Re: Team 2194 Fondy Fire
 

Congratulations from one of the Newton finalists!

I am in a minority that think the issues were handled correctly, and in accordance with current FIRST policies. After the first two matches, they did exactly the right thing (and somewhat outside precedent) with replaying them. The next matches, there were scattered problems, but in accordance with what is de-facto policy, they did not replay or cancel them. They did not move to Galileo because it was already torn down. They did not crown twelve teams Champions, because to do that would be to admit defeat completely and utterly. FIRST never does that. It appeared that the issues were fixed when 4334 began working.

Sidenote: We were one of the backup bots for the Newton Division, so our drivers were back behind Einstein if anyone has an questions about what was actually going on. We all know the saying about assumptions.

In the first finals match, it didn't appear from my position in the pit next to Einstein by the VIP section that there were any field issues. It is clear that there were in the second match, but we have to think about the enormous pressure here. Was the decision deferred to the head ref? Did Dean Kamen make the call himself? Everyone is talking about how rustled they looked, and I can attest, Woody looked somewhat put out when he was reading the awards. Dean looked nervous and taut while standing next to the field. There is a human element here, and the stress and pressure of deciding a world champion is enormous.

Regardless, if the FTAs could detect no problem with the field, then they made the correct call in not replaying the match. It follows all precedent. I covered the reasoning in not declaring all teams World Champions above. That isn't to say that the field issues on Einstein were disgraceful.

The issue was not with how the problems were handled. They were with the field/control system. It means that there are quite a few things that need to be greatly looked at, and fixed before next year:

• There have been many high profile cases of very high tier teams being unable to connect to the field (118 and 1676 among others). This needs to be fixed by next year, especially the fact that some fields were able to be connected to and others not.
• Einstein needs to be tested. It is supposed to be the best field in all the land, and if there are problems on it, it becomes a massive debacle (ie, this thread). Someone suggested running a practice match on it with divisional quarterfinalists first. This would diminish the 'virginity' of the field, as well as reduce the value of "being on einstein". I suggest that the GDC brings the 6 bots they build to test the game when they're making it and run the tests that way, being careful not to scuff anything. They can do it quietly whenever they please, maybe Wednesday night.
• The idea of Einstein needs to be reexamined. It seems somewhat stupid to put all your hopes on an untested field. Why not play the finals match on the field of whichever division won last year?

I think we need to thank all the Einstein teams for remaining Gracious and Professional, role models for the whole community.

Re: Team 2194 Fondy Fire
 

My friend and I examined solutions on the 6 hour ride home:

-Putting the finals on an existing field poses the logistical problem of seats. The teams on Archimedes (if that were the chose field) would have the advantage over every other division when it comes to getting good seats for "Einstein". Also, how would FIRST block off seats for the Einstein teams? You can't block those out for all of Saturday if they're in the middle of a division's block of seats, and you can't really kick teams out of those seats in time for "Einstein".

-Moving fields during awards (after the issue was noted) is a logistical nightmare. The podium, cannons, judges seats, student rep seats, etc are all set up to be where they are, and you can't just move that in a quick and organized fashion. Not to mention stampedes of people trying to move seats.

Anything else we've said has been mentioned and scrutinized already.

Re: Team 2194 Fondy Fire
 

I see your point, but nobody wanted to see what was going on anyway with robots not moving, and basically illegitimate eliminations on Einstein. They could have finished the awards while the teams move, then transfer to Galileo once they didn't need the podium anymore. At this point, who cares if every spectator was able to get a good seat? It's better to have legitimate elimination rounds then to have everybody disappointed watching illegitimate ones.

Also, I'm not sure how the screens worked, but it was probably reasonably easy to get a feed from another field displayed on the screen at Einstein. That way, not everyone has to move.

Re: Einstein Field issues Handled correctly?
 

I wasn’t sure which thread to post this in, but I figured this was the most appropriate. For those who don’t know, I was a mentor with SPAM from their rookie season until 2006 and I was on stage in Einstein with them this weekend. Three of the current mentors on the team were students on the team when I was there, they have returned after college as professionals, and are shining examples of the best that FIRST has to offer. I am not going to say that I speak directly for them or any of our alliance, but I’d like to share some of my thoughts and emotions.
First, I think our sentiment is best summed up by the way Karthik and I greeted each other on stage at the end of the event. I said “We’re having kind of a tempered celebration” and he replied “I understand”. We would have replayed matches all night if necessary; when we were told we were replaying match 1, no one even batted an eye. We didn’t want to win this way, but it is what it is. We consider ourselves World Champions; we felt like we had an unbeatable alliance, but I’m sure the other division winners felt the same way. Although our celebration was somewhat muted, our loss of elation pales in comparison to what I’m sure the other division winners are feeling about what happened. After we lost the championship finals in the third match in 2002, I replayed that match over and over again in my head –if we had only done this or that we might have won. What are the Robonauts or the Pink team going to imagine that they might have done differently? My heart goes out to you.
As far as the OP’s question, I’d like to mention part of what the head ref Dr. Aidan Brown told the alliance captains before the final four started (as relayed to me by our team captain, so I’m not quoting and I don’t remember the exact words). He said this is a competition, but it is also a show. (He also told them to have fun). I fully understand this, and the show must go on, so some decisions for the benefit of FIRST and the ceremony had to be made at the expense of the competition. I think it was a lose – lose situation, and this was the best they could do. This could have been prevented long before Einstein, but that is a discussion for other threads which we have all been following all season. I saw one FTA in tears afterwards, and I know everyone involved was doing all they could. 10 years ago when we were on Einstein, it wasn’t part of the closing ceremonies; we just played in front of whoever was still there in the afternoon, and we could have replayed without much fanfare, and then the closing ceremonies were in the evening. When they switched to the current format, I thought it was fabulous and wished we could have had that experience in ’02. I still feel that way, so I guess this is the compromise we have to accept. Thankfully, a lot of the corporate leaders were at the division eliminations matches up close and got to experience the thrill of the competition, and hopefully their support will continue so that we can advance the mission of FIRST.
There were some discussions amongst the teams on stage about ways to make a public demonstration, including the winners declining to accept the championship and having all 12 teams go up as finalists. This discussion took place after the semi-finals and before the finals, so we didn’t know yet that we would be the winners (in fact, we knew we would be the red alliance and we were worried). I went back and forth on it, weighing the need for a statement versus the ramifications to FIRST. Our alliance wasn’t unanimous in what to do, so we decided to just accept the results and proceed as normal.
As far as having the teams go to IRI and play it off (and I haven’t talked to anyone on SPAM about this, but it’s just my 2 cents), if you’d like to write the $10,000 check to SPAM for them to travel, and cover the mentor’s lost wages for another 2-3 days missed at work, maybe they’ll be able to get the paperwork through the school system in the month they have remaining to allow an out of state / after school is out trip to take place. I’ve only been able to make to IRI once, when my daughter wanted to visit Purdue as a possible college and we made the trip coincide with IRI. The rest of the time I have a real job and a family that I like to spend time with and work to do around the house to catch up on from the 2-3 months I neglect it during build and competition season. Not that the team wouldn’t love to attend IRI (for all I know they already had it in this year’s plan and budget), but it doesn’t just happen on the spur of the moment.
Finally, thank you for the respectful and courteous way that this discussion has taken place; pretty much everyone has caveated their comments with “not taking away anything from 16,25,180”, etc., and that means a lot. FIRST is a big family and we‘ll get through this together.

Re: Team 2194 Fondy Fire
 

I don't want to get in a back and forth, so this will be my last post (and we can PM if you'd like to continue conversation).

Finishing awards while teams move: drive teams? teams in the stands? That's pretty disrespectful to the teams winning awards and the speakers presenting them. No one feels too great about themselves when they're talking/being presented and the audience is too preoccupied with something else.

And teams not moving but the matches moving? You can't stop people from moving and I'm pretty certain 80% of the FIRSTers I know would want to move to actually see the robots.

I'm not saying I'm glad things turned out the way they did. I couldn't quite get excited about Einstein after the issues weren't fixed. I'm just saying that FIRST didn't have too many options and had legitimate reasons for not switching fields.

However, I wouldn't mind them presenting all the awards while field crews and FTAs switched all the FMS components of the fields (have one crew gut Einstein's FMS and another gut the most reliable field and then swap). I would gladly take a delay of any time span to fix the problem (and I'm sure you're thinking "well then we can just switch fields", but that's a hairier mess, in my opinion, than switching field elements).

Re: Team 2194 Fondy Fire
 

This'll be my last post about it too. I meant just move the drive teams, robots, refs, field crew etc and keep the crowd where they are until awards are given out. Then when they're done with the podium and the presentation, let people move. It would present some logistical issues with everyone moving at once, but I feel it would have been better than having illegitimate matches played on Einstein. People have enough class that if you told them to wait before they move, they'll wait. Then you put it on the jumbo-tron in case not everyone got a seat at the new location.

Re: Einstein Field issues Handled correctly?
 

We were on the blue side and died for an extended period of time in one match on Einstein, and briefly in others. At least one of our partners died for a time, and had glitches. We had no such problems on the Curie field. Regarding who "should have won," we'll never know for sure, but if played on a properly working field, it is quite possible that the Canadians would have beaten us, and we never would have made it to the finals.

As far as solutions, this year is done, but for next year....

1) One of the division fields could be used as Einstein for the "superfinals." It would have been well-tested after running over 150 matches. To my knowledge, we had no field-related issues on the Curie field during 3 days of play. If i'm wrong on that, please correct me.

2) Teams could play most of their matches on their "home" field, but be rotated through the Einstein field as was done at Disney, and maybe since then. That way, the field would be well tested, and presumably fixed, if there were problems.

Re: Einstein Field issues Handled correctly?
 

"Dear FRC Teams:

Thank you for your incredible enthusiasm and Gracious Professionalism throughout the year and at the Championship.

We apologize for the technical problems that affected the final matches at our Championship. We will examine all of the facts, report our findings and ultimately solve any and all identified issues.

Sincerely,
Jon Dudas
President, FIRST "

Just received this, posting it here in case anyone doesn't receive it.

Re: Einstein Field issues Handled correctly?
 

I agree.

Work through the OSI model on both ends of the link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model

It's complicated...but by process of elimination I'm sure the problems can be found now and in future developments.

Re: Einstein Field issues Handled correctly?
 

As much as everyone would like Einstein to be in "pristine" condition, I think this is a good solution moving forward. It doesn't change the format of play at the end, and it has a very good chance of working out field issues (and if the FMS needs to be updated/replaced, we'll have ample warning).

Re: Einstein Field issues Handled correctly?
 

For those complaining that Einstein's prettiness would be lost in test matching before finals, They could use used electronics and virgin game components. They are separable, Our team uses the game components without all the electronics (like score counters and displays from the walls of the station). It's not like you can tell whether electronics have been used before.

Re: Einstein Field issues Handled correctly?
 

I believe I may have a relatively Simple Solution to prevent such an issue from happening again* - well actually two ideas on the same train of thought.

What if we were to Give each Alliance an Introduction Match on Einstein? When an Alliance is sent to Einstein, they make it a point to introduce them either via Video or by having them walk onto the field. Why not give each alliance the field for 2 minutes and 15 seconds and tell them 'Show 'em what you've got.' This serves a variety of purposes:

-Each Alliance Has what's essentially an uninterrupted Practice Match on Einstein. They can check Camera Calibration, Code, Tweaks, Communications, etc. If each robot runs during this intro match, you've now ruled out a bunch of machine issues from causing a robot to sit dead.

-These intro matches are going to be AWESOME for spectators. Imagine 2056, 1114 and 4334 on the field, uninterrupted driving the score up. It would be an EPIC sight. This gives everyone watching a good chance to get a feel for who's going to be playing on Einstein.

Or, Why not play Division Finals On Einstein? Basically, we'd be turning Einstein into a Full Elims Bracket with the Division Finals now serving as the Einstein Quarters.

Kit, I believe you are correct. As far as I am aware, the only team that had multiple issues with their robot not running on the field was 971, and the issue was on their end IIRC.

78's Dying in Final 1 was due to the radio coming unplugged.

*The real solution to all of this is to make a 100% reliable field, but that's been covered enough here.

Re: Einstein Field issues Handled correctly?
 

I'm a bit worried that many people are writing this off as an "oh its cause they didn't test Einstein" issue. Really? Did you hear about 1717's issues in their division?

The problem here is deeper. These issues persist on many FRC fields and this needs to change.
Ultimately the firmware and hardware we are given by FIRST needs to be built tougher and respond more reliably.

Everyone contributes far too much money and time to be met with faulty reliability on FIRSTs end.

Re: Einstein Field issues Handled correctly?
 

I really like this idea. The full bracket would take some time, but the practice matches would be good pumping for the crowds and I would love to see all alliances and what they are capable of before the matches start.

Re: Einstein Field issues Handled correctly?
 

You are correct. The issues on Einstein were just more visible. Issues have been ongoing all season at multiple venues.

I'm not entirely sure that all the problems are firmware and hardware provided by FIRST. In some cases teams did have some influence over the issues. Not that teams didn't expend absolutely every effort to work out their issues when they had the tools to find them.

However, I am entirely sure that FIRST needs to work on the troubleshooting process. Not merely for Einstein but competition wide. FIRST needs tools to solve these problems or no matter the brilliance of everyone involved the deadlines will be a disaster.