Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Please read Dr. Joe's intro FIRST:

Greetings from Milwaukee.

THE GOOD:
Put the Wisconsin Regional down on your "A" list as an event to attend in the future. They've done a great job in planning. nice venue - large pits - smooth flow - on time - great matches.

THE BAD:
It's a FIRST event -> It's all good.

THE UGLY:
The automatic scoring system.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

I noticed a few scores up in the 300 or so range on the realtime scoring on the video screen. They took it off for a couple matches. Team numbers on the alliance stations have been messed up a few times and the emcee called them the wrong number.

For corner goal incursion, they are giving a DQ and a disable, which is quite interesting. Doesn't hurt the team any more but it does hurt the alliance more.

Other than that is seemed okay.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Nope. I didn't call the wrong number. The numbers on the screen are wrong and I am looking at the teams' badges to get the team number. Basically, they are not setting the new team number until after we announce the teams.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

You were in LA too, Paul? Man! You shure get around!

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Here in NYC the automatic ball counting system is working very well. The only times there were problems was when there was human error (i.e. coaches putting their hands in front of the camera, human player forgetting to remove balls from the coral, teams driving their robots into the corner goals). They have two people (one ref, one real-time scorer) counting every goal just to make sure.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

The BMR was surprisingly good after seeing so many other regionals having problems... the only major differences that I noted can from penalties, which obviously aren't counted by the automatic. :)

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

The auto scores in the data were adjusted to account for penalty and ramp points.

Show us your numbers.

Which do they believe? And, show us your numbers.

If the auto scorer gets the autonomous winner wrong - does anybody catch on? If they do, and correct the ten points after the match, how do they change the fact that both teams played the game based on false information?

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Here at the Davis regional, we have 6 additional volunteers in ref shirts each in charged of a goal on the field, whose sole role is to count the balls going into them every round.

They each have a white board and marker on their hand, and they write down the number of balls that went into the goal when autonomous mode and the match is over. And each time, our head ref, Stu Bloom, standing in front of the scoring table, have the ball counters hold up their white board to show him what their number is, so he can record them on the little sheet and hands to the scorekeeper to calculate the official score.

So far all day yesterday this system has been working out really well for us. The ball counters are amazing, and they never shift their focus away from the goals. Stu did a great job organizing all these!

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

The main problem is not the final score. That is easily corrected. It's when the autonomous mode is incorrectly scored and the wrong team is declared the winner and goes on defense first.

This has happend to us twice...both in regional finals. One time we were declared the winner and one time the opposing alliance was. Both times were wrong and both times the wrong team went on defense first.

Sure, the 10 point bonus is easy to correct. But what about the change in strategy a team would do based on the outcome of autonomous mode?

The inability of the system to have humans override the autonomous mode scoring to get the winner right is something I hope gets corrected before Atlanta.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

If I read this right, you're saying the wrong alliance won about 1 out of 5 matches? As an FTA (NJ, Pitts & Philly) I find this very worrying. May I ask where the data comes from?

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Yes, I clearly remember that during Final 2, but one thing still makes me unsure...

Since the balls are sometimes travelling VERY quickly through the goals,
are the Counters 100% dependable? I know they are very good, but sometimes the outcome of the match (F 1-2 in Detroit) would have made a possible difference and a possible win if the autonomous was in our favor.

I don't doubt the counters accuracy, I just don't like the effects of not having 100% accuracy.

Tomasz Bania

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Balls aren't counted as they go through the goal, only as they go down the tube into the can... Hence, if balls bounce out, they aren't counted.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Sorry about that, I men't to say that balls going though the tube sometimes fall very quickly as seen when we both clogged the goals. But I still believe this is a possible, but not very likely, factor. But My argument still stands on corner goals.

Tomasz Bania

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

The scoring at Granite State was terrible. When a robot got too close to a coner goal the scoring went way up. I think it had something to do with shadows. FIRST added refs to the corner goals but it didnt really help. During a match we broke down and only one of our robots got to the corner goal. The team started with 10 balls and picked up two on the way over and dumped them. One ball did not go in. The scoring system showed 9. At the end of the match the score was 9-9. We talked to the head ref who talked to the ref at the corner goal. He came back to us and said that the corner ref couldn't be shure how many balls went in. So we ended up with a tie instead of a win. Another time we were with two other shooters. At the 4th period one of the coaches said we were up by 40 and to not shoot anymore and just go on defense. It turns out the board scored wrong and thats where the coach had looked. We ended up losing the match where we could have won.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Data is from the official score sheet - the standby, hand entered, hard copy.

NO - what it says is...
Assuming the human count was accurate, and had the auto-count been used as the official score, then the wrong alliance would have won 20 percent of the time. What it also say is that the wrong team went on offense after autonomy 1 of 5 times. There was no way to override it.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

I was watching Sacramento and that one was so bad that they had the teams reverse there sides as the teams were put by the computer on the wrong side. Than In Finals 2, the Robots Attacked!!! jk. The robot's autonomous were activated during setup and 1 robot (I believe 955's) rammed into the corner goal and it looked like it could have been knocked over if it was hit any harder.

Good Luck!
Tomasz Bania

P.S. The awards ceremony happened only 4 1/2 hours later there than they were supposed to. (CEREMONY RIGHT NOW)

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Yea, The numbers were always behind, and Paul did a great of announcing the correct team name. He mixed one number up, but oh well. He also worked in the spider monkies and Tie-dye under wear!

I can't beelive you were posting at 2 am paul!

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

NYC was good. There were some game system problems, but nothing too out there.

We knocked one of the field access doors off in autonomous and got a penelty. I think a mild hit on the door shouldn't make it fall on the field, and if it does should not be a penelty.

My two cents.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

The field at Boston had very few problems. Our automatic scoring was usually correct with the human scoring. Only one bad start during the elimination rounds because of a communication error with the blue alliance. Friday, we only had two matches that had to be restarted, once when the field randomly decided to turn on and the other from a communication error. We discovered that in the case of a tie during the elimination rounds, the score will not show.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

As some of you have said, the scoring at WI was somewhat faulty [...scoring code, done dirt cheap!] but only during autonomous modes involving big shooters like 70, 494, 1103, 1625, and most notably, 111 who seemed to trigger a restart every match. The people manually scoring, however, did an excellent job (there were at least two crew members counting the balls entered on each goal).

In terms of field work, I know that our team was responsible for 1 or 2 powerful autonomous runs to the low goal which resulted in the lefthand side of each driver's station (position 1) being shifted backwards about 3 inches. After very regrettably causing damage to another team's elegant control system early Thursday morning (it flew off of the shelf and they were unable to catch it) in auton mode, we pulled our power back a bit in the same auton mode and were able to score goals very well. As far as I saw, the field was never "realigned" because of the immense amount of work involved in doing so, but this difference was negligible over the course of the competition.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

From a driver's perspective, I had one simple problem with the field. The mid-line did not extend all the way to the edges of the field.

Now normally this really doesn't matter, but when a driver is the backbot and chasing balls around sometimes they come really close to the midline and do not want to pick up a penalty and so are being careful. But one time in SVR I remember driving to pick up a ball in the blue starting zones and realizing that from my angle I really couldn't tell if I had a wheel across the midline or not.

All the refs at midline crouched down and I just gunned it out of there to avoid a penalty but it was a close call.

I'd hope they consider extending that mid-line all the way to the edges of the field to help out the backbot driver who really doesn't have that excellent angle you have from the stands to tell where the mid-line is while cutting it close.

Anyway, back to your discussion on auto ball-counters

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

One thing that I noticed is that not every ball was counted when it went into the corner goal. We had issues with the score in a match, and they told us that they relied on the real time scoring, even though they said that it is not reliable earlier. Seems strange to me.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Our first finals match, they didn't do the offense/defense correctly after autonomous. That caused such a huge delay to get the correct score, which ended up being a tie.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

It took 20 minutes or more to figure the correct score after someone pointed out how impossible it was to get 13 points in auto with only one robot scoring in the corner. They way I see it, too many balls came in at once, flooding the corral and triggering the auto-score to count too high. Then the computer took over. The real auto score would have been 12-10, red. The computer saw 13-12, blue, and put red on offense first.

As a side note, multiple times during the finals (mostly) matches would be replayed due to the computer not picking a team for offense or lights not being on.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Just as an observer comparing SVR and Davis/Sacramento Regionals, the one in Davis was very efficient and had very few delays. In some cases, I thought they were actually ahead of schedule or pretty much on schedule. Not to rag on SVR, but there were some times at SVR where it was a whole half-hour behind. Looks like the field crew really did their job at Davis and got everything moving.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Looks like there are a few regionals with "issues" that seem to have a common thread.

At the SBPLI Regional the active on screen scoring was attempted for a few of the early matches on Friday but was discarded quickly as it was not reliable info. It was never used for the rest of the regional. Not a real biggie but I know that with the scoring of this year's game many of the on field coaches had come to rely on this as a good guide to where they stood.

The ranking system was never updated after the 4th match and from Friday afternoon until literally 5 minutes before alliance selection on Saturday there was no ranking information available to the teams. Once the seeding was up the alliance selections proceeded only to be stopped after the 4th seed picked because it was discovered that a match had not been entered into the system and this affected the 5 - 8 listing of the seeded teams. As you can imagine there was a pretty good level of confusion during all of this.

To their credit the person who made the mistake, discovered it and then fixed it got on the mike and explained what happened and took the responsibility for the error. I'm sorry I don't know their name but it takes alot of character to publicly admit you made a mistake.

IMHO I believe the Regional volunteers did a great job. I do know they were understaffed on Saturday and about 5 or 6 of members of team 1468 stepped up and helped out for the rest of the regional along with members of quite a few other teams.

While this may not be specific enough for Dr. Joe's original missive the scoring and seeding information problems appear to be a common problem this year.

Oh well, Like we keep telling the J-birds team "adapt and overcome"

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Team 533 participated in the SBPLI competition this past weekend. I would first like to say that the volunteers and FIRST representatives did an excellent job of making the best out of a bad situation. I have a unique outlook on the game. I was a mentor for Team 533 and the father of one of the referees on the field. The scoring system was a major disappointment this season. As mentioned earlier, the real time scoring was turned off due to its inaccuracy. This left teams, mentors and spectators lost and resulted in numerous arguments after the scores were posted. We also suffered numerous incorrect scorings which resulted in the wrong team winning autonomous mode. In the early rounds, when these situations were questioned, the rounds were replayed, but as the competition went on the referees became less tolerant of these challenges and replays were not allowed. The last game of the finals was played 3 times due to scoring errors (one of which was called a tie) and autonomous problems. In the end, everyone competed and everyone was a winner, but I think the scoring problems hurt FIRST's reputation with the teams, parents and spectators.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

In the two regionals we have been to Cleveland and Detroit the scoring seemed to be horrible. More so in Detroit then Cleveland but it was still bad. The problem was that there were a lot of kids tending to the field instead of refs. So therefore if we had 10 balls at the start of the game and during auto mode we went to the side goal and dumped all the balls not one came out we only got credit for about 6 of them and ended up loosing auto mode because of this. Many balls were not counted like they should have been because the crew was to busy paying attention to other things. In cleveland it seemed that there were only a few ties at the end of the competition. 3 of them belonged to us and I think that's all there was. We were leading the match 47-16 and back to back matches they said that our matches ended up in a 17-17 tie. Is that possible to go from that lead to a tie not once but twice with the same score. There were no penalities in the match and if we correctly did the scoring in our heads then we should have won out matches my somewhat of a lead. The last match they said that we won and then about 3 matches later they said they made a mistake and that was a tie but there was no explaination. When asking the refs they really had nothing to say. It seemed that this year FIRST relied more on the youth then the adults and I don't feel that if you are on a FIRST team you should be allowed to work at a competition where your team is at. I know they want to help and that's what FIRST is about but if they are on a team who's to say they aren't fudging a score? It seemed that there were many field scorers that belonged on teams and I don't feel that is is right to do that. Correct me if I'm wrong but that's how I feel about it because not everyone involved in FIRST is a perfect person. I also didn't feel that it was right that if a ball went in the center goal and bounced out that it wasn't counted. It was scored into the goal and came out for reasons unknown. That happened MANY times in Detroit. Some of the balls were getting counted a few times because if the balls were jammed and they had to take the stick to poke it it triggered the camera a few times then need be. Did anyone else seem to have and of these problems? hopefully our last competition in Philly will be better.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

OK - you are wrong! No one in FIRST is perfect! But I'll bet that not one of those volunteers set out to cheat you. They too were victims of a good idea gone bad. You should apologize right here - right now!

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Please remember that the upper goal balls were only counted in the scoring system when they triggered a switch in the downtube leading to the can at the bottom of the goal. This downtube is only slightly larger than the ball diameter and was/is actually a simple and accurate system. There are no cameras on the upper goal. While we may not agree about balls bouncing out not counting ( I actually think it's fair because it's the same for everybody. A camera would have most likely added an additional level of inaccuracy. ie: count a ball twice as it goes in and then bounces out of the goal.)

From what I have seen and read the brunt of the problem appears to be with the lower goals and the possibility that a longer ball settlement period is necessary after autonomous to insure that all upper goal balls drop through the tube.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

And for the NYC Regional:

Thanks to John Park the scoring system worked extremely well. John was very optimistic after all the work was done to insure everything worked properly, Now if only the other lil bugs got worked out, like that lil bug that wouldn't allow scores to be entered in for the elimination rounds, we went like 3 - 4 rounds w/o any scores.

And for the field, the only problems we had with that was the field border lexan panels kept coming off by the gates due to extreme robot driving, no matter how many zip ties we put on the panels they still kept coming off =). Thanks to Mike C. and the Repair team the panels were fixed during the matches so that the robots and balls wouldn't have an easy exit.

I must say the volunteers at this regional worked extremely hard this year =)


BTW I knew I forgot something last nite. John all the Field Electronics Cables were put into the Field Electronics Box along with all the DB15 Cables =)

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

OK maybe people are blowing my last post out of proportion. I never said that they WERE for sure cheating. I said no one is perfect and who's to say that they can't fudge a score. I said that I didn't feel that teams who had students working on the field should be allowed and students shouldn't be allowed. Most of the time the students were too busy paying attention to what was going on on the field especially if their team was up and who's to say that they just won't fudge a score because they missed what was going on because they were watching the field. That's where I was going with that Idea. Maybe it wasn't worded the best or something I dunno. I've been involved with FIRST for 6 years I know how stuff goes and this year just seems to be the worst year scoring wise. SORRY if I offended anyone that wasn't my intention I was just trying to make a statement.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Wisconsin Regional was AWESOME!

the venue was perfect. the pits werent too cramped, and the team social was the best ive been too. the scoring however gave me a laugh (stupid wildstang :p )

i heard we have a bid for the US Cellular Arena for 3 years so plan on coming back! also, i heard that FIRST wants them to have 50 teams at wisconsin next year! just a rumor, dont get too crazy, but who wouldn't love to see a super-regional in wisconsin. someone start taking notes at toronto.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

SBPLI had it's share of field and scoring problems, but somewhat unusual circumstances also complicated field setup and checkout.

Problems are a little more understandable when you know that at the very last minute the venue was suddenly unavailable the day before practice day. The setup crew did not have the normal day in advance to do field setup, checkout, and to work out bugs in the systems.

The entire arena had to be setup by an extremely dedicated crew who were there for 24+ straight hours, beginning the very early morning of practice day.

My thanks for the Herculean effort required to pull this event off !!!

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Be professional, get your facts straight before making a statement.
1. The students in Detroit were not competing. Their robot was sitting in the warehouse. They, like most of us who volunteer are not part of the actual competition. The team in question was there from setup until we pushed the crates into the truck. The event could not have happened without them.

2. The game design, not the volunteers are the root of the scoring issues. So stop blaming them, pehaps you should volunteer your time to be a scorer at an event and deal with the various claims of cheating, napping, mis scoring etc.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Oh Yeah, I forgot, read the rules. Volunteers, suprisingly enough, can read.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

I think the most under-read rule is this:

A lot of human players try to score the entire match on that corner goal.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Ok, 5 things...

1. The center goal is something a team should have adapted to.
2. Computer Scoring wasn't half-bad.
3. Human scoring wasn't that problematic.
4.Many Refs,Voluteers were Alumni of teams, but they (as far as I know) made a call to their advantage (unless rightfully so)
5. Field Glitches wern't even noticed during one of our matches. The autonomous never activated, everyone got mad, but we still won and didn't complain about it (expecially should have affected us as we are partial masters in autonomous)

I totally agree with you!

Just My Opinions!

Tomasz Bania

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Absolutely! Good point Mark and one that was overlooked by many (me too :o ) Thanks for reminding me.

The seeding program issue seems to be one that is haunting quite a few of the regionals though. Hopefully FIRST can resolve the problems with Hatch.

BTW Great job by your team and your alliance partners 271 and 870 in the finals at SBPLI. 358 is a class act all the way.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

I have been away for almost 2 weeks. I am sorry that I did not get to posting this message. Thanks to Jack for starting the thread.

It is hard for me to get my arms around the issues.

Is it fair to say that there are still issues but that between the experience of the teams and the field crews, things are working well enough to muddle through the rest of the season?

Is the general sense that things are getting better week to week or staying the same? Again, it is hard to see the forest for all the trees.

Help catch me up.

Joe J.

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Team 1596 just went to waterloo, and this is my review..

pros: decent food, good price, courteous field crew, good announcers, great venue overall, only 2 field resets that i witnessed, lots of pits room, the queing area was very intuitive and loading the 10 balls there was a plus.

cons: loosing things under the bleachers (although the volunteers going under there and putting in lost and found every xx minutes was great), nothing else, this regional rocked

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

I may be biased since most of the field problems in Wisconsin seemed to happen when our team was on the field, but in my opinion the performance of the scoring system in Wisconsin was the worst one yet of the 4 regionals I've seen.

I think it is completely unacceptable that because the scoring system doesn't work right that the wrong alliance is frequently awarded the autonomous "win" putting them on defense first. Playing defense first is a big advantage in this game and when one alliance (say red) scores 10-15 balls in the center goal and the blue alliance scores 1 or 2 in the lower goal (or sometimes even none!) and blue ends up of defense first it is a huge screwup. Now, even though the 10 point bonus will be corrected at the end of the match, the red team is basically depleted of balls (since they shot them all) and is now immediately on offense.

Jack Jones put up some stats from Wisconsin showing that the scoring system incorrectly awarded the autonomous "win" about 22% (!) of the time. I don't think this is acceptable at all for the Championship. Since FIRST has already given up on the idea of using the automatic counters for the official scoring anyway, they shouldn't use it for autonomous either. The system needs to be reworked so that there is a pause after autonomous for the head ref to figure out which alliance won and then allow the scorekeeper to manually select which alliance is on defense first. My understanding is that right now there is no way to override the system to indicate the correct autonomous winner.

Oh, and the fact that the entire system locks up whenever a large number of balls is scored is ridiculous! We had a match where 2 robots each scored 10/10 (a big accomplishment in my opinion) and the field couldn't handle it. FIRST is putting big challenges in front of the teams to solve and we're doing it. How come they can't build a system capable of counting a few dozen Poof balls without locking up?

Week 4 and we still have a mess on our hands. :mad:

Re: Week 4: So how's that Field Working?
 

Did you realize that the student team that was scoring at Detroit wasn't competing that week? Now maybe you were addressing Buckeye, I don't know.

The work I saw the students doing was done very well. Did they miscount one or two? Undoubtably - but I'm sure they were far more accurate than the auto-score. The head ref had several meetings with the field staff to reinforce the counting rules. Students were putting in a lot of hours doing pretty boring work, and doing very well at staying focused on it.