IRI Finals Question
 

My internet connection had some issues during the finals so I have a few questions as to what happened. I know that 2056 won, but I'm not sure how the scoring went.

1-Finals 1: What happened in auto? Did 1114 get a penalty for their blocking, or was this a clean match?

2-Finals 2: It appeared that 1114 and 2056 were disabled after dragging each other around. Was this done by the teams e-stopping themselves, or by a ref? If by a ref, what was the rule for disabling them?

3-Finals 2: Was there a foul for entangling? If so, did 1114 get it?

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

All I know is that it was 230-230 at the end of the match and Blue received 50 points from a tech foul, but I didn't hear an explanation for the foul.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

My stream cut to commercials at the wrong time, so I too am wondering what happened. Last thing I saw was (I think) 1114 and 2056 getting highlighted red on the scoring overlay (while they were tangled up).

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Yeah right before it cut away at the end 1114 and 2056 seemed to have red cards.
It looked like, as they were untangling, that 1114 had caught 2056's string with their appendages and so maybe that's why alliance #1 got the foul points.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

I just texted my friend who was there for finals 2-

Here's what he said.

Finals 1- 1114 high speed ramming (probably)
Finals 2- 1114 got tangled in 2056. Referee disabled the robots for an unknown reason, 1114 got a penalty for it, but it wasn't clear whose fault it was.

So why was 2056 disabled?

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

1114 just can't get a break with these penalties huh?

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Probably so that no further damage would potentially be caused by the entanglement

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Hopefully Karthik or someone else from teams 254, 1114, or 2056 who was at the question box after Finals match 2 can give us a solid explanation as to what happened.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

I'm curious about this - throughout the entire competition there have been more collisions that have been higher speed and resulted in more damage but weren't called. why would this be called out of everything?

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

I don't see a rule that says you can disable a robot if you feel like it.

There are 6 ways a robot can get disabled.

1. "ROBOTS whose operation or design is unsafe are not permitted.
Violation: FOUL & DISABLED. If the issue is due to design: Re-Inspection."

Not this. It wasn't unsafe, and if it was a G3, there would have been fouls on both sides.

2. G4. Placing robots on field. It's not this either.

3. G6. Delayed start of match. I don't think so.

4. G10. Deals only with field elements.

5. G20. Bumper rules. Bumpers were totally fine and in the bumper zone (measured with respect to normal robot orientation).

6. G21. Extend outside field. 2056 did this plenty (with no fouls), but never contacted anything, so no disable. Not this.

What's frustrating to me is that my buddy said they never explained who got the first foul and they never explained the second foul at all.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Watching it on the webstream Finals 2 looked like a pinning penalty on red but I can't be sure.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Finals 1- The only fouls seen in the match recording are 2056's repeated extensions outside the safety zone. There could have been some on the other side of the field missed by the webcast.

The announcer says "As you saw, the last second truss shot would have won it by ten points; however, at the very start of the match there was a red technical foul that also resulted in a red yellow card, one of the red robots drove onto a blue robot with the intent to inhibit that robot's actions. That's a yellow card...."

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

The explanation for finals match 1 was "At the beginning of the match, one of the red robots drove onto a blue robot with the intent to inhibit that robot's actions", not quite high speed ramming. From watching the video here: http://youtu.be/gCfHNWajGq4, I can't see anything like that, so it must have been off camera.

Edit: magnets beat me to it but I'll keep my post here for the video link.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

2056's drive team could have just stopped moving to avoid further damage. Their robot wasn't necessarily disabled; it just wasn't moving.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

I was sitting in the audience and saw the ref call the pinning foul.

As for finals 1, 330 ran on top of 469 in front of the low goal, preventing them from shooting.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

My buddy, who was there, is pretty sure they were actually disabled. He said their numbers turned red on the screen, which happened last time a robot was disabled. He also said that 2056's drivers seemed to try to drive their robot, and it wasn't moving.

He could be wrong though.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

The reason we believe they were disabled was because both 1114's and 2056's numbers on the scoring screen were in red, which is what happens when they have been disabled (as we saw with team 51 in quarterfinals).

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

You don't get a yellow card for pinning though. The alliance got a yellow card. There MUST have been a G27 (ramming).

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

The yellow card was in finals one. The pinning was in finals two.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Lots of inaccurate information in this thread.

In the first match 330 was assessed a technical for driving on top of 469's drive base as they were up against the low goal. From our perspective this was completely accidental. As soon as 330 realized they couldn't back off from the pin, 1114 came over and pushed them free.

The second match 2056's strings flopped around and got entangled on 1114's claw (which was entirely inside the frame perimeter). There were no penalties called and the robots were disabled.

The penalty in the second match was because 469 and 330 got their wings/arms entangled. 330 was called for pinning since they couldn't get away.

It was a hard fought set of matches between two evenly matched alliances. We would have liked to see a clean outcome but it didn't work out that way.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Thanks for clarifying Cory. What was the reasoning for disabling 1114 and 2056?

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Watching the archive videos peaked my interest. Tons of great matches and kudos to all the competitors and champions. Can somebody explain to me how the human player hard bounce off of 2056 that returned to the in bounder was construed as an actual possession/assist...throughout the event? No intent to be argumentative, just trying to understand why such interaction wasn't called as an assist throughout the regular season events I attended or watched. Sure would have made things easier:D

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

4334 did it on Curie.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

I'm really surprised that no eagle-eyed person looking at the video noticed that both 1114 and 2056's status lights next to their number on the field were blinking (which indicate an e-stop or field disable). That should've been an easy one.

Some incredible matches. Wish I could've been there to see them in person.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

One definition of POSESSION is motion caused by deformation of robot parts relative to the robot. Throwing the ball off the catapult deflected it in and then back out, meeting the definition of Assist

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

The robots were actually disabled by "red cards" that were removed after the match. That's why you saw their numbers turn red on the webcast even though neither ended up with one. It's just faster / easier that way.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Got it...so long as the catapult flexed downward and back I guess one of the definitions of assist is met. Well done 2056.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Here's a gif of the best human player of 2014 ever! Seriously, props man.
http://www.reddit.com/tb/2b6a4d

I didn't watch this live, but isn't reaching an appendage outside of the field a penalty?

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Just from my point of view both seeing 330 play and watching finals 1 on youtube. They were backing up and jerking forward quickly in order to lift up the front of their robot and land it on 469's bumper, ideally stopping them from shooting.

This of course may have been totally accidental but I remember them doing it in qualification matches too if I'm not mistaken so the refs may have deemed it a repeated strategy.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

In the regular season, it depended on which week, and where, and how far.

However, for IRI, the basic foul part of that was removed, leaving continuous/repeated violations as a technical foul, along with contact outside the safety zone as a major foul. IF a team was repeatedly reaching outside safety zone, then a tech foul should have been called--but, speaking as a ref, the safety zone was the absolute hardest thing to enforce, particularly for minor violations.


@websass: It's entirely possible that they weren't trying to prevent a shot, but to throw off the aim. One of the best ways to throw off aim is to hit the corner of a robot, repeatedly if they return to their start position. Thus, it's entirely possible that it was accidental that they ended up on top of another robot. But, even an accidental maneuver that ends that way is probably going to net a technical foul at least--and the refs will probably have their choice of fouls to call (pinning, damaging contact inside frame perimeter, and inhibition are all technical fouls).

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

330s bot was slighty tippy, and quick changes of direction caused it to rock. I don't believe it was intentional. However, they did damage 469, and the tech was certainly deserved.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

I was thinking the same thing about possession. Upon further investigation I found out that unless there was a rule change I did not know about, it should not have counted for possession. Here is the FIRST definition of possession in the rule book:

“carrying” (moving while supporting BALLS in or on the ROBOT or holding the BALL in or on the ROBOT),
“herding” (repeated pushing or bumping),
“launching” (impelling BALLS to a desired location or direction via a MECHANISM in motion relative to the ROBOT), or
“trapping” (overt isolation or holding one or more BALLS against a FIELD element or ROBOT in an attempt to shield them).

All of these definitions require that the robot actually moves either a manipulator or the whole robot in order to direct the ball. By definition, the hard bounce is NOT possession. No idea why they counted it. However, there was a rule change for IRI saying that zones don't matter for assists, not sure if that affected anything judgment-wise.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Their hard bounce for the definition of launching. The ball went where they wanted it to and their catapult arm moved relative to their robot

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

In the case of 2056 at IRI there was not a hard bounce. It looked like their shooter had a bit of a spring to it, so the ball went in, bent the shooter back, and then the shooter would spring forward. This would count as "launching," because there was a mechanism in motion relative to the robot. 4334 had a similar strategy at Champs.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

As I previously explained earlier in the thread, 2056's catapult deflected when the ball hit it. They didn't just bounce the ball off a rigid part of the robot - they bounced the ball of their catapult while it was in the "just fired" position. As the catapult went in and back out, the robot was LAUNCHING the ball and it counts as an assist.

In general, rather than assuming a world class FRC team and the reffing crew at the most prestigious off season in the country were all unaware of the rules, I would consider that maybe there's something you're missing or isn't obvious from a web cast.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

2056s catapult is on a winch with an encoder so they have it half cocked giving it the ability to move back and launch the ball to the human player and since it was their catapult it counts as launching.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

takes a clever team to make a lie of "never go off half-cocked" :)

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Realistically, no part of the robot is perfectly rigid. Throwing a ball at a goalie pole, or side shield, or any other number of non-spring loaded mechanisms would also deflect and bounce the ball back to a desired location (if done properly).

IMO, it was a slippery slope to allow those short bounce-off type possessions because from the get go because you can get so deep into the 'technically its deflecting' part of the rule description.

That being said, it was a tough nuance of the game that was difficult to parse out, and it seemed those type of possessions were being called consistently. Thats all you can really ask for in weird situations.

-Brando

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Technically speaking, every material you chuck the ball at will deform and push the ball back, so I agree, every time I hit a ball with my robot, I'm impelling it with motion relative to the robot.

But remember, this is FIRST, where rules aren't interpreted the way they're written, but are interpreted according to how people are feeling on a particular day (see extending outside field fouls), and according to FIRSTers, should be "interpreted by Grandmothers", who are the most qualified people in the world to make decisions in an engineering project. :rolleyes:

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

1) Clean match during auto, though 1114's goalie auto was racking up techs during qualifications. It looked like they changed it a bit going into elims.
2) 1114's claw got caught in 2056's strings. If you watch the match video, the entanglement did not start as bad as it ended. Originally, the string was stretched outside of 2056's frame perimeter and caught on the bottom half of 1114's claw. As the two of them moved around, the tangle got worse and worse until both robots were disabled.
3) As said by other users, the penalty was actually against 330. I believe the lack of a call was good, as the entanglement really was neither team's fault. It's not like 2056 has any control of where the strings flop around, and they really don't flop that far outside the perimeter anyway.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

At Mt. Olive district, three robots got entangled during an elims match (semi?), and were disabled 'due to safety hazard'. Basically, prevent the teams from doing more damage to either robot, volunteers around the field, or field elements by continuing to flop around while entangled. As a note, that match was also replayed since it was paused-and-restarted during the entanglement issue.

Best guess is that's also why it happened at IRI. However, it happened insanely late in the match after the entanglement started, and the teams were allowed to move around and try to get un-stuck for at least 15 seconds.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

This bothered me a bit, actually. 1114 had what appeared to be a neat, rainbow colored 20" stick that would swing out from under their robot to maintain contact with the goalie zone while blocking the low goal. Despite this appendage being really visible, at least once I saw 1114 get a technical foul for leaving the goalie zone when this appendage was indeed maintaining contact. I'm guessing this was cleared up for elims as 1114 didn't get any technical in auto during elims that I remember.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

What happened happened, and the past is in the past.

However, for the sake of discussion, I'm interested in the reverse of the other side of the coin. The rules this year are defined such that the definition of possession is the same for both alliances with both balls, irrespective of who 'owns' the ball.

If 2056 had been executing the same maneuver with the other alliance's ball somehow (perhaps the other alliance's HP messed up their inbound or whatever), I definitely think it would have fallen under the modified G21 (if it was in fact considered a possession) or not been considered a possession (instead considered deflection). However, which side of the fence does it fall on here?

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

What the manual says about possession is not how referees call possession. The manual is not the source of referee judgement. This was admitted by a member of the GDC at the CMP driver's meeting.

Regardless of what the rules say, offensive possession is totally different from defensive possession. These kinds of contradictions really bug me.

1114's coach asked if offensive possession was judged differently from defensive possession. The response was yes, it is judged differently. At this point, a few other people asked where this was written, and the answer was "it's not written, it's up to the individual referees, but don't worry we've gone over it with them, and it'll be consistent", but they didn't spell out what was considered offensive or defensive possession because they didn't want to give people something to argue about with refs.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Chris, here are 1114's matches:

Match 1: Didn't start in the zone
Match 16: Didn't move away from the wall
Match 32: Didn't start in the zone
Match 45: Didn't start in the zone
Match 51: Didn't move away from the wall
Match 67: Turned and left the wall. May have possibly stopped while in the zone, but had their arm lowered outside their bumper and it ended up inside our bumper perimeter and severely bent our shooter so that we struggled for the next 2 matches. When we back up in auto, they were jammed inside us and backed up with us. Penalized
Match 73: Didn't leave the wall
Match 81: Penalized for leaving the zone.
Match 95: Came right out to the edge. I actually went down to watch this, and as far as I could tell they were about 1 inch inside the line.

Are you certain they had an extension device to keep them in the zone? I know 447 did, but I never saw 1114 use one. I believe they were trying to get right to the very edge of the zone while keeping their bumper inside it.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Yeah I saw as well they had a device that stayed in the zone. It folded under their robot and rotated out on the ground. Very difficult to spot if you were not looking for it. I'm pretty sure it was rainbow colored as well.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

I vaguely recall seeing something come out by 1114's bumpers to stay in the zone and I'm fairly certain there was something on the end of the lower half of the claw to give them more reach.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Ok. I'm sorry I missed it. It was an elegant idea and only a couple robots did it, and it certainly conferred a huge advantage in blocking balls!

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Yes, this is correct. The referees missed the existence of this device a couple of times. In their defense, it's easy to miss if you aren't looking for it, and it's something that was only added for IRI. It was originally pink, but we made it rainbow coloured to make it easier for everyone to see. We also had our driveteam talk to and the demonstrate the device to the head referee to ensure the device wasn't missed during the elimination rounds.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Throw some LED's on it next time? Not that Evolution needs the aesthetic boost.

-Nick

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

I saw the stick as well, and it appeared to stay in the zone. Either way, it wasn't very obvious. 447 had an interesting solution that worked pretty well, a stick with a bunch of zipties.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

oh so they were zip ties and not antlers? no wonder they were quiet.

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Thanks! We used two pneumatic rotaries each with a PVC arm attached that extended out 20". Each had 4 zip-ties that would maintain contact with the zone's carpet. Coupled with a Kinect to get into blocking position made blocking over the 1pt. goal achievable. That is unless the person working with the Kinect moves their arm to avoid getting hit in the face with a ball and drives the robot out of the zone, haha :D (see IRI match #1).

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

Re: IRI Finals Question
 

haha, looks like we need to add a new portion to our drive-team tryouts.