Re: Do We have a trend here?
 

setting out to damage another robot IS against the rules - clearly against the rules - I dont see why the judges should have any problem distinguishing between a team that is getting in your way, pushing you away from a goal, and simply ramming and bashing into your bot?

<G32> Strategies aimed solely at the destruction, damage, tipping over or
entanglement of robots are not in the spirit of the FIRST Robotics competition and are not allowed. Accidental tipping over of a robot is not considered damaging and may be allowed at the discretion of the referees. Intentional stabbing, cutting, etc., is illegal. If a breach of this rule occurs, the team will be disqualified for that match. Repeated offenses could result in a team being disqualified from the remainder of the regional competition and/or championship event.

notice that it does NOT say robots designed to cause damage to other robots - its says teams who's strategie it is to damage another teams robot

anyone who has been on a team this year should have a pretty good idea of home much a machine can take and what kinds of actions will cause damage - and it should be obvious to a ref if a machine is contending for a goal or position, or simply ramming the other bot.

I find this esp troublesome because our bot was designed to collect and deliver small balls and we were repeated given penalty points if the slightest bit of our bot broke the plane of the ball corral. Our bot was designed so that it cannot possibly go through the corral and put the HP in any sort of danger - which is the intent of the rule - to protect the HP from getting spleened

but a few times our bot tipped up slightly and the very bottom edge of the bot or castor broke the plane - we lost over 50 points during friday - and at no time was the HP in any danger

but robots were rammed and slammed so hard that pieces flew off the playing field, and no penalites or disqualifications were called - isnt the end result a clear indication? if you hit a bot so hard that piece go flying is there any question to what your strategy was?!

Re: Do We have a trend here?
 

I had the same feeling re: penalties for 'breaking the plane' -- they were probably called more often than necessary, if the intent is really just to protect the HP.

Can someone who is a FIRST referee comment on procedures?

In St. Louis, it appeared (to people watching in the stands) that four referees were stationed beside the ball corrals for the entire match, looking for plane breaking and throwing the flag every time it occurred, while the Head Referee monitored the action at midfield. This makes sense if the intent is zero-tolerance on plane breaking, and that in turn makes sense as a way to keep the plane breaking calls fair by eliminating the referee's judgement of the relative risk to HPs from one incident to the next.

On the other hand, I agree that the bot-on-bot action this year is much more aggressive (and sometimes destructive, even if unintentionally so) compared with previous years. Clearly, penalties for bot-on-bot violations (pinning, entanglement, tipping, etc.) are much more subject to the referees' judgement, and this causes disagreement between competitors and among spectators about whether a referee's call is fair.

Re: Do We have a trend here?
 

Whatever the intent of the rules are, if you break them then you should be penalized. It doesn't matter if you're an inch into the goal or a foot, you're still violating the rules. It's like when you're driving, whether you're going 5 over or 20 over you're still breaking the law. The intent there is to stop unsafe fast driving, yet you can still get a ticket for only going 5 over. Thus, the call must be made.

You could see that the penalties had a positive effect on the drivers - during the Elims I only called one team for "breaking the plane." So if the drivers learn to drive safer, I believe I did a good thing calling the close ones earlier. Calling the close ones lowered the chances of having someone being hurt later on a big violation.

As for the damage rule, there is a VERY fine line between legal "blocking" and illegal entanglement, damage, destruction, etc. There were a few times when I wanted to call a robot for pinning another one, but since the other robot could still move, even if it couldn't go where it wanted to, it wasn't considered pinning.

I can't speak for referees at other regionals, but at the GLR where I was refereeing, we gave one warning to teams with unsafe features, and thankfully the teams took them into consideration. I didn't see any robots that damaged other robots on purpose, and for robots that had questionable intentions, I would have disabled if their actions resulted in actual damage.

Re: Do We have a trend here?
 

Thanks for the explanation, SwaDan.

I completely support the way the plane breaking rule was enforced at STL, and it seems you were applying the same standard at GLR. Teams must consider the potential hazards to HPs, and the consequent standards that field officials must apply during competition, when designing their robots for the tasks required by a particular game tactic. The standard for protecting HPs must be higher than the standard for protecting robots.

[SF fans will recall that this policy is consistent with Asimov's 1st Law of Robotics.]

Re: Do We have a trend here?
 

As a person whose robot sat out the Saint Louis eliminations (we had an ugly friday. And we only had one match after we fixed our robot, in which our auton mode functioned correctly and we got on the bar in about 25 seconds . . but it was too little too late. . .)

Anywho, I watched the elimiations. As a fan there is little in this world as exciting as two alliances tieing each other TWICE IN A ROW!!

The crowd was on its feet screaming their heads off. This is not something you see even in the finals. You are all talking from the perspective of the team, but let me tell you that in the crowd's mind, ties are great.

Re: Do We have a trend here?
 

Thank you, you just made my point for me. Alan - read the prior post ^^^ !!!

-dave

Re: Do We have a trend here?
 

I love hockey. I hate soccer. One of the reasons is you play to win. Soccer you play to tie and hope your goalie is better in shootouts than the other teams. Some of the ideas are valid but if you want to water down the competition then why not draw straws at the beginning of each match to see who wins.

As to breaking the plane rules, they are easier to call than others. Once a robot breaks the plane of the diamond plate they are in violation. However whether someone is intentionally damaging another robot is tougher to call. I had a discussion with the head ref at Pittsburgh after he told our team to back off. He said that he thought we were damaging another robot (which may or may not be true as there were no pieces laying around). My point was that the rules allow push and shoving and that if a robot can't take it so what. Our team did back off which let the other team go to the other side of the field and push our alliance partners away from the platform. Was this right? Who knows. What I do know is that the ref did the best he could and inforced the rules to the best of his ability and I commend him for his dedication and hard work. He is a volunteer and had no ill will to any of the teams. As to my opinion, I was partial to my team and may not see things the same. The ref also checked out the rules after the game to make sure that he remembered right. Again another plus for the refereeing crews.
On the other hand I do not condon ramming or intentionally damaging robots. I would rather see our team lose than be seen as one who intentionally damages others. It is a fine line between aggressive play and detructive play but most teams know the difference.

I hope that FIRST never goes back to the way they were last year. This years system is a lot more exciting (and demanding) than before but by the interest shown by the spectators proved it to be a better system.

Re: Do We have a trend here?
 

O.K.


Thanks for the discussion and input. I will not bring it up again - and I won't say I told you so if the Nationals run late.

Re: Do We have a trend here?
 

I want to make a small comment about "breaking the plane"
Evidently it is perfectly within the rules for a team to jam the mobile goal into a the ball corral. In our case, the goal was sticking nearly a foot inside our goal area ... this seems to be OK with the rules... I am not sure why this is the case as the goal is actually more dangerous to people trying to retrieve balls than a robot because it is sticking inside quite a bit further...
I wonder whether if we had touched it ..and pushed it out, whether we would have been penalized ??? It would seem that if it is not dangerous for someone to intentionally push it inside our goal area then it is equally not dangerous for us to push it back out...

just wondering

thanks
Bob

Re: Do We have a trend here?
 

<G09> Team members may not extend any part of their bodies into any part of the playing field. Violating this rule will result in the disabling of the team’s ROBOT and the team will be disqualified.

<G28> If any part of a robot is in a Ball Corral (breaks the vertical plane of the diamond plate of the Wall), a referee will throw a 10-point penalty flag. The robot operator and the human player have a shared responsibility to avoid contact. If a team member touches the offending robot, that teams' robot will be disabled. If a robot pushes another robot to break the plane, the pushing robot will be assessed the penalty. If a human player touches a robot that has been pushed into the Ball Corral, the pushing robot and the pushed robot will be disabled.

<G29> If a human player touches a mobile goal that has been pushed into the Ball Corral, his / her team will be assessed a 10-point penalty for each occurrence.

Re: Do We have a trend here?
 

so then according to the rules, you CAN cram a moble goal into a ball corral so its a foot inside

but if a tiewrap on your bot protrudes into the corral by a 1/4" then YOU get a penalty

ok, someone at FIRST needs to rethink this one! :ahh:

Re: Do We have a trend here?
 

Actually, I think that this makes sense. The goals are fundamentally inert, monolithic objects without an ability for agile motion. They are big rocks on wheels.

The robots are (theoretically) active objets with multiple degrees of freedom, one or more of which can be activiated without notice (from the perspective of the Human Player) in any direction. Almost every robot has exposed chains, gears, wheel sets, pulleys, cables, etc. which will cause harm if a finger/hand/elbow/head are mistakenly stuck into them.

Given these differences, I think that the differences in the penalties make sense. The penalties are structured to provide an implicit message: "these machines CAN be dangerous, and CAN do harm if you are not careful - so we are going to help you remember to behave around the machines with appropriate caution." During the excitement of a competition match, the Human Player needs to stay away from the robot, and the robot needs to stay away from the Human Player, just to make sure nothing goes wrong.

Given some of the unsafe behavior that I have observed from many teams in the pits (i.e. people shoving hands into drive mechanisms while the power is on, tensioning sprocket/chain assemblies by driving while pushing the chain with a bare hand, operating robot arms while people are inside the work envelope, hauling batteries around by using the connectors as a handle, etc.), I don't have a problem with anything that helps reinforce the concept of appropriate caution during the operation of these robots.

-dave

Re: Do We have a trend here?
 

this is interesting.

if a team jams your chute thing w/ a mobile goal, you can push it back out and only lose 10 pts which is better than not being able to get any balls in at all.

make sense?

Re: Do We have a trend here?
 

Be sure to read this one too.

<G09> Team members may not extend any part of their bodies into any part of the playing field. Violating this rule will result in the disabling of the team’s ROBOT and the team will be disqualified.

Re: Do We have a trend here?
 

so, if the goal was in the corral, you could push it back, making sure that you didn't break the plane yourself, and lose only 10 pts. since i was scouting, i didn't get a chance to see this, but how far in does the mobile goal get into the corral? is it a couple of inches or half a foot or what?