Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

There was a lot of discussion about the problems that FIRST had with the Field/Real Time Scoring/Team Ranking System last week. See this thread for what problems folks had and what FIRST (or at least Dave Lavery & Jason Morrella*) has said about it.

I don't want this thread to get into a re-hash of last week. I really would like it to be an opportunity for us to discuss what is working and (if we have to and can do it respectfully) what is not working.

So... ...share with us what you know.

Personally, I would really like to hear from folks who worked behind the scenes last week and are doing it again this week. Tell us the straight scoop.

Also, (again for me personally) I am interested in the view of participants and especially the view from the stands by those who are non-FIRST fanatics but just folks who are coming to see the show (and perhaps support their kids).

If we can all play nice, we can keep this thread out of the Moderated Forum.

Let's hear what you've got to say.

Joe J.


*Jason Morrella <- notice 2 R's & 2 L's Jason is too nice of guy to say anything, but we ought to TRY to spell his name right shouldn't we?

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Because it was only practice day I just found the scores of 500-600 hilarious. The balls would get backed up in the corral and then they would continuously score for the alliance. Other than this there weren’t any major problems from what I saw at GLR. Plus there is quite a complex filed setup so I can see it taking a while to get all of the bugs worked out. And yes I agree with Joe lets please not let this thread become moderated.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Let's face it. We're experiencing the effects of First's success. More regionals, a very lush KOP, lots of new teams and more complex playing field. Everyone involved in the administration is probably feeling the effects of time compression. Going into the future with this kind of growth is going to require more long range planning. This means that even though the 2006 completion is just starting the 2007 initial planning should be about wrapped up. To get ahead and more in control is going to be painful. The price of success.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

I was involved at UTC with the field setup and testing yesterday, and I was hovering around the scoring table all day today. The counting system seems to be working much better than at BAE last week (considering we have the same field), and we've only had one miscalibration problem with a corner goal (it was continuously counting upwards). The real-time score display was up and running the whole time.

There were some matches where the green lights were randomly on or off when they weren't supposed to be (e.g. both lights it during the 2nd period) but the problem disappeared with the next match. We'll just have to keep an eye out for that and sound the foghorn if it happens in competition.

As for the rankings, I have no clue how well they work, since we haven't been processing the data from the practice matches.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

The bad thing about having the next season wrapped up by the end of this season is they have to come up with the game, define the rules, and then design the field and what not. Plus there is a greater chance of info leaking about the game. It’s not the complexity of the game, its the complexity of the scoring system. That’s the only detail that needed to be worked out better. I personally think they are doing a great job by stepping into the realm of an automated game. It can make scoring discrepancies obsolete and provide for more complex games in the future. But these are just all my thoughts. Good luck at regionals this weekend everyone.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Yep, I definitely saw scores of 520 during one practice match. The scoring system appears to be working pretty flawlessly. The field in general is pretty nice. Some robots really killed the balls, and others didnt even leave a mark on them. As for the upper goals, we didnt have a problem with them falling out, but they would get jammed and then not go down at all...until someone reached up and banged on it some. I dunno how thats gonna work out tomorrow, but i'm sure its something that will be addressed at the drivers meeting. If not, I intend on bringing that question up.

EDIT: There were also other scoring errors. In one match, only one team dumped balls, but the end of autonmous score was 21 and they only dumped 10....the system counted an extra ball through the corner goal.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

One team at the UTC regional scored over 2100 points in autonomous alone. I was highly impressed.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Is that with 10 point bonus for auto mode win? :D

At buckeye, there dident seem to be too many issues field wise, but i didnet get alot of time to watch many pratice matches. Tommrow will be the true show if fields are better.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Not many problems at Arizona; a few matches with some miscounts, but the only real problem came when the entire blue alliance during our practice match didn't initialize, so we got to sit there for 3 minutes. We got an extra match at the end to make up for it though.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

If balls get jammed in the goal, there is supposed to be a field reset/ scorekeeper behind the goal with a PVC "prod" to unwedge the balls so they will fall down the chute.

As long as that one extra ball in autonomous is not enough to decide why wins autonomous, the score is changed at the end of the match.

Also: A problem we found at VCU: If there are a lot of balls in the corral and a robot dumps more balls in, there was a possibility that new balls would bouce off of the original balls and back up onto the light causing them to be scored twice. Our solution for this was to put another plastic bin beside each corral and have someone there to pull balls out of the corral and into that bin. The human players could still pull from that bin, but it kept so many balls from being in the corral.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Word from Kevin K. at Buckeye is that they are on a 30 minute delay so far on Qualifying Match 4. Blue side of the field is being completely switched out with equipment.

Doesn't sound fun.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

There seems to be a lot of variability among fields. The one used at PNW wasn't that bad (except for one match of ours -- want to see video?) Last year at Portland there was a L-O-O-O-N-G delay one day (something like an hour or two), but this year they moved right along. I don't think they were more than a half-hour late finishing, most of which probably came from the time spent cleaning up Poof balls from the floor.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

UTC had some problems to today that need up with 1 rematch and a restart. from what i hear the computer that was running the blue alliance keep crashing and locking up.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Yes, we had a few random technical problems at UTC today.

At one point the blue side of the field lost power when someone tripped over a cable at the scoring table, so there was a slight delay while the counting computer was rebooted. When it was ready once again, the match was started but the blue IFI equipment hadn't synced up and the blue robots didn't go into autonomous mode properly. We quickly caught on to that and restarted the match.

The problems with the team rankings display in the pits were because of a damaged cable; once fixed, they were correct. Discrepancies between the displayed number of QPs for certain teams and how many QPs they themselves thought they had were not because of faulty software; the data was incorrectly entered into the system and has since been fixed.

Also, the right-side blue corner goal started counting up randomly a few times, either because of debris on the illuminated sheet or because the screen was bent out of shape. Note, however, that all the official end-of-match goal counts are coming from people at each goal with clickers. The automatic system has been used for displaying the real-time scores only.

Since the same problems weren't happening more than once or twice each, and since most of them dealt with the synchronization of the software and hardware of three different companies (National Instruments, IFI and Hatch), I'm willing at this point to chalk the field problems up to circumstance and congratulate those three companies on a job well done.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Tell me, if I hadn't noticed that we were still disabled during auto mode, would that match have went on, or was there some display showing we weren't enabled?

I know of at least one match we were in that was screwed up. When the scores first appeared, and were announced.. I think they were 30-11. About a second before they disappeared from the screen, they were 30-17. Seeing as how a number of different people from our team saw us score 4 balls in the middle goal, I'm hoping the second one was the actual score. There was also a DQ that match that wasn't announced
*JUst checked the match results, it went in as 30-17, which is fine by me.


Only one other problem.. we had the metal cover from the alliance lights fall onto our controls when a robot hit the wall. That was a bit shocking.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

I think GLR was pretty rough today. First off, auto scoring was down most of the day. Scores were based on the referees, which I think was as inaccurate as the computer system at times. The refs decided to also make the offesnse/defense random becuase whenever who won autonmous was placed on defense first, their score defaulted to 540 for no apparently reason. It was finally fixed for Match 53. In Match 53, the field equipment decided to die. CD 47's robot never went out of autonomous. They reset the field and tried it again...then no one went into autonomous. They rebooted their equipment and CD's robot still stayed in autonomous. They finally swapped out field equipment. We almost had to replay a match because the team before use used the E-Stop in the match** and no one reset it. We caught it right before the start of the match when we didnt know why only our alliance light was flashing. The scoring display in the pits also malfunctioned. Some teams Win/Loss was messed up, then it just stopped working all together. There were also various disputes regarding the penalty flags being thrown for back bots, but i'm not even gonna go on that rant.

** We were told to E-Stop if we flipped over and were dead for the match to avoid issues with offesnse/defense and the back bot because the disabled robot does not count as one of the 2 robots.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

When I noticed that the blue 'bots weren't moving, I checked and saw that their LED's were still solid blue (disabled mode) instead of rapidly blinking (autonomous mode). I alerted Melissa, the scorekeeper, and she killed the match.

Ricky from IFI would have noticed it on the scanner if the match had gone on any longer. (On a side note, that scanner is amazing - it picks up all sorts of useful information such as battery voltages and disabled states, just by intercepting the communications between the various RCs and OIs. It's thanks to it that the staff is able to warn teams on the field about dead backup batteries and the 8.3V bug. So far, we've been able to catch and rectify every single control system problem brought about by a team's negligence, before the match starts.)

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

THIS should give you an idea of how well the scoring system worked at GLR.
???

There were three to five system reboots

About six re-starts - five software, one hardware.

Automatic scoring was unreliable. Went to human counters.

Lost match list during third match.

Teams -1, -1, -1 both won and lost many matches

Red started on offense no matter who won autonomous in way too many matches.

Chains did a good job at preventing lightning from striking players; not so good at dampening shots.

Winners became loosers and vise-versa early in the day; then it flip-flopped.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

My experience with the field at UTC:

Ok, so on thursday we didnt get a single practice run in do to our robot being 10 pounds overweight. We got it fixed thursday night and today we had more stuff break.

But all that doesnt matter, we got about 3 rounds on the field today, 1 of which we got a dq for.

heres what happened:

We had 2 and 1/4 inch bumpers on our robot, and the driver decided that we should go for the lower goal. We drove up to the goal, but our shooting mechanism had an error we ended up pushing balls in. Now to the fun part, when we pushed in, we rammed it with full speed, bending the plexi-glass and triggering the light sensor, we dumped a few more balls, and rammed it again. At the end of the round we all sat and wondered why the score for our alliance was up in the 200 range. Then we got disqualified for "intentionally" getting our robot in the light sensor. I dont think that we deserved the DQ, but oh well. Other than that I saw control of the robots on the field go out a few times and 1 match restart. I was in the pit getting yelled at most of the day so I didnt really watch much.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

I've walked past it a couple times, and it looked fun to play with, but I never got a chance to stop and look at it. I assume it's also because of this that they know if anyone is operating over radio :)


That is not a bad idea.. hopefully I'll never have to think like that.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Florida Regional had two rematches held at the end of the day. There were a few -1, -1, -1 teams, but overall it was decently decent.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Actually, The team at buckeye did one helluva job keeping the field good. There were maybe a handful of matches that had auto problems that were able to be solved quickly, i dont think there was any more than a ~40 min delay, and they were able to make up the time by teams moving quickly getting the field reset.

The scariest field moment wasnet even the fields fault! A robot during the match before us had some autonomus problems and made a full speed run directly at one of the field door/ramps. Hit with enough force to disengade the lock, flop down the ramp, and pop out the plexi covering. my drive team was standing just feet from where it happend waiting for our match, Made all of our alliace jump and take a few steps back!

Also, Bob from Innovation First at Buckeye was amazingly helpful. Team 1278 has been having many RC gremlins, and he has always been able to offer a helping hand or a suggestion!

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Great Lakes regional field problems galore. The crew is really trying to make things work, but the system just doesn't seem robust enough to handle the situation at hand.
So many problems with the scoring software that they simply gave up and went back to humans keeping track - in close matches where it isn't obvious, when autonomous ends the scorers "report in". The match is put temporarily onhold until they figure out whom won the autonomous period and then they restart the timer announcing which alliance is on offense.
If no one wins the auton period they "randomly" select a color to go on offense.
The score board isn't working most of the time - so you don't really know what the score is unless you somehow keep track in your head.
At the end of the match the head ref announces the penalties (I like that part because then you can figure out which robot/team is doing silly things to get penalized)
All in all - I feel really bad for the good folks that have volunteered to coordinate and run the regional event - it must be difficult dealing with the inconsistent and unreliable programs and systems.
Unfortunately, I think the delays and problems distract from the game - it makes the game choppy and even more difficult to watch/understand.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

I wanted to get some sleep before I posted this. I am the game announcer at Great Lakes and the scoring system situation here is a nightmare. The blue alliance station real time score was accumulating most of the day. Meaning, after each match the blue alliance real time score would not get reset to 0. Even if red won the auton, the scoring system would place the green light on for the red alliance. However, the refs are doing a miraculous job at keeping track of who really won auton.

A scoring laptop reboot seemed to fix that problem and the real time started working (somewhat) again.

In matches 1 through 11, some of the results got transposed (red won, but blue got the win). This was human error and the rankings will get fixed before teams arrive this morning.

I think the system will be working much better today because we identified some software and hardware problems. However, we will still be using human back-up for scoring.

The real time scoring was working for the last few matches of the day, but the red high goal was not counting balls. I think that is also fixed.

-Paul

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

The field is working much more smoothly than last weekend here at UTC. The sensors, when cleaned, are usually only off by one from the human real timers. Our one rematch was from a sensor not sensing a ball and thus giving the wrong person the autonomous. We had one false start b/c the blue side wasn't responding during autonomous. The sensors start going to crazy when the robots have been hitting the side goals and when the ball foam parts are getting on the lens. John, our Field Supervisor is doing a wonderful job with fixing those. Mark, our FTA, keeps on top of making sure the counts and the field our working. The rankings are working fine. The pit computer decided to show the results from BAE when a cable got cut, but once we reran the cable it was showing the results from UTC again.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

There are sensors on the ramp which will hold the scoring open until all the balls in the goal are counted prior to ending autonomous, so the timing of the poker is not critical.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

I was not there, but listening to the webcast, it sounded pretty bad at GLR.

From what Copioli and Verbrugge were saying I suppose the Real Time Scoring system was sufficiently unreliable that it caused more confusion than help in knowing who was winning.

Also, it seemed like there were a lot of software lockups, mis-scored autonomous periods, and gremlins of 100 other kinds.

Is that pretty much how it seemed to those actually attending?

For what it is worth, my wife attended Friday AM and was baffled by the entire game. I think that was when the real time scoring system was totally off, so it kind of confirms my believe that this year's game really requires a reliable real time scoring system.

Joe J.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

I'll second. There were definitely problems with the scoring system even today. I believe they were pausing the match after autonomous to get the winner from the manual scoring. Also, the first match of the finals was restarted after autonomous mode. With no explaination, just a lot of waiting around for the crowd, and a foghorn.

I've noticed the spectator difficulty as well. I suspect it stems from the fact that in all previous games you had a decent shot of telling who was winning by just a glance at the field. This year, if real time scoring isn't working, you can blink and not have a clue who's winning.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

So here's the report from GLR.

First many thanks to John from IFI, Ron from FIRST and all of the scorers and the rest of the volunteers. Personally I am exhausted, this was a very trying weekend for the field team. I'd also like to thank the students, coaches and mentors for their patience and unending professionalism. I apologize if I lost mine at any point and I hope everyone had a great time. In general the robots were the best I've ever seen (except of course for the fires :) ).

So here are my observations on the field and scoring.

Starting Friday Morning:

We realized after the first couple of matches, that when we went to enter the ramp points and penalties, the electronic score erased.

After the third match, the entire match list disappeared, we got it back a few matches later (we continued to run off the printed list, but scores were lost and we had to start scoring over. At this point, I decided we would use human scoring as the official score. Not perfect, but verifiable and consistent.

So then, after match 11, we realized the head ref was transposing scores on his sheet (thanks to team members for bringing this to our attention), to be honest, at that point, we had our heads buried in attempts to fix the scoring system, and were not actually watching the matches.

By late morning, the blue side of the field scoring went haywire, 42 points in every autonomous period, (+10 points), also the end score for blue was 132 points regardless of the actual scoring. At this point I decided to shut off the real time scoring display as it was pure nonsense and we had been relying on the manual scoring anyway. After lunch we determined it was not a sensor failure, but instead a DAQ box to to scoring computer comm issue. After re-initializing the DAQ box, rebooting the blue scoring computer (at the red end) and the main scoring computer eventually we happened upon the correct sequence, from that point on, the scores were recorded correctly. We monitored for a while before putting the score back on video, but had real time scoring back up before the end of the day. I chose to keep the matches going using manual scoring and put fixing the real time system on the back burner in order to stay somewhat close to schedule.

In late morning we experienced a failure to initialize a robot on the blue end. We replaced the arena controller and it ran fine for a while, the problem re-occured later in the afternoon but worked after a match restart, so we limped through the last couple of matches of the day. After the end of competiton, we tested the units, replaced the station relay and tested some more.

Saturday Morning, as we were finishing field testing after rebooting and reinitializing all computers, DAQ boxes controllers, etc... We found the initialization problem had spread to another station, on the same end. After failing to clear the problem with another arena controller, we replaced the entire box during opening ceremonies. This of couse failed to correct the problem until I combined relays from stations in both panels from stations which had not failed.

From this point onward, things actually ran well, too well of course, as lightning struck in match one of the finals when the field froze at the end of autonomous mode. The cause was a reported red zone "ball in chute", essentalltially the DAQ box on that end lost the reset signal from the main scoring computer. Another reset of the DAQ box and we were off to the races.


Again, thanks to everyone for their patience and professionalism. Thanks especially to the manual scorers for doing an excellent job of scoring game which was clearly not designed for manual scoring. Also many thanks to teams 66 and 33 for help with set up and teardown, team 857 for help with field clean up and set up Thursday night, ITT Technical schools for additional "volunteers" to help with scoring, and all the rest of the volunteers. Without them none of this can happen.


Ben Tower
GLR 2006 Field Supervisor

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

See my report below, the pause after Autonomous is due to the "ball in goal" sensors which allow all the balls in the goal at the end of autonomous to be scored as autonomous points. There is no way to manually pause the field timer.

Ben

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

I was working Pit Admin so I saw less than 10 matches before the finals. (For the finals I was switched to provide additional queuing assistance.) At the Pit desk, we heard very few complaints about the field or real-time scoring.

But if we could have a nickel for every question about the accuracy of the rankings, we'd be rich. We finally turned the monitor off, figuring no results were better than the wrong ones. They found the problem with that Friday night, and then the questions became, "But the score in Match XX isn't correct." - see the head ref. Sorry Ron, for having to send so many your way.

Hopefully the fixes described in this thread will make it better for the remaining weeks.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

If you want a warm and fuzzy feeling about the automatic counting, then you're headed for a let-down.

As you may know, GLR went to human goal count because they just could not believe those (EG) 478 low goal shots in practice.

They compiled statistics as to how many match results would have been reversed had the auto count been used.

Want numbers? Ask FIRST. :confused: :( :eek:

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

I'd guess 90% of the match results would have been wrong if auto counting was used.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Not at all regionals. UTC's auto was generally right. Mark Koors, our FTA, fixed the configuration of the sensors so that it was pretty accurate.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Read it again. It wasn't simply a matter of the wrong count. They tracked the ones where the wrong count would have made winners loose.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

So, you're content with generally right and pretty accurate? Good thing we're not hunting Quail!

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

I'm not saying it was perfect. The human real timers and the automatic system were usually dead-on, except in cases of the cameras being blocked. When it was off, it was usually off by one or two at most.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Florida on Saturday worked out pretty well. There was only one close call significant enough that field reset could notice it, and that was semifinal 1-2, where 357's alliance beat 233's by two points according to the computers. The human counters said 357 won by one point. That's good enough for me.

(And since the field at Florida eventually gets to Palmetto, it makes me feel quite confident for when it's our turn to throw some balls around.)

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

The computers seemed to be generally right but when there was a discrepancy having counters on all the corners made all the difference.

We had 1 match the first day that there was a problem and we had to replay it. We had won the match but the second time we went out our robot wasn't functioning and we lost. It was unfortunate but we still believe it was the right call.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Cold comfort to a team (like ours) that lost three matches by a cumulative total of three points.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

I was the Emcee at the Pittsburgh Regional. Things were going great during qualification matches, a little too smoothly if anything. For the most part the auto-counting worked alright, matching fairly closely to what the human counters tallied. Problems occurred left and right in the elimination rounds with our scoring system. There was some controversy with the scoring. Teams grew frustrated and tired, the crowd grew restless. SF2 went to 4 matches, with I think 5 or 6 starts. There was a huge delay in the finals due to field problems in addition to the time that the crew had to work on it during the timeout called. There were still problems with only one side being reenabled after autonomous. Comparing it to the NJ Regional, Pittsburgh's field worked immensly better and the scoring volunteers and Corey were much better prepared to solve the fields problems.

-wayne

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

First of all, I'd like to thank Ron Webb for talking me out of heading up North last week, so I could feel all warm and fuzzy about the field down here at UCF. I agree with Billfred, and would have to say that it was one of the smoothest that I've seen the field run in quite a few years.

We did have only a few small problems - had to backup the auto count with a human count on Saturday, but it was mostly accurate. Also the field needed a reboot a few times in Elims, which was relaxing more than annoying (well, for me anyways. But that's because I got to nap on the ramp.) Whatever was right with the Florida program, we need to copy it and send it to all of the 3rd week regionals.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

We had a scoring disaster in match 12 at the GLR. Our robot scored 21 points (we put 5 in the center goal to win autonomous 15-0, and put in two more 3-pointers in the match), yet somehow we lost the match 12-0 (the score was reported as 12-3 with our alliance getting a 5-pt penalty). Basically, none of our 3 point shots counted during that match. In the end, it didn't mean anything for us in the standings, but I hope this isn't a recurring event.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

The field at GLR was a nightmare and I have no doubt in my mind that the final standings would have been different if things were working correctly. First I think it has to be said that everyone did what they could given the circumstances. There simply isn't the time to rehash things out to get the real story at these events.

We were in match two and were told that the score thing went down on this match and nobody happened to see the score so the refs had to basically search their minds and remember who they think got what points. If you are not absolutely sure, then you need to replay the match. There is too much riding on this to have people "remembering" the results.

The next 12 matches is where the ref was transposing the scores on his paper. Even after they "fixed" this there were teams that were sure that it was wrong. We were in match 14 and the official final score that was shown on the screen was 4 red 7 blue. We would have won. The next day the score comes up as a tie. After much frantic checking we were told that the scores were mixed up and after a 5 point penalty was assessed against one team it made the score 7 to 7. now you tell me how either of these scores with a 5 added or subtracted equals 7? Our final standings would have come closer to the top and we might have made quarter finals.

Most teams had no idea what was going on with the scores on Friday, no standings were given and those that were posted later were wrong. We were told Saturday all would be fixed but Saturday morning they were still wrong and by the time they got them "fixed" it was too late to dispute.

I am really disappointed with this problem, but I think the teams that won deserved it and played really well. I think the ref's did what they could, but like my husband said, "Aren't these supposed to be rocket scientists designing this thing?" That says it all.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

As said before Florida Regional's scoring went really well. The only thing noticeable was that if robots rammed into the corner goals, they would increase their score by 1 point.

So, in autonomous, a lot of corner bots would get in 11 or 12 points because they hit corner goal a few times and increased their score. This isn't significant but sometimes, the only robots scoring in autonomous were corner bots and if there was a score like "11-10" because one robot rammed into the corner goal, that team would get the autonomous bonus when, in reality, no one deserved it.

So, I suggest that we have refs looking at the real time scoring to watch out for that. It's not the "offense/defense" round or the extra 1 point that really makes a difference but the refs should notice if a team gets the autonomous bonus when it was really an error due to the auto scoring. It should be pretty easy, if the only robots that are scoring are corner robots, make sure that at the end of the round, there isn't a score like "11" or "12" -- usually it doesn't happen, but if it does, the match's end score could be off by 11 or 12 points (the 1 pt difference and the 10 pt bonus).

And we just have to make sure balls don't get jammed in the corner and keep scoring. It happened once with our team (we were allied w/ 1902 who posted above) but looking at the other regionals, it was good that this only happened once.

good luck to the future regionals.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

In Arizona they had to restart a good number of matches because the green lights wouldn't come on or they both came on. A couple times, one alliance's autonomous wouldn't come on. The last match of the regional was restarted twice. The real time scoring seems to work fairly well but sometimes they added in the 10 pt bonus and sometimes they didn't.

I didn't see it but I heard that in semifinals 330's alliance was put on the field because they were told they won but then pulled off the field because they were told that there was an error in the system and they actually lost.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

I must be missing something in the body of your post that supports the introduction, other than maybe that it was worse someplace else.

Machines and electronics must get it right every time, otherwise they're next to useless. They still had to have six people counting shots. To me, that says it all - they didn't trust it.

An auto industry expert in machine vision pointed out to me that the 60Hz florescent light source is conspiring with the video frame rate to produce destructive interference, which is why the pros use lasers. That makes sense to me. Test his theory for yourself. Drop a pair of small objects into a very calm body of water (a swimming pool a daybreak). Observe the waves as they radiate from each end. Then notice the patterns caused as they interfere in the center. They will appear to spawn more waves, the way those counters are spawning shots.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Hey, all those waits weren't so bad for us...our alliance got along great, we were actually having fun. I say it wasn't so bad now, when I'm not nearly dehydrated and dead on my feet, not to mention more nervous than I've ever been in my life about the next match and whether our alliance's many mechanical problems can be sorted out or not. But hey, it created a lot of memories.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Buckeye ran fairly well overall. There was the massive failure at the beginning of Friday that Ricky mentioned earlier, but other than that, the problems seemed fairly minor and quickly corrected. I'm extremely glad for the delay built in after autonomous ends for balls to be cleared from the upper goals - sometimes the delay was nearly 30 seconds!

I only saw one match where a ball got stuck in the low goal. It was an interesting match for me because I was coaching 1675 (my primary team) against 1714 (my secondary team and our mentor team). I looked up at the score about midmatch and it read 237-10 or something like that...so I knew that was wrong. In the end, I heard we had over 1000 points. It was ruled 53-3 at first, but that was wrong as well. In the end it was declared 28-28, but I've heard that that was wrong as well, but I haven't seen any video (and it doesn't matter).

Another issue that I expect to be common to ALL fields is the delay between the start of period 2 and the starting sound for period 2. I have my drivers step up as soon as the automode ends where as most drivers wait for the sound, which typically results in no moving robots until the clock reads 35 seconds.

There was one additional issue that I have NO idea what could be the cause of it. If there is no chance it could be field issue, let me know and I'll ask the question in the appropriate location. Our autonomous program runs perfectly on the practice field, but on the competition field, the robot moves 1 foot instead of 16' before shooting. Its almost as if the program is started BEFORE the robots are enabled and it just catches the tail end of the movement, when it adjusts for the goal. Any thoughts?

Kev

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Couple things i noticed. That the grace period was great for the autonomous to let the balls in. Didn't disrupt the game much and it allowed for latter balls to be scored. One thing i did find disapointing was the way the balls weren't replaced. I remember one ball i picked up as human player and my middle finger went about 3/4s of the way into the ball by way of a hole.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

I remember in our 2nd match in the finals of Great Lakes, they announced that we had in fact had not won the autonomous period, which changes things greatly. Although it would have made no difference in our loss, the outcome of autonomous mode and the 10pt bonus greatly changes the strategy. If one team were led to believe they won autonomous and played a shutout game afterwards, only to be told otherwise after the match, they'd be pretty miffed to say the least.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Autoscoring Problems occurred throughout the Elims. In the first start of SF2-4, 398 autonomously slammed into the alliance wall and knocked 1629's OI panel to the floor, breaking their joystick. The Field was never the same after this hit. False stars and communication problems were rampant. Autoscoring went from bad to nearly worthless. The Field was good in qualifying rounds but just couldn't last. The constant hits the alliance walls take from auto bots, ball dumpers, ramp bots, defense, and poof ball shots seems to knock things out of whack.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Autoscoring worked as well as our autonomous mode!

Actually some of the issues may have been the humans-
We were at the UTC Regional-
Our last match in the elims- Team 195 Scored 10 in Automode and accrued the 10 pt bonus. Thats 20 in my book. Then in the video I have I see 2-3 balls rolling in the corner goal. I thought we got 1 out of 2 in the 3pts goal while getting pushed back. (But thats not completely confirmed- though the announcer eluded to it as well.) Then 195 was trapped in the corner with a full load and was getting pushed around, but they mannaged to turn arround and face the corner goal. This allowed them to dump 3-4 that I could see (before the camera moves) but they had a full load and they were all poised to exit the robot- According to the Auto score, they went in.

At the end of the round the Auto scoring had us up 29-24 (All of which was easily accounted for in the video I have), The opponents had two teams on the Ramp and one playing defence- so they did not have any last second scoring, Team 236 was on the ramp for our alliance. That puts it at an even score. (34-34)

The final results- 35-26 - We Lose. No Penalties.

I reviewed the video I have - The above is what I can confirm from what I see on the DVD. And I see no possible way this score was possible ( I'm not disputing their score- If they had 35 and all the balls were counted correctly- they should have beat us by 1pt- I cant confirm, their score) I'm basically saying that There is no possible way at all that our score could be correct.

In our First Sat Morning Match- Team 228 GUS- felt the score we recieved was also impossible. I dont remember the scenario- I need to look at the video. I also felt that we werent getting the final scores that seemed were being accumilated (Even if we still don't win our matches- I'm concerned with how this effects everyone involved?)

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

I was at the NJ Regional doing Field Repair & Reset

Scoring issues were rampant;
The end goals were close to being reliable but there was 4 volunteers station at each of the end goals to do manual scoring
During some of the matches the team numbers & ranks would not show up when the final score was displayed
During the finals matches the score would be 35 to 55 but after no penalties were deducted the score would be 35 to 0, which would confuse the MC's and referees constantly

As for the field;
The field remained in good condition the carpet suffered maybe 2 - 4 small tears in it.
The poof balls were also in pretty good condition: out of all the robots running over them & shooters shooting them the NJ regional only had to replace a box and a half full (however many comes in a box) which isn't bad considering 63 robots were using them constantly throughout the 3 days.
As for the poof balls getting caught up in the center goal there were not many problems with it maybe once or twice 2 balls got caught up on one another and didn't drop right away but the field manager stationed one volunteer on each end to release balls.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

The problem of balls not exiting the center goal was very common. It mostly happened when large volleys of balls went into the goal (happened often). Either that or the balls would get stuck in the bottom because the angel they were thrown in at was so low that they didn’t even hit the chains and would become wedged in the netting (I don't know how but it happened). But the scores were kept manually fro most of the comp and the real time scores weren’t even posted.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

There didn't seem to be too many problems in St.Louis. A couple of times the scoring couldn't be shown on the screen. The biggest issue we had was the automonous not being counted correctly. For example, the extra 10 points wouldn't be awarded or not all the balls would score. Otherwise it wasn't too bad.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

This is a very very hard year for the scoring of matches, as many sensors are needed, compared to last year only having human counters. I congratulate FIRST on handling it as well as they did, considering it was soo much different from last year.

Although, their was MANY problems @ GLR, the main one was the hatch leaderboard being down for more then half the time, one match having to reset like 5 times due to various errors, and scores being posted backwards for the first 11! matches. So we were freaking out, our score was only 9, we scored at least 15, (score was posted 37 : 9 ), turned out the 37 was ours! They later fixed it,

suggestion: it would have been nice to have a field crew member near the scoring table, to tell any team members what happened, as i went there myself right after the match, and was not able to get any information other then (the official score for match XX was...) <but it was backwards...

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

Rampant is a good word. The scoring was going bad immediately before that as well; our alliance thought, based on the autoscoring on the screen, we had lost SF 2-3, when it came to a tie by the hand count. (Best feeling ever, by the way: thinking you're done then finding out you're still in it. :) )

That was a once-in-a-lifetime hit, that autonomous ram(or at least I hope it is). Our alliance partner, 1370, was running a blocking autonomous; they hit 398 just right to spin them so they'd make it up the ramp right in front of us, slamming into our wall. No one's fault, really, but we nearly freaked out when we realized the joystick broke. It was a horrible sight: our bot was doing donuts on the field and the match was still going. Thankfully, we had a spare, and the refs graciously let us tether our bot on the field to calibrate it.

Re: Week 2: So how's that Field Working?
 

I agree there.. we had one of the metal covers from the alliance lights fall onto our controls.. The wall seems really weak this year.

NOT Week 2 but Week 3: So how's that Field Working?
 

EDIT- OOPS, move to "Week 3: So how's that Field Working?" once we have one.


MWR was an improvement over GLR. The real time scoring appeared to work well in testing, but we still didn't trust it enough to use it as the official score. We had a group of Navy volunteers (Great Lakes trainees) and their instructors do the counting. I'll guaran-darn-tee you they got it right. GO NAVY!!!
The major malfunction with scoring was that, even if the sensor count hardware and software had it right, the Hatch scoring software displayed it wrong.

We had a couple of restarts because the system failed to reset after autonomous. Also, the clock would start at 38 instead of 40 when blue won autonomous, so winning autonomous was worth ten points plus two seconds. Note: that observation was from the RED perspective (that is, BLUE won auto, RED lost two seconds) The other perspective may have shown the same thing - don't know - wasn't stationed down there.

One curious gremlin was that teams lost radio communications a few times. It acted like someone had a radio out there on the same frequency - it always happened against RED #2. Twice at the end of the matches in quals. Again in the semis for a long time when 1213 went silent. A check in the pit showed nothing wrong with 1213's radio. In every case the IFI software showed full COM, but the robot went away, or got flaky on the scoring system side. There was no doubt in my mind that the drivers lost control of the robot - either that. or they deserve an Academy Award. Not one of the matches was re-played.

The low goals were modified with a U-channel stiffener across the top so that it would not flex inward on impact. It helped prevent incursion, along with the fact that we gave them a great big APPROXIMATELY three inches - only two DQs called for low goal incursion, both in the quals.