WITHIN your robot, and simply forbid direct grabbing and object insertion into the opponent's hardware. If violated, it constitutes a "Personal Foul" or "Holding", just like in other sports.

In this situation, direct pushing and pinning on the outside, and possibly even external envelopment dragging would be OK. But instantly banned would be things like: grabbing another robot and dragging it around by sticking in a T-toggle, lifting/wedging it up on a forklift off its drivetrain to carry it out of the way, sticking an appendage into its innards to "grab them by the guts" (and risk "accidentally" pulling out something if THEY resist or even try to retreat), or anything resembling a spearing or martial arts move against your opponent. Think of it as a "personal envelope" around the boundaries of your machine's mechanisms, whose multifaceted virtual planes other machines must NOT deliberately PENETRATE with deployable mechanisms.

BTW - Last year, I envisioned a scenario of one machine's bin knockdown bar/wings being stuck into opposing stacking machine's stacker mechanisms to stop its operation. So I did bring this up with FIRST Q&A, and ASKED them to make some kind of Robotic Personal Space ruling to prevent that. To my surprise they REFUSED to even CONSIDER barring any such grabbing NOR insertion interaction. (OK then, we'll "keep that in mind"...) <sigh>

IMHO, we REALLY need some better guidelines here. My fear is that mech entanglement severity will continue to increase until a better definition emerges for "appropriate" vs "inappropriate" interactions. As it stands now, a team's primary defense may be that any part of another's machine stuck into theirs is fair game for an immediate drivetrain "spin breakage/amputation". I would have NO problem telling MY drivers that if someone has the gall to stick something into our robot chassis, to simply "turn, and drive away with it"... (Souvenirs, anyone???) ;)

I just hope it won't take a few robots torn apart by others before they'll consider instituting a Robotic Personal Space definition of some kind.

Now don't get me wrong. When another robot is about to score, I do feel that "dealignment" moves, and pushing/pulling them are appropriate with the current rule set. They probably should still be allowed in some fashion. Fighting over game resources and positioning are to be expected. I just wish something clearly defined as to HOW you're allowed to engage or grip another, to protect the pull-ee's HARDWARE from damage when it is done ("which wrestling holds" ARE legal).

Basically though, I wish better guidelines that clearly and unambiguously forbid INSERTION and ENTANGLEMENT moves which could interfere with a bot's INTERNAL operations, or rip out hardware. If we don't define that, we may start to see arms with fingers on the end which can simply be inserted into other robots to "toss a wrench" into moving mechanisms as a defense...

If clamping and/or siezing deployable things for dealignment and towing purposes IS to be considered "fair game", IMO the trick will be either in clearly and properly defining what is grabbable and what isn't to limit damage (or defining clear point penalties when damage occurs, whether deliberate or accidental in such a way that still discourages "lizard tail dropoff" style defense). The problem with such a rule is that our bots aren't of a "single species" formula with known structural specs, where you can just clearly say "you can grab XXX but not YYY because it's too fragile"...

That's where I feel a generic Robotic Personal Space definition and rule could be useful. IMO "respecting another's body safety" is the biggest defining difference between playing a game, and brawling. All other sports rule sets are designed to protect the participants' bodies from harm by defining safe grip/push interactions and forbidding harmful ones. I feel we need something similar.

What do you think? Is a Robotic Personal Space Violation rule appropriate, and/or needed? Would this help solve an "overagression problem"? If so, how would it best be phrased, where are the limits (e.g. what kind of grabbing SHOULD be allowed), and what should be the penalty?

- Keith

AmyPrib

21-04-2004, 01:00

I dont understand why you feel this way? do you play any sports in school? do you take gym class?

First of all, I'm an engineer, not a high school student who takes gym class. Second, yes, I played many sports while in school but I don't feel I have to compare this robotics organization to any sport.

if you dont get between a bot and its goal and it gets into scoring position, then you lost your chance - its too late - why do you think its now ok to push it over and 'take it out' for the rest of the match?

Where on earth do I say in my post that I think it's ok to push a robot over and "take it out" for the rest of the match? Because nowhere does it even imply that!

Why can't another robot push us out of the way? You can't honestly expect the only defense of an opponent to be physically sitting in front of my goal. If that's the case, then you would disallow robots on the platform to stick an arm thru the goal in order to prevent my 2x? Technically they're not "in between me and my goal". I think it's ridiculous to say you shouldn't be able to push someone from the side, or front, or back, or other side.
I think that if I built a robot that is top heavy or know that there's even the slightest possibility of tipping if someone pushes on me, I should be expecting it.

cause if a player is in 'scoring postion' then they have already played the game better than you.

No they haven't. Why can't it mean that I have a good offensive robot that is actually playing the game elsewhere, instead of parking itself in front of a goal all day long waiting for you to come along, just so I can "be in between you and the goal". That's silly.

and the rules state that 'any strategy aimed solely towards tipping... is not allowed'. But Ive seen match after match where this happened, so I dont see how anyone can say, we only intended to push them sideways, we expected there wheels to skid sideways and the bot to NOT fall over, but for some reason it fell over..

Well by the same token, how in the heck can you say they "intended" to tip you over? Yes, the rule states any strategy aimed soley towards tipping. Pushing is a strategy aimed soley at tipping a robot? Hasn't your team ever pushed another robot? Was your intention to tip them over? Doubt it.
If you look at the matches of 45 and 71, like I previously used as examples, you can see that they've gotten pushed around from their sides without tipping over. So I don't see the harm in that, why should it be disallowed? While I can't speak for 71, 45 built their robot to have the least liklihood of tipping. So yes - Wheels can in fact skid sideways without causing a robot to tip over. It's pretty simple. I would think you'd look at your robot during design and say hmm.. if someone plays defense on me, how easily will I tip? Or, where will I get damaged and how can I improve that?

I think after this year you are going to see more and more teams who tried to build machines with complex articulated arms for capping, or ball collectors simply come back next year with tanks, armored vehicles that savage anything on the field, cause they tried to play the game to score points this year and ended up watching match after match with their bots knocked flat, and no penalites called.

Eh, I don't think so. I guess you could look at that way if you're negative. But most teams that I saw had an offensive mechanism to help them score points and to play their own offense. If they happen to go against a much better offensive robot, then of course they need some sort of defense. Unless FIRST is invaded with dirty game-playing people, which I hope doesn't happen, then we shouldn't have to worry about the majority of people turning into pure defense robots like you predict. If you watch a lot of matches, I think you'd see that the most effective robot was one that could play great offense, but knew how to avoid/defeat the defense and could play it's own if need be. So I wouldn't expect everything to take a 180 just because some good defense won the Championships.

seriously, why bother to build an arm to place the 2X ball if you know you will be toppled over and over if you make it to the elim rounds? Why build a ball collector if someone can fly across the field at full speed and smash your rollers? why build a ball capture machine if someone can stuff their sky hook or claw into it and pull you over

Good point. Why would anyone bother to build a non-robust robot that can be easily toppled, or easily smashed, or easily pulled around the field? You didn't make any point there. I mean, are you saying that it's not possible to build an arm for a 2x that won't get you tipped? Is it impossible to protect your rollers from getting smashed? Is it impossible to build a drivetrain that prevents you from being pulled around like that? If you said yes to any of those, you haven't see this years robots.

Maybe there weren't many DQ's or calls on certain rules, but MAYBE it's because the refs deemed it "not intentional, not malicious" and within the rules!!! The refs do what they can according to the rules. There's other debates going on about that, how to improve the rules to satisfy more people, but the bottom line is, creating all these conditional defense rules may not be the answer, and certainly not basing them all on what various sports do.
Sure there are some similarities, but I guess I just don't believe you can apply most sports rules that deal with Humans to robots. For one thing, Humans can control their physical actions better than they can control a robots actions. If a human goes running into another human with full body contact, my feeling is that it's easier to call that as an intentional body slam, then you could call a robot doing something similar. I have a pretty good idea that a person will fall over when I run into them with my whole body, especially in plane sight. I don't have a pretty good idea if someone's robot is gonna fall over if I hit them on one side versus a different side, and that's even assuming full view. Maybe I don't have a full view now, how the heck can you penalize me for intentional tipping when I can't see through 2 full goals, pvc, other robots, and a platform? I can't even see which direction a robot is facing. So now are you going to say that I just shouldn't be on the opponent's side at all if I don't have a good view of them? And should I just not shoot balls into the goal so that I can be able to view them?

Common sense comes into play for everyone when judging these conditions. You know darn well when you do something maliciously intentionally, so don't do it. The actions that I've seen debated already don't seem to have been intentional. The only people that know for sure are those people.

If thats the way the game is played now in FIRST, why bother trying to cap or score points?

It seems so cynical and childish to basically say "why should I bother building a robot at all, that can play offensive aspects of the game, if someone can play defense on me".

all those teams who lost out after being knocked over, or who could not continue to play due to severe damage - what have they learned this year?

How 'bout - lower the center of gravity, don't build top heavy or too tall without precautions, protect your robot features, learn to fix it..... They may have learned those things. Isn't this whole organization partially about learning and improving?

JVN

21-04-2004, 02:16

FIRST has in the past allowed defensive play.

FIRST has allowed pushing, non-malicious ramming, accidental "oops, your CG is too high" flipping, all at the refs discretion. FIRST has repeatedly, emphasized that this is a physical game, and pleaded with teams to build their robots accordingly.

I imagine, this will continue in the future.

I believe this thread is designed to highlight ways to end "overly aggresive" defensive play. Intentional tipping, entanglement, and such. Also to get ideas such that refs will be better able to warn teams that their play is "entering the grey area". I think we've done a good job, and posted several great ideas.

Defense makes the matches exciting.
It should NOT go away. (In my opinion)

I thought FIRST did a heck of a job balancing this year's game. Defense was present, but not overly so. There were plenty of tradeoffs. A successful alliance had to be well balanced. I imagine things would have been pretty boring to watch if all we saw was machines corralling, capping, and hanging.
Wooooo... another 300 score.

Wooop-dee-freakin-dooo.

Defense is an important strategic part of the game. (Or do you still disagree with me on this Ken? Did you watch the webcast?) As a coach, I'm glad we have it at our disposal, when we're outgunned offensively.

KenWittlief

21-04-2004, 07:52

What do you think? Is a Robotic Personal Space Violation rule appropriate, and/or needed? Would this help solve an "overagression problem"? If so, how would it best be phrased, where are the limits (e.g. what kind of grabbing SHOULD be allowed), and what should be the penalty?

I think we are on the same plane here, I suggested that bot to bot contact for the purpose of pushing and shoving must be limited to a defined bumper zone at the base of the machines, so you would not be able to point your arm or hook at another machine and take out their spleen with it, or push them over

Andy Brockway

21-04-2004, 08:20

When this thread started the intent was to write new rules.

It seems to have evolved into a discussion on whether the games should be played like football or like ballet. Any game has two sides and playing defense is just as important as playing offense. FIRST intentionally warns teams to build their robots for robustness in the robot build rules and in the tournament rules (under picking partners).

Everyone should look at the standings lists. How many boxes are in the top 15? From there , how many were in the finals? The game rewards good design practices, robust robots and strategies that include offense and defense.

The game is designed to mimic the real world. We are teaching that life is not fair, we need to look at our surroundings and plan for the future. If the rules say expect interaction with other robots it should not mean that they will be only kissing each other.

I think the card system has merit because what may be unintentional in one match would be recognized and punished if it is a recurring behavior.

(edit) There should also be a method to recall yellow cards for teams that play two or more matches without further penalty. 'Reduced sentence for good behavior' (edit)

KenWittlief

21-04-2004, 08:37

Where on earth do I say in my post that I think it's ok to push a robot over and "take it out" for the rest of the match? Because nowhere does it even imply that!

Why can't another robot push us out of the way? You can't honestly expect the only defense of an opponent to be physically sitting in front of my goal.

in the refinement of the rules as I posted them on page 1, I said if you push a bot from the side or back and topple it or damage it, then you are DQ'd - if you CAN push it sideways then no foul is incurred.

look at the video MikeDubreuil posted in his text on page two. Team 56 had a tendency to wheelie up when they accelerated, and they drove across the playfield into the SIDE of 45 (who had a 2X ball up in the air) - the contact was above what I defined as the bumber zone, and 45 was toppled (taken out)

with my new refinement of the rules 56 would be DQ because the result of their 'ramming' and contact above the bumper zone caused 45 to topple.

that was a quarterfinal match BTW - 45 got that far and ended up sprawled across the floor. I defy anyone to design a bot that could be holding a 2X ball up in the air, take a hit like that and NOT fall over - you cant drive around with outriggers planted on all 4 corners of your bot. when 45 was hit they were not even close to the goal yet.

Im not trying to eliminate all defense - Im trying to acknowledge that there IS defense and to put guidelines for it - thats what this thread is about - nobody here is saying all bot to bot contact has to stop

if you think you can push someone sideways without tipping them over (esp when they are extended and vunerable) that will be your choice - you push them and they slide and its ok, you push them and 'take them out' of the game, and you are DQ

isnt that fair? As others have pointed out, no matter how low the center of gravity is on your bot, if my bot pushes above it once your CG is past your center of balance, your bot will topple - any bot can be toppled, we cant design bots that defy the laws of physics

but we can design rules that will allow teams on all levels to play without getting destroyed or knocked over without penalites.

Even in RollerBall, they had rules, at least at first - so we really want the elimination matches to be a robotwar freeForAll?

Andy Baker

21-04-2004, 10:19

KenWittlief

21-04-2004, 10:59

im not saying the match action was illegal - many matches played out this way and no penalites were asessed

look around the forum and you will see that many people this year were disapointed with the level of agressive play this year, and could not understand why no penalites were called, anywhere - for tipping or for damage inflicted?

thats what this thread is about - clearly teams had different expectations this year going into the games as to what would be allowed and what would be called foul

personally if you asked me after the kickoff if driving across the field and ramming a bot and knocking it over like that was allowable, I would have said -no way - they would be DQ'd for being that agressive

esp when a bot is not even near the goal

ok - I was wrong - apparently this type of no-holds-barred action is not only allowed

its encouraged? is this what we want? to be on ESPN?

if thats what the majority of teams want then ok, make it clear - get rid of rules that are not called at any event anywhere, stop leading people to believe there is some sort of good sportmanship happening on the playfield. Lets stop pretending that tipping, ramming, bashing is discouraged - cause apparently the crowd loves it and thats what they want to see

and lets play battlebots - lets play RollerBall

no penaties, no disqualifications, and no subsitutions. the last bot not toppled wins (thats how it turned out this year)

how far were we from that this year in the finals, seriously?

If thats what everyone wants, I'll go along with it - but at least tell us at the kickoff meeting so we dont feel like idiots when we show up at our first regional and watch our 6 weeks of hard work get battered, smashed and toppled repeatedly.

Ricky Q.

21-04-2004, 11:21

ok - I was wrong - apparently this type of no-holds-barred action is not only allowed

its encouraged? is this what we want? to be on ESPN?

if thats what the majority of teams want then ok, make it clear - get rid of rules that are not called at any event anywhere, stop leading people to believe there is some sort of good sportmanship happening on the playfield

and lets play battlebots - lets play RollerBall

no penaties, no disqualifications, and no subsitutions. the last bot not toppled wins.

If thats what everyone wants, I'll go along with it - but at least tell us at the kickoff meeting so we dont feel like idiots when we show up at our first regional and watch our 6 weeks of hard work get battered, smashed and toppled repeatedly.
Who is saying there is no good sportsmanship going out on the field? People are playing to win, maybe some are playing too extremely and going nuts, but not the majority. My team and many others out there "play to win or don't play at all, but if we lose take it graciously." There are some hard fought battles out on that FIRST carpet, and most of the time teams love that kind of hear-stopping action. Agressive play will always be there, some robot out there will always be the 'annoying, im going to get in your face and ram you until you stop scoring points against me' robot, and there will always be teams that beat them. Robots will always tip, take damage, etc.. Thats why FIRST tells you to build them robust, its in the rules, they are going to take hits over and over and the best robustly designed robot will still be out there.

Winning is encouraged, its human nature to want to win. If a robot is out there trying to cap, get in there way, hit them, stick your arm up there. Play some defense, but keep it legal. Of course it is going to be agressive, thats what defesne is, you can't just sit at your drivers station saying to yourself "Please, please, please, let them not cap that goal." You have to get out there and get in their way. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but at least you know you tried and didnt just cower your robot in a corner and hide. The best robots are able to adapt to the game, they can play offense with the best of them and then turn right around and beat the best of them with their defense. Its tough to build a robot like that, and you don't see alot of them.

Let the robots play, rules are like laws, there are gray areas. There will be no-calls and play-ons just like in sports. As long as the robots aren't continually beating each other down. Let the refs make the judgement call, its their job. But don't totally outlaw agressive play, it is part of what makes it fun to play and watch.

Rick

21-04-2004, 11:26

your team decides what to make and how to use it.

If everyone made a steel box to play defense with thye couldn't play defense! Only defensive robots would make for no offense. But if everyone made offensive robots and played no defense, you'd watch in horror as the team your against scores higher than you repeatedly and you can do nothing to stop it.

Listen folks there needs to be offense and defense, a Yin and Yang and a Hall and Oates if you will (well maybe not hall and oates but you get it)

Be prepared for defense and ways around it simple as that. I think we are creating a problem for something that isn't broken.

For example, one could argue that 494's or 56 defense was unfair. But in saying that their defense was too good could you not also say that 71's offense from 2002 was too good? I mean they were unstoppable back then and there was no rule made against that. Even this year they could do it all and no rules are being made about how much offense can be played?

JVN

21-04-2004, 11:30

look around the forum and you will see that many people this year were disapointed with the level of agressive play this year, and could not understand why no penalites were called, anywhere - for tipping or for damage inflicted?I'm not sure if you can make that statement.

A few individuals have been complaining about overly agressive play, but for the most part people seem very happy with the referee calls, and with the way the game has played out.

Why is it that people pay the most attention to the negative comments?

I LOVED this game. I LOVED the job the referees did. I would hope next season plays out the same way.

Let's see what people actually think (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28047).

MrToast

21-04-2004, 11:40

IMHO:

If a robot is rendered inoperable or (partially) destroyed by another robot, then the offending robot should be given (at least) a yellow card. Severity of card (yellow or red) would be determined by the witnessing referee(s).

Definition of inoperable: Tipped or destroyed in such a way that the robot can not complete the rest of the match. However, if the robot is tipped and manages to get back up, the card issued to the offensive robot shall be recalled with a green card.
Definition of damage: destruction (either intentionally or not) of any rigid (non-pliable) component (so something like a styrofoam bumper would be excluded) to the point where that component is inoperable.

However, bending of a component, like an aluminum arm or whatever, would not be deemed as a card-worthy action, because it *may* not represent a total inoperability of said component.

How's that? :D

MrToast, having fun with colors :cool:

MikeDubreuil

21-04-2004, 11:48

Why is it that people pay the most attention to the negative comments?

I LOVED this game. I LOVED the job the referees did. I would hope next season plays out the same way.

A very small minority were upset with the church of England, now we have the United States of America. It's also possible that some people are not coming out because they fear being the minority.

I think the real puspose of these threads is to determine what qualifys a violation of the standard rules. It also points out how open the current rules are to interpretation.

ngreen

21-04-2004, 11:49

I'm not sure if you can make that statement.

A few individuals have been complaining about overly agressive play, but for the most part people seem very happy with the referee calls, and with the way the game has played out.

Why is it that people pay the most attention to the negative comments?

I LOVED this game. I LOVED the job the referees did. I would hope next season plays out the same way.

I agree with John here. Everything played out pretty well and the ref did a good job.

There were a few things I disagreed with:

1. The refs had a tough time acknowledging overly rough play without a dq. A dq in my mind was overly harsh in most all cases. A warning that carries over and discouraging the team from playing like that would work better and give the refs more options in penalizing a team in a less harsh way. Unintentional things happen and it would be hard for a ref to DQ for unintentional things but I can see a warning for unintentional damage.

2. Sometime resets bother me because sometimes teams get a second chance that maybe in all fairness they shouldn't. One example I saw was a team in autonomous mode hit the wall and drove one of its wheels outside the playing field. I all normal cases this would merit a disabling of the robot. But for for some reason when they hit the wall and drove the front wheel of it caused the balls to drop even though the ten point ball wasn't knock off. They stopped the match and let all the robots reset and play again. My assessment was that the offending robot should have been able to be put in the starting position but be disabled for that round. I don't know that was just my thought. I saw a couple other type instances where I thought there should be a disabled bot off of the reset. This didn't involve my team at all I just thought it was odd.

KenWittlief

21-04-2004, 11:57

I agree that in most games and events GP and good sportsmanship reigned and teams did their best to respect the opponents machines and skills

A dq in my mind was overly harsh in most all cases...

why do you think that, from a perspective of fairness?

if my team is getting wild and bashes into your bot, either knocking it over or disabling it, your team has done nothing wrong

but now you cant play for the rest of the match

while my team continues to play, and benefit from our actions since it is now 2 against 1 on the field

most likely, my team will win. If we are not DQ'd why wouldnt my team keep driving like that?

and if its the last match of the finals, what do I care about yellow cards?!

MikeDubreuil

21-04-2004, 12:08

I agree that in most games and events GP and good sportsmanship reigned and teams did their best to respect the opponents machines and skills

why do you think that, from a perspective of fairness?

What's interesting is that this is whats wrong with our justice system.

If I murder someone they lose their life. I however, could potentially get out in 20 years. I get to raise a familly and have the American dream. The parents of the murder victim get nothing.

Should we move to a biblical eye for an eye system of rule in FIRST?

If a robot becomes disabled should the offending robot be disabled?

Or maybe like the US jusctice system, should an offending robot be disabled for a period of time? For instance, 15 seconds.

AmyPrib

21-04-2004, 12:17

in the refinement of the rules as I posted them on page 1, I said if you push a bot from the side or back and topple it or damage it, then you are DQ'd - if you CAN push it sideways then no foul is incurred.

look at the video MikeDubreuil posted in his text on page two. Team 56 had a tendency to wheelie up when they accelerated, and they drove across the playfield into the SIDE of 45 (who had a 2X ball up in the air) - the contact was above what I defined as the bumber zone, and 45 was toppled (taken out)

that was a quarterfinal match BTW - 45 got that far and ended up sprawled across the floor. I defy anyone to design a bot that could be holding a 2X ball up in the air, take a hit like that and NOT fall over - when 45 was hit they were not even close to the goal yet.

but we can design rules that will allow teams on all levels to play without getting destroyed or knocked over without penalites.

We already have rules for this. It just so happens that the refs didn't make the calls because they didn't feel a robot was destroyed or maliciously and intentionally "taken out" of the game.

Andy's right. I never heard anyone talk about 56s action until you brought it up. We are not complaining. If we thought something was unjust we might have contested it or at least asked about it. But 56 did nothing wrong. Sure we got tipped but it's not all 56s fault! We could have had our arm in a different position to help keep us stable. They shouldn't have to wait until we get within a foot of our goal to prevent us from scoring. Heck, we could score from 5ft away if we wanted! I would expect someone to try to keep us as far away as possible!

You can only make defensive rules so conditional. By adding all these "can't hit from the side or back", "can only hit between 2-8" mark", "if Blue Bot falls and breaks it's arm because Red Bot pushed him, Red Bot is disabled"... it just makes the refs job that much harder and way too many conditions to watch...

According to your rule, if I push on any one of 3 of 4 sides of a robot, and it happens to tip.. I'm disabled..Because tippage was the "result". If I rammed them, it might be different, under the discretion of the ref. What about those sly guys that can right themselves? What about their partner who helps them back up? So I should still be disabled? So now I'm out of the game, but yet whoever I "pushed or shoved", they were awesome enough to get back up and continue playing! Now that doesn't seem so fair either! I personally don't think I should be responsible if the opponents robot gets "destroyed" when they fall over as a result of defense. They could have fallen over all by themselves and destroyed themselves just as much. Apparently they weren't robust enough if they were "destroyed". But I shouldn't be disabled just because part of their arm snapped off when they came crashing down on top of it.

The point is, we already have rules for overly aggressive and malicious driving/playing. I'm sure there can be some words to improve the rules, but I don't know what they are. But I can say that I don't think the resolution is adding very specific conditions that pretty much remove defense from a game.

G's.. this has gotten out of hand... I don't need to react anymore..

We should try the yellow/red cards at IRI and see what happens.

I don't want robots out there, holding hands and humming as they go to score points.
This just cracks me up.....

Don Wright

21-04-2004, 12:19

look at the video MikeDubreuil posted in his text on page two. Team 56 had a tendency to wheelie up when they accelerated, and they drove across the playfield into the SIDE of 45 (who had a 2X ball up in the air) - the contact was above what I defined as the bumber zone, and 45 was toppled (taken out)

with my new refinement of the rules 56 would be DQ because the result of their 'ramming' and contact above the bumper zone caused 45 to topple.

im not saying the match action was illegal - many matches played out this way and no penalites were asessed

Which is it...it's illegal from your new rules resulting a DQ, or it isn't?

look around the forum and you will see that many people this year were disapointed with the level of agressive play this year, and could not understand why no penalites were called, anywhere - for tipping or for damage inflicted?

I agree with Jon...you can't say that. Just because a few people on this board are complaining about it...even if it were a 100, that's a very small percentage of the thousands of people in FIRST. I have talked with many people and a lot of people have described how exciting it is to watch and loved that way the games were played this year.

thats what this thread is about - clearly teams had different expectations this year going into the games as to what would be allowed and what would be called foul

Personally, I'm beginning to think there are two groups of people...people with common sense that understand what FIRST is trying to do with the rules, and people who don't. I wonder if some people at the beginning of the season read "no aggressive behavior" and thought, "Cool...robot contact is going to be at a minimum..."

personally if you asked me after the kickoff if driving across the field and ramming a bot and knocking it over like that was allowable, I would have said -no way - they would be DQ'd for being that agressive

If you design a robot that can be tipped over just by someone ramming into you...that's your fault. You seem to view this through rose colored glasses and I'm having real trouble grasping what kind of competition you are going for.

esp when a bot is not even near the goal
ok - I was wrong - apparently this type of no-holds-barred action is not only allowed its encouraged? is this what we want? to be on ESPN?

Sure...why not be on ESPN? What better way to spread the interest of FIRST that to get on national television and show the kids not interested in boring robotics how exciting it can be... And who is saying FIRST is encouraging it? Just because it isn't illegal, doesn't mean it's promoted.

if thats what the majority of teams want then ok, make it clear - get rid of rules that are not called at any event anywhere, stop leading people to believe there is some sort of good sportmanship happening on the playfield. Lets stop pretending that tipping, ramming, bashing is discouraged - cause apparently the crowd loves it and thats what they want to see

They aren't being called, because people aren't doing it. There are no chain saws cutting up robots. I never once saw a robot bash another robot over and over again just to do it. What is good sportsmanship to you? Stand back and see how well you can get scored on? Or putting up a good fight? I would much rather win over a tough opponent doing everything they can to stop me than one standing back letting me do whatever I want. Try to push me over. Try to stop me from scoring. Bring it. And when you can't stop me, the win will feel even better. And if you do, I'll be back...

and lets play battlebots - lets play RollerBall

no penaties, no disqualifications, and no subsitutions. the last bot not toppled wins (thats how it turned out this year)

how far were we from that this year in the finals, seriously?

If thats what everyone wants, I'll go along with it - but at least tell us at the kickoff meeting so we dont feel like idiots when we show up at our first regional and watch our 6 weeks of hard work get battered, smashed and toppled repeatedly.

Again with the exaggerations... How you can compare Battlebots to FIRST is beyond me. I almost wonder if you ever saw it. But, maybe you are just bitter about something...

ngreen

21-04-2004, 12:21

I agree that in most games and events GP and good sportsmanship reigned and teams did their best to respect the opponents machines and skills

why do you think that, from a perspective of fairness?

if my team is getting wild and bashes into your bot, either knocking it over or disabling it, your team has done nothing wrong

but now you cant play for the rest of the match

while my team continues to play, and benefit from our actions since it is now 2 against 1 on the field

most likely, my team will win. If we are not DQ'd why wouldnt my team keep driving like that?

and if its the last match of the finals, what do I care about yellow cards?!

I'm saying overly harsh based on current rules. This is what we are discussing right? It is hard to judge intent. You can't quantify it that tipping or damaged robot wasn't built poorly so that it was partial at fault.
I'm only suggestion to leave it subjective but give the refs better tools to work with.

The yellow cards would allow for teams to not do the same thing in consecutive matches. You might get away with tipping or overly aggressive actions in one match of final but now you could do it all two or three. And you only get 2 dq before you get dqed from the game. And don't forget finals rule, a dq for a team in elims is a dq for that alliance. I think the cards would suffice.

MrToast

21-04-2004, 12:30

Just some clarification and examples:

Definition of inoperable: Tipped or destroyed in such a way that the robot can not complete the rest of the match. However, if the robot is tipped and manages to get back up, the card issued to the offensive robot shall be recalled with a green card.

Example: In one of the Archimdedes semi-finals, Team 571 (Paragon)'s big ball grabber was broken. So, if it was caused by abuse by another robot, then that robot would be shut off and disqualified, because 571's pincer was inoperable. If Paragon broke it themselves, well, then sucks to be them. :D

Definition of damage: destruction (either intentionally or not) of any rigid (non-pliable) component (so something like a styrofoam bumper would be excluded) to the point where that component is inoperable.

Example: In our last semi-final match (Archimedes), one of our cooling fans was destroyed (unintentionally) by 494. The fan littered the field. So this would represent (most likely) a yellow card for 494.

However, this brings up the point of teams purposely building shoddy robots just to get their opponents dq'ed. This would be up to the inspectors to notice and prevent. (Prevent from competing until the robot is more robust)

However, bending of a component, like an aluminum arm or whatever, would not be deemed as a card-worthy action, because it *may* not represent a total inoperability of said component.

Example: In our first quarter-final match (oh, that was an intense match :D), our hook was quite badly twisted. This happened because our robot, who was hanging, was pushed by another robot attempting to mount the platform. This is not card worthy, because our hook still functioned. (We were still hanging)

MrToast

kmcclary

21-04-2004, 12:31

I like the idea of a card system.

I also like the CONCEPT of a Penalty Box, where a machine is disabled for a FEW seconds as a penalty for a Yellow Card warning. However, I feel a 7-10 second penalty would be more than enough to "warn" and punish them, vs a 15 second penalty.

BTW, in any case IMHO the arena control system should have a Disabled Light at each player station, at the shelf level. Maybe have a big yellow bulb attached off of the back of the mini Kill Button Box, or a countdown display there, showing the operators how many seconds remain in your Penalty. No one thinks to notice that the light above their heads is out while they're furious shaking their controls wondering what's wrong with their robot. It needs to be between eye and waist level.

- Keith

Anne Shade

21-04-2004, 12:44

I really like the yellow/red card idea. The big problem with these kinds of aggressiveness calls is that in a lot of cases it almost impossible for the refs to tell the actual intent of the drivers. If a robot tips another, did they actually mean to tip them or were they just trying to move them out of the way? With a defensive move a robot is broken, was it the intent to break the other or was that just a bad design? Refs can't be deciding whether or not damage was the fault of another team or whether or not it was a design issue. Refs already have so much that they have to be keeping track of on the field, we do have to keep in mind that they are only human.

With the yellow/red card idea, this gives the refs a chance to warn teams that a certain action will not be accepted by a team. That also gives the team a chance to change what they are doing. As a coach, I know how intense it can get up on stage and yeh sometimes we may make a bad call without really realizing it. Having a warning system in place that tells the team to not try that again or you will be DQ'ed I think is the way to go.

MikeDubreuil

21-04-2004, 12:51

I like like the combination yellow red card approach. I also like the time based penalty a little better. (not just because it was my idea)

For instance, in the match that started this whole mess 93 vs 469, I think it would have been adventagous to issue a 10 second penalty to 469.

My problem with the yellow card: in order for the yellow card to come out a questionable act has already occured.

KenWittlief

21-04-2004, 13:02

Which is it...it's illegal from your new rules resulting a DQ, or it isn't?
...

I tried to explain that Im not questioning the results of the match in the video (not saying the results should be reversed)

Im saying that match results would be different with the rules I proposed on page one

the match was NOT illegal as it was played and called according to the official rules because the driver was only thinking good thoughts when he drove across the field at full speed and rammed the bot knocking it over

if he had been thinking bad thoughts, "Im gonna drive across the field at full speed and knock that bot over" then he would have been DQ's - and somehow the refs could tell the difference

?!

Im getting zinged with negative rep points for my opinions in this thread, thats why I tried to explain the difference between the way the game was played/called this year, and the way I would LIKE to have seen it played/called

I guess my opinion is unacceptable?

Personally, I'm beginning to think there are two groups of people...people with common sense that understand what FIRST is trying to do with the rules, and people who don't...

I must be one of those people you referred to with no common sense, because I thought teams would play rough up to the point where bots start getting knocked over, or disabled by damage, and the refs would call a few DQs to discourage it at that level.

guess not

JVN

21-04-2004, 13:05

My problem with the yellow card: in order for the yellow card to come out a questionable act has already occured.
Yet somehow your system is preemptive?

I'm missing your point.

KenWittlief

21-04-2004, 13:09

the yellow card will look cool next to the agressive teams champion trophy, thats the point

Don Wright

21-04-2004, 13:18

and I must be one of those people you referred to with no common sense, because I thought teams would play rough up to the point where bots start getting knocked over, or disabled by damage, and the refs would call a few DQs to discourage it at that level.

My comments are nothing personal to you, but it just seems to me that you are striving for a system that is calling for very strict interaction guidlines. Not only do I think this would be very hard to enforce, but would lead to a lot of second guessing of refs by the field teams and arguements about whether opposing robots should have been dq'd/not dq'd. Both of these things would take a lot out of the excitment and fun factor we had this year.

Can you give me examples where robots went past the point where robots get knocked over? Most of tipping situations I saw as soon as the robot started tipping, the other backed off, but the robot tipped anyway.

I just think a lot of what has been discussed and expressed in this thread is unrealistic, exaggerated, and if some of the rules are implimented, will take a lot of the fun out of the game. I mean, how much fun will it be if:

a) the kids are afraid to push another robot because if they tip, they are dq'd.
b) they push other robots, causing them to tip, getting them dq'd. We'll have dq's all over the place.

MrToast

21-04-2004, 13:23

a) the kids are afraid to push another robot because if they tip, they are dq'd.
b) they push other robots, causing them to tip, getting them dq'd. We'll have dq's all over the place.

That's what the yellow cards would be for. Either those or a few seconds shut down.

MrToast, once again enjoying the [COLOR] tag WAY too much :D

KenWittlief

21-04-2004, 13:25

Can you give me examples where robots went past the point where robots get knocked over? ...I just think a lot of what has been discussed and expressed in this thread is unrealistic, exaggerated, ...

go look at this poll thread - 25% so far are people who watched matches where they thought things got out of hand and penalties should have been called, and they werent

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28047&page=1&pp=15

Joel Glidden

21-04-2004, 13:29

You know what? I'm going to design a really great new autonomous passenger aircraft. I've also found a way to reduce weight and increase passenger capacity by removing redundant structural elements. Due to fuel savings, increased passenger capacity, and reduced personnel requirements, air travel costs will be drastically reduced!

But ...
Clouds, flocks of birds, solar flares, and weather related electrical disturbances will cause the plane to crash, and certain atmospheric density variations or wind effects will critically compromise the air frame.

So ...
I'm writing up a proposal to disallow the environmental phenomena listed above.

Doesn't work in engineering, and it shouldn't work in FIRST.

MrToast

21-04-2004, 13:32

You know what? I'm going to design a really great new autonomous passenger aircraft. I've also found a way to reduce weight and increase passenger capacity by removing redundant structural elements. Due to fuel savings, increased passenger capacity, and reduced personnel requirements, air travel costs will be drastically reduced!

But ...
Clouds, flocks of birds, solar flares, and weather related electrical disturbances will cause the plane to crash, and certain atmospheric density variations or wind effects will critically compromise the air frame.

So ...
I'm writing up a proposal to disallow the environmental phenomena listed above.

That's not right at all!

Robot problems that might result in a dq result from other robots, not the carpeting of the arena.

Good try, though.

AmyPrib

21-04-2004, 13:39

..strict interaction guidlines. Not only do I think this would be very hard to enforce, but would lead to a lot of second guessing of refs by the field teams and arguements about whether opposing robots should have been dq'd/not dq'd. Both of these things would take a lot out of the excitment and fun factor we had this year.

I just think a lot of what has been discussed and expressed in this thread is unrealistic, exaggerated, and if some of the rules are implimented, will take a lot of the fun out of the game. I mean, how much fun will it be if:

a) the kids are afraid to push another robot because if they tip, they are dq'd.
b) they push other robots, causing them to tip, getting them dq'd. We'll have dq's all over the place.

I think these are extremely valid points. At the beginning of this game introduction, I thought people would be afraid to try and cap opponents goals for fear of goaltending... Annnnnd we didn't really see very much capping of the opponent goal because all they had to do was throw a ball at the obstacle (while in your grip) to get a goaltending call - plus it was more effective to play a good offense anyways.

What about automode? What happens if they run into each other and one flips over or gets rammed? How do you penalize or DQ someone for that? Or maybe we'll just add another rule that says... if tipped during automode, no penalties incur...Or maybe make up some crazy detailed rule for it.. Or maybe we get rid of automode, or maybe we say... robot can only move 1ft/s during automode....

Now, if we create a rule that says "if you're totally legal pushing action results in tipping your opponent", then why do we have any incentive to play any kind of defense, or even build a good offensive robot? We've already determined that obvious ramming and "intentional" damage is illegal. But we start putting these detailed guidelines on "what is legal defense", we might as well put a big black wall in the center of the field so that there will be no robot interaction. There will be no need for a competition. These drivers will be so worried about going anywhere near another robot. Like said before, if your robot cannot withstand some pushing and shoving in any way, you've probably got some things to look at and re-design. Otherwise, we better start building robots that can hold hands and hum together. ;)

Joel Glidden

21-04-2004, 13:42

That's not right at all!

Robot problems that might result in a dq result from other robots, not the carpeting of the arena.

Good try, though.

The point is that "vigorous interaction" is a part of the game environment. It's no secret that our robots should be designed to handle it.

MikeDubreuil

21-04-2004, 13:46

Yet somehow your system is preemptive?

I'm missing your point.
The time based penalty is certainly not preemptive, but...

The point is that the yellow card is not a penalty. In order to get the yellow card you have or are coming close to violating the rules. Why don't we couple the yellow card with a 10 second penatly, there's a tangible penalty. It's not a slap on the wrist and it's not a DQ. It seems to me like it's the perfect balance.

MrToast

21-04-2004, 13:54

The point is that "vigorous interaction" is a part of the game environment. It's no secret that our robots should be designed to handle it.

Perhaps a better example might have been one of your autonomous planes getting hit by another autonomous plane. That matches the idea of a robot hitting another robot better.

The birds and the air and the clouds were there before the plane was, just like the field and the carpet and the platforms were there before the robots were.

MrToast

21-04-2004, 13:55

The point is that the yellow card is not a penalty. In order to get the yellow card you have or are coming close to violating the rules. Why don't we couple the yellow card with a 10 second penatly, there's a tangible penalty. It's not a slap on the wrist and it's not a DQ. It seems to me like it's the perfect balance.

IMHO, that is an excellent compromise! :D

ngreen

21-04-2004, 13:57

Again I have to explain part of my reasoning behind the card system.

SIMPLICITY.

You know. KISS.

It is a lot easier to hold up a card than it is to have a system to disable the robot for a certain period when a foul occurs.

The yellow card doesn't incur a penalty but it put you close to a penalty and carries through to the next round so that discourage overly rough play. The call is also not overly harsh enough that ref will call it when needed and not worry that they may be making a huge mistake. So you get your penalty, easier to call, and are able to discourage teams from certain kinds of play.

I think a 10 second penalty along with the card might be close to too much. And it is way harder to implement. Simplicity.

edit: That's my only problem. I'm trying to make it easy to implement into the game.

Chris Hibner

21-04-2004, 13:59

The time based penalty is certainly not preemptive, but...

The point is that the yellow card is not a penalty. In order to get the yellow card you have or are coming close to violating the rules. Why don't we couple the yellow card with a 10 second penatly, there's a tangible penalty. It's not a slap on the wrist and it's not a DQ. It seems to me like it's the perfect balance.

I think the time based penalty is great. There can be different times for different violations. I like this system because some resolution can be built into the system.

Don Wright

21-04-2004, 14:00

go look at this poll thread - 25% so far are people who watched matches where they thought things got out of hand and penalties should have been called, and they werent

yea...and 76% (at the time I write this) of the peopl think everything is fine. So, do we change the rules for the minority, or leave them the same for the majority?

10 seconds is an eternity in a 1 minute 45 second match...

MikeDubreuil

21-04-2004, 14:00

The yellow card doesn't incur a penalty but it put you close to a penalty and carries through to the next round so that discourage overly rough play. The call is also not overly harsh enough that ref will call it when needed and not worry that they may be making a huge mistake. So you get your penalty, easier to call, and are able to discourage teams from certain kinds of play.

I think a 10 second penalty along with the card might be close to too much. And it is way harder to implement. Simplicity.

You want to talk simplicity and want a system that carries over yellow penalty cards from match to match? I bet if we asked IFI if the 10 second penalty would be possible to implement they would tell us, "that's simple."

Karthik

21-04-2004, 14:03

A few of my thoughts on various things that have been said.

A very small minority were upset with the church of England, now we have the United States of America. It's also possible that some people are not coming out because they fear being the minority.

Yup, being persecuted for heresy and getting negative reputation are just about the same thing. For sure.

is this what we want? to be on ESPN?
This is exactly what we want. There is no better way to further the mission of FIRST than to get widespread exposure.

I'm not saying that FIRST needs to go the way of battlebots, but I am saying there needs to be vigorous robot interaction. When I hear about all sorts of pushing zones and penalties for any sort of tipping, it makes be very afraid that we'll end up back in 2001. Is this what we want?

If thats what everyone wants, I'll go along with it - but at least tell us at the kickoff meeting so we dont feel like idiots when we show up at our first regional and watch our 6 weeks of hard work get battered, smashed and toppled repeatedly.
FIRST was very clear at the beginning of this season, build robust robots. I'm normally a proponent of very strong defensive robots. This year my team decided to go a different route and we built a fast offensive bot. We knew we'd be a target, so we did everything we could to protect it. We designed outriggers (never used due to weight issues) to keep us upright, we put as little weight as possibile in our 2X manipulator to keep our center of gravity low. We knew teams would try and push and pin us, so we went with a strafing drive train.

Even when it came down to alliance selection, we tried to make sure that we had a defensive partner who could run some screens for us and help us stay in the clear. (See Teams 48 & 229)

You can't design a complicated offensive robot and not expect to be a target. That's just irresponsible. Designing a robot to withstand the rigors of defensive gameplay is part of the challenge we undertake every January.

Every year at this time, there is inevitably some one who feels their robot lost because of unfair defensive play, and bad referees. We then have to endure talk that if this keeps up FIRST is going to turn into battlebots. Isn't this getting old?

In 1999 teams 1, 45 and 68 controlled the puck with large defensive arms. People complained, say this was going so start a horrible new trend. Did it?

In 2002 after 180 torched Wildstang (Div Semifinals) and Beatty (even though the Beatty alliance pulled out the victory with some great play by 66 and 173) with their powerful drivetrain and wedge, people claimed that everyone and their mother's parrots would use wedges from now on. Did that happen? (Aside: Yes, many teams used wedges in 2003, but not in the attacking manner that people feared)

People see string defense show up in the elimination rounds every year. That doesn't mean world is going to end. In my opinion defense is still under appreciated in FIRST. I would never have my team build a solely defensive robot, because it's too risky. There's a huge chance that teams could ignore you, and you'll be spending Saturday afternoon at the funnel cake stand.

To sum up my long stream of consciousness, we should not try and eliminate fair defensive play. Robots intentionally trying to damage one and another is clearly wrong. Solid defense consisting of pushing, ramming and incidental tipping is fair game. I have a lot of faith in the referees that FIRST has. Let them be judge of what is intentionally destructive and what is just simply a sound strategic decision to play some hard nosed defense.

ngreen

21-04-2004, 14:05

You want to talk simplicity and want a system that carries over yellow penalty cards from match to match? I bet if we asked IFI if the 10 second penalty would be possible to implement they would tell us, "that's simple."
Simplicity in real time. You've got to have someone to push the button to start the penalty.

JVN

21-04-2004, 14:11

the yellow card will look cool next to the agressive teams champion trophy, thats the point
If the yellow card team wins a champion trophy, wouldn't that imply that they didn't "cross the line" enough times to merit a DQ?

The only way this scenario would occur is if a team received a yellow card in the final match. And that would only occur if they hadn't received a yellow card in any other matches.

The yellow card is the warning, a quantitative, solid warning. The red card is the penalty itself. If a team doesn't progress past the yellow card, they simply don't merit a penalty.

You're reaching Ken.

John

MrToast

21-04-2004, 14:16

KenWittlief

21-04-2004, 14:18

several people have plea'd 'build a robust bot' as the defense for leaving the rules alone the way they stand. Build a bot that can take it, and there is no reason for refs to DQ anyone

ok, time to inflict some physics on this thread. Its day after kickoff. I have to quantify 'robust' for my team. How good is good enough

what can we expect to happen if anything goes on the field?

given all the threads about multispeed transmissions at the beginning of the season, Ill take the worse case possible top speed, 15 mph

and the worse case robot weight, 130 pounds

for a bot to reach 15mph (22 ft/S) when dropped, it would have to fall from a height of 7.5625 feet - thats how much kinetic energy it will have when travelling 22ft/sec (all potential energy converted to kinetic energy) how much? 7.5625 * 130 = 983 foot-pounds

that doesnt sound so bad - so a bot come flying across the field at that speed and the corner of the frame hits my bot - I have to absorb all that energy -
if they catch us with the corner of their frame, the contact area might be 3 or 4 sq inches, about the size of the face of a 5 lb sledge hammer

so how far would you have to drop a 5 lb sledge hammer to give it 983 ft-lbs of kinetic energy? thats easy 983/5 = 196 feet

how fast will it be going? it comes out to 112 ft/second, or 76mph

hey, that wasnt so bad - all I have to do is design my bot so that someone can take a 5 lb sledge hammer and bash away at it for 2 minutes with an impact velocity of 76mph, hitting it anwhere, the wheels, the sides, the arms, the ball collectors, over and over

and if my bot fails then it just wasnt robust enough

in fact, we could have the inspectors do this to each bot in the pits, smack the bot for 2 minutes with a sledge hammer - if the bot breaks, it fails inspection

sounds like a good approach. Who needs rules of engagement? we can solve all our problems with thorough impact testing during inspection.

I have a sledge hammer in my garage. Anyone wanna take the robustness test with your bot?

MikeDubreuil

21-04-2004, 14:23

You're a hockey player. Your position is defense and the puck is in your opponents zone. Out of nowhere the puck gets passed to a hanger. There's no way you can legally stop your opponent from having a 1 on 1 with your goalie. What do you do? Without question, you would hook your stick around the guys ankle and trip him. You would receieve a 2 minute penatly for your actions. A really good player would try to hook the puck, but would settle for taking out the guy and getting a penalty.

There's situations in sports where you have to commit the penalty for the benifet of the team. In FIRST, I think if your intent was to push another robot and they happen to fall over, you should recieve a time based penalty. You needed to take the robot out in order to save the game.

As far as the cards go...
Yellow - let's make it purely a warning.
Red - You get a 10 second penalty.
The ref also has the option to DQ you.

BTW: I have been saying 10 second penalty. This is purely for conversational purposes and the actual value could be decided on later.

JVN

21-04-2004, 14:25

hey, that wasnt so bad - all I have to do is design my bot so that someone can take a 5 lb sledge hammer and bash away at it for 2 minutes with an impact velocity of 76mph, hitting it anwhere, the wheels, the sides, the arms, the ball collectors, over and over

Or...
You could design your robot to deflect away some of that force.
You could design your drive to outrun/out manuever your aggressor.
You could train your drivers well enough that you don't take a beating for 2 minutes.

We do all of the above. 3 competitions later, the drivetrain seems fine.

I imagine the definition of robust is not:
PVC tri-wheels left exposed to the world.

KenWittlief

21-04-2004, 14:34

We do all of the above. 3 competitions later, the drivetrain seems fine.

ok, we have our 1st volunteer

you bring your bot, Ill bring the sledgehammer and stopwatch- where would you like to conduct the testing?

we could sell tickets - the crowd will love this - maybe it will be on ESPN?

MikeDubreuil

21-04-2004, 14:38

ok, we have our 1st volunteer

you bring your bot, Ill bring the sledgehammer and stopwatch- where would you like to conduct the testing?

we could sell tickets - the crowd will love this - maybe it will be on ESPN?

"Ken Wittlief vs Division by Zero" - this will definitely one up Battelebots :D

Joel Glidden

21-04-2004, 14:38

ok, we have our 1st volunteer

you bring your bot, Ill bring the sledgehammer and stopwatch- where would you like to conduct the testing?

we could sell tickets - the crowd will love this - maybe it will be on ESPN?

Uh, Ken, you do realize they'd be driving the robot while you do this.

JVN

21-04-2004, 14:39

Better yet... I'll have my driver run the bot around the field and you can TRY to hit it with your sledgehammer. Good luck.

AmyPrib

21-04-2004, 14:46

several people have plea'd 'build a robust bot' as the defense for leaving the rules alone the way they stand. Build a bot that can take it, and there is no reason for refs to DQ anyone

in fact, we could have the inspectors do this to each bot in the pits, smack the bot for 2 minutes with a sledge hammer - if the bot breaks, it fails inspection

sounds like a good approach. Who needs rules of engagement? we can solve all our problems with thorough impact testing during inspection.

Yeah I'd have to agree.. you're really reaching. But doing a great job at keeping this thread alive and kicking with debate. You keep changing the subject of your proposals. First you're talking about "pushing and shoving" to be allowed only in bla bla bla certain cases, and "pushing and shoving" should be disallowed under bla bla bla circumstance.
Then you're twisting everyone's words into saying that robustness means withstanding a sledge hammer. That's ridiculous. We've already said there are rules against that type of behavior. It's called battlebots, and FIRST has come nowhere near that. Many believe the rules as they are prevent that type of play, however there's always room for improvement. Even with ramming speed, the rules still apply. If you don't trust the refs to make the calls, that's not our problem, but nobody else in this thread has gone this far to prevent or restrict good defense.
First you want to use new rules to prevent normal, legal defensive play. Then you change the subject to prevent the malicious, intentional, destructive defensive play - have I mentioned we already have rules for that?

Common sense again...that is, in order to quantify "robust" for your team. From what I can tell, 295 teams at nationals were able to quantify "robust" without much problem, without using sledge hammer validation. Great offensive machines apparently used common sense to think, "Hay, I might get beat up, pushed, tipped, etc. since I have such a great offensive machine... Maybe I should use this material, or shield this area, or close off this space to prevent as much damage as possible.. Maybe I should design this for easy repair if need be". Defensive machines did the same thing. It's called engineering.

If you're sore over the vigorous defense teams play, get over it. It happens and will continue to, as the majority of people hope.

KenWittlief

21-04-2004, 14:48

Better yet... I'll have my driver run the bot around the field and you can TRY to hit it with your sledgehammer. Good luck.

drive away - I was thinking to get the impact velocity right the hammers should be dropped from 196 feet

is there a 20 story building somewhere halfway between us? we'll set up an enclosed playfield in the parking lot, you can drive around all you want, and I'll rain down a couple hundred sledge hammer heads for two minutes

or if you prefer side impacts we can rig up a 196 foot tower and swing the hammers down like giant pendulums?

or maybe we can come up with a version of the potato gun? the hammerhead gun?

besides, why do you want to drive around avoid the impacts? isnt your bot robust? you dont want to take the required inspectors two minute pit test to prove your bot is up to snuff?

Amanda Morrison

21-04-2004, 14:52

JVN

21-04-2004, 14:52

besides, why do you want to drive around avoid the impacts? isnt your bot robust?
After 3 competitions, we've proven our robot is more than robust enough for FIRST. We designed it with the FIRST game in mind.

I guess, if you'd like I can engineer a robot for your sledgehammer game.

It's what I do.

John

KenWittlief

21-04-2004, 14:58

Then you're twisting everyone's words into saying that robustness means withstanding a sledge hammer. That's ridiculous. We've already said there are rules against that type of behavior. It's called battlebots, and FIRST has come nowhere near that.

its been stated in this thread that its ok for a bot to drive across the field at full speed and ram another machine, and if the machine breaks it was too flimsy

if I made a mistake in my potential/kinetic energy equations please point them out, but thats what it equates to - driving a 130 lb bot into another at 15mph is the SAME AS hitting it with a 5 lb sledge hammer going 76mph

the same amount of kinetic energy is present in both

if it seems absurd to you that a bot should have to be designed to withstand that type of punishment, ANYWHERE on its exposed surface or mechanism, then you get the point now

it IS absurd to say that all 1000 FIRST teams can design machines to take that kind of abuse

and yes we have rules - but they were NOT imposed on any team at any event that anyone can remember so far - so if a rule was never involked is it really a rule?

MikeDubreuil

21-04-2004, 14:59

Although the current topic is a little riddiculous, it is revealing holes in the rules. What qualifies as robust enough? If the defensive rules start appearing in the rules the definition of robust may become more important.

Don Wright

21-04-2004, 14:59

ngreen

21-04-2004, 15:04

Here's a question:

If you get a yellow card in one match, would that card carry over to the other matches?

Example, a team gets a yellow card in qual # 42, and then gets another in qual # 69. Would they be disqualified? Or would they need to get two yellow cards in one match?

Maybe an alternative would be something like:
2 yellow cards in one match is an automatic DQ
----or----
a total of 3 yellow cards, over all the matches, is a DQ

MrToast

In looking at fairness I proposed it only carries over for one or two matches. Yeah this does not make it perfect but it won't be. You could be overly agressive every second or third match and only get yellow cards and not get Dqed.

I'm looking at it from the standpoint of elims.

Say your first qualifying round your driver makes a mistake and rams into another robot partially breaking it. Honest mistake. You fix the problem and play nice and get more no yellow cards the rest of your match. You make it to the finals and your first match you have some questionable aggressive contact with another robot and the ref pulls another yellow card. I can't justify connecting that first mistake with your final aggressive to make a connection that would merit a DQ.

The truth is everyone loves to see the finals played out and to DQ a team and alliance for something the one team did in the first round of qualifiers.

So I would say either one or two matches the yellow would carry over. If you are aggressive enough to get cards in consectutive match I can make that correlation and justify the DQ because of your teams aggressive pattern.

Another solution to the finals problems could be to give everyone a clean slate for the elimination rounds (I don't care one way or the other on this, the advantages and disadvantages are kind of close to the same)

Karthik

21-04-2004, 15:05

Sigh. Before further trying to decipher any more of these posts, I suggest that the loyal reader look at the following webpage http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ .

It's really a fun game, "how many logical fallacies can someone squeeze into one post". I know some people around here have some ill will towards lawyers, but constructing a sound logical argument is not a crime. I know we love our hyperboles, but c'mon.

This thread started with Aidan asking us how we would reinterpret pinning and entanglement if we had the chance. Suddenly we have sledgehammers falling from 196 ft. How did we get from point A to point B? Did I miss something here? Anyone, anyone? Bueller?

If you're sore over the vigorous defense teams play, get over it. It happens and will continue to, as the majority of people hope.
The best thing I've seen written in a while. Thank you.

Steve W

21-04-2004, 15:13

Since we have changed from rules to I can't build a decent robot thread I will again post. Team 188 built a 6 motor,2 speed transmition. Our robot can raise the 2X ball 13 feet in the air and cap over top of almost any robot between them and the stationary goal. We do not go on the platform but do hang. We are able to play with the toughest of them and survive. Did we retain damage you ask. You better believe it. Did we cry about it? No we went back to the pits and got to work. We had some intricate pulley system that another team accidently caught their robot on and pulled us both over. Mucho damage. I was even asked to come to the pits once my announcing was done to help fix problem. We knew that this might happen but decided to go the way we did. Should other robots back away ? no. I wouldn't expect our team to so why would I ask them to. As was stated in a previous post, better than I am able, it is better to win a hard fought match than have the match handed to you. It is even better to lose knowing you did your best than to give up.

I believe that FIRST has given us a great forum to showcase to the world. Science, engineering, math etc IS NOT BORING and we can prove it. Forget the yellow cards or red ones. All we should see is green for GO and the games begin.

On a personal note : I played racketball with a guy that was WAY better than me. If I ever sensed that he was letting up to make me feel good I would let him feel the sting of the ball on his back. Funny thing is that when that happened he played with more determination to WOOP me. Mission accomplished. :)

Ken Leung

21-04-2004, 15:21

Not only has this reached the point of being ridiculous, I'm going to remind everyone that personal replies or comments should be PM'ed to each other. This thread was started for suggestions to the rules, not how to test robustness of a robot.

As much as you may want the ChiefDelphi community to see your argument, we may not want to see yours.

Let's try to re-focus our thoughts and energy back into the original topic of the thread, shall we? There were some excellent discussions a page ago, and even though I am quite entertained by the image of KenW going after 229's bot (or vice-versa), I would hate to have to remove any future posts regarding that idea (although I wouldn't reject the idea of scorekeeper vs. robots if someone ever bring that up Q(^_^Q) ).

Just want to remind you that this thread has reached page 4, and it's harder and harder for everyone keep track of all points of the discussion. It would be nice if someone step up to the plate and organize this thread a little bit and point at a direction this discussion should continue onto. Or you can just go back to the original question posted by Adian.

Thanks for understanding~ I am still sick from the Atlanta trip, and even though I kept trying to read through this entire thread, I kept falling asleep half way.

MikeDubreuil

21-04-2004, 15:31

In order to keep FIRST friendly and more sportsmanship oriented, and also to encourage offense I recommend a new penalty system be put into place.

Standard Rules:
1.No tipping.
2.No desctucive play.
3.No damage.
4.No entanglement.

Intentional violations of the standard rules allow a referee to disqualify a robot.

If a team is operating the robot in a manor that is questionable or is borderline breaking the rules, a yellow card is shown as a warning. Yellow cards are not comulative.

If a team accidentally violates the rules, a red card is shown and a robot is disabled for a period of time (I.E. 10 seconds).

Andrew

21-04-2004, 16:32

Otherwise, we better start building robots that can hold hands and hum together. ;)

It's too bad that these two things violate existing rules.

If you want to build a robot that hums, you need to add an electrical actuator (a speaker). If it's not supplied in the kit, it violates the "motor" rules.

Holding hands is a form of entanglement. So, no good there.

Aidan F. Browne

21-04-2004, 16:33

I wonder if one of Aidan's intentions was to show us how hard it is to write and interpret the rules. Whether it was or not, I think this thread has shown it.
Amy, you no longer have to wonder -- my intention of starting this thread was exactly that.

As we came out of the incredible weekend of Championship competition, there was an awful lot of "the refs should have done _____" or "FIRST should make a rule to ______"

I decided to give everyone a chance to show all of us how to fix the situation. (I really meant that.) There were some very good suggestions came out of the discussion, and I thank those posters for giving the difficult task a shot -- it is definately not easy to write an all-inclusive rule. More of you are aware how hard it is now, and that in itself is a good thing.

I am very amused at the posts that said (paraphrasing) "it is impossible to write such a rule... but here is what the refs should have done" or "what happened just isn't right -- someone should take it upon themselves to write a rule to fix this". I will say no more about those at the moment, other than those posts created a lot of noise in this thread that made it hard to follow the attempts that folks made to actually answer my challenge.

This is clearly still a big deal to alot of us. So, becasue of that, I would still like to see us come up with one or more solutions that address these issues. To that end, I am going to do the following:

Ask that this thread be ended with this post
Later tonight, start two new threads, which will be moderated from the get-go, one to deal with suggested rule wording for each issue
Ask the moderators not to approve any post to either of the two threads that does not address the situation in the form of a suggested rule.
Close each of the threads in a week, and forward the two threads to next years Game Committee for their consideration

Please note that I am not trying to stifle discussion. While the issue is fresh in our minds, I am trying to derive a solution which will improve the experience for all of us in the future. To get to that solution (or set of solutions) I feel that I need to focus us on those solutions -- kind of like in a brainstorming session when no individual gets to comment on another's idea until the brainstorming session ends. In a week, we can open up discussion of all the solutions that are presented.

Thank you to everyone who posted to this thread. Lots of great points have been made. Now lets take out our thinking caps -- make our brains hurt (as Woody would say) -- and find some answers.

:)

Aidan

dlavery

21-04-2004, 16:55

Better yet... I'll have my driver run the bot around the field and you can TRY to hit it with your sledgehammer. Good luck.

OOOOHHHH!!! File that one away in the "Ideas for the 2005 game" folder! :)

if I made a mistake in my potential/kinetic energy equations please point them out, but thats what it equates to - driving a 130 lb bot into another at 15mph is the SAME AS hitting it with a 5 lb sledge hammer going 76mph

Actually, you did make a mistake (or assumption that led to a significant mistake). In the original argument, you stated the kinetic energy transfer of a 130 pound robot traveling 15 mph was equivalent to the impact of a 5 pound sledgehammer face traveling 76 mph. In terms of raw energy transfer potential, that may be true. However, it requires that the impact area of the robot-to-robot collision be limited to approximately 4 square inches (in your example, "catching a corner of the frame"), AND that 100 percent of the potential energy of the moving system be transferred through that impact area. For that to happen, the centers of mass of both robots, the center of impact, and the dymanic motion vectors of both robots would all have to be precisely colinear.

In reality, given the kinematics and dynamics of the typical FIRST robot, that assumption is fallacious. It is highly unlikely (bordering on virtually impossible) that the "impact energy vectors" for the robots (drawn through the center of mass and the impact point of each robot) will be colinear and opposite. The higher the divergence between these two vectors and this "maximum impact energy transfer state," the higher the proportion of translational energy that is converted to rotational energy (i.e causes both robots to spin around their respective centers of mass). In the example of catching a corner, the majority of the energy is dissipated as torque around the center of mass of each robot. The actual amount of energy transferred to the impacted robot is equivalent to kinetic energy * cos(abs(dynamic motion vector - impact energy vector)).

-dave