Scoring System Problems

[hektormagee]

Hey, I'm from Team Rush 27 and I'm wondering if any of the other regionals had trouble with the automatic scoring system. At the Kettering Invitational, some crucial matches had to be re-played because the scoring system either didn't count balls, started counting down, rather then up, etc. I know the people were doing their best to fix the issue, and I applaud them for fixing it and getting refs to count the scores when it took too long, but the invitational ran VERY late. Have any of the other invitationals had this problem?

[mizscience]

There were a quite a few field delays at the Florida Regional, but only one match had to be re-played due to lost scores. That said, as soon as that issue occurred, people were assigned to each to each goal to manually record the scoring for the rest of the competition, just in case the issue occurred again. It was excellent thinking on the part of the people in charge of the field at the Florida Regional.

[hektormagee]

Yea, at the Kettering District event, they Attempted to fix it numerous times. At least 4 matches (Including 2 Semi-Final matches) had to be replayed.

[Chris Hibner]

Hey, I'm from Team Rush 27 and I'm wondering if any of the other regionals had trouble with the automatic scoring system. At the Kettering Invitational, some crucial matches had to be re-played because the scoring system either didn't count balls, started counting down, rather then up, etc. I know the people were doing their best to fix the issue, and I applaud them for fixing it and getting refs to count the scores when it took too long, but the invitational ran VERY late. Have any of the other invitationals had this problem?

I read in another thread that the scoring system will penalize you 2 points if the human players push a ball through the tunnels in the wrong direction. Perhaps this is what was happening at Kettering.

[davidmedeiros]

Actually yes, the same problem happened at the Arizona Regional this weekend.

Our alliance during one of our matches was penalized 22 points in one match due to the issue. The human player on our alliance (from our team, 842) swore he had returned all of the balls back to the field of play but nothing was done about it.

At the regional events one of the things I do is record all of our teams matches to just see how we had done on each match and my video did indeed show that every ball was returned to the match just as the human player had said.

We tried to appeal the match by offering the video as proof and the head ref said our argument was probably correct, but he couldn't accept the video as proof as per one of the rules.

Our team in no way is bitter about what happened at all, we accept it as just "one of those things" that happened.
I am glad however it wasn't just us that have had the problem.

[texarkana]

i saw several goals not get scored on the blue side at wisconsin. but like everything else at wisconsin the field staff was oblivious and no one fixed it. just one more way the outcome there was very messed up.

[Vikesrock]

Our alliance during one of our matches was penalized 22 points in one match due to the issue. The human player on our alliance (from our team, 842) swore he had returned all of the balls back to the field of play but nothing was done about it.


Did you verify that the number of balls the scoring system recorded as scored matched the number of balls that went into the goal and that all the balls that were "returned" passed through the ball counter on the rails?

[hektormagee]

Yes. All these errors were verified (by the head ref) and every time the robot scored a ball, the counter counted down, not up. The matches were replayed because of the issue. It wasn't the ball return penalty. Does the system automatically count the penalty? Because I think (not at all sure) that those are factored in after the actual score. Otherwise, wouldn't the other team's qualification points be altered by them scoring??

[ahecht]

The scoring system is designed intentionally to subtract two points if a ball passes backwards through the ball counter in the goals. This does not show up as a penalty, it just decrements the score. If the ball bounces in such a way that it is seen to go forwards and then backwards, the scoring system will decrement the score by 1 instead of increasing it by one.

[EricH]

Arizona also saw 4 balls counted as 2 for some reason. That one was caught and fixed.

The refs can't review video per <T03>. There have been several threads on making video replay official, but the general consensus from those is 1) there isn't a good way to do it under time constraints, 2) there isn't a good way to do it under cost constraints, and 3) it wouldn't change a whole lot of calls.

[davidmedeiros]

Did you verify that the number of balls the scoring system recorded as scored matched the number of balls that went into the goal and that all the balls that were "returned" passed through the ball counter on the rails?

Yes. It counted a total of 8 shots and 7 of the balls were returned. The last ball shot was in at the very last second so it didn't count as one needing to be returned to the field of play.


We did discuss it with the head ref and he told us there was nothing we could do. There was no replay of our match, nor were there any point altering. We just took the 22 point hit for the match.

Again, the team isn't bitter at all about what happened. It's more of we want to make sure it's known as an issue that should be made aware of.

[Radical Pi]

At FLR there was one match where midway through the match a robot's battery fell out and disconnected, and at the same time scores for that alliance started to go minus and not plus, reaching a grand total of -2 at the end of the match

[RMiller]

i saw several goals not get scored on the blue side at wisconsin. but like everything else at wisconsin the field staff was oblivious and no one fixed it. just one more way the outcome there was very messed up.

In the second match of Friday, this occurred at Wisconsin. It was noted that scores were decreasing. The second match was reviewed for the number of scores and corrected. Thereafter, scorers were placed to count the number of balls scored. So, while the number shown initially might not have been accurate, the final scores should have been accurate with the exception of penalties due to not getting the ball in on time as the system was unreliable. However, teams did not use this to hoard ball.

As noted, it seemed to be related to putting the ball back through the counter on accident.

[Not2B]

In Ann Arbor we had a match where a ball got counted twice. Which was great as we got two points for one ball...

... until the auto scoring system started to look for the second ball to be returned to the field. Our alliance lost like 4 or 5 points because of this. The field crew knew that it was an issue, but they said they couldn't change it because the field was automatic.

Not much we could do about it. Of course, that wasn't as upsetting as all the communications issues with the field. One of our partners had their robot drive around on the field without any driver input in teleop, while we lost all control in teleop. Also nothing the field crew could do.

Oh well... I think FIRST knows that the fields are buggy and unreliable at this point. No point in beating a dead horse. The field crews did the best job they could with the equipment they had. I don't envy their job at all - I'm glad they survived the weekend! Thanks field crews.

[JBotAlan]

... and at the same time scores for that alliance started to go minus and not plus, reaching a grand total of -2 at the end of the match
This is perhaps the most perplexing of the field faults for me, mostly because I have a hard time wrapping my mind around how you mess this up.

Does anyone know of a legitimate reason the real-time score should ever be negative? The rules have always been pretty clear on the issue of negative scores...granted, the rule says "Final score" but I still think that displaying a negative score does nothing but cause confusion.

<G06> Minimum Score - The minimum final score is zero points.

Jacob

[PAR_WIG1350]

Lets just hope it doesn't try to pull a divide by zero on us and suffer an unrecoverable crash {e.g. dumps all memory accumulated from the previous day or two of quals and all the QP's and cooperation bonuses, etc.}.:ahh:

[EricH]

The system is supposed to be backed up every now and again--usually during longish breaks (like lunch). If it did crash like that, most of the data would most likely survive.

[DCA Fan]

In San Diego I believe we had two matches in which the computer score did not match what we observed on the field; our sharp-eyed referees quickly caught and corrected the problem.

[GaryVoshol]

This is perhaps the most perplexing of the field faults for me, mostly because I have a hard time wrapping my mind around how you mess this up.

Does anyone know of a legitimate reason the real-time score should ever be negative? The rules have always been pretty clear on the issue of negative scores...granted, the rule says "Final score" but I still think that displaying a negative score does nothing but cause confusion.



JacobThere apparently are two versions of the score system. At least at some locations in Week 1, DOGMA penalties were decremented from the score as they happened. I saw a -3 score on the display at Kettering.

I understand that other events reported the DOGMA penalties after the match, which also caused confusion. The referee would confirm the score, the announcer would say, "No penalties" - and then there were 3 penalties appearing on the screen. Only the scorekeeper could see the DOGMA penalties separately.

[Jimmy Cao]

There apparently are two versions of the score system. At least at some locations in Week 1, DOGMA penalties were decremented from the score as they happened. I saw a -3 score on the display at Kettering.

I don't think this is the case. During testing of the field at Traverse City, we found that the DOGMA penalties were not added in real-time, but rather in one big chunk at the end.

However, there is a penalty that can cause negative score. The scoring sensor work on the quadrature principle. In theory, it can detect the difference between ball-in and ball-out. In practice, it's only 99% correct. Every now and then, you have a ball-in counted as a ball-out, which is assessed a 2 point penalty (in real-time). A score of -3 means 3 balls were scored, 1 was scored "in", and 2 were scored "out" (or any # of scenarios where you get similar scores). I saw this happen at Cass Tech as well, when a team that had 7 points dropped to 5, instead of going up to 8, when they scored.

[Mark Holschuh]

At the Wisconsin Regional there was at least one incidence in an early match in which a ball bounced in and partially back out of the goal counter, so that it counted two balls as being scored. However, only one ball was returned to the field. That alliance ended up losing due to the autmated DOGMA penalties.

They appealed, but were told that the final score was official. But the field crew used manual scoring for the remainder of the regional.

As a result, the real-time scoring was often not correct.

[Travis Hoffman]

So what do people think of the blue side of the field failing/miscounting/deleting realtime scores on multiple fields? It seems to be happening at Midwest, and blue was definitely was the preferred color of fail at Pittsburgh.

[kylelanman]

I know the blue side was faulty at WI and someone said in another thread the same field that was in WI is now at Midwest. As for Pittsburgh I have no clue.

[Leav]

At one of our matches we got 44 DOGMA penalties :ahh:

A video reply (and about a dozen unrelated eye-witnesses) confirmed that indeed all balls were brought back into play in the correct time and manner.

We didn't even try showing the ref (Go Stu!) the video since I knew it was not admissable as evidence :rolleyes:.

The match was entered into the system as-is, 44 penalties and all. and my team took it in stride: joking about setting a new world record in FIRST...

In the end that match was scrubbed when team captains voted to scrub all day 2 matches and start over on day 3 due to the communication problems that plagued our regional.

-Leav

[mtaman02]

The system is supposed to be backed up every now and again--usually during longish breaks (like lunch). If it did crash like that, most of the data would most likely survive.

If you want the honest end of backups, it's usually after each match (providing there's an internet connection b/c it uploads directly to where you see the scores and what not on FIRST's site), and then usually manually backed up lunch then at the end of the day / event. FMS backs up pretty regular w/o any user telling it to do so just in case of such a problem or worse. The way the system is designed and programmed isn't bad at all but the time frame to acct. for EVERYTHING and ANYTHING that COULD happen is extremely slim.

As a reminder if you don't already do so at the event thank your head ref, scorekeeper, fta and ftaa. they're the ones that take a beating when the field malfunctions and do their best to make sure every team plays with in the rule book limits up until its beyond our control.

here here lead position roles at the events *raises glass of mountain dew*

[Mop Iii Top]

It wasn't exactly a technical problem, but at the TC Regional there were penalties like crazy! The max seeding points from the #1 seed was like high 80s low 90s. They called the 3 inch infraction penalty everytime it went under a robot. Even if you tried to get it out, they still called it on you.
We also had alot of problems at TC with the scoring system. One time, the system stopped working, and they had to manually tally the points. We were scoring goals the whole entire match, and it was a penalty free match. They called the final score 2-2. :mad: One of our leaders went over and had a chat with the refs, like she does best. :D