Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

I wouldn't say that it wasn't part of the challenge, because teams were informed in the rules that balls bouncing out wouldn't be counted. Whether or not FIRST realized that so many balls would bounce out of the centre goal is another question, however.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

My feeling is that you're "kind of right." Without question a ball entering the goal with a low enough velocity would bounce of the lose chains.

The problem is that the center goal was poorly designed. The goal clogs way to easily, 2 balls could clog it. If the center goal was 1 foot higher and the balls had a steeper ramp to move down the clogging problem would have been avoided. It was clogging that caused so many balls to bounce out of the goal. It was clogging that required a field attendant to poke at the center goal to move the balls along.

I would eat my socks if the game designers intended for the goal to clog so easilly. That's not "part of the challenge" it was poorly designed and then never tested.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

The need for system integration testing is a direct consequence of novel game features; e.g., dynamic scoring in 2006 as opposed to static post-match scoring in all previous games. The only practical approach to system integration testing would be to build several (at least six) robots with a variety of capabilities and run trial matches. This would require significant resources both material and human, and would have to be conducted in secret to avoid spoiling the game for us participants. Of course the resources FIRST would spend on this would be unavailable for other things.

Or FIRST could reduce the need for such testing by repeating game elements, or whole games, that have worked in the past.

I'll take the technical difficulties, as the price of getting a new game to play every year.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

Unfortunately, I suspect that you're correct with regard to the design. While FIRST did warn teams that balls bouncing out wouldn't be counted, I don't think they meant for the design of the goal to be so problematic.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

I think a lot of testing could be conducted with 6 volunteers and 6 borrowed robots from prior years. The robots don't have to do all the scoring. You can just have the people throw balls in, or put a rather simple dumper on a robot and run it into the corner goal and dump in a ton of balls. Or just plain run into the corner goal. That alone would've revealed the 1000+ points issue. And a crew of a few people throwing at the center goal would've revealed the ball jamming issue.

All physical testing aside... The absolute LEAST someone could have done is sat down in front of the Hatch scoring software and made up numbers for an hour or so to simulate a regional. That was just as true last year as it was this year. The display and ranking problems weren't quite as severe this year, but if we're not learning from our mistakes, I think we're in trouble.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

I certainly agree that relatively simple testing of the scoring software could have revealed many of the problems that caused delays at several regionals.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

Take off your shoes and start chewing.

Like almost everything, the design of the center goal is a compromise between multiple, oft-conflicting, constraints. There is an excellent reason why the goal could not be one foot higher. There is also an excellent reason that the diameter of the opening at the bottom of the ramp had to be what it was. The opening in the face of the goal and the impact-absorption chains performed as intended, consistent with the ball-retention performance experienced during testing. Were they all perfect? No. But were they the best-possible compromise for an over-constrained problem. There is certainly an argument that says this is the case.

While you are gnawing on your tube socks, I would challenge you to identify as many of the potential constraints as you can. I am not going to give you the answers on this one - I want you to think about the problem yourself and ponder all the things that have to be considered when designing a game field. Remember, you need try to address every possible concern that may be raised by 1135 teams. Some will be building their field in their school shop, some in a corporate facility, some in a parent's garage, some in a spare warehouse, and some in a classroom. Some will have enough room to build an entire field; some will need to pack up every available component away in a closet every night. Some will have access to a full machine shop for constructing the field, some will be hard pressed to have more than a hammer and hand drill. But be assured that every one of them will feel that they have a unique issue or situation that will require special consideration when designing the field.

And when you are finished creating what will be a very long list of constraints, you can share it with all of us. THEN we can have a discussion about how you have developed an improvement to the "poorly designed" center goal that satisfies all those constraints.

If this post comes through with a little bit of an irritated tone, then I have communicated correctly. I have no problem in the world if someone wants to stand up and say "I am a customer, and I believe that I have not been properly supported due to item #1, #2, #3..." In fact, I will be right at the front of the line to give you a soapbox to stand upon, and will hold the microphone for you. But when the tone changes to "I am the customer - and you are all a bunch of idiots that don't have a flippin' clue and can't tell the difference between a drill bit and a post-hole digger, and you should be ashamed that you are still breathing" then I begin to take exception. If you want to offer CONSTRUCTIVE criticism, you will always receive my full support. But when it devolves to a thread full of denigration and condescension, as this one has, then you have crossed the line of acceptability as far as I am concerned.

-dave

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

I think with the design of the center goal the design team did not think that there would 10 to 20 balls at a time shot into the center goal. As far as the bottom goal goes I did see robots that could herd 20 or more balls and drop them in the bottom goal real fast. It may be that the robot designers out smarted the field design team. I am sure the field design and scoring design teams thought about almost all possible scenarios.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

I'd re-read Dave's post above before saying such things. I'll bet dollars to donuts that the GDC thought that there would be teams that would shoot 20 balls into the center goal. (It goes back to the age-old question: "What would Beatty do?")

But just as we'd all like to have a robot with the ability to hold 80 balls and deliver them into the center goal in 1.293 seconds, the GDC has limits on what it can do. The goals have to be durable, safe, portable, able to be wedged into a FIRST field box (look carefully, and you'll see that they reuse those boxes--many of them in 2005 still wore the older FIRST logo), assembled and disassembled quickly with hand tools (and perhaps a drill with a driver bit), and easily replicated with things you can find at Lowe's so that teams can build their own. Add all that (and probably about 116 different more that I've missed) together, and I wish you the best of luck in building a goal that can do all of that together.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

Dave I do believe I offered constructive criticism. My constructive criticism was that system tests would have avoided many of the problems that occurred and were fixed during the regionals. Simple tests, such as “what happens if I fill the goal with balls?”

I'm certainly not telling the guy who's responsible for the Mars Exploration Program that he's an idiot. I believe it's one of the best NASA programs since the Shuttle program. I also do like this year's game. It's my favorite game since 2000.

I simply refuse to believe that there was a design requirement for the center goal to clog. Nor do I believe that the center goal could not have been designed any other way to avoid clogging. My idea to move the goal 1 foot higher is one of many ideas to fix the goal clogging problem.

The goal clogging problem is serious because it adds a 4th alliance partner- the field volunteers . If a volunteer on one end of the field is better at poking balls down the chute than the other side than that side of the field has an advantage. Their center goals could be cleared faster allowing them to clog the goal with balls sooner. The game should not have that type of unfairness built into it.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

Here are my thoughts regarding the design of the upper goal:
Make the upper goal twice as deep as it is right now. If the chains were set back a little more balls would not collect right in front of the opening and would not cause other balls to bounce out. There are a couple of ways I can think of to make the scoring system work better. One would be to have two channels for balls to roll down and through the scoring sensor, although if balls got stuck it might be kind of difficult to dislodge them. Another way would be instead of having an automatic counter, have a person with a button that they could push for every ball scored in the upper goal. Error would be quite low, and the system certainly wouldn't fail.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

Oddly enough, this is what FIRST was doing at least since week two (as seen at the Florida Regional). Also not flawless, but the combination of the two systems proved a decent way of handling things. (Actually, the humans were trusted more than the computers in Atlanta in some regards--that's why the timing was changed around following autonomous.)

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

With many robots dumping a ridiculous amount of balls into the corner goals at a time, it must have been very difficult for the volunteers to get an accurate count of how many balls were coming in. Add to that the potential for as many as six people to be reaching in to remove balls as soon as they come in and it becomes almost impossible for a single person to maintain an accurate count.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

Dave just told us that making the goal higher wasn't an option.

If you have many other suggestions though--let's hear em'

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

I doubt that the clugging of balls in a chute prevented anyone from winning a match. From the matches I've watched, the robots were emptied of balls when they were shooting at the center goal. In the event the center goal was clogged, the volunteer was able to clear the balls by the time the robot had been able to collect more balls to shoot.