Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

FIRST isn't a "typical sporting event". In my opinion, FIRST is thriving to become much more than that.
Even so, referees in FIRST and in sports are suppose to control the attitude of game play. Referees can lose control of a game if they don't call the rules as intended. FIRST created the game rules to reflect the spirit of FIRST, as they state in some of the rules (G14, for example). If referees aren't enforcing the rules correctly, the competition can get out of hand and devolve in to a competition that does not reflect the spirit of FIRST.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

We could never get a good answer from the referees about the reason for either penalty called during Finals match 3, and I'm curious where you guys heard this, because they sound mutually exclusive. I find it hard to believe the refs would call intentional tipping on 4296 after no-calls on 3 previous tips. Regardless it was a very, very hard fought finals, easily the roughest matches I have seen in FRC. Congrats to both your teams as well as 1986 for the win.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

You are entitled to your own opinion, but as Team 171's drive coach I can tell you we were not deliberately trying to tip any robots on the Red Alliance. We were playing defense as hard a we could, and in the process, robots got tipped over. A robots center of gravity is an important consideration during design, and I can't help it if robots with higher CG's got tipped. I'm quite embarrassed that we ended up tipping 4 robots, but I find it insulting that you would say we did it intentionally

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

I heard it third hand - but you're right it doesn't make sense. I re-watched the video and the ref does signal red foul and crosses his arms right after 4296 pushes 4143 over.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Videos are being cropped right now.. Will post when they are uploaded to youtube.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

In all the cases where 171 tipped another team were they actively playing defense?

If a robot is tipped by an opposing alliance member playing defense, at that point I believe it becomes a violation of the G27 rule and should have resulted in a Technical Foul and a Yellow Card. Meaning, the finals should have been over in two matches and the alliance in question should have lost due to disqualification. Fitting for the behavior, unsportsmanlike conduct, and strategy employed here. I'm outraged still, not sure if I'm more upset with the fact that the rules weren't enforced or that a team would employ that type of strategy to win.

I've never seen teams play like this. It is very disappointing if not infuriating. I'm glad our next event will have a very high quality officiating crew and always has.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

FIRST tries to remove some stress from the refs by making most of the rules clearly objective and not based on intent. Perhaps it was not intentional, but if you look at it objectively, 171 did tip over 4296 every match at approximately the same time each match. I have nothing against you or your team, but intentional or not, it did happen repeatedly, which can be viewed as 'strategic'.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Fact:
I was the FTAA down on the field. I heard the ref tell the score keeper intentional tipping. Then I asked the score keeper which alliance the call was on.

Opinion:
I believe 4296 tipped over at least once and possibly multiple times prior to the finals. Getting a reputation as an easily tippable robot lessens the chances the ref will deem it intentional tipping oppose to a design flaw.

A similar situation occurred with a team and leaving parts on the field. After 2 matches of things breaking off there robot they were issued a technical each match following when a part fell off.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

From 4296 perspective in response to the prior post. We had flipped once during qualifications. We had also resulted with flipping one other team during qualifications.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

You are absolutely right that within the rules what occurred could have, and probably should have been called as strategic tipping. I take issue with the statements that have been made by others that we planned to do so, that we were attempting to execute an un-sportsmanlike strategy, and that we were trying to get a "dirty" win at all costs. I'm terribly sorry about what happened, but it was not intentional.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

This is accurate. After a conference following the final match, the head referee reversed the TF called on 4296. The explanation given to our drive captain was that the TF would not have been consistent with the lack of TF's in the other multiple defensive tips that occurred in the round.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

On behalf of the Regional Planning Committee, we would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to all the teams that came and volunteers who took on the challenge of a week one inaugural regional and made it feel like we had been doing this for years! Your attention to detail, willingness to change things up to make something run smoother, and your overall positive attitudes and responses were simply stellar.

Whether it was engaging in conversation with teams in the pits, or watching you cheer from the stands, sharing your seats with visitors (we had an overwhelming response from the local community of first time people to an Robotics competition), to the closing rendition of YMCA, it was the “hardest fun” we have ever been part of.

We knew this regional was going to be competitive when we saw the registration list. Anyone willing to share what the best match they were part of? Good communication, good strategy session, good game play? Best shot under pressure?

Again, our thanks on behalf the entire Regional Planning Committee for the CIR.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Team 4329 had a great time at the first ever Central Illinois regional. The venue was very unique and once it warmed up a little bit after the cold morning, I loved it. The concession options were reasonably priced and excellent. The field crew and volunteers were on top of their game as well.

I wanted to personally thank all the teams we played with and against and apologize if our robot was dead in any of those matches. We were battling with many, many issues throughout Friday & Saturday that with the help of Al & the rest of the volunteers allowed us to narrow it down to a power issue. Rest assured we are putting together a plan for resolving this issue for the St. Louis regional and hope to be on top of our game at that event.

Congrats to the winners & all the teams who made this a really competitive regional.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

My two favorite match moments involved the Roboteers:

In our match before Quals 21, we ended with a bent lower cylinder. We managed to get it removed, but didn't have time to install the spare. We sent the robot out anyways hoping the arm would stay up with only 1 cylinder. This was a tough match up against the Roboteers and Titanium. As we played some tough defense with our arm flopping around, our alliance managed to pull off a very close win by 1 point. I hope someone has the match recorded for our team to watch again.

The 2nd was Quarters 3 Match 2. With the Roboteers on our alliance this time and down 1 match already, our alliance played a great match to force a rubber match. On defense, our alliance was able to prevent the opposing team from scoring for over a minute to end the match. As I caught our driveteam coming back to the pits, Martin from 2081 on the opposing alliance was coming back to the pits with a big smile on his face and said something to the effect of "I knew you guys could do that to us." Here's a video of the match uploaded by 4213:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2vOnc1RrEE

You can see at the end the blue ball still hasn't been put in the goal. 2081 went on to win in match 3, and I'm sure we'll reminisce about this great best of 3 in the future.

It was a lot of fun to finally be able to play with and against all the local teams from Central IL at the same regional along with all the great teams who traveled.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

I probably have a minority opinion on intentional tipping, but I don't think tipping should ever really be called. Imagine I push a box bot square on their side, push with full power for 5 seconds and they just get pushed to the side but stay righted. Imagine I push a tall, high CG, arm bot square on their side, push with full power for 5 seconds and they tip over. Should I get a tipping penalty for just pushing a top heavy robot who happens to tip? (Kind of joking, but if so, then I'll just build a really top heavy robot knowing that opponents would be afraid to play defense on in fear of getting tipping penalty).


Especially for a week 1 and first year event, I thought CIR was a great success. After hearing and seeing some of the issues the other regionals had, I think CIR did a fantastic job. Hopefully, Illinois doesn't go to districts next year so 1732 could attend!

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

It looks like the Channel Cats team 1094 captured some of the elimination matches & qualification matches 71-80 & can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnxYxpXol19JVG7sar12H2Q

I was wondering if anyone else happened to record any other matches & planned to upload them?

Edit: Just saw 1094's post a page back - did you guys manage to capture all of the qualification & elimination matches?

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Here is my take on the venue as a spectator.

Lots if room for growth if they plan accordingly. Lots of space for more pits.
Lots of food choices around venue.
Hotel rooms are inexpensive compared to other sites.
Well run tournament.
Great crowd
Will need to add portable bathrooms in future. Very long lines for the one.
Having one exit door was a pain.
Should add a second concession.
There will not be enough bleacher seating if they add more teams in the future without adding more seats.

The finals
The final matches played out as I predicted. I have said all along that aggressive defense will become the norm.
To the drive coach of 171. It's hard to believe that tipping was accidental when it appeared your driver went in for the kill shot as the other robot was starting to flip. That was this man's observation. It looked deliberate. Fool me once but don't try to fool me three times.

Advantage Platteville! The same head ref is usually in Milwaukee so if he doesn't change his opinion on the tipping, we'll all see it again.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

I found these two finals videos on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5YPGacCbhA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzmhG-Bsmio

After watching a few times, as far as I can tell, the refs may have made the correct calls for these 2 matches. More rough than we've been accustomed to in the last few years. Plan accordingly!

I didn't see much of match 2 as I was helping take down our pits. I'd love to see a video of that also if someone has it.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Guys, I agree that the finals (and all of elims for that matter) were rough on everyone's bumpers. Elims are always high intensity and that just ramps up as you get closer to the finals. With the nature of this year's game, this intensity resulted in some unfortunate toppling of the robots competing in the championship matches. Being on the opposite end of that unfortunate event in a regional deciding match last year, I empathize greatly for anyone having to watch a high stakes match play out with that sense of combined disappointment and helplessness. However, blatantly jumping to any conclusion and publicly accusing any team of intentionally dirty play is in the exact opposite of everything the spirit of FIRST represents. I'm sorry, but thats completely uncalled for. I know this is a time of frustration for some teams, but please take a step back, calm down, and remember what this program is really all about.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

I believe we have all of them captured, they are uploading now.. we started a new youtube account which is listed above.

If anyone needs raw footage for something, please let us know. In case you didn't know, anyone can tap into the video feed at any regional/championship event and record it. They have a dedicated 'recording station' at each event. We now use a laptop, but back in the day, we used a home DVR with a hard drive/dvd burner to capture.

See you in STL!

Feed the Fish!

DeAnna

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

As the Team 171 driver, I apologize, it was not intentional (even though some think it was). During the finals matches we were playing hard. Congrats to 525, 1986 and 4926 :). I would also like to thank our own alliance 2039 Rockford Robotics and Mars Wars 4143, I don't think we could have gotten as far as we did with out you guys.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

I don't remember what match it happened it, but one match was tied with under 10 seconds to go, both alliances had possession of their ball and are going for a truss shot to win. The red alliance got their shot off first and it cleared the truss for 10 points. Then the blue alliance shoots their ball, and just as it leaves the robot it collides with the red ball that is coming down from the truss shot and deflects away. A few inches further over on the red ball shot and blue would have tied it up at the buzzer.

As a side note for the regional, the box lunch delivery was one of the smoothest lunch breaks I've seen for our team at a regional. Usually it is utter chaos with missing sandwiches, long walks outside in the cold, and mentors trying to corral students who "forgot" where the meeting place was. Having food delivered into the venue, and having a place to eat it right there was quite convenient.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

I believe that was Match 27, with 1806 shooting the red alliance's ball.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

We are sorry for any damage done to your robot, it was not intentional and are sorry for breaking any part of your robot. It was some tough quarterfinals and we had problems our selves with our shooter during the same match from all of the defense being played. Great Job and good Luck at other regionals your attend!

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Yes, I believe we shot the blue truss attempt that would have tied the match, but for it colliding midair with the winning red ball truss shot.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Oh, no hard feelings what so ever. You have nothing to apologize for. The battery box was the least well thought out part of our robot. It was already damaged and we didn't think it would cause an issue, but we were wrong. The battery literally rotated 90 degrees in the box. It was a hard fought quarter finals and we finally had the strategy figured out, but it just wasn't in the cards. We were frankly a little surprised we ended up choosing our own alliance, but we ended up with quality teams. Your alliance played extraordinarily well and we were caught off guard after the first match, so it took a huge regroup to get it figured out.

Again, great work. Good luck to you at the rest of your events as well.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

The joy at 1:29 in the third match.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

It took us an extra 9 hours to get home in the midst of a winter storm fittingly named Titan. A bonding experience made a bit sweeter by the weekend's successes.

We had a great time. The enormity of the venue gave the event a very grand feel. The hospitality and professionalism of the volunteers made it easy to forget this was a 1st year event.

The level of competition was top notch, full of old friends and some very impressive new ones. Thank you 525 for inviting us to join you on the run to the regional championship. Your drive team handled their machine beautifully, and adapted well to the changing circumstances. Your whole team was a pleasure to work with from the PR department making the alliance buttons down to the scouts willing to collaborate on our pick-list. We've attended many regionals together, but this was our first time aligning in elims, and it was fun. 4296 was a great compliment to the alliance, possessing an agile drive train, quick roller intake, and a drive team with a calm focus able to switch between the triple assist and the shut down defense.

Much has been made of how over worked the officials were in this game. While I agree that a dedicated pair of score keepers would enhance the field crew, I want to give my heart felt thanks for the job they did.

On the tipping in finals. Now that the videos are up I've had a chance to reflect on the robot flips. All but one of the tips were generated by bumper to bumper contact on robots that had demonstrated a CG a little higher than what their drive train depth could support. 4296 frequently popped a wheelie when changing directions, and 4134 nearly tipped over in the first final match when their partner 171 hit them right after flipping 4296. No need to vilify the drivers here, and no hard feelings. We'd gladly play with 171 in the future.

I do wish the calls for deliberate or damaging contact inside the frame perimeter would have been enforced. The one tip that wasn't bumper to bumper we thought would fit into this category. Anxious to hear what the referee's have to say at the week 2 driver's meetings regarding appendage contact inside other robots.

Extremely proud of the team. It was quite an honor to receive the Regional Chairman's Award among such a veteran group in a year when everyone can present at every event. I work with a fantastic set of mentors and students whose dedication to helping others through FIRST continues to amaze me. It is impossible to outwork this team.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

I had access to a Google Glass during the event and recorded a few matches from the drive team coach's perspective. Here is match number 11 from start to end: http://youtu.be/ORwTxVWRt5I If anyone is interested I may upload a few more. I thought it was a pretty neat perspective to have for a video. Thanks to 1806 & 3138 for being awesome alliance partners in this match!

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

can I have the footage of the 3 quarterfinals between 2022, 292, 2081, and 1786?

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Several of you who have said it are right. My frustration is more with the head ref than any particular team. For that, I apologize. I imagine this would be much more heated if it had effected the outcome, but thankfully it didn't.

This is my full explanation of my feelings regarding robots tipping (how I would expect for it to have been called had it been my team being called into question). Also, I've included my thoughts on a few rules that were blatantly ignored in one case in a rude and unprofessional manner by the referees.

Ignoring the intent, when something happens in the course of game play that is advantageous for a specific alliance it has become a strategy. This is a definition I've heard multiple times from different referees/head refs. Obviously the same robot ended up on its back multiple times in different matches, so by that definition, regardless of intent, it became a strategy.

Per G27:

Strategies aimed at the destruction or inhibition of ROBOTS via attachment, damage, tipping, or entanglement of ROBOTS are not allowed.

Violation: TECHNICAL FOUL and YELLOW CARD

So at a minimum it should have been a technical foul and a yellow card simply because it happened multiple times, not because of any intent on the part of the drivers/drive team/alliance.

If you consider that robots being tipped gained a strategic advantage for the alliance now playing 3 v 2 it could be considered a strategy on the first offense. In this case it could have been (and I think would have been totally justified) a technical foul and a yellow card the first time it happened. The second would have then been a technical foul and a Yellow Card, causing a DQ with a further Red Card based on G13, because regardless of intent the strategy resulting in repeated instances of robot tipping would be egregious behavior.

I've coached for long enough to know that there is almost always time to avoid tipping an opposing robot in a two robot interaction. The GP thing to do is to back off and let them down. Defense robot to robot in stable configurations on the floor is totally acceptable, but ANYTIME our driver has a robot off of its wheels I immediately advise him to back off and we do. Our robot spent a match on its back and it isn't fun. It isn't the way we want to win either. You guys do what you feel is right and we'll do the same. I certainly don't have any trouble sleeping at night with the way we play.

On G28:

In the course of qualifications on Friday we had a robot come to rest at the completion of a match with its appendage inside of our robot. This caused cosmetic damage to our sponsor panels, but more importantly popped the HDPE trim that the ball rides on through our shooter mechanism off in one area. The referees sitting at the scoring table not only acknowledged the fact that the robot was in contact, but also grinned. No technical foul was called. The head referee claimed he didn't see it, which is ridiculous, considering that the robots came to rest that way. The point of the rule is not to react to damage to robots, but discourage the damage from happening, at least that is our interpretation and the interpretation of the rule I've heard from reliable, knowledgeable sources, so it should have been called if there was even a question of damage. I'm sorry to hear that there were even more serious instances of this being ignored. 1736 built a heck of a robot. The only drivetrain we really ever struggled to control in defensive interactions in the course of qualification play.

G20 was also not being enforced. Teams repeatedly lost bumpers and continued to play. The rule is clear:

ROBOTS must be in compliance with Section 4.6: BUMPER Rules throughout the MATCH.

Violation: DISABLED

No interpretation required. If you lose a bumper, you're in violation, you pose a risk to other robots, you should be disabled. It happened many, many times with no instances of robots being disabled that I'm aware of.

This game is rough. Totally open field means very high speed robot to robot interaction. Bumpers have to be tough and rigidly mounted. I hope things calm down as the season wears on, because this is not battle bots and it was starting to feel that way.

Best of luck to all the teams of CIR with the rest of their season.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

"That escalated quickly"

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Thanks to Tim Koch and the rest of the planning team for a great event. Everything was well organized and ran smoothly. The staff and volunteers were all very gracious and helpful. The venue was a bit chilly in the morning but warmed up nicely throughout the day. The team social was a nice addtion - it reminds us of previous years when these were common.

We had a great time working with 1986 and 4296 in the elimination matches. It was nice to be able to partner with our friends from Titanium instead of playing against them in eliminations at our previous regionals. It was awesome to see the drive teams working together to form a strategy and adapt as needed when opponents or situations change. The matches were intense for all involved and are typical of how these events go on Saturday afternoon. The game rules this year allow tough defense so it's up to us to make sure our robots are ready for it. Matches like these expose our weak points we need to design out in the future. Thanks to 171, 4143, and 2039 for the exciting finals matches.

Congratulations to Team Titanium on receiving the Regional Chairman's Award - well deserved.


My personal highlight was being able to welcome my wonderful wife Jan to the field when she received the CIR Woodie Flowers Finalist Award. Woodie presenting it made it even more special.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

This was due largely impart to the fact that the FMS did not allow the head ref or the score keeper to disable a robot without disqualifying them. If the bumper violation occurred early on in the match the head ref would go over to the player station and demand the team press or press the E-Stop button for the team. If the bumper violation occurred towards the end of the match the head ref did not bother to disable the robot because of the amount of time it took to walk over to the player station press the E-Stop button.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Seriously?... What's the point in having a disablement punishment in the rules, if the team has to disable themselves. Why didn't the FTA disable them?

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

That is unreal. My understanding is that the head ref, under no circumstances should leave his post at mid field this year, especially with the responsibilities on the tablet there. I was pretty shocked to see him moving around the field. That said, obviously FIRST needs to make a real solution to this problem if that is indeed the case.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Chances are, our pits will be right next to each other at Wisconsin. It'll be fun comparing bent parts coming off the robots. I thought about challenging you to a race to see who could make the first practice match, but there is little chance we'll make one.

You might want to consider some "curb feeler" posts on the corners of your frame riding about an 1/8" over the carpet. Your wheels must in real far in, or you have a lot of drop in your center wheel. You practically tip over when you change direction. People kept hitting our climbing robot last year, and the colored discs would fly out. We added "curb feelers", and we lost a lot less discs.

No hard feeling from 4143. We'll gladly play with you, or cleanly against you at Wisconsin. Good luck at St. Louis. Hopefully we'll see you there.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

This was a great competition and I'd like to thank anyone and everyone who helped put on the event. It was a lot of fun and I look forward to next year CIR. I'd also like to thank our alliance partners 171 and 4143, you guys were a great alliance and I can't wait to see you guys at Milwaukee. Congratulations to 525, 4926, and 1986, you guys played extremely well and going into that last match I had no idea which alliance was going to win, I hope to see you at Championships (if my team wins at Milwaukee that is). And again congratulations to 1986 on the Chairman's win, we were hoping to win it, but I'm glad to see how close we were to the team that won. To all other teams I wish you a good season and we will see any of you that are going to Milwaukee there.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Thanks! We put more focus on drivetrain this year and are happy with our kitbot on steroids. I think part of it was our driver Dan though. I think he has the knack.

You guys had a great drivetrain too. I recall Dan not being too excited to start the quals against you guys after the practice matches.

I'm curious, how did the blue nitrile hold up? Is this your first year using it?

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Wait... we are supposed to plan for time for practice matches? I thought that first day was fix the robot day ;)

Yeah, we have a few (a lot) of changes that we are planning out prior to Wisconsin that we plan on implementing.

Don't expect any less defense from us though, just more clean defense ... and possibly stronger :rolleyes:

Regarding the tipping, there's a couple things wrong with the robot currently, and I will relay your recommendations to the rest of my team to check out... a lot of it is also that prior to the regional, I had about 10 minutes worth of real drive time with the robot and still don't really have a feel for driving it (First year as the driver)


See you there... along with the rest of your alliance from CIR haha.

Our blue nitride should last at least one more event thankfully, as there is 216"^2 on the robot. We love our blue nitrile. HBR has been using it for at least 6 years. We have a heck of a driver too. This is his third year. The drivetrain on this robot is tough to keep on the ground with the torque and traction it has, but he is adjusting to it. 6 cims with an 18.75:1 reduction was kind of a sick fantasy that just happened to come true this year. I like.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

If they unchecked the box prior to submitting final match scoring it doesn't apply the DQ, so it could be used to disable, then unchecked at the completion of the match.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

I sincerely hope that reffing gets better for Milwaukee being the same head ref. There needs to be more consistency in the calls and there needs to be calls regardless of the outcome it makes on the match.

We played a match where our robot died with a ball in it's possession. Therefore, at least two members of our alliance put up the dead ball sign including us. They then began hitting the glass with it to get the attention of the field crew/refs. With a little more than 20 seconds until the end of the match, one more score could have at least been attempted, however no ball ever got put back into play because the pedestal never lit up. Our robot was having issues, so our team went back to the pits while our two alliance partners went to the box to discuss this issue and why a ball was never allowed back into play. The story I was told was that it may have been an error on the field, however the ball being in play wouldn't have caught up with enough points and therefore there would be no match reply. Those involved can feel free to correct me if I am wrong as this was heard secondhand from a couple of people, but watching from the stands I was definitely thinking there would be a reply of the match because of no ball coming into play and was very surprised that after the amount of time it took them to bring up the final score and finish discussing everything that a reply was not going to happen. We also had a DQ on our record and were never really sure what it was for so we discussed it with the head ref who also wasn't sure. It has since been removed from our record so it was probably just a mistake and didn't really matter for us, but luckily we noticed it and were able to bring it to attention and get it off of there.

Also as far as robots taking damage. I think we can all understand that robots are supposed to be built to take the possible defense and collisions they might come up against. However I know that many teams have been surprised about the amount of defense involved in this year's game. That said, to give you an understanding about how rough it actually was out there, we now have a cRio that is unusable in a competition robot. While it is a cRio that has of course seen a couple seasons, something that was brought to light was the delamination (I think that's the right term) happening to the circuit board. This was brought to our attention by the head inspector (Al) and some of the control systems people there. While it could have been there before we even started playing this past weekend (there is a good chance it was starting anyways) there is also a possibility that it was worsened by a couple hard hits we took. There were definitely a couple of hard hits that caused us to go dead for either part of or the rest of the match. Just something to consider if you think that you're safe from damage if you build a robust enough robot...

All in all, it was a pretty good regional. Our team had fun though we didn't do all that great. 2-9-1 is a record we are definitely looking to improving for Wisconsin... Perhaps the autograph of Woodie Flowers will do us better for Wisconsin (We asked him to sign our robot) :D

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

I had to call dead ball a few times with no issue. I would take the card around the driver station wall and get near enough to a corner ref where I could yell for him or her to look over and see the Dead Ball sign. Just holding the sign up to the glass was very ineffective.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

They might need to come up with another way entirely. As I said, it was two of our alliance members all pounding on the glass and yelling at the refs about it and trying to get their ok to release another ball. Ah well, what's done is done, I just hope they either come up with a better way or pay more attention when that happens.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

The FMS and dead ball system both need work. There was one time our robot had rebooted due to low voltage, and was up and running again before they even saw the dead ball sign. Perhaps a button per alliance station would work that would trigger FMS to light up the pedestal?

The pedestal also had a long delay between scoring a ball and lighting up. I realize part of this is the refs have to count the ball as scored, but some times it took more than 10 seconds.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

From our team, congratulations to all of the teams who made this a great event. It was pretty cool to see 525 pair up with 1986 (and don't forget 4296). 525 and 1986 are both so full of super nice people that it was really cool to see them win together. Our alliance had hopes of upsetting them in the semis, but that #1 seed was simply more reliable and effective than us. If we replayed that matchup enough times, we'd eventually get lucky and win a few :)

It was great to meet some really cool teams while we were there. I got a chance to talk to people from 1756 a bunch, and they're a really cool team with a great program - thanks for the alliance invitation! 1288 is likewise a very smart bunch. It's SO much nicer to work with allies who are quick on their feet with rules and strategy. Sorry we couldn't get our auto working in the elims! We thought we had it!

Congratulations to Team 1986 on their first Chairman's Award (am I right?). I knew it was only a matter of time.

Congratulations to Jan on the Woodie Flowers trophy! No surprises there either, and no surprise that 525 now has no fewer than three WFFA recipients mentoring the team.

Congratulations to the finalist alliance on a strong performance. Our team has a bit of a new connection to 171 since their drive coach is a respected alumni of our team.

Some thoughts on the robot flipping in the finals, and this is all just my analysis, not an attempt to tell anybody the definition of right and wrong.
4296 had a tendency to tip. While their team built quite a good robot, it is possible for it to tip as a result of normal pushing on the front bumpers. That indicates that the bumpers were mounted a little too high, the CoG was too high, the CoG was too far to the rear of the robot, or some combination of those. That was evident in one of the qualifier matches prior to alliance selections, so I'd say that the #1 alliance took a knowable risk by selecting them. I don't think the first flip in Match 1 of the finals was an example of egregious behavior. I do think it would have been better for everyone if the 171 driver had had the presence of mind to realize that the robot was in the process tipping and backed off before it happened. In match 2, 171 had a blue ball they were trying to score, so I don't entirely blame them for driving through the defender on the way to their scoring zone. In match 3, the driver had already tipped 4296 twice and could be reasonably expected to know that they were tippy. I think it was unnecessary for them to plow through and tip them again, so I find that instance to warrant a penalty or yellow/red card. I can give the driver a bit of slack since finals match 3 is a really high adrenaline situation, they know they're the underdogs and they're trying to play 110%, things happen faster than people think behind the glass, and 4296+alliance own a piece of the responsibility for the existence of the tipping risk of that robot. Nevertheless, on balance I call that third tip a penalty/yellow card offense. And if the first or second ones had been called as a foul, that's life, because that's a risk you take if you tip a robot over, even if it's by accident. I fully believe 171 when they say they weren't intentionally trying to tip anybody. On the 1986 tip, it's worth noting that 171's arm was stuck in the deployed position (bent cylinders); they were not intentionally leaving it down as a battering ram. But it's a foul/card for contact inside the frame perimeter as the rules are written, and a driver has a responsibility to drive a little more carefully when their collector arm is sticking out in front of the robot. It can cause damage and tipping, which is a potential issue both from a sportsmanship perspective and from the pragmatic perspective of avoiding fouls and damage to your own robot.

In that last area, our drive team also has had a bit of a learning curve. We have talked about it some, and I think we are a little wiser now. To 1747, I wish we had gone over to your pits to apologize and try to help with repairs after we accidentally scraped off your pneumatics with our collector arm during the qualifier match. Our drivers said that they got more careful about the arm position after that, but they certainly continued to drive aggressively. If we damaged anybody else, we apologize. (we have some scars of our own)

I do hope FIRST finds a way to make this game less difficult to referee. While I did feel there were some incorrect calls and scores, I don't blame the refs for not being able to correctly do so many things at once. The system needs to be adjusted to provide some relief to the referees, who are human after all.

I have plenty of other opinions... if you want more, just ask! Okay, I'll shut up.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Only because you asked, 1986 won their SECOND Chairmans Award. First was in 2009. They are a very deserving team indeed.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

I hear that in 2009, they had an awesome driver and Chairman's presenter in as well!




(It was me :P Brandon and Drew were the other 2 in our awesome Chairman's team)

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

All is good. It was a quick fix. The tanks were only held on by zip-ties. (If you didn't notice, we tied them on with rope afterwards) You guys did do a number on the compression fitting, but we had extras. Thanks for playing with us and we look forwards to competing again.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

1986 has quite the streak of wins I might add:

1 2010 Minnesota North Star Regional
2 2011 Colorado Regional
3 2012 Greater Kansas City Regional
4 2012 St. Louis Regional
5 2013 Hub City Regional
6 2013 Greater Kansas City Regional
7 2013 Oklahoma Regional
8 2014 Central Illinois Regional

The secret is out, they are good!

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Thanks. I look forward to the day that we get to play together too.

Actually, this was our 2nd. We won Chairman's back in 2009 before we ever won a tournament. That always reminds me of the value of building a strong foundation before reaching for on-field victories.

It didn't look entirely premeditated. They led with their non-intake side initially but when we spun around they pursued with what ever side of the robot was most convenient. Just glad it was at the end of the match and not the beginning. We were the only functional scorer at that point.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Regarding 4296's "Tippability", we entire agree with a lot of it, and noticed it early into friday and qualifications, sadly I had only a few minutes (Yes, minutes =/ ) worth of practice driving during the season and we had not noticed the massive problems with it. Since then, we have already planned a lot of changes, and are in the process of planning out the changes to make when we get to our second regional in Wisconsin... so don't worry Wisconsin, we hopefully won't tip as much there haha.

1986 brings up another thing that was "fun" with our last 2 matches in the finals and completely forced us into quickly changing our strategy... 1986 really was our only robot capable of shooting in the last 2 matches. 525 had a problem with their bands (all I know, didn't really ask specifics as I wasn't entirely sure how the shooter worked in the first place) resulting in their inability to shoot.
Our shooting, albeit slow/inaccurate in the qualifiers, was impossible in the finals because of an axle inside of our gear box that acted as a stop for the winch broke and we could not actually tension the bands anymore... Thankfully a little duct tape allowed us to push our shooter arms out of the way or we wouldn't of even been able to drop our intake during the finals(Which really only mattered when we were right side up haha)

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Halfway through the timeout between F2 and F3 we realized the problem was the nut on the pot that sensed the main ball pickup arm position loosened so we lost the calibration. The arm was then too close to the ball and partially blocked the ball's path when shooting. There was not enough time to tighten and reset the calibration before F3.

Including practice matches, we had run over 20 matches before this with no problem. Unfortunately it came loose at a very bad time.

The pot body will be hot glued in place and the nut Loctited at Queen City. We usually do not Loctite the pot nuts but this may convince us to do so.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

One could argue that in Finals-2 blue was not awarded the correct assists points on the first cycle.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

525 is also on quite a tear over the past several years having won 7 of their last 9 events since 2010. Between 525 and 1986 there are 15 regional wins in the past 5 years.

1. 2010 Greater Kansas City
2. 2010 10,000 Lakes Finalists
3. 2011 Greater Kansas City
4. 2011 10,000 Lakes
5. 2012 Greater Kansas City Semi-Finals
6. 2012 10,000 Lakes
7. 2013 Northern Lights
8. 2013 10,000 Lakes
9. 2014 Central Illinois

I'm looking forward to seeing how 525 does with the rest of their season. I had a blast working with them in 2012. A great group of people and a very solid program. Good luck with the rest of your season Swartdogs!

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

There was certainly a lot of that going around for everyone. Scoring errors in virtually any match you care to pick. If you watch F-3 you will find that Red was not awarded their full autonomous points (15 vs. 35). Fortunately it did not affect the outcome.

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Mr. Shoff, I think our alliance did not get awarded the full assist points because Rockford never possessed the ball with the robot entirely in the white zone.

As for the finals, they were very exciting and intense. There were many potential outcomes. Teamwork, chance, and strategy all took a part in the outcome. It was awesome getting that far as a 3rd year team.

-In match 3, it did look like 171 pushed 4296 over deliberately, but that was after a pushing fight.
-Us (4143) got pushed over at the 7 second mark in teleop. 4296 was heading towards us at the beginning, but 1986 and 171 got in their way. They went around them, lined up ~15 feet away and went straight for us. They were in contact for 3 seconds and pushed us back ~7 feet.
-To me, this seems like a pre-planned strategy: take out their main scorer in the beginning before they get any points (and 1 less robot defending). With assists from our teammates, we could score +80 points in tele-op, so a 50 point penalty would not compensate for the flip. The other alliance would "gain" points even with a technical foul.

-(in my opinion with no offense or accusations to any teams. It's just hard for me to imagine an accident like this early in the match)

So was it an accident or a pre-planned action? It's been greatly bothering me since the regional. Thoughts?

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

Here is the link to the recap video that was shown just before the Awards Ceremony on Saturday. We thought you might want to see it one last time and share it with friends and family who might not have been able to make the trip with you.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoMz...m-upload_owner


Thanks to all the Teams, families, volunteers, event staff for working together to make the Central Illinois Regional happen. We hope to work together in the future and even see you throughout this season as well. Good luck to all!

Re: New Central Illinois Regional Looking Good!
 

So now that I have stepped back and taken a more objective look at what happened, I want to offer my perspective of what occurred in the finals matches, as well as some of my conclusions.

First off, we did not do enough to back off after hitting 4296. They start to go up, but rather than backing off immediately to let them down, we continue pushing. This was not a result of malicious intent, but lack of driver experience, and poor coaching on my part. This was the first competition for our driver, and he did not react when he saw them going over. I needed to pull him aside after the first match and make sure he was aware that he needs to back off immediately in those situations, but I was too caught up repairing the robot and getting it ready to go back out between matches for that to occur to me. It has been said by several others that 4296 was a rather "tippy" robot. While they did show a certain instability, and I think that it was not terribly erroneous not to call a penalty after the first flip, I do believe we should have been penalized after the second time we flipped them because it was becoming repetitive, and by some definitions, a strategy. I'm going to try to work with our driver between now and Wisconsin to improve his recognition of this types of situations, and improve his ability to react and pull away from robots that have begun to tip over.

Regarding the hit on 1986 at the end of match 2. As Nemo said, our intake cylinders were already wrecked from a previous hit earlier in the match, and we had no way to raise the intake. That being said, G28 would seem to apply regardless of intent if the contact was damaging, but I will leave sorting out the enforcement problems with that particular rule to another thread.

Despite what it looked like to spectators, we did not ever enter the field with the intent of flipping a robot, nor did we ever construct a match strategy around flipping any member of the opposing alliance. I got angry when I saw what I believed to be people on Chief Delphi characterizing our team and the way we behave based upon what occurred on field. I apologize for that, and I hope this will help everyone understand what went on behind our driver's station during those three matches. I would never want to win a regional in that way, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for 525, 1986, and 4296.

To our alliance partners 4143 and 2039, you guys were awesome. It was amazing to play on an alliance with so much strategic flexibility and I think that was one of our greatest assets. I look forward to playing with both of you at Wisconsin.

Despite what happened, I think this year is a very good game, with lots of ways for alliances to approach it. There are some issues with enforcing penalties, and I know we had some issues with the pedestal not lighting up, but I believe those issues can be addressed. I would like to thank all those involved in making the Central Illinois Regional happen. I thought it was a very well run event, especially considering this was its inaugural year, and a week 1 event no less. I would absolutely come back to play in the "Snow Globe" next year.