Passing/Trapping - Assist?
 

It just occurred to me: Trapping is "holding ... Balls agasint a ... Robot".

Situation 1: Two red bots are passing a ball between each other - bot to bot with bumpers touching. As soon as Bot 2 touches the ball, is that considered possession by Bot 2?

Situation 2: On carpet pass between Bot 1 and Bot 2. Bot 2 is having trouble picking it up. Bot 1 pushes the ball against Bot 2 to assist in the pickup. At some point, the ball is trapped between Bot 1 and Bot 2 while Bot 2 is trying to pick it up.

Are not both situations considered Trapping Possessions? The ball can be considered trapped by Bot 2 against Bot 1. So, does Bot 2 get a deemed possession?

Re: Passing/Trapping - Assist?
 

It might be considered possession at one regional and not at another, just depends on the officiating.

Re: Passing/Trapping - Assist?
 

I would think trapping would be applied to red robot alliance doing that to blue robot alliance

Re: Passing/Trapping - Assist?
 

Agreed, trapping only applies when a robot is purposefully attempting to keep an apposite alliances ball away from them by using field elements or other robots on your alliance.

G12
An ALLIANCE may not POSSESS their opponent’s BALLS. The following criteria define POSSESSION :

D. “trapping” (overt isolation or holding one or more BALLS against a FIELD element or ROBOT in an attempt to shield them).

Re: Passing/Trapping - Assist?
 

You'd (and I'd) think it should be, but it's not. I Q&A'd it a while ago.

Q. Is is possible for G12d to apply to an offensive robot (robot with its own ball)? i.e. Can "trapping" lead to an ASSIST-eligible POSSESSION [provided 3.1.4 and other rules are otherwise followed], as offensive play wouldn't be "an attempt to shield [the ball]"?
A. Yes.

They really, really, ought to change this verbiage in the rule. The inconsistency continues to be ridiculous.

Re: Passing/Trapping - Assist?
 

This is super gray area. But yes, that is an assist.

If you can find match video of the Finger Lakes Regional, that was the strategy consistently used by FRC Team 1511. It would go something like: Receive inbounded ball, hold the ball up to their alliance partners until it was scored as an assist, release the ball, pick it back up, go to the next unique robot a unique zone and repeat for a full 3 assists before shooting.

Definitely gray-area strategy, but allowable in the manual. I'm sure CD User pandemonium can elaborate as he's the strategy mentor for that team.

Re: Passing/Trapping - Assist?
 

Our team was undefeated until we got a technical foul for being in possession of the ball since the opposite alliance ball simply bounced off a robot...... so we ended up getting seeded in third place.. but I saw other situations where robots were obviously holding the ball against a field element and didn't receive technical fouls. And some technical fouls were given off as 20 pts while our technical foul was 50 pts. So it really depends on the referees

This was at LoneStar

Re: Passing/Trapping - Assist?
 

It is still amazing to me that in this strategy robots got credit for assists when the ball was still clearly being controlled by 1511's machine.

Re: Passing/Trapping - Assist?
 

And it's not even just who's controlling. By the manual (rather than my Q&A provoked by but apparently not remedying the utter inconsistency), neither of these robots should be attempting to shield their own ball, which is an explicit G12d requirement. I honestly rank G12d inconsistency as one of the biggest problems with this game, just because so much of it would be so easy to standardize if they wanted to do so.

Re: Passing/Trapping - Assist?
 

How about in this case with Titanium? Check out the video around 1:09. I think that is a very deliberate and well done assist using the passing and trapping method. I think that this should totally count for an assist. I haven't seen many other teams try assists like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0LF...AwqUlCg# t=69

Re: Passing/Trapping - Assist?
 

It looked to me that Titanium's teammate clearly took possession of the ball in that technique. Titanium may or may not lose contact, but their teammate was deciding where the ball was going (which is for me a logical summary of the "Possession" definition). They also have to activate their roller to get control back.
1511's technique was clearly different: in many cases going up to the side of a robot that is not moving, rolling the ball forward within the manipulator until it touches the partner robot and the ground. The touched robot gets a possession credit and 1511 moves on. The difference is that 1511 never lost control of the ball - at any point in the operation, they could back up and the ball would still come with them.

Re: Passing/Trapping - Assist?
 

There is a cycle at 1:56 - 2:05, where the ball is inbounded to 1986. It seems clear to me that the ball never leaves their possesion, but at the end of the cycle they are creditted with a 2 assist cycle.

How am I missing an assist? If so, I know we aren't getting these in MI.

-Adam

Re: Passing/Trapping - Assist?
 

The only thing I can think of is that the inbound at 1:56 isn't actually the start of the cycle (it's the return of an out of bounds ball), and the 2nd assist is late coming to 1986. If not, we don't get these in MAR either.

I've watched teams not get credited with trapping assists when they hold their ball against the low goal longer than the 1:09 trap while attempting to score. With rulings like that, why would anyone expect innovative teams to waste cycle time honing in on even more novel assist styles? It's not just the teams that are acting differently, it's disparate calls that are influencing behavior variations.

Re: Passing/Trapping - Assist?
 

It was amazing to us too! In some cases the ball never even was spit out we kind of just drove into / onto our alliance partners. I wish someone would load some matches so we could share this more

Re: Passing/Trapping - Assist?
 

I know Team 20 took match footage for scouting. I don't know if they are planning/would be willing to upload.

Re: Passing/Trapping - Assist?
 

You are correct. (Apologies regarding the low resolution feed.)

We (1986) fed 2001 in the red zone, and their pass back to us went out of bounds. The 2nd assist occurred when we drove into the white zone. 1777 was there in the white waiting for a wall press style assist, which our driver initially lowered the arm on the intake to execute, but the time remaining on the game clock forced us to skip that assist and finish the play.

You can see the type of pass 2001 was generating here in the previous cycle.