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.