Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

In competitive online gaming, communications is paramount. As a tech oriented game, it seems like FRC is behind the curve when it comes to communication behind the driver station glass. We have Drive coaches that have to run between teams yelling, and driver teams that can't communicate with each other unless they take their eyes away from driving their robot.

I think we can look to the video gaming industry for a potential answer. What if we added some type of ventrilo / teamspeak or other servers to the field and give the laptops access to it through the driver station. Match it up with allowing bluetooth headsets that the team members can wear.

A lot of teams would probably look at it as a distraction, but it would be interesting to see if it would become useful over time and even more interesting what teams would do with it (voice controlled autonomous?).

Wireless communication with the human players could also unlock a new and interesting avenue.

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

That's kind of an interesting idea. If I was to make a suggestion...

Have it coaches-only, at least at first--the 3 coaches on the alliance all get a headset and talk to each other, with the option of keeping drivers' instruction "off-mike". But also give the refs (head ref or appropriate substitute) a mike-only interface, so that they can call a foul in straight to the coaches as the foul is dished out. Something like "Hey, Red, back off or get a pinning foul in 3... 2... 1... Tech foul!"

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

That sounds really cool! And then teams wouldn't have to worry about not being able to hear field personnel because they would have headsets too. As a drive coach, I've been wanting headsets FOREVER.

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

I've wanted headset communication between coaches and drivers for a very long time. It'd really make everything better.

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

Along this same line, it always intrigued me why off-the-field communication is discouraged.

As a spectator, I catch some things that I feel like my coaches don't catch. NASCAR has a communication network that includes coach, drivers, and the spotters.

I wonder if there's any particular reasoning behind this or if it's just because "this is how it's always been."

- Sunny G.

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

FIRST has to do this, it is so amazing. "Aerial Assist" would have been so much better if there was a mic system. Most importantly if the refs and the coaches had mics. What would the rules be of bring a mic system for your alliance to use? What if it used a bandwith that was allowed by FIRST?

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

I think it is to help try to even the playing field, not all teams have enough members to provide a spotting team. Also can you imagine people jockeying for ideal spotting locations in the stands, all the extra radio traffic, the different bleacher setups at each event that make spotting easier or harder... etc.

It would be awesome. But I don't think there is a way to implement fairly.


Does anyone know of any teams that have tried wired voice communication networks in the player station between the drivers and coach?

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

A system like this would likely be wired, so it reduces the complexity on the teams side. Assuming each team brings their own headsets that is. In my opinion, perfect implementation of this system would be to have it all included with the field, and then have 3 jacks for headsets to go into at each station. The coaches jack would be marked, and have the ability to broadcast to other coaches or his drivers. Drivers would only be able to hear their specific coach, at least at first.

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

I know Kyle Hughes of team Rush (27) wears a speaker and microphone so she doesn't have to shout to her drivers, but I've never seen a wired system.

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

Wow, that would be really cool! It would really bring alliance play to a whole new level.

If you've heard of Curse Voice, maybe something like that would be nice, you could call it FIRST Voice. It's essentially like a Ventrilo or TS server, but has some nice features towards the game.

This could be the start of heading towards a really sophisticated driver station (with HUDs and everyting, JARVIS anyone?).

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

Oculus rift anyone?

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

Kyle wears that to mitigate a medical condition; I wouldn't want to say more without her permission, and I don't know the specifics anyway.

Other than that, a team-supplied communication system would fall under non-allowed equipment that has been part of the rules for many years. Allowing it in this year's game would indeed be a "change" ...

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

What could we do to suggest to FIRST to add that feature?

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

This thread has already done that. Frank will see it.

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

I've thought about implementing things like this on my own team, and the possibility of having it between alliance partners in the past, and honestly I've always thought that it wouldn't help at all.

First of all, I've personally never had my drivers tell me that they can't hear me well nor have I seen the effects of this. These are loud events, so you talk loudly to your drivers. I don't know, there just isn't a problem with it. I mean you are right behind them the majority of the time (accounting for jumping over to say something to another team's coach).

That being said, if there were a communication device, I'd also have to be able to count on it 100%. As a coach, if I want to tell my partners something, I need to be absolutely sure that they are aware of what I told them. For this, generally I look for some sort of visual signal that they understood (like a thumbs up or a waive), I mean they're occupied with coaching their own team too. If I had a headset, I personally wouldn't feel really comfortable trusting it, and to be sure I'd probably want a 'roger' (or a QSL for those hams out there) confirmation. But I mean, people are going to forget to respond, and I really don't want to be in the position to nag another coach during a match.

Bottom line, communicating in person just feels like a more foolproof option. I already have 6 robots on the field I have to worry about, I don't want a radio (that I didn't even set up) to be on top of that.

That's my take on it. People can talk loudly, and your all only a few feet from each other. It's not broken, I don't need it fixed.

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

Of course, it's not a question of an issue. There's nothing per se wrong with the regular talking behind the glass between the coaches. But it is a question of whether or not we can make it better. Right now, there is a bit of hierarchy (at least in my experience) where the drive coaches are communicating the strategy between each other and then relaying it down to the drivers at the controls. What if you could make it more seamless by having direct communication between the coaches and drive teams on a single channel without ever having to look up from the controls or robot, for both the coach and drivers?

In the end, I don't see why it couldn't be optional for teams to use if the alliance isn't comfortable with it. Having used headsets to communicate in competitive games myself, I can see the potential in an FRC application - communication is the most important thing to implementing effective strategy, and as we know, effective strategy wins matches.

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

Half of this thread is kind of a scary thought to me. Last year I was a ref at my home regional and we had headsets with mics for all the refs to communicate during the matches and otherwise.

There would be a large number of issues if the refs had to inform teams what they were about to get penalties on real time while trying to watch the game and confirm or deny various things. Many times on our field, the conversations over the mic would be, "Was that [penalty X]? I don't have a good angle from here" and then the response. Or it would be someone calling a penalty on a team and another ref claiming it wasn't a penalty, they had a better vantage point. Most of our ref team has worked together for a number of years, but if Coaches/Drivers/Etc were to be able to listen while we worked stuff out, we'd have a thousand more people standing in our question box after every match.

To make all that worse would be the possibility of the Coaches/Drivers/Etc trying to talk to us during the match. Everybody knows that FIRST events are controlled chaos in many ways, and that's just an added level that I can't see making anything better for anybody.

That being said, I can see the upsides to the alliances having communication among themselves. When I was on a team and competed, we just tried to talk strategy before the match and understand how everyone wanted to play, and do our best to play the respective parts.

Just my two cents though--

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

Maybe having refs warning drive teams in real-time or communicating with the drive teams might be difficult, but what if they had a small monitor at each end of the field (kind of like the assist monitor that nobody used) that flashed when a foul was committed and showed what foul it was and which team it was assessed to. This would be a pretty easy feature to add in and could lead to less use of the question box.

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

Only if we get to bring our own headsets.... No way I'd want to share the same grimy, germy, teenagery headsets that everyone else uses at the event.

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

Love the idea. Only trifle I have is that it's no fun to be the guy who has 4 different voices coming in at once and having to decipher who said what and what each means.

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

Personally I don't think this would be beneficial. Coaches spend the majority of their time telling their drivers what to do. Since I don't care that team 9999 is telling their driver to turn left, it will quickly turn into background noise, similar to the game announcer.

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

I don't know about all other regionals, but for ours we always announce who got what penalties after each match so that hopefully they will realize the mistake and adapt their gameplay.
Also, as I mentioned before, sometimes the problem with real time penalizing is viewpoints. It is a penalty from one viewpoint, but isn't from another, so the refs must discuss sometimes before finalizing. That's a lot to ask of some people in a very small time frame

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

I like the idea of the three coaches talking. Just put one green and one pink 3.5mm audio jack and a 5v USB at each station, simple. Maybe have it so a whole drive team can hear each other but only coaches can talk between teams? Also this doesn't need to be national it could be done by an individual regional right? (Peachtree please).

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

I am a driver so i know the struggles of giving or receiving information from the couches so this will not only help for that but it will help because at the end of every match we will know what fouls or whatnot were put upon us so there's no guessing who won

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

I would prefer a headset with my team only. It would be better for the coach to be able to communicate with the human player than with the other coaches. Since the coaches are all there beside each other, they can communicate easier already than the human player, at least in Arial Assist. As a driver, I understand how common it is for the driver just to block out background noise, and a headset with the only voice I need to listen to at the moment would be nice.

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

First, a disclosure: I've never been "behind the glass." Our head coach did this for the first few matches our rookie year, and since then it's been all students.

If anything is done here, it should certainly be well-regulated and the channels standardized; a wild-west situation would introduce more problems (and OBTW even greater asymmetry to well-funded teams) than it would solve.
Having a coach be able to speak to his drivers over a dedicated channel would probably be good but apparently unnecessary in most cases. A more reasonable use of this capability would be to have the alliance lead (team #1 for ranking rounds, lead team for playoffs) be an "alliance captain" who would have a dedicated channel to his team captains and human players. This could either mean that the lead team gets an extra human, or that there are only two regular HP, and the lead team's HP would become the team coach in this case.
Spotters off-field sounds particularly problematic, and should be limited to a VERY small number per team (zero or one), and those should only be speaking to a coach, not a driver or HP, and certainly not the drivers or HP of other teams.

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

Thats one more I forgot to mention, which I totally can see happening. That being said, if I could have a speaker at my driverstation that plays from the ref's mic for calling penalties, now THAT would be awesome.

Also, agreed on the BYO-Headset thing.

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

Agreed. I would want to use my Razer Kraken over anything they could/would have. Plus it is not much to ask for teams to bring there own. Most ten dollop sets of earbuds come with a built in mic.

*Edit* What if the com was Coach to drive with a button the coach could press to talk to other coaches?

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

Most of the Peachtree people this year have their hands a bit full with preparing for the new Georgia Regional as well ;) (Georgia Southern Classic Regional).

Also, having been someone who has helped to set up the field (and all the electronics) for a regional, adding more wires and plug ins is not as simple as it sounds! Just think about the couple of things that one team plugs in and has to connect with at the start of each match. Multiply that by six and add whatever light up field elements there are, it can get pretty crazy pretty fast. Some years when setting up the field, we start at noon and don't leave till 10pm or later

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

This ... but only if it has Push-To-Talk (PTT). Anyone who's done online gaming or trained for live tactical situations understands why. Yet then, what would the drivers do to activate PTT? What would the coach do? If it's so cumbersome, would everyone even be willing to use it?

Would lack of bringing a team's own headset be an unwritten preclusion to being on an alliance in elims, like Mecanum drive trains are for some teams?

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

I really like the idea, but only for Coach-to-Coach interaction. As a former drive coach, I see little use for communicating with my drivers over a mic. I'm standing within easy hearing of my team, with the exception of the HP (subject to change based on game).

Communicating with my alliance partners via PTT* I think would be quite useful to save time and concentration. I too agree that a Bring-your-own-headset would be a major plus, though not exactly a necessity.

*I think PTT, as mentioned above, would be a must. Having the channel open at all times could be annoying and/or confusing as I communicate with my drivers. Other coaches don't need to be bothered with what I'm saying to my drivers, just as I don't need to hear what they are saying to theirs.

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

What about VOX(voice activated)? Thus you would would not need to worry about a button for talk, yet the mic would not alwaus be on.

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

But what if you're saying something to your own drive team? Then the other coaches would hear it. That would be very annoying.

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

If it was permitted, a good portable setup would be this:

http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalo...cs_skycom1.php

and three of these:

http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalo...ges/h10_20.php

with some extension cables, for a voice actuated setup. PTT would be additional wiring/cost.

I picked the DC headsets because they're durable. The cheap ones would not last long in the competition environment.

Re: Time to include communications at each driver station?
 

Giving each coach (each driveteam member) a headset is a brilliant ideal, but may also be a dangerous one if implemented poorly.

As it stands, a lot of coaches in the upper tier tend to "run the box" for inter-team communications, or if they're lucky, the team in the center is the facilitator for the team on either side, calling overall match strategy. Looking at how things are now, I'm hesitant to support any idea where the communications are not wireless, or at least not proven to be perfect prior to the season, because if the headset looses comms, Now you've got tethered headsets in the way when dashing from station #1 to #3.

Allowing each team a spotter, through a dedicated channel, especially one that's wireless would be simply amazing, especially if this spotter were allowed into a designated box (akin to the drivers station) where they have an effective vantage point for the entire field. This person could be a student, or a mentor, and more than likely still provide vital influence, assuming the information can be conveyed in real time.

Anecdotally, I have never coached on field without a spotter, on season or off season. That spotter's role and position (relative to the field) changes from year to year, but they are most always waiting to convey information immediately before or after a match. In 2014, our Human Player became the spotter during matches where he'd relay through hand signals (or facial expressions, much more amusing and probably effective) where we needed to be, or whether or not what we were doing was right. Prior to that, (different team) the spotter was also my replacement/backup, where he'd watch the match as a scout and provide feedback immediately after a match, we'd pick a spot where he could yell over the barrier and stick to it.

I guess the long and short of this is, headsets would be awesome, but they need to work, without question, and the models / specifics need to be open, similar to how the Drivers station is open, because as Adam cited before, I doubt many of us are warm to the idea of sharing equipment that's been on someone else's head...

Or make the driver's station soundproof. And let a team send its drivers to the field, and the coaches to a "box". Have all communications sent between them wireless, through headsets. That'd be interesting for sure, although, I'm not sure if every coach would want to sit back in a chair and watch the match from 100ft away.