Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

Team 968 had to wait almost 40 seconds to finish shooting their hopper full of balls in an elimination match on Newton, because of how slow the pokey stick guy was.

Not to mention the fact that they knocked numerous balls out of the goal entirely, while trying to get them to fall through the tube.

Not much that could be done about that, though.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

I must second Cory on that. I saw it happen many times this season, many times.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

I forgot to clarify that I meant the upper goals, not the lower ones. The lower goal automatic counters seemed a lot more reliable than the upper goal counters. I do agree though, that one person trying to count all of the lower goals scored would have a lot of trouble doing so.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

How about a polycord conveyor or or paddle wheel on the bottom of the goal? It doesn't even have to be motorized, (although that'd be ideal) the dude with a stick could just power it. Sure, it'd be more complex, but I think it could really help the goal out. Our, there could have been two high goals, it'd help the problem and add some more complexity. (Maybe different colored lights?)

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

Our experience has been that they are no more accurate than the upper goals.

Re: Lessons Learned: The Negative(2006)
 

The one definite reason I can tell you why its probably not the best idea, was due to the fact that they designed how the field counted both upper and lower goals in the first place. After helping at one regional and working with the FTA, he explained how it worked and such. I'm not sure how many people realize that. Just my .02$.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

My point in saying that the goal was poorly designed is not to be elitist about myself being a superior engineer than anyone else. Therefore, I will not offer alternative designs. My point was to say that in engineering there is a process. One of the most important steps in the process of engineering a product for a customer is testing. It's why as mentors we strive to get a robot built by week 5 so the kids have week 6 to test it.

I find it inconceivable that the Game Design Committee hoped the center goal would require human interaction with an automatic computerized scoring system. I think Dave's comments point out a problem with the “big picture” of FIRST. Essentially, he said that there's nothing wrong with goal clogging because there's a set of constraints that cause it to be built in such a way. So I'll assume the GDC did test the center goal and knew the goal would clog during competition.

This year was a rough ride for IFI. There's been two major flaws identified with the Robot Controller. You'd think I would be ready to steam roll them in this thread. I'm not. In fact, I love IFI. When the problem was discovered they worked with teams and were open and honest. They immediately issued a fix for the problems. They were even as kind to monitor the problem as best they could at the regionals and provide on the spot help. I mention IFI here because they gracefully handled a situation where their stuff had problems. As I said above they were open and honest about the problem and immediately and continually offered help. IFI knows who there customers are and treats us right.

I don't think FIRST was nearly as open and honest about the problems with the rank and scoring software. Unlike IFI, FIRST was not prompt with a fix and even at times would refuse to admit there was a problem. (Yes, this did actually happen to my team)

I work tirelessly with my teams to make sure that the students have a robot that they can be proud of and abides to all the FIRST rules. FIRST loves rules. In fact, the rules have gotten more and more detailed. The rules are so stringent that it's possible to be disqualified at an event. What rules does FIRST follow? What happens when FIRST breaks the rules? Does FIRST have a set of standards to which they live by?

Currently the vehicle that gets kids involved in science and technology is in need of repair. As a mentor I invest thousands of hours of my time and my sponsors spend thousands for that vehicle to be in top top shape. Students can not become excited about science and technology when the system that inspires them has become so broken. FIRST does not even follow engineering processes. Field systems are not working as expected. Under my understanding of gracious professionalism it would not be acceptable to not be open and honest about your problems. A center goal clogging is really just the symptom of a major problem FIRST has right now. They do not understand how important a working game is and they do not understand that as customers we expect the vehicle to work.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

I'll second that. I personally enjoyed the time that we managed to score 11 points in the corner goal during autonomous though, that was fun ;)


As for "FIRST being broken", and not following the engineering process, I'd have to object to that. The fact is, it is MUCH harder to design a game, field, scoring system, kit bot, organize 33 regional events, work with corporate sponsors, work on obtaining collegiate scholarships, and the rest of the things that FIRST does, than it is to build a robot.
FIRST has kept the customer in mind alot more than you thought. For instance, the center couldn't have been much taller, or else it wouldn't fit in most indoor facilities, therefor limiting the amount of teams capable of constructing it properly, and able to utilize it for testing even further. In order to be able to conduct MORE testing, they would have to release the "product" (game) after kick-off, and that would generate a ton of more problems than a not-perfect center goal, or an annoying scoring system. Yeah, the scoring system sucked this year, no hiding that. Nobody enjoyed that 40 minute break we took during week 1 as FIRST attempted to fix it (except for the teams that needed to work on their robots). But it could have been much much worse. It still produced accurate scores for a majority of the matches (at least a majority of the matches I witnessed). Do you honestly think that the game would be even close to this good (however good you interpret that to be) without a significant amount of testing?
Personally, I would count my blessings. Yeah, FIRST, like anything, can always be better, but as it is now, it is nowhere near "broken". If you ask every single student who attended a FIRST competition this year to give you their comments, I doubt any more than 5% would say a word about the scoring system. Not just the students on CD, not just about their negatives this year, just ask them. In fact, in discussion with my teammates, they have said that they loved the real-time scoring so much, they would gladly tolerate the faulty scoring system to have it. It just makes the game more exciting.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

No one doubts that managind FIRST is more difficult than being in FIRST. Are you suggesting that since I'm on the robot side my concerns are not valid?

Your list of things FIRST does is not accurate. The regionals are organized by volunteers. The kitbot is created by IFI. Very little work at the FIRST level is involved in obtaining college scholarships.

The most important thing FIRST does is create a game. I'll he honest and say that I don't know how the Game Design Comitte works. The scoring system and ranking software is subcontracted out.

FIRST needs to concentrate on the game and keeping subcontractors in check. A final system integration is in order to determine if everything will work.
At approximately 11 feet heigh the field already won't fit into many regular rooms. There's a big difference between what the teams need to create to simulate the field and what FIRST should create for a production field. This year a piece of plywood with a hole in it was enough to simulate the center goal. I would expect FIRST could create a much more advanced solution.
That might hint at a problem with how FIRST handles game design. I work year round. FIRST should too. They have 7 months to design, build and test a game and field. What does FIRST do between now and January that is more imprtant than creating a new game?
This would completely cooberate my feeling that FIRST was not open and honest about the software problems.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

If that's what you believe, then I understand your frustration with the results. It's no wonder that you find fault with FIRST's execution of their job. But if you look around, you'll probably notice that many people understand FIRST's job quite differently -- including those who actually work for (and directly with) FIRST.

FIRST is not about robots. It's not even about robot games. It's about promoting engineering as an exciting field. It's about Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, through collaborations between education and industry, students and mentors, schools and communities, companies, teams, and individuals. The robots are just a convenient (and entertaining) point of focus for people's attention.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

So I see I've stumbled across the 2006 Season - We hate the upper goal thread.....

Seriously though. Dave just pointed out the ridiculously complicated design problem that is the center goal. It has to cushion shots, funnel balls, count balls, be easily assembled, be no taller than 10.5', be no wider than 6', not get in the way of human players, support a vision target, not be over balanced so it might fall over, not be prone to breakdowns, etc. etc. It's a terribly overconstrained problem. When you start adding in things like "not jam when 20 balls are fired at it in 10 seconds" you just can't do it. Mike says he's not confident enough in his engineering to propose an alternative design. I suspect there aren't many that would meet the design criteria.

Conveyors would breakdown (in the middle of a match) and genereate complaints of over complication. Increasing the depth of the goal would require additional supports that would have gotten in the way of human players. Lowering the goal's bottom would've impeded the team in the middle. Just look at the lengths hopper teams needed to go to to prevent jamming and see how hard it would be to adapt them to the goal.

The GDC does a heck of a job designing a game and field every year. I challenge anyone here that has a problem with the field to spend some time trying to design a game just for a Vex bot. I've done a simple one and it wasn't nearly as easy as I thought. Then work up fully dimensioned drawings and rules. If you want, email it all to me and I'll point out the glaring flaws I've decided I can see in it. Then multiply that by 10 time the size and 1000 teams and you might have a better grasp of the difficulties here. Personally, I don't know how the GDC manages to convince themselves to do it every year.

*Steps down from soapbox*

Ahem. Sooo... On to my actual criticisms and suggestions. I'll note that since I didn't attend nationals, I haven't thought about the game in long enough that I've forgotten most of my complaints. Which just goes to show how trivial most of them must have been.

Scoring software - Yeah, it's already been covered to death. More testing would be the easiest fix. I'm sure you can grab some mentors or students to punch numbers in during the first week or two of build season.

Field robustness - Yes, I'm probably contradicting myself. But the GDC should probably plan on the robots running full tilt into most field pieces, as I understand that was one of the issues with the camera.

Camera target - I have no idea what was going on, but our camera worked flawlessly on a practice field, but hated the on-field vision targets. Could we go back to the super free-form practice matches? Or have a camera calibration party on the field Thursday night after practice matches but before the pits close? Yes, I am assuming the camera makes a triumphant return. It's nifty enough that I think it'd be a good idea.

Spare parts - Bring back the Small Parts desk! LSR has a Spare Parts desk with nuts, bolts, pins, etc. It's funded by the regional, doesn't cost that much to restock every year, and helps lots. I humbly suggest that every regional needs one.

Practice field - Is there enough room on the trucks to ship official-style practice field components? The wooden replicas everyone ends up with are useful, but not as useful as an actual field.

AV - Possibly the video directors need to be clued in more about things. Watching alliance picking webcasts from nationals, some of the directors didn't know the alliance picking screens were available for about 10 minutes.

Music - I don't know where the DJs come from, but LSR had to listen to 15 minutes of 70's and 80's TV show themes on Saturday morning. I didn't really believe it until the campy Batman theme faded in. Thumbs up on starting Friday with Thunderstruck, however.

Umm.. and that's it. Overall the season went really well. No "gotcha" rule changes in between ship and the 1st regional, and no people getting knocked in the head with tetras, so we're obviously learning here. The scoring problems were understandably annoying, but I think these sorts of problems are being worked on and we've commenced beating compost that used to be a horse there.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

Sorry, just fully read Mike's post and I have to point a few things out.
Your list is wrong as well. Most regionals are, in fact, organized by FIRST staffers. Who did you think the Regional Directors were? Even the volunteer RDs work closely with FIRST in NH to pull off a regional. A LOT more goes into regional planning than any FIRST team sees, and it's the RD's job to keep it that way.
I don't even want to think about the complaints there would be if FIRST had a fancy goal clearing system and only 10 teams could afford to replicate it.
I don't know what to tell you if you think the GDC isn't already working feverishly on the next game. You've already commented that you don't know how they work. If you don't think it takes every day of the 7 months they have to design a game, test it, balance it, design and draw a field, and build the field for kickoff.... Well I don't know what to tell you. Just think about how long it would take you to produce the drawings in the Arena section of the documents. As for what's more important.... Little things like fundraising, finding regional and national venues, running Team Forums, and generally making sure the FIRST is still around next year.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

From my perspective, this thread is about the negative parts of FIRST in the 2006 season. The center goal just happens to be just one problem of a larger issue.
I certianly DID NOT say that. I said that I wouldn't design one because that's not what's important. In fact, it would be a waste of time re-designing the center goal. My main concern was that when grouped with the field collectively it looks like 1 more system that did not follow an engineering process.

I would agree. I like this years game in theory and mostly in execution. It just needed more testing.
Believe me, if you were in New Hampshire on the first weekend and burned by the problems you would not forget.
A lack of testing is a sign that FIRST does not follow a process for designing the field. This is critical factor in my major complaint with FIRST.

Re: 2006 Season - The Negative
 

I was in fact in daily conversations with people on the Boston regional planning comitte. The vast majority of the people on that board were not paid by FIRST. As a rookie regional one would think that more FIRST staffers were involved but this is not the case. Maybe other regionals get more FIRST support, I would be suprised considering it was a rookie regional.
I was going to mention it before but the center goal clogging issue reminded me of 2004 and the ball dumping mechanism. Teams didn't make that. It wasn't necessary to a practice field. Neither is the ball collection of this year. That year the dumper had problems and wasn't fixed until several weeks into the competition season.

I know what to tell them. They need more time. Perhaps 2 game design committes working on games. It's part of my main issue that FIRST does not understand how important the game is to the program.

I wish I could elaborate now but I'm out of time. I'll respond back tonight as to why the game is so important and why it needs all the attention.

Re: Lessons Learned: The Negative(2006)
 

PIT TRAFICK!!!!!!!!!!!