2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

What could FIRST stand to improve on from this year?

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Field management system.

Someone had to be the first to say it.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Better Radios. Someone had to be the first to say it.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Until Einstein, it seemed to me that the control system problems were swept under the rug. While I'm not mad that there are problems (truthfully), technology will always have problems, I am unhappy with the way that FIRST did not listen to the fairly large number of teams presenting the issues throughout 6+ weeks of competition.

It was sad that it had to come to Einstein to make them really see it.

A major topic that I believe FIRST could improve on is the support of veteran teams, rather than what seems like an absolute push for rookies.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Definitely get rid of the Field Management problems. We lost our first elimination match by only 2 points but had one dead robot. The next alliance had a dead robot (1717) in the exact same location in the following match.

Also, eliminate anything that allows one team to easily manipulate the ranking of another team. Though to some degree you can always do this, this year it was too easy to keep a team down in ranking by refusing to co-op with them. Though we would think Gracious Professionalism would prohibit this from happening, it did.

District trophies were just sad. I understand making them smaller than regional, but the selected trophies were not a good choice.

MSC and MAR teams qualify in week 7 for worlds, not leaving them many choices with STEELE Meetings and freezing them out of events like the ball game and Finale. Something needs to be done to ensure these teams have equal chances to participate in all championship activities.

100 teams is TOO many in a division. You never get to know the teams in your division. Break it down into more divisions of smaller numbers. Allow us more matches to allow for better ranking chances.

Give division trophies as well as Championship trophies. Those getting the championship one could be eliminated from receiving division ones so that more than 10 or so teams out of 400 get recognized at the world level. It would recognize the top 5 teams at worlds (4 division winners, 1 championship winner).

:) Just a few thoughts. :)

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I know this is sort of Championship specific...

I agree with everything Debbie said above. Just a few to add:

Put screens showing the current matches being played on the field back in the pits. Our pit team barely got to see any matches.

The seating for Einstein was frustrating. As soon as matches were done on Newton, we moved to get seats on Einstein. As soon as we got their, the lower section was already very full so we went up a level and were told that FIRST didn't want anybody on those floors and we had to go back down. We ended up at this point almost all the way around to the side lined up with the curtain separating Einstein from the rest of the dome...i.e. we could barely see the field and had to rely on the screens. Then, we see that they were now letting people up on the second and third floors...it was quite annoying...

If you want teams to use camera tracking, please be considerate where you put LED signs up around in the arenas.

From my understanding, the people on the field queuing the teams were not the most polite or understanding...

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Get rid of the black volunteer shirts. Volunteers should stand out, and the black shirts did nothing to help that. Even a white shirt would stand out more.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I'm going to forget the field issues right now, since EVERYONE knows that's something to be looked into.

First, I think the rule book needs to be more specific. Thare was a lot of ambiguity this year as far as rule interpretation, so I think next time the GDC shouldn't skimp on the rule book. Not saying it needs to be overly detailed, just enough so teams shouldn't need to turn to the Q&A for seemingly simple rule clarifications.

Also, if FIRST is going to use a more general rulebook, they need to be prepared to back it up WITH the Q&A. We all know what happened to 118 earlier this year, and though it pretty much turned out alright for them, I feel it was an unfair move by The GDC to refuse to answer their question when the rules on what and what was not grappling were so vague.

I also think FIRST should move away from that age-old rule that teams aren't allowed to check field measurements for themselves. I don't see what harm there is in letting a drive crew/coach onto the field prior to opening ceremonies/the driver meeting with a tape measure to take some measurements. Or for an FTA to do it themselves and publish the results to all the teams. FIRST seems to cringe at the thought that their volunteers built their own field wrong, but I don't really see the harm.

I also think FIRST needs to be more careful when it comes to Hybrid/Autonomous points. The GDC ruled that as long as a ball entered the net in Hybrid, it would count for the full Hybrid points. I saw several times where it did not. Either they need to make sure field personel know the deal with those, or they need to think about their sensor placement (i.e. a sensor on the hoop. I know that would be pretty difficult to implement, it's just an example).

I, personally, would like to see FIRST stray away from games where game piece deterioration isn't such a huge factor, but I know what pretty much impossible. But I can wish.

Those are pretty much my gripes. Nothing too extreme. Just some logistical stuff.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

First has a serious internal problem at HQ. An immediate investigation needs to be launched at HQ. WHO sent out that VIP invitation to Mr. Murphy and Mr. Finagle ???? Anyone in technology should have know that those SOB's are on the black list. I will be very mad if it is found that First picked up the travel expenses. This investigation should be handled by an outside firm and I expect transparency. This can not be allowed to happen again.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Please bring back the live feed to the pits!

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I see what you did there...

One negative that I saw were the rules on bumpers. They were specific. Should they be this specific? Also, there are varied interpretations on those rules by various inspectors. A while back, it was posted on here by an inspector that we had to have 8 inches of frame backing the bumper as well, but at the Peachtree regional, the head inspector said that was not an issue, and we just had to have 8 inches of bumper. We essentially wasted precious hours trying to extend the frame when the head inspector came over and said that wasn't the issue.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I respectfully disagree. As someone who was issued one shirt for 4 days of sweaty volunteering, black held up better than the traditional white of the past.
ps. I guess this post really belongs in the positive thread...

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

[EDIT: At CMP especially,] provide more than one printed copy of the match schedule. Or install a photocopier in Pit Admin for team use.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

The game was a lot to keep up with for the refs at champs. There was at least 1 instance of a [G28] in Curie SF-2-1 and a very obvious [G27] in SF 2-2. The ref that was right next to the areas of contact was looking at the other side of the field both times. Perhaps consider adding 1-2 refs per field at champs since the level of play is always greater than at Regionals.

The teams posting questions to Q&A's need to be more direct. If they aren't direct, they need to quit their [whining] when the GDC makes an event-time decision on whether something is within the intent of the rules. Teams who aren't part of the team who the decision may go against especially need to quit their whining. No one likes whiners, especially those who think they're whining on others' behalf.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Need video feeds to the pits. It is ridiculous that our pit crew does not get to watch us play!!!

The Kinect was not a well thought-out addition to the game this year. (Unless you are 987 :)

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I really missed having no video feed of matches in the pits.

Match cycle times would be greatly improved if FIRST would move to a faster-booting bridge. I miss the little black Linksys bridges from 2009, they only took 15 seconds to boot up. It sucks having to wait for the radio to boot after the cRIO has been booted for 30 seconds already. It would make for faster match cycles, which would make for more matches for more teams.

Or just get rid of it altogether and move to a more reliable system...

They could also debug the FMS software a bit more thoroughly.

-Nick

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

This issue happened to 1747 in 2010. The field used at BMR was off as the tunnel was IIRC 1/2" too low. The robot didn't have that amount of tolerance height wise (it was pretty crammed to say the least) and it caused the robot to be unable to to use the tunnel. This issue might have cost us the regional, as one reason why we lost in the SFs was due to being blocked from crossing bumps by the defense.

BTW, the same field appeared at our second regional (Buckeye) as well...

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Suggestion to FIRST: allow teams to use the black boxes and a 5 port switch- they even make them in the d-link's exact form factor (I have one in my junk bin) . Yeah, it would draw a shade more power, but it would allow future use of field-specific radios and might perhaps reduce the load on the wireless AP (for intra-robot comms).

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Or better yet, why not give us illuminated targets? A simple LED strip instead of reflective tape marking the backboards would have solved most tracking problems which, in turn, would make the game even more exciting.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I would have liked to have seen a separate practice bridge in the pits. With as much as the triple balance was worth and how specifically the combinations of robots had to fit together, it was very unfortunate that it was so complicated to get combinations of robots together to try it. Seems like they could have replaced the extra hoop off to the side with a bridge practice area (like so many regionals, including ours in Vegas, had) and let more teams onto the main field for hoop practice.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Having illuminated targets does not solve the problem that Don mentions. The retroreflective targets where just as easy to track (if not moreso) than self-illuminated targets...but in either case there is always the possibility that something off in the distance will be look the "same" to your vision system (in color if not in shape/size).

An opaque top backboard would have partially addressed this, and it's not like the audience seated behind the ends of the field was able to see anything anyhow.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

This. So much this. The idea of having teams to cooperate with eachother for a common good is in theory a great thing. Especially since most teams follow the creed of gracious professionalism. We encountered at least one instance this year though where a team flat out told us they would not balance with us.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

That's better than having the team who says they will balance with you and they never show up. How unGP is that?

I understand the intent but IMHO the reality is that cooperation points are not working and hurt the game. Those same people you are competing against can prevent you from a good ranking. Unfortunately there are a few who believe this is a legit strategy of the game. As a result, the intent of COOP points is doing the exact opposite of the great intentions from FIRST.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I saw a team accept an alliance selection at an off season last year and then leave immediately. The team that picked them was none too pleased.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

1. Own problems and when you get owned by problems know when and how to ask for help. That goes for everyone, but in this particular case FIRST as well.

2. Provide a level playing field for troubleshooting to eliminate power quality issues leaving dead robots on the field (that's been going on to some extent for 17 years that I know of).

3. Provide more electronics support at the competitions and more parts to support troubleshooting in the spare parts.

4. Characterize all the parts from the KOP and control system so that teams do not have to clean up later.

5. Open up more factual data about the field.

5. Track much more information about events, teams, robots, problems and be quick and fair to act on problems.

6. Encourage much more community participation directly to the canopy of control at FIRST before, during and after competition. Especially when number 1 above applies. Also take more interest in additional input gotten from beta tests.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

While for the most part it is beneficial for everyone if the Co-Op bridge is present, I would imagine there is at least one scenario where it is in a team's best interest to make sure the Co-Op bridge is not balanced. This is a strategy decision and it is unfair to say they are acting against the idea of Gracious Professionalism and not know why they chose to make that decision.

If you want the bridge balanced, the other teams on the alliance can probably be convinced to help you with that, as it may be in their best interest for that to happen.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Except refusing to balance with us did not help this team in the rankings at all. They were in bottom 50. It would have made no difference to their team's individual ranking.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

1. There needs to be a safer setup for teams entering the building at the start of the day. I know this has been discussed but it happens at most events. There should be a way to keep people from rushing the doors and running to the seats. If my team get there at 6AM I should get better seats than the team that shows up just before the doors open and shoves their way to the front. You have seating charts for the arenas, let teams designate where they want to be and avoid the unsafe behaviors. Maybe you should position a judge or 2 by the doorway. That may change some behaviors.

2. There needs to be a better way to have teams bring their stuff into the pits. Again, it was a mad rush of people to get their stuff to their pits so they could get to work as soon as possible.

3. Fewer teams at Champs. There were just way too many teams there.

4. Fix the match listings. I may be the only person to say this but our match listings were unfair. We had to play 7 of the top 15 team in our division and got the pleasure of playing with 7 of the bottom 20. We finished 3 - 6 and placed in 36th place, only because of the co-op bridge. Our last match was against 2 teams that ended up on Einstein (548 and 118, and our partners finished in 74th & 90th).

5. Video in the pits at champs. It is a long walk to get to the field and too often our pit crew couldn’t watch matches.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Let me second this. At MAR Mount Olive it took a bit for people to get video in the pits using my laptop and finally getting the feed into the pit area.

It was obviously a different event but it should be similar for any event and I've seen this issue repeatedly over the years.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

One of my negitives is the FIRST Q and A system. It's horrible. Teams should not EVER have to wait until their first competiton to find out that their robot is illegal if they have tried to clarify it in the Q and A. Furthermore, teams should have a guarentee that their question will be answered. The Q and A's purpose is to help teams design robots within the rules, if team's are not getting helpful answers after waiting who knows how long, that is not acceptable and the Q and A is not doing it's job. When I compair the FIRST Q and A to the VEX Q and A, I am embarassed for FIRST.

Regards, Bryan

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I second that as well. I have stated in these forums my own concerns about the fact that Team 11 asked a question that impacted all teams in the entire competition. The answer wasn't posted until it was nearly impossible for it to even have been of value.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Game piece Consistency was a huge issue this year. Wear and tear were somewhat predictable by the time later regionals came around, but balls from different batches were not. From my experience, there were at least 3 or 4 different types of balls, those bought direct from the manufacturer, those bought from AM, those given in the KOP and those used at the Championship.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I totally disagree. The number of times alliances cooperated with each other is way higher than the number of times multiple teams conspired to hose a good team. Fact: this year, lots and lots of teams cooperated with each other to gain a mutual benefit. At least in the case of our team, that resulted in many positive interactions with teams that we otherwise wouldn't have had a chance to work together with. I'd guess that the GDC's "great intentions" ran at least partly along these lines.

Also, look at all of the teams that won #1 seeds this year. They are consistently really good teams who deserved to be there, and the number of exceptions doesn't seem much different to me than it has been in past years. This indicates to me that it was either not that common or not that easy for teams to collude and hurt the best teams' rankings.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

This was something that really hurt us in St. Louis. The balls at the FLR and Buckeye regionals were pretty much identical to what we received in the KOP. We rarely ran into issues (only once or twice in total) with the balls getting stuck but the ones that did were usually the newer ones. Nothing you can do about that.

The ones at St. Louis though had to be completely different. We got so many of those stuck in our loader mechanism it bordered on the ridiculous. It definitely wasn't just the fact they were newer balls. As you said, they were definitely a different batch.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I second this. Also, a clarification of when different balls would be used. Our team (and I know of others) had their shooters calibrated for new or used balls. New balls being used at CT elim matches gave us no chance to change our shooter speed or position. Whereas GUS was having trouble with the used balls in quals. I would have like a clarification in an update for some sort of game piece schedule, IE a line stating new balls would be used in elims.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

1. Practice field at CMP. Almost all teams who use the practice field are looking to test specific things, in this game they are:
-Running their autonomous programs - This requires a basket and key, and possibly a bridge, all at the correct distances
-Shooting balls - This requires a basket and marked key distance
-Driving and shooting - This requires more open space than above, but the general key and basket area is usually sufficient to simulate a driver lining up
-Triple balance before elims
None of these require a field border or radios - A 50' tether is sufficient.

At MSC, there was a large carpet area with 2 baskets, 3 bridges, and two movable bumps. Teams would tell the practice field queue what they needed to test and what their setup requirements were, and he would organize where each team could be. There were no practice field radios, all teams ran on tethers. Immediately after alliance selections, the three bridges were reserved for each alliance in the order they had to play (e.g. QF1 teams gets to practice before QF4 teams), allowing each alliance to practice their triple balance. The practice field seemed adequate for the volume of teams - a 64 team event with 2 baskets and 3 bridges, allowing multiple teams to use a set of baskets at the same time

At CMP, there were two full practice fields which required several hours of advanced notice to sign up for an use. The radios also caused mass confusion due to the mis-coloring of the red and blue radios (at least on the Galileo practice field). They had a single set of baskets behind the practice field, and two more in the annex on the way to the dome. For an event of this size, there should have been at least 3 bridges and 4 baskets per division (total of 12 bridges and 16 baskets required, there were only 6 bridges and 7 baskets at the whole event this year)


2. I have to say it, the quality of teams at CMP this year was disappointing. The league is too large to hope to allow each team to go to CMP every few years, so even trying seems pointless.

3. The vision system this year was fairly good, but a different geometric shape should be chosen (how about a circle?) - There are too many bright rectangular objects but relatively few bright circular objects. I know our vision system was often confused by large white display screens directly behind fields.

4. I've already talked to a few NI people about this, but (at least in LabVIEW) most of the CPU load on the processor is overhead from LabVIEW and library inefficiency, not actual team code.

5. On a related note, the fact that teams are able to hit 90% CPU utilization without running vision on the robot amazes me. The processor is definitely powerful enough (the old IFI PIC and Vex Cortex systems run much smaller processors, and almost everything being done now could be done then), but the inefficiency is SO HUGE

6. Ball consistency on bridges. At all previous events, the field reset people were placing the balls on two holes in the center of the bridge. At CMP (Galileo division), we found that they were consistently placing them on the outside holes, or in various other symmetric but not centered positions, during our matches, but only on the center bridge. Our scouting team investigated the issue, and the balls were only being placed off-center during only our matches and in matches where teams were attempting bridge autonomous modes. When we asked the field reset and head ref on our field, they claimed that the balls had to be symmetric, nothing else, and started placing the balls on the alliance bridges differently as well. We brought a Q&A question which stated that the balls would be centered on the bridge, and they ignored it. We talked to Aiden Brown on the issue, and the ball placement stopped immediately after.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

The practice field situation at the championships was pitiful. 400 teams, 2 full, and 3 wooden fields? Come on. It would be nice if they left an area for teams to set up their own goals.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Having already explained this in emails to your team, I'm surprised it is brought up yet again in a thread.

The highlighted part is where you yourself can see why our alliance did not co-op balance. The co-op bridge is for mutual benefit. Our alliance, as stated by yourself, had no potential benefit from doing so. We all had 1 or 2 matches each left in qualifications, and we knew our standings would not improve. The co-op bridge goal is to mutually boost rankings. Since we did not have a legitimate chance at the top 8 seeds, we chose not to co-op and instead we chose to display the strong suits of each of our robots.

We were not being ungracious or unprofessional about the situation. We were playing our game as we saw fit. We, in your best interest, had let you know of the strategy beforehand so that there would be no surprise. Also, none of the teams involved were pressured into agreeing on the strategy. 254, 415, and 3929 were pretty unanimous about it.

PM me if you would like to continue the discussion further. :)

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

The coopertition award, yes the coopertition bridge was successful in mixing up the rankings but it made the award based way too much on luck. Last years coopertition award system was the best ever. To win it you had to: A make a minibot that was one that other teams wanted to use because it was a good performer, B approach and "sell" other teams on why they should use your minibot, C sometimes assist that team in either adapting their deployment system to accept your minibot or building or help them build a system to deploy it. For us it created some strong bonds between those teams to which we loaned minibots that continues, as well as being used by other teams to promote their teams and expand their programs since in many cases we sent them home with the teams after the season was over.

Kinnect, it essentially made the GDC look as if they were for sale. On a related note the Innovation in control award which at least at the events I attended was based on being the only team using the Kinnect.

The Q&A system which was even harder to navigate and find what you were looking for than before. Never mind the "no comment" answers as in previous years.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

1) Follow and enforce the rules that are in place. If teams are expected to follow the rules, as should field personnel, inspectors, and volunteers.

2) Don't ignore the students.

Multiple times our students questioned a situation that did not agree with rules and procedures published, and were either ridiculed or ignored.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I agree with Debbies assessment and have a few other suggestions.

1. The fields were too close to the spectator seating. You could not see the closest alliance bridge well from most of the seats. Moving them away 20-40 feet would help a lot.

2. I would like to see a move to more competition based entrance into the championship. I have no problem rookie all stars and HOF teams being there but it when there are 50% or more teams in all the divisions that have very limited robots and teams lack experience with the game it makes seeding matches a very "Luck of the draw" thing. Although there are many more very good teams in a championship division than a district or regional event the less experienced teams brought the seeding matches down to district event type play in my opinion. It didn't look like a championship to me until after alliance selection.

3. There should be a team entrance on the side of the dome where the trailers and parking was. I am not sure about others but our team likes to tailgate at these events and it is a pain to walk all around the dome to get back in.


Just some of my opinions.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

At VCU the Innovaction in Control award went to the only team to get Vision Tracking working due to the magnificently bright advertisements on the arena's walls. How did they do it? They went to the fender and made some lights blink based upon Vision Tracking status. It wasn't automated aiming at all :/ I only know because I asked them how they were able to get vision tracking working with the lights behind the field.

That brings up something that's kind of irked me for a couple of years.

Judges could CARE LESS if the programmers on a team built a custom display app out of Java or C++ that displays data to the drivers. They either dismiss is as "oh, anyone can build a web page" or "the driver's display means your stuff isn't automated". What a load of crap.

Building a Java app with a custom layout tailored for the drivers is the closest thing a team will get to a full software development cycle in FRC (including Systems Engineering, Coding, I&T phases). It also requires some technical prowess to debug things in order to ensure the system runs smoothly while on the field. It's also more realistic since there isn't a single automated dynamic interactive system in the world that doesn't have some sort of human-in-the-loop control. Eventually our second driver will move solely to the app on a touchscreen panel when open-architecture tablets become reasonably priced. Maybe then the judges will think something of it :rolleyes:

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Either do this or get rid of signup for championship and make it pure qualification to decrease the number of teams in each division if FIRST doesn't have the space or people for more fields. I personally think that the ability for any team to signup for championship and not earn their way in takes away from the quality of play at championship.

This was ridiculous. For a team like ours who was long and had a stinger, we knew we could triple with another long robot, but no team would spend their practice spot to learn if we were a viable 2nd round pick because it made more sense for them to learn if they could triple with one of the elite long robots. I don't blame the teams for this at all because I would do the same exact thing, you only have so many slots and to spend it on us isn't worth it.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

The Seating for Einstein was indeed frustrating :ahh: i think it would be waaay better if the Awards and the Einstein field were positioned in the widest side od the Dome (were Newton and Archimides were set up this year) that way more people would get a chance to have a better view of the game.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

More video feeds.

MSC set the standard this year by having a 'fixed, full-field' view, and supplemented by a 'roaming/closeup' view. Viewing both simultaneously is optimum for those of us at home (or work!).

I would have expected no less for Einstein at least.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I would like to see practice matches at 3 day regionals go until the pits close on Thursday. That beautiful field is mostly empty from about 4:30 p.m. on. People could be practicing and tuning rather than struggling on the practice field.

I would like to see lower cost regionals. The price per match is extremely high, even if you make it to eliminations.

I would like to see adults allowed to train student drive team coaches during the practice day at at 3 day regional.

I would like to see participation pins distributed to teams based on roster size rather than a straight 25 per team.

I would like to see brightly colored caps for the field reset crew so they stand out from the others near the field.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Now while I do understand there could be issues having this happen, I think it may be a good idea.

FIRST is always saying how there trying to cut costs. If we did it by roster size, excess pins wouldn't be given to smaller teams, and the larger teams would be covered.

My $0.02 on the issue.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Me too on the FMS stuff.

The balls. This is the second time in the time I have been mentoring that the balls have really impacted things. Lunacy year the primary game piece was discontinued by the manufacturer, so I guess this wasn't quite as bad. But when you take all of your KoP and AndyMark balls and they are all within a tolerance and then the competition comes and they are WAY different it is a pain. Couple with the fact that we are now in a district model and there were no practice days, just a match or two, and retuning was 'exciting'.

Also, as one who had to watch the championship online: please have the NASA coverage go all the way to the end! They stopped at 6! While I appreciate the time, effort , and expense that the teams who stream go to, the stream quality just can't measure up to NASA's. It was Heidi all over again! (older NFL fans know what I am talking about :) )

Coopertition (I also posted it as being a Good Thing in that thread). That FIRST got a strategy that really threw a curve ball was a good thing. That it got teams arguing and divisive at times was definitely not. That I think is a question of resetting expectations for how you go about getting top seeded. But unless FIRST comes up with equally compelling coopertition schemes going forward that may be difficult.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Ooops, Forgot my Kinect Rant:

Why was a device made to track humans put in areas where humans (other than the human player) could easily walk through? At every event (we went to 4) we had instances of people including photographers and field personnel walk through or into the Kinect area during hybrid. There needs to be something more than lines on the floor, especially when so few teams utilize the Kinect.

How about "Drivers behind the lines; confused bystanders out of the Kinect areas; 3, 2, 1, GO." :)

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Einstein is its own story, and since FIRST has already set out that they're looking into the issues and want to make it right, I don't think there's much need to touch that subject here.

Coopertition is a good thing, a core value of FIRST, and a neat element of Rebound Rumble. The unfortunate stories I've heard from many events regarding bullying and manipulation of other teams into non-cooperating is not.

From the other thread...
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=106207

Please, go add the positives. So often, we focus on the bad things. And yes, there were bad things that happened this year. Inexcusable things. But there were also plenty of positives. FIRST reads Chief Delphi and I am sure they would appreciate your support on both threads, so long as posts stay constructive.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

The coopertition bridge allowed teams to be ranked higher than their abilities and I saw numerous "respectfully declines". IMO - this is humiliating especially if you receive more than one decline.

The coopertition points should have been the first tie breaker after your W/L/T record.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

The Coop award made no sense at all. I bet there was nobody at most regionals that could even explain how it was determined.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Not to sound biased given we got one:

If you've followed our team around for a bit you'd see why other teams would vote to give that award to us, our opinion of ourselves irrelevant.

I'm rarely more proud of my team than when they go all out (including rebuilding other people's robots from scratch with them) doing the right things, not just what it takes to win.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Sorry I meant Coop.


I love the GP award.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Better webcasts. I didn't really watch so many before this year because I was always going to the regionals with the team. I'd say the GKC Regional is probably a model other regionals/districts should try to reach/emulate.

It has:

• Almost instant access to matches, so if you barely miss seeing a team play, you aren't out of luck.
• A semi-permanent archive
• A good connection

These were things that it seemed like a lot of regionals lacked. Quality was definitely an issue with some regionals. I had to watch one regional 1986 went to with the sound off because the stream skipped every few seconds.

I'm not sure why FIRST doesn't try to do something like the Blue Alliance for themselves. It seems like they should be interested in keeping archive footage. I'm also not sure why FIRST is staying out of providing the webcasts to begin with either.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I started bringing a printer/copier/scanner to competition years ago, anyone that's ever at a competition with Spectrum stop by and will make you copies. It's only like $100 for the entire competition season, with a new printer and replacement ink. It's useful for a lot of other things besides match schedules as well.

I make pocket schedules for all my team members that only have our matches on them, takes about 5 mins. I did it for a couple other teams at championship as well.

Having FIRST do this would be far too difficult, this is something that teams can take care of easily and at not too much of an expense.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Watching the streams on The Red Alliance was great... Except for one thing. Terrible stream quality due to the lack of good equipment at events. It's minor compared to a lot of things here, except when you're trying to get someone to watch a few matches and it is almost impossible to tell what is going on.

Edit: I guess I got beat to it by Paul.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I would like to have written feedback from the Chairman's Award judges for every team that presents at a regional or CMP. There is a judging rubric out there - I'd like to see something that helps the students understand their strengths and weaknesses.

Julia

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I agree. Especially for the Championship. I had a handful of people from work and family trying to watch the Archimedes webcast.

One of my co-workers videoed his computer screen to show me what he was seeing for most of the time he tried to watch the Archimedes eliminations.

http://youtu.be/L_flbSCBvQw

Apparently all other field feeds were working fine...except for the one he really wanted to see.

How are we supposed to get people interested in FIRST, if we can't show them?

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I deeply dislike the new Q&A system. The number of clicks to get each answer in the new system when trying to keep up with all of the rulings was excessive. The new system's design seems to have an flawed assumption that we only care about the answers to questions we asked.

I really wish the Q&A system had an easy way to pull a digest of all answers (and their questions) since X date or last visit, since that would exactly match the reasons I go there.

I also missed having the referees summarize fouls at the end of the match. I like the instant scoring, but sometimes I was looking at the other end and didn't see the foul or referee hand signal happen.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Is this not standard? I know we picked up our Chairman's feedback from pit admin after awards were over. (At GSR). It is hugely helpful, pointing out our strengths, and the one thing we didn't touch on. We won EI and will push harder for RCA next year

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

At the MAR Championship, we were blocking the Kinect area from the time we got the green light to the time hybrid ended. Our field supervisors made sure that nobody and I mean NOBODY (I had to keep some of the esteemed VIPs from walking through) through until hybrid was over. We made it a point that teams who used Kinect weren't interfered with during its operation.


To comment on the thread: I like the new radio (mainly because of the AP option for team use) but something with a faster boot time needs to be used. Also, the communication issues I witnessed at the MAR Championship were disgraceful. Teams sometimes spent 7 or 8 minutes with the FTA to get their robot connected, only to have it lose comms a few seconds in to the match (1676 comes to mind here). It was a shame.

Also, an issue I was personally affected by was the method to dislodge balls from the baskets. During the MAR Championship elimination tournament, alliance 1 (341, 25, 1640) clogged the basket in hybrid with no fewer than 6 balls. I was behind the basket attempting to nudge them lose, to no avail, so we had to restart due to a field malfunction. As I came out on to the field, I fake cried and said, "They just wouldn't stop coming! They just wouldn't stop!" I was told by 25's coach that they shot on something like 5,6,7,8, and 9 second marks, so I just had to be ready. I jokingly replied with "So I get .5 seconds to react? Sweet!" We both laughed and got back to the match.

Anyway, something to prevent the jamming of game pieces needs to be implemented any time something like this year's game is done. A pole to poke the balls wasn't nearly effective enough.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

On better webcasts: I totally agree.

To add to that, I think it would be useful to have some guidelines to give to all of the camera people on where to point the camera when. If you're trying to watch a particular robot, as most people probably are, it is very frustrating when the feed focuses in on the one robot that isn't working for 20 seconds at a time. Or if it focuses on a robot that is about to shoot, and then pans to another angle before we get to see the shots. Etc. etc.

Echoing what was said above, it would be great if FIRST would take charge of this and do it right: high resolution video, 2+ views including a full field view, archived and easily accessible according to event and match number, reliable live stream, etc.

That would have obvious benefits in getting more people exposed to FIRST. The grainy feeds where you can't even recognize team numbers, or even really see what a robot looks like, do a poor job of showing how cool FRC is. Those feeds are only really useful for people who already know how the game works and what the particular robots they're watching for look like.

Also... video feeds of sufficiently high quality would allow stat nerds to compile actual stats for every event. That would be sweet!

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Quoted for truth. I don't think the GP Award could have concrete criteria, or else they would have to make concrete definitions for GP, which is somewhat against the concept. At the same time, it should be about general GP of the team, and not about a single event (though it can be). Also, deciding on it before elims is silly. The greatest case of GP in FIRST tend to happen during eliminations. For example, at Champs this year, I would have given it to all the teams on Einstein for being gracious and professional about the whole ordeal.

The moment that made me realize what GP was about (I'll tell this story any time I get a chance) was in 2010 Philly, where an alliance of 341 and 365 called a time out for our 7th seeded alliance so we could fix one of our robots. We had already used our coupon, and our alliance was the biggest challenger to them. They called a timeout, giving our alliance enough time to make a C-RIO changeout and have a 3v3 match. We ended up losing 7-8 due to a penalty, but that gesture will always stay with me and is a testament to what its like to play against two HoF teams on one alliance.

On the subject of competition this season, I would have to say my biggest complaint is the manual. This years manual was vague to say the least. Glossary. There needs to be one. If the GDC insists that the game is played exactly the way they want it to, we would never see any of the really cool an unique robot designs. For that to happen, teams must have the freedom to know if their designs are legal or not. If the excuse for not giving specific definitions is that they will in Q&A (as was stated at FRC Live), they need to actually give the definitions asked for in Q&A. A second thing that struck me about the FRC Live is that they said that they were simplifying the manual "because some teams don't read it". We shouldn't reward them for not reading the manual, and cater to them at the expense of unique designs.

No internet/power in the stands was a big inconvenience for our team. Would be nice for FIRST to contract with whatever venue they have for internet during the competition.

Suggestion for FIRST: Send a recording device along with each field for archiving events. With their goal of bringing back alumni, it feels like they are forgetting old games relying on teams to record them. I can barely find any media of games before ~2004 or so, and FIRST has a much longer heritage than that. FIRST Official webcasts would be nice too, if their goal is more media coverage, this wouldn't be a bad place to start.

Overall, an excellent season.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

A few things:

Someone mentioned earlier in the thread the matchmaking algorithm. It patently doesn't suck. It's a very complex multidimensional matrix problem, and it does a very good job at producing a 'fair' schedule. It makes an assumption that all teams are equal in power, and thus, a given schedule will be 'harder' or 'easier' for some teams. It has a large number of parameters which can be set, including minimum match separation and so on. There's a well written paper explaining exactly how it works. Someone can provide a link I'm sure.

My biggest wish is for the robots to stop using consumer-grade electronics (the D-Link radio) in an industrial environment. It wasn't designed for the kinds of shock-loads and so on it receives in the hostile environment of an FRC bot, so it should come as no surprise that things like the power connector don't hold up terribly well to the abuse we put them through.

Einstein made it evident that we need to a) solve the FMS/robot comms issues, and b) have a much stronger plan in place for what to do when Einstein has systemic issues.

The people complaining about the CMP division size: get used to it. It will be the new norm unless they go to 8 divisions, which comes with the complication of where to put that many fields. We have reached a point now where the number of regionals qualifying teams to CMP completely fills the ~350team capacity CMP had pre-2012, and we're only adding MORE qualifying events with each passing year.

Better webcasts. Absolutely. A few this year, GKC, and GTREast, come to mind as having been pretty good. Perhaps better casting and archiving will come from the newfound Google partnership? After all, Google owns Youtube.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

My negatives:
1. The bumper issues this year were horrible. Through all the weeks of regionals/districts, about half the teams at each event had bumper issues that needed to be fixed. That number is way to high to blame it all on the teams.
2. There was very little defense played at the regional level this year - for the most part, teams stayed on their half of the court and did their own thing. There were exceptions, but it made the game a little boring.
3. The game was a little more challenging than in past years, which I feel hurt the rookies. In the past, a kitbot could go in and do some good for a team, even if it's just driving to the other side and getting in the oppositions way. Not so with this year, as traversal of the field was non-trivial (despite how easy some teams made it appear!).
4. The Kinect has a great potential "coolness" factor that wasn't realized with this game. You didn't have long enough or accurate enough control to make it really useful during autonomous, and only letting one team on each alliance also limited its usefulness. This was something I really wanted to use this year, until I figured out we could do everything we wanted with a normal autonomous mode.

Some fixes for the above negatives:
1. FIRST has already stated they're getting a group together to go over the bumper rules for next year, and that group includes mentors and inspectors, the two groups of people that mater the most for this issue!
2. I'm not sure there's anything FIRST can do about this, other than to make sure we have a more balanced game next year!
3. I really feel that there needs to be something simple a team can do to materially benefit their alliance. I've been here for 6 years now, and tell tell you exactly what kitbots could do in every game up until now: Rack 'n Roll, they could play defense with little or no risk of penalties. Overdrive, they could do laps to score points. Lunacy, a good driver could avoid getting scored on. Breakaway, they could play defense fairly well just by getting in front of the goal. Logomotion, they could play defense really well just by pushing tubes to the sides and getting in the way. The game next year needs to include something for a simple kitbot to do!
4. The game needs to involve some way for the kinect to very clearly be superior. For example, in overdrive the balls were randomly positioned, and the hybrid remotes could, in theory, tell your robot where the ball actually was. The kinect gives us more control, so maybe take this same concept and make it 3 dimensional? What about allowing control of the robot through the kinect during teleop? There could be a portion of the field that isn't viewable from the driver station, but is from the kinect station - the human player can "take over" with the kinect in order to do something for some serious bonus points for their alliance.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

VIMS needs a complete makeover from end to end. That doesn't mean just grafting additional functions onto the existing core.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I agree on the opaque backboard, but have to disagree about lit targets. You are neglecting the inverse square relationship between light intensity and distance. A reflective target forces the light to have to travel twice as far to reach the camera than a lit target (from robot to target and back to robot vs from target to robot), not to mention the fact that some of the light hitting the reflective tape will be scattered. Your target, being on the field, would almost surely be much closer to the camera than any other lighting in the venue making light from that target appear brighter than anything else. With a lit target, you could tune your camera to pick up only the brightest objects (your illuminated target) while ignoring most everything else. I would take a lit target in an arena filled with LED signs over retroreflective tape any day.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

There are many, MANY reasons why the GDC doesn't answer certain questions on the Q&A, specifically about robot and mechanism designs. What the GDC didn't do was backtrack, they purely did what they should have done - avoided making a judgement on specific designs during build season, and then made a ruling during competition based on what was defined in the rule book. There were multiple choice words used in the Rule Book to explain what robots were unable to do, and all a dictionary would do is provide those same words back.


That said,

1. Allow for 'conversation' in the Q&A.
What I mean by this, is that a poster can respond to an answer they received within the same "thread" of questions. Rather than it being that a new question needs to be asked, but all questions relating to an answer can be grouped together and not separated by other questions.

2. Rules involving everything behind the player station walls need to be enforced and not ignored. Or, remove those kind of rules.
Example, the rules about the inbounders this year. Very rarely, at many events, these rules (don't step over lines, hold only 2, take out of corral asap) weren't enforced. Maybe in elimination matches the refs gave a little check that all was well, but for the most part, these rules didn't hold any ground.

3. Practice Rounds could be changed.
Instead of a list of matches that will be played by specific teams, have practice matches be first-come-first-served. This will only work best at regional and district events, not the championship; that said it makes more sense at regional/district events anyway. Have teams line up at que who wish to be qued up for a match and enter them in as they wish. Teams will still be required a time to connect to FMS on practice day, to ensure connectivity, but otherwise all teams that wish to forego their practice matches will then allow an extra team willing to join in a go.

4. Official FIRST Video Recording and Archive of all Competition matches, Alliance Selection. All Competitions webcasted by official FIRST staff/volunteers.
This, obviously, will take some time but it's so needed and pretty self explanatory. Done should be the days of teams having to volunteer coverage of events, and instead it be done officially at one website for all to see.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I think that the Q&A is the cause for a lot of gripes this year.

I would like to see it eliminated. They are digging themselves a deeper and deeper hole as FIRST grows. Seemed like the GDC couldn't keep up with aggregate thinking of the masses.

The rules should be clear enough to make the Q&A redundant.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

While that is true, inevitably, some form of Q&A is needed because people are ALWAYS going to have questions about rules unless the GDC releases a manual with blue boxes for every single rule detailing every possible game/design scenario possible...


My grips this year are redundant to what's been said in the thread:

Comm issues: This one doesn't need to be discussed further.

Lack of a glossary: This year's manual needed it. In addition to the Q&A responses, it would have been nice to have definitions of things such as "grab/grasp/grapple" and "bridge" so that all the controversies with the rules wouldn't have happened.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I agree with this pretty much completely.

Don't let the inactions of a few overshadow the positive interactions of the many.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

If you build a small bot like 4334, (Archimedes champs) or 522 (NY Regional winner) you could be quite successful this year. A simple kitbot (on steroids) could balance on the bridges by following another team up, play "pushy pushy" defense or with a good driver, play "ball control defense". There was lots for a kitbot to do this year.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Agreed, this year there was really not much different a kitbot could do than in past years. In fact, because of balancing, it could be argued that a basic bot with no shooting or bridge mechanism would have more success than a basic bot last year that had no hanging or minibot deployment.

Also, it was 522 who won the NYC Regional/

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

We got feedback at our district event, but did not get feedback at the regional (Michigan State Champs) or CMP. We asked about feedback at the regional event but were told that the winning teams did not get feedback, because they won.

There's always room for improvement, even if you win.

Julia

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I know that we did get to receive ours last year when we won at Midwest. Weird.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I hope next year more field testing occurs before week 1 regionals. Our home regional of the Granite State Regional is week 1 and we were burned by balls stuck under the bridges and missed a lot of balances week 1 because we couldn't get the bridge down. Week 2 the panel was flipped and when we competed week 5 we had zero issues with balls under bridges. I thought the issue would have been fixed after our scrimmage that FIRST hosted but alas it was not. Not the end of the world but I don't know why they weren't steeper to begin with.

2. I agree with what people have said about the practice field at CMP. Even though I didn't attend this year it has been an issue in the past. 2011 especially with teams either testing auto, minibot, or scoring which was ineffective with a variety of testing on a field. I think it should be organized as follows: 2 full fields for wireless testing only. 2-4 large carpeted areas with several hoops and a lot of bridges. Maybe they could put these in two of the corners/along the back walls so it is out of the way. This would maximize practice as teams who want to run their robot to get more driver practice go to the field, teams who want to tune auto/their shooter and test balancing go to the carpeted areas.

3. Q&A needs to be much faster.

4. A little more clarification on bumpers rules and we are golden. "Exterior vertices" and the bumper numbers were vague to some teams.

5. Real time penalties is great, but having the emcee announce them after the match would be nice. I'm sure many team who didn't fully comprehend the rules didn't know they were committing them. It is nice that the match cycle is faster and specified unarguable rules are in place for silly items but if a team doesn't know they are committing something how will they get better?

As for the ball consistency this year, I know it sucks to have an inconsistency among balls, but when a company is mass producing a foam play ball they will vary and there is nothing we can do about it. Unless we want to pay double because they have to be tested. While annoying we took this into consideration with our robot so brand new or used, it still suck in from the key.

Overall, great season!

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Our loader mechanism admittedly had some issues here and there with the new balls (something we just decided we had to deal with) compared to those that were used, but my problem (and also one raised by a couple others) is the fact that the balls they used in the Championships vs. at least the two regionals we attended were completely different. They weren't just new, they were a different batch entirely.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Either you could have played with used regional balls (believe me in week 5 they didn't have too much life left in them) or new balls? I think the choice is pretty clear with the championship event playing 150 matches on 4 fields.

Having worked in retail, manufacturers don't make a product constantly (unless it is an extremely popular item such as food or major electronics) manufacturers make items in batches of xxxx (say 2000 cases) so distributors can sell them to stores/retail chains to sell over time before a new batch is made. Right now we are placing an order for camping coolers for the summer and won't be able to get them again until next year. Something similar happened in 2009 when FIRST ordered the last of the manufacturers batch to cover what they needed but another batch wasn't going to be made for a while. FIRST probably had to make several large purchases over time which was divided up among regional fields, Andymark, and the KOP.

I agree with everyone that it would have been nice to have the exact same ball but it just isn't possible with how economics work.

/endbunnytrail

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Make sure people can see the field regardless of where they are in the stands.
On Galileo, this meant pushing the field away from the stands by about 10-15 feet. When people in front stood up, the field was covered. When they sat down, only the co-op bridge and beyond could be seen.

Open up the upper levels and have more seating available throughout the ENTIRE competition.

Allow more entrances to the Edward Jones Dome. Put them on opposite ends of the building.


Please explain intent in the rule books, especially on chains of rules. Just like you don't like us lawyering your rules, we don't like reading your minds only to find that we got it wrong.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Alli, my sister mentioned (this year being her official freshman year) that the negative things she experienced was:

1) Teams not showing the values of FIRST during the competition.
2) Communication issues on the fields.

My own negatives are:

1) Not getting feedback from the Chairmans judges.
2) Teams rushing inside pretty much taking myself and my grandparents out while rushing for seating. I was not happy about people pretty much running us over.
3) The seating of Einstein and the opening Ceremonies.
4) Cannot see Einstein on either left or right in the stands
5) Could not see any of the matches from the Pits.
6) The smoking area. (Im sorry, I am allergic to smoke)
7) Teams not being Gracious to each other and to other people.


These are all minor things, I loved the closing ceremonies and the Finale!

I LOVE FIRST WITH ALL MY <3

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I agree with:

The Einstein seating hassle. That was kind of ridiculous. If they had opened up the upper levels beforehand, as they should've been able to easily predict their necessity, perhaps all that walking up and down and around the dome wouldn't have happened for our team.

The FMS problems. I don't think I need to add much else to that.

Also, one thing that our veteran members really missed was the Glossary in the rules. The manual in general was smaller this year, and while being succinct is great, the lack of definitions really brought up too much ambiguity.

I asked Bill Miller and some GDC members at FRC Live! during Champs, and Bill's justification was that they made the rules shorter so that teams who don't read them actually would. I did not agree with that method. Don't get me wrong, I approve of shorter rules as long as they are clear and specific. But the reason they provided did not bode well for me. Teams should read the rules, 5 pages or 500 pages, and those who don't should take what comes to them because of it.

One of the GDC members also stated that the glossary was removed in fear of creating a rule within the definition. I don't agree with that answer either. I believe the usefulness of the glossary outweighs that issue. I believe the usefulness of the glossary outweighs a lot of things. In short, we'd really like the glossary back.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Kill the speeches on Einstein. After we won our division I sent the webcast link to a bunch of people and along with the field issues the sheer number of speeches made it remarkably uninteresting. If you want to make it consumable to a larger audience it has to be interesting. I recommend a separate awards ceremony and far fewer speeches.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Funny thing about that suggestion. Team 3081 roboeagles seemed to be one of the few who considered that variable which is why we went with a catapult design.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

It's the "At Least You Found Your Way to the Field. Here's a Medal" Award.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

That's a common complaint every year -- and I couldn't agree more. I have no idea how a group of geniuses intent on making STEM exciting for the masses so consistently make the final championship games so painfully boring!

(That is to say, the matches themselves are generally great, but the speeches are so numerous and so long that the overall Einstein spectator experience is downright tedious.)

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Actually, from what I gathered at regionals/champs, quite a few teams considered the variable. It's just that very few teams actually built to account for it.

I know I was skeptical during week 1 about the ball deterioration being a huge factor, I was proven dead wrong during shooter testing. We then spent the rest of the season, right up until the championship, trying to build a ball compression tester that would account for that. We never got it to work.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Couldn't agree with you more. In our early testing we discovered the variability would be a huge problem. That's why we went with our fling-a-pult and it was never a problem for us.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

The field sketches need to be more similar to the field with parts of the field that robots react off of, or at least include some optional sketches that are closer to the actual field. So many teams couldn't lower the bridge at the start of the season and had a shooter designed for the backboard in the sketches and then missed shots that went too hard off of the backboard on the actual field.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

It was worse before.

In 2002 and prior when at Epcot Einstein was played through to completion, at which point there was a 2.5 hour long award ceremony in 100* heat with everyone looking forward to going to Disney as soon as the awards were over.

At least now the teams get time between matches to fix any breakdowns, let the robots cool, etc. The real problem is the content that FIRST is choosing to fill that dead space with, not the existence of it.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

A lesson that all teams should take to heart about everything: all values are nominal.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

About the Q&A system...

FIRST needs to answer all questions even if they are design specific. The ONLY reason a team would ask a design specific question is because they don't know whether or not their design is legal. No team should ever have to build part of their robot (or even worse their whole robot) wondering if it is going to be ruled legal or illegal at their first event.

This year 973 was debating doing something similar to the '118' style hang off the bridge. We considered this because there was not a definition to the 'Grab, Grasp, Grapple' rule in the manual. When we looked up definitions for grab, grasp, and grapple we found multiples of each, and most of them classified 118's hanging mechanism legal. Even most of the definitions for grapple don't classify a grappling hook as something that grapples. Because of this we thought we needed clarification by the Q&A. After they failed to answer our initial question, we submitted 3 question: (1) Please define Grab. (2) Please define Grasp. (3) Please define Grapple.

The answers they gave were mediocre: "If a reasonably astute observer would define something as (insert one of the G's) then it is (that same G).

The problem with this is that 'reasonably astute observers' don't always define stuff the same. So essentially they were saying that at some events the 118 style hang is legal... and at some, it is not. This is not only unfair it degrades the image of FIRST. (It also makes for some very frustrated designers in the middle of build season.)


There's also the bridge thing, where FIRST defined the bridge as everything in the bridge assembly picture (including the ball deflector), twice in week 2 of build (which even I thought was strange cause the first thing I thought of was, hey if we go under the bridge then we're still supported by it and we still get points for it). Then in week 6 they redefined the bridge as only the moving/balancing part. So essentially this told me that, the answers in the FIRST Q&A are not official and we should not make design decisions based on Q&A answers. Again this degrades FIRST's image, and can potentially ruin a teams' season.

/end Q&A rant

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

We ended up going with a shooter, but used a force transducer to account for the variability in all but the most extreme situations. We read the force returned as the ball rolled across it and used it to modify a base speed.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Same situation for our robot. Not a SINGLE problem with picking up balls through 2 districts and MSC. The balls introduced on Saturday before/during division elims were unbearable. Our intake jammed almost every time we tried to pick one of those up.

The new balls introduced were way different. After our last qualification match on Saturday we left the ball that jammed us in the robot. Normal balls we had used all season allowed ~1-2 inches of compression from squeezing. The ball that jammed us... 1/4 inch if we were trying...

I wish FIRST would have chosen a game piece that they have readily available for the entire season (Each object has the same consistency when new.) and will not change teams' ability to play the game as the season progresses.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I missed the Web Hug :(

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I have to ask, what did you think they were trying to disallow when they specified grab, grasp, and grapple?

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

I've seen a lot of problems, but the big one for me was: dedicated webcasts. We should not have to resort to a team maybe stepping up to hopefully get a stream out to people. Please get the infrastructure for that to work at all events! It was really unfortunate that I had to tell sponsors back at home that I would only be able to maybe get emails out to them since the feed was down.

FIRST, if we're trying to impress giant companies who are new to the organization, the ability for executives to watch the event when they want to is very important. At our home regional, our sponsors came out and checked out the event, but in NC, no cast at all... it was a PR nightmare that I had to find energy to deal with.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

Having the gamepieces made by more than one place (there were some made in one manufacturer, and some made in another. Balls we bought week 1 were drastically different from balls we bought week 8, and that is after heavy testing of both balls being freshly opened and unused).

That really messed up shooting for most teams.


Replacing balls. While one thinks it's logical to replace old balls with new ones, the new ones were again drastically different than the old ones, resulting in wheeled shooters misfiring almost every time in eliminations. I think a game piece like the balls this year had too much variability for teams to control. Game pieces like the soccer balls in 2010, the moon rocks in 2009 (for the most part), the trackballs of 2008, etc. had little to no variability between them, so going from one to another wouldn't change performance.


Coopertition bridge. Great addition to the game, worth too much. I like the idea of a coop bridge, because working with your opponents is much harder than working with your allies. Because of this, there is a reward. Plus, you have to sacrifice one of your team mates who could spend their time scoring, so the tradeoff seems good enough for the mutual benefit. The part I don't like, however, is how much it decided regionals. I understand it's supposed to be a part of the game, but to go to the point to say that you can loose and still "win" is too far. If you loose, you loose. Don't try and over-glorify winning, and cushion loosing. I think the best solution is to make the coop bridge worth 1 point. Not quite a win, but enough to benefit the winning team a little, and benefit the loosing team for putting a robot up to benefit the other team. Rankings won't be drastically affected, and coopertition will remain a part of the game.


Events. The events, while awesome, are getting too crowded. While the idea of moving to district systems is being talked about, it needs to be done soon. Teams are having trouble getting into regional events. I know personally here in CA we wanted to sign up for Sacramento, and were forced into Central Valley because Sacramento had no room. Not a terrible thing, but as FIRST expands at the exponential rate it does, I think we're going to need to be able to contain those teams as fast and efficiently as possible.


That's all my complaints. No more until next year.

Re: 2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative
 

That's just it, other than to prevent robots from grabbing onto the hoops and preventing field damage, we didn't know. If they had clarified it in the game manual we would have known. Maybe a rule along the line of:

R118) A robot may not be supported by the bridge in more than 1 way, AKA a robot gaining leverage on the bridge from 2 or more different parts of the bridge.

However that in itself would have cause some upsets with many balances this season. Either way there were many teams who were unclear about the grab, grasp, grapple rule.