Car Nack Reluctantly Predicts 2/06
 

The "real time" scoring system will have problems and at times FIRST will have to use at least four "real time humans" to allow the competition to continue. Car Nack sincerely hopes he is wrong with this prediction.

May your oasis be lush and green.

Car Nack has spoken

Re: Car Nack Reluctantly Predicts 2/06
 

Machines aren't perfect and I truly hope FIRST has a backup system that will minimize controversy.

Re: Car Nack Reluctantly Predicts 2/06
 

If there's a problem it probably would be on the software side. At kickoff Woodie said they tested those camera counters pretty thoroughly.

Re: Car Nack Reluctantly Predicts 2/06
 

Great thought. This would probably be good to factor into the volunteer numbers at each regional just in case, especially in the earlier weekends. I may not want it to happen, but it's better to plan ahead so that the competition can keep running smooth.

Re: Car Nack Reluctantly Predicts 2/06
 

If there are many machines like pumping balls in the hoop like this Video from Rage, I am very concerned about the ability of the scoring system!!!

Joe J.

Re: Car Nack Reluctantly Predicts 2/06
 

Yeah, but we'll see. Where are they going to get an oompa-loompa to feed the thing?

Re: Car Nack Reluctantly Predicts 2/06
 

I dunno, but they have 37 days to do so.

IANAE, but it seems like a backup system could be implemented with a bit of work (and an order from Newegg for a few dozen webcams). Record the goals during the matches, play it back to get a count. Assuming you would have to record for five more seconds to be sure all the balls were counted at the end, you'd have 360 goal-seconds of video to review. Break that up across a team of five or six official scorekeepers, and you should be able to determine the scores in about as much time as it historically takes for a FIRST match to be scored.

Hopefully, though, we won't have this problem. (Perhaps we should establish a cookies bounty for a problem-free season? I mean, you throw cookies into the mix and it's on! ;) )

Re: Car Nack Reluctantly Predicts 2/06
 

This thing has been worrying some of our team for a while too. I hope FIRST figures it out though because the game is not that hard to ref other than counting balls.

Re: Car Nack Reluctantly Predicts 2/06
 

My team is participating in a first week regional so I'm assuming that there will be problems. Hopefully by nationals they will have sorted it out or at least have a well defined system for how the reffing of it will work out.

Re: Car Nack Reluctantly Predicts 2/06
 

I would be more concerned with the One Point goals. They are a few feet wide, and the only sensor is a camera on top that picks up breaks in a band of light on the floor. (The center goal uses a sensor in the tube that feeds the human player, and only one ball can pass it at a time.)

Woodie said they bought 30-something new dual core computers, which will be dedicated to running the real time scoring at events. Yes, any algorithm to track the path of many balls passing through the light beam at a time would be tough, but I wouldn't put it past some of the minds FIRST has working with them.

Re: Car Nack Reluctantly Predicts 2/06
 

I'm not too worried, I don't think they'd agree on a scoring system unless they were perfectly confident it would work.

Re: Car Nack Reluctantly Predicts 2/06
 

Quite right. With all this talk of shooting 10+ balls/sec into the center goal, not having seen the real setup up close, I wonder if it's possible to saturate and jam the goal full of balls so that they can't properly fall one by one down the scoring tube?

If this is possible, I wonder if a FIRST volunteer or ref is supposed to jar the balls loose when jammed or just leave them alone.

Re: Car Nack Reluctantly Predicts 2/06
 

I believe that the chain and the sloped ramp in the center goal will prevent 99.90% of jamming. I think that FIRST worked hard to develop a system that would not break so easily, If anything FIRST probably overestimated first teams abilities

lets work hard to prove them wrong :D

Re: Car Nack Reluctantly Predicts 2/06
 

Actually if anyone watches the kickoff video, in the very beginning while releasing the game to the world, while the GDC was shooting the balls they were indeed getting stuck on the ramp, and we have tested the possibility on our goal and it can happen.... should be interesting to see what finally ends up happening though.

Re: Car Nack Reluctantly Predicts 2/06
 

I'm with car nack on this one.

Re: Car Nack Reluctantly Predicts 2/06
 

I'm guessing that FIRST will have periodic scoring issues during the first 2-3 weeks of Regionals, but after that a modification to the goal scoring system will resolve the issues, and by the Championship Event, everything will be going smoothly.

However, I predict at least one alliance will believe that a scoring system malfunction resulted in their elimination.

Re: Car Nack Reluctantly Predicts 2/06
 

...or tragically losing the event in the finals and will take their beef to these pages and start a one week flamewar amongst the particiapating teams, the refs and the powers that be in FIRST (eh, it happens at least once a year).