Re: NASA/VCU field problems
 

1st - In case you did not hear, the field problems that occurred on Thursday and Friday were caused by too slow laptops (Not the software!) with not enough memory. Friday Night they went out and got more powerful laptops, and at the end of today there were very few problems. The only issue left seams to be the NI ball counting system, and that worked better than anticipated. Keep in mind that laptops being used were donated last season, for use with last years scoring system.

Should the system have been tested using last years laptops--yes. But things are not always what they appear to be:

2nd - Just like the teams, FIRST Engineering has 6 - 8 weeks to build 9 fields. The field that you see at kickoff is for the most part a test field. This field never sees any competition. This is for many reasons, but the main reason is that the GDC lots of times is making changes right up to kickoff. One year the name was changed the night before.

Yes - the basics of the game are pretty much decided by the 1st of December, but changes are made, that seam pretty simple by the GDC, but cause major changes in engineering. If you think the build season is hard on the teams, you should be at FIRST. They work late nights and weekends just like you, and the shipping deadlines are just as real. If they are late getting a field ready, there will be no field for your regional!

The software is tested using human players, and a scrimmage. Unfortunately it looks like it was tested using powerful laptops, (Developer laptops.)
and not the regular scoring laptops. Also keep in mind that software developers are all alumni of FIRST teams, graduates of top schools, with years of experience. And yes all the testing can not take the place of a regional, not matter how much they try. (Does Windows work every time you use it, what service pack is current now?) Go back to your teams, look at all the people there, Engineers, Students and Teachers, these are the same people that are developing the scoring system. People who love FIRST, and should get the same amount of respect that you show your team.

Next year, take a week of vacation, fly to New Hampshire and volunteer to help get the fields ready. I promise you IT WILL be an education! The 8 people that are FIRST Engineering would love all the expert help, that all you posters are offering to give.

The moral to the whole story: Have the GDC design the game the year before. Right now they should be putting the final touches on the 2007 game. So that FIRST Engineering has enough time to do their job.

Re: NASA/VCU field problems
 

Again, I am not usually quick to find fault with things, generally, and FIRST, specifically, so it pains me to be on the side I have found myself.

I appreciate the backstory as to what happened, but at least with respect to problems with the field/scoring/ranking system, this is getting to be a trend. I think there is some justifiable disappointment in the results (though not perhaps with the effort).

Finally as to the bit of your message I have quoted above, as far as I know nobody ASKED for volunteers to help do this. If they had, I suppose that folks would have stepped up to the challenge.

Joe J.

Re: NASA/VCU field problems
 

My team and I watched allot of the games today between jobs of building robot cart and getting our 2005 robot ready for show.
Did the scoring get better in the finals? I saw numerous times when the autonomous scores were wrong. In one match only two robots moved in autonomous mode (1 red and 1 blue), The blue bot dumped it's load of balls and scored 12 points :ahh: I thought you could only hold 10 balls max. I would like to think they could have someone watch the score and adjust accordingly.
I wonder if putting a lighter chain in the center goal would keep balls from bouncing out. I lost count of how many balls bounced out of the center goal. This can really remove the wind from your sails to nail the 3 point goal and receive nothing :(

Re: NASA/VCU field problems
 

Joe -

Don't be so quick to accept the backstory - particularly when it is not correct, and delivered by someone that was not there.

Everyone needs to read Jason Morella's message again. The bottom line is that the excuses from the software developers, FIRST, or anyone else don't matter. Every team deserves to have the same quality experience, whether it is the first week of competition or the last. FIRST's customers - the teams - all have a reasonable expectation to participate in a high-quality event. The software developers customer - FIRST - deserves a quality product for which they have contracted and paid. There is no reason to expect or accept anything less.

The FIRST leadership has this same belief. They know there is a problem. I believe they are committed to fixing it, and ensuring that it does not happen again. Excuses don't matter. Stepping up and doing something about the situation does.

-dave

Re: NASA/VCU field problems
 

We can not change the score during the match. We saw early on the discrepancy and figured out where the extra points were coming from by Friday. It was a physical issue and should be corrected by next week.


The software from Hatch is better than last year, but in my opinion still at an unsatisfactory level for release.

Wetzel

Re: NASA/VCU field problems
 

Although I note the sarcasm, I still appreciate the post :) You have shed a little more light on the problem, although I am unclear how well people flying from all over the US to come help set up the field in NH would be received.

Really, though, I understand the tone of your post. No one wants to work that hard and be criticized. I know I don't. But let's face it, there ARE two words in gracious profesionalism. By all accounts there seems to be trend in not getting the fields fully functional for week 1 regionals. There is no doubt in my mind that the people involved in this love FIRST and are doing their absolute best to get things working. It would be easy if it was the same game every year, but since it isn't , things have to be done from scratch....every single year. A professional would be remiss, however, if he/she noted flaws in a process and said nothing (see the Space Shuttle program). A professional would be even more remiss if he/she heard about these flaws and did nothing to correct them.

I am not making any claims to being an expert in this particular problem. The reason I am not is because the only information I have comes from this forum. The process of field design from the minutiae of nuts and bolts to software is never published or open sourced(that I am aware of). Note all of the question marks in my previous post. There is a lot I don't understand. Clearly there is a problem, though. As a person that is "in the know" is the solution really to design the game a year ahead of time? Maybe you only need an extra two weeks, as most of the problems seem to be worked out by week 3. But if it is true that there is no way to test the field until a real competition, with real robots, then an extra year wouldn't help either. Again, I'm sure I don't understand the full scope of the problem, but there IS a problem.

It cannot be deemed acceptable to let a few teams be penalized while the "kinks" are worked out. Anyone who loves FIRST should be able to agree with that statement. The entire premise of the meticulously designed set of rules is to level the playing field for ALL teams. Wouldn't it be wrong to randomly pick 3 teams at a competition and DQ them?

So the point of all this is to try and find a solution. It isn't quite working the way it is. You mention that the field WAS tested before week 1 which is good, but the computers they used during the test were better than the ones used at the competition. Are the conditions that were used for the test published? In other words, to use your example, if the field is tested on using WindowsXP professional machines with 3.2 ghz processors and 1 gb of RAM with 120 gb hard drives, then that would have to be the logical minimum requirements for a reliable system. Another question, are all of the fields constructed de novo at each regional? I am presuming that lessons learned are passed along as the problems seem to decrease as the season progresses. But are the computers different at every regional? It just seems that if the test field worked correctly, then each of the regional venues should replicate the test field. Well it is too late to think clearly any more, so I am just going to post.

Re: NASA/VCU field problems
 

This, folks, is what I think of when I hear "Gracious professionalism!"

Re: NASA/VCU field problems
 

I am thankful for both Jason's and Dave Lavery's comments. It think that it shows that FIRST owns the problem and will address it.

I think at this point we are in danger of just summarizing ourselves.

So... ....I am going to move this to the moderated forum.

If you've got something new to add, by all means, fire away with a response. But potential posters and all moderators should know that the bar is going to be pretty high with respect to approving posts.

Joe J.

Re: NASA/VCU field problems
 

What amazes me about the software is that it was written by the same company as last year. This gave them a huge advantage over last year since they already had something to work off of and only needed to change how the scores are tabulated. If I heard correctly they also had to write the software to count the balls as they entered the goals. This I can see having bugs since vision processing is a very hard task.

From a programming point of view I can accept counting issues in the software although I would prefer not to have them. What I can not accept is the the other issues there were with the software which should have been exactly the same or very similar to last year. There is no excuse for the rankings not working. This is a very simple sort with very simple rules behind them this year.

I have written scoring software before and I know how hard it can be but some of the biggest problems with the software FIRST is using is from things that should be working. I would rather have a system which works than looks good.

Re: [moderated]: NASA/VCU field problems
 

I also think it’s good that FIRST “owns the problem” and intends to take corrective action. I wouldn’t expect anything less.

However, that is not the way the real world works. When two or more parties enter into a contract there are expectations from all sides that the others live up to their end of the bargain from day one. Eventually is not good enough. There are consequences for every day that one side is in breach of contract. The teams who paid their $6 by the 9-Dec. deadline had every reason to expect that FIRST would live up to their end of the deal. Especially since FIRST has rigorously enforced the team’s requirements – W9, ship date, etc., and etc.

If my rental car broke down and they told me to hitchhike back and they’d rent me another, I’d be seeing them in court. I don’t see a whole lot of difference between that and this. Week one broke down and FIRST is saying bear with us, but do so at your own expense.

In my opinion, FIRST owes EVERY first week team at least a partial refund. If the fault is that of a third party, then it’s up to FIRST to recoup from them. The same goes for this week #2. I think we’ll see results much faster when it starts coming-out-of-pocket for the ones who are at fault.

Re: [moderated]: NASA/VCU field problems
 

While I also understand the sarcasm implied...the time in which the field is made appears to line up with my winter break. I would be quite happy to spend Christmas working on those fields in doing anything that could possibly be helpful. It is an embarrassment to FIRST to not have these fields be functional but I believe I don't have a right to criticize unless I'm also offering to help.

If the problem really comes from the time constraints of building a field why not put another week between ship date and the first week of regionals next year? The game can't change during that time...

Pretty much every team brings a computer to a regional. I am sure one of them would have been willing to temporarily trade (or if they brought two just flatly lend) laptops with the scorekeepers for the good of the regional. Did anybody ask? If it was known that that was the reason why didn't anybody? If the problem was fixed Friday night then it must have been found sometime on Friday. Matches after that time could have been fixed with a computer trade.

As to the size of the task? The difficulty of the challenge? I'd rather quote Woodie Flowers on this:

"So that's why we've tried to give you a problem too big, a time too short, a budget too small and a team too large. The reason we do that is that's the way things happen. That's a very realistic set of constraints. That's the way we make progress."

Many people (as I am sure you know) avidly hate Windows for this and many other reasons. If FIRST holds itself to standards no higher than Windows it is very logical that in many places it will be received with equal warmth. If this is the standard FIRST decides to be held to then it has no understandable reason to be upset about these complaints.

Why isn't this stuff open source? I am sure many teams would love the chance to practice on a more realistic field and you could have bugs being reported (as well as suggested solutions) firing back at you all season...even from real robots as time goes on. Once the game is released there is no need for secrecy.

People talked about lending FIRST robots to test the field. Is there really anything a combination of last year's robots driving donuts on the field with humans throwing balls in the goals from the sidelines would not properly simulate?

Re: [moderated]: NASA/VCU field problems
 

We at team 111 are ready to help contribute in any way we can to solve this problem. I encourage FIRST to call us and ask if they think there is any way we can help. Whether that involves flying to Manchester to help build fields as someone suggested, or lending a robot as others suggested or anything else, we are willing to help if we possibly can.

I know we are not the only ones that feel this way. Just ask.

Re: [moderated]: NASA/VCU field problems
 

I am closing this thread. I have opened a new thread to discuss field related issues.

Thanks to all who shared their thoughts.

I think it was a good discussion.

Joe J.