Illegal human player bin placement
 

This topic was mentioned by David Lantz in the St Louis thread (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...5#post14 4825), but it needs to be highlighted in its own thread.

Wildstang did not compete at the St Louis regional, but a bunch of us traveled down to watch the competition and scout the teams.

Human players started the trend by placing bins in front of other robots, which is perfectly legal - we'll probably do the same thing if we think our opponent can be knocked off path by a well placed bin. Then a few human players put bins half in the scoring zone and half in the grey zone (illegal). Since it worked, more tried it. I even saw a few times where a human player wedged a bin between the ramp and the robot so the bin was touching both(very illegal).

If you were near us in the stands, you probably heard me boo and quietly yell 'illegal' each time a human player put a bin in an illegal position.

FIRST needs to come out with a strong and official ruling in a team update against this practice. If FIRST wants dead reckoning autonomous robots to stand a chance of being successful (and in turn an exciting competition), they need to stop human players from wedging bins between the robot and ramp.

Mike

In VCU there were lots of illegal bin placement:

-Stacks TOTALY out of the scoring area.
-Bins not nesting in a bottom-to-top fassion (like on sides or upside down)
-Bins being thrown.
-HPs not going through the gate.

I was a referee at Sacramento. Before each match I would tell the nearest HP that they had to place their bins bottom down, and completely within their scoring zone. If HPs illegally placed their bins, I wouldn't allow them to get back onto their pressure pad until their boxes were completely within the non-grey carpet. Even if they ended up missing out on auton mode. I thought that was the most fair thing to do.

my favorite illegal human player move was when in cleveland a human player realized the stack was screwed up after steping back on the pad and reached down and moved it by reaching over the bar...then they looked over at the referee standing beside them watching them and the referee didn't say anything and seemed to be telling them they were ok.

This was challenged and it was called 'inadvertantly affecting the stacks after steping on the pad'

They ended up just replaying the match.

One of the weaknesses of dead reckoning is that it can be screwed up by something as simple as placing a bin in front of the robot or if it gets rammed, but thats just one of the problems with it.

Just like sensors autonomous is hindered by the fact that it can be alot more complicated and harder to tweak and implement.

They both have advantages and disadvantages.

But yes i think the human player rules are just another part of the game that wasn't very well thought out .

FIRST needs to make a ruling on their rules.

Even if you place a bin illegally you only receive a minor penalty. You need 2 other penalties for this rule to mean anything. So pretty much they are allowing you to do something illegal and get away with it. This rule should seriously be considered by first and revised with more consequences or just not allow it whatsoever.

Rules to revise for more consequences:

http://jive.ilearning.com/thread.jsp...56d656e74#3256

Actually, it's two minor penalties for illegal bin placement, so you only need one more for a DQ.

Note:

If the human player knocks a stack of bins into the grey area, and then steps into the grey area and carries the bins back... he is violating a rule to affect his score, and thus instantly DQ's his team.

This is how we called things in New Hampshire.
It is a terrible thing... 2 teams actually got DQ'd for this.

We didn't see any "wedging" like Mike described...

Make sure everyone watches their HP's...!
Make sure they know they rules!

I was at the St Louis regional with team 940 Digital Demolition, and even though we read the rules hundreds of times we still had many things to learn about the game and rules. Not every team takes rules for there words they will try to bend the meaning, and you cant blaim them for that. I will agree that the ref's were doing a poor job especialy the ref's on the blue scoring side.

It sounds like there was a lot of illegal bin placement this year. However, that is no excuse for saying the referees were doing a poor job. Remember, they are unpaid volunteers who selflessly give their time to see that things run as fairly as possible. Sure, there are referees who do not truely understand the rules. Also, there are referees like Bill Gold, who understand the game a great deal and try to be as fair as possible. Whatever the case, referees, especially inexperienced ones, make mistakes, and complaining about them on a forum where they will probably never go and will not be able to reply is not a very nice thing to do.

See Rule DQ1

DQ1 An alliance may not gain points by breaking a rule, even accidentally.

The penalty for gaining points by breaking a rule is disqualification. The refs at St Louis did not enforce this, but I think we should expect that the refs at Houston will.

I honestly had no clue that bin placement like this was illegal. In the match that we lost in the semi finals, a bin was placed like this and caused 525's very sucessful autonomus mode to be faulted...If i would've know i would've certaintly have complained. Oh well, we certaintly won't let it slip if it happens again.

Darn my ignorance.

at the buckeye regional the refs said that it was perfectly legal to place the bins in the grey carpet as long as part of the bin was touching the blue or red carpet..we had them double check about 4 times before our semi-finals match, we saw people do it before but we didnt want to take any chances, but we ended up not doing it, and it helped my team with our robot placement so that we avoided a bin that was put into the grey carpet

Yeah, that match was the one where Mike was booing the most :) We were all very surprised that the referees allowed that. From where I was sitting it looked like the bin was not only in the grey zone but it was also actually wedged between the ramp wall and 525's robot.

The refs in New Hampshire did enforece this rule in at least two matches that I saw, and announced that they would do so at the driver meeting.

The refs in NH announced at the driver meeting that no part of the human player or their bins could touch the grey zone, but I never saw a case where a human player was DQ'd for just touching the grey area.

This is NOT true.
It's true, we announced that no part of a human player could make contact with the grey carpet. ex. a foot/hand/whatever...

However we scored bins exactly the same way they are scored in actual matches. We announced this at the driver meeting as well.
As long as the HP's place bins so that they are upright, and partially touching the colored carpet, they are considerred legally placed. Though, it is important that the HP's themselves did not touch the grey carpet while accomplishing this.

As far as I know, this was the same across the country. We certainly saw none of the "wedging" that occured elsewhere.

I know FIRST is going to great lengths to keep consistencies between the regionals, and make sure everyone has a fair and positive experience. The head referees had conference calls before and after each regional, to ensure that a standard was set, and maintained throughout competition.[

Personally, I felt the HP rules were a particularly "dangerous" point. I made sure that each and every human player that came through "my" corner of the field knew the official rules, the consequences and how we were calling things. It is a terrible thing to DQ a team for actions during the HP period, unforunately, as posted above, it did happen twice in Manchester.

There is some debate about how this works, and I will clarify.

If a human player spills a bin into the grey zone, they have violated a rule, and will receive a 2 flag violation at the end of the HP period. If they successfully retrieve the bins, and orient them correctly before HP period ends, there are no penalties.
Should the HPs step into the grey zone, that is another 2 flag violation. The tricky part comes when they couple these...

If a human player steps into the grey zone, and retrieves a bin from this zone, they have no violated a rule and directly affected the outcome score. This results in an immediate DQ of the violating team.

This is what happened in Manchester. Twice, and both times it sucked to make the call, but the rules are quite clear on this...

I have re-read the rules, and I believe that there is no rule that's wording specifically forbids "wedging". The spirit of the HP rules is directed at preventing just such HP-"opponent robot" interraction. (So said Woodie during conversation in NH).

The best defense against this for now, is to make an autonomous mode that starts farther back in the grey area, our of reach of HPs. While this could cost a few seconds of time, it would protect a robot from such problems.

Hopefully FIRST will make a ruling on this before week 2, and inform the head referees accordingly.

In closing...
As a coach, I will never ask my HP's to perform such "wedging". If we need to use such a move to beat our opponents, perhaps they deserve to defeat us.

Unfortuante luck...
 

As my team member Gope already pointed out, our ultimate loss in the Semifinals was likely thanks to an illegally placed bin which hindered team 525's ability to make it to the ramp in autonomous mode. Such bin placement had occurred throughout the day, but nobody bothered to mention it to referees. My position on our team requires me to understand the rules, so I was aware that the bin placement was illegal. Sadly, I was unaware of the illegal placements that had occurred earlier in the day, so it was too late by the time it happened in our alliance's final match. Although the outcome of our match would have perhaps been different, there's no telling.

I wish to congratulate teams 877, 1178, and their partner (whose number I could not remember) on their achievements this year. Your teams have shown great progress, and I hope to have the opportunity to meet you again!

Sorry, my mistake. I must've confused human player with human player bin.

It seems that FIRST disagrees with you: http://jive.ilearning.com/thread.jsp...ge=3256&q=6875

Also, if we used the logic that several people who refereed this weekend used with bin placement, then when the rules say that a robot must start "within" the grey area that would mean that the robot only has to be touching it, not completely contained in it.

The FIRST rules are so vague and poorly written that the bins could be hanging over the scoring area and they would count.

Frankly, it makes no sense, unless you want to block a bot using wedged boxes, to stack your boxes somewhat outside of the scoring area.

Dave,
I agree that Jive post you pointed out contradicts my statements. I was merely saying how it was called this weekend, and the rationale behind it (at least in Manchester). The Head-Ref in NH was someone from FIRST authorized to make "official" calls like these... this was how we called it, which leads me to believe that is how FIRST wants it. I'm not sure how much faith can be put in many of the Jive rulings... As mentioned in other threads, there is quite a bit of contradiction in there...

Hopefully FIRST will prepare the week 2 ref's accordingly, with a TRUE answer to this dispute. We'll just have to wait and see...

I'm no longer on the "official" side either... 229 is competing at UTC, so I guess we'll see first hand how this ruling goes.

Hopefully things will be ironed out WELL before Stang's week 3 regional.

Thanks,
John

Interesting. I know what you mean about the Jive postings as many of them seem to contradict each other. The reason I referenced this particular Jive post is because it seemed so definitive, unlike many of their other responses. I'm just very surprised that FIRST would allow bin placement in the grey area especially when it means touching the robot in there with the bin. If this is allowed, what's to stop a human player from using a bin to push a robot back further into the grey area before setting down their bin right in front of it? I guess I feel like the intent of the rule was to not allow the bins to intrude into the robot's starting area.
I'm not worried about our team. This "strategy" of bin placement hurts others a lot more than it hurts us. If it is legal, it will actually work out to be an advantage for us.

We suffered from the bins being placed right in front of us in one of the qualifying rounds, but we were ok with it, as we did not lose the match...

When it was done to 525/16/356 in the semi-finals, I was kinda ticked...I was hoping that alliance would win! (They beat us, and I would like to be able to say that we were beaten by the winning alliance) :)

Thank you very much.:D I myself, being the Alliance Captain, had talked to the refs. earlier that day but unfortunatly they would not sway on their earlier ruling. Which made me a little mad. However, I do want to say that I hope FIRST does come to a final conclusion on this before nationals. Good luck to all the teams.

I am amazed that such discrepancies could occur between the regionals. At Sacramento, if a bin hung over ever so slightly into the grey zone, you received penalties. Also, we received a DQ of our autonomy for the HP leaning over the rail. Not once did I see a HP intentionally violate any rules.

I know my team would get really mad if someone wedged bins in front of us. I really hope this issue gets ironed out before Week 3. The discrepancies between regionals are unacceptable.

FIRST has spoken
 

It looks like FIRST reiterated its initial ruling concerning illegal bin placement. Thanks to all who asked questions on the jive forums, and thanks to FIRST for clarifying the rule.

http://jive.ilearning.com/thread.jsp...rt=0&trange=15
http://jive.ilearning.com/thread.jsp...rt=0&trange=15

FIRST says they'll advise the referees of the rule, but you'd better print out the forum post to show to a referee if they rule a different way.

Mike

I dont think the referee's would like that too much =P

same thing at New York
 

Something like that happened to us at the New York Regionals. Our bot needs to fall down to get going, and the pius princesses put one of their boxes right underneath us. The match eventually got replayed and we got 193 points (box points).

I agree with many on this thread, there is too much illegal bin placement going either unnoticed or unheeded. Although this is a little unrelated, this is one of my least favorite games. It definately beats a few years, the floopies come to mind, but in my opinion this year's game itself is flawed.

Heh John, you beat me too it I was just about to mention that Princess dealy.