Scoring System Problems
 

Hey, I'm from Team Rush 27 and I'm wondering if any of the other regionals had trouble with the automatic scoring system. At the Kettering Invitational, some crucial matches had to be re-played because the scoring system either didn't count balls, started counting down, rather then up, etc. I know the people were doing their best to fix the issue, and I applaud them for fixing it and getting refs to count the scores when it took too long, but the invitational ran VERY late. Have any of the other invitationals had this problem?

Re: Scoring System Problems
 

There were a quite a few field delays at the Florida Regional, but only one match had to be re-played due to lost scores. That said, as soon as that issue occurred, people were assigned to each to each goal to manually record the scoring for the rest of the competition, just in case the issue occurred again. It was excellent thinking on the part of the people in charge of the field at the Florida Regional.

Re: Scoring System Problems
 

Yea, at the Kettering District event, they Attempted to fix it numerous times. At least 4 matches (Including 2 Semi-Final matches) had to be replayed.

Re: Scoring System Problems
 

I read in another thread that the scoring system will penalize you 2 points if the human players push a ball through the tunnels in the wrong direction. Perhaps this is what was happening at Kettering.

Re: Scoring System Problems
 

Actually yes, the same problem happened at the Arizona Regional this weekend.

Our alliance during one of our matches was penalized 22 points in one match due to the issue. The human player on our alliance (from our team, 842) swore he had returned all of the balls back to the field of play but nothing was done about it.

At the regional events one of the things I do is record all of our teams matches to just see how we had done on each match and my video did indeed show that every ball was returned to the match just as the human player had said.

We tried to appeal the match by offering the video as proof and the head ref said our argument was probably correct, but he couldn't accept the video as proof as per one of the rules.

Our team in no way is bitter about what happened at all, we accept it as just "one of those things" that happened.
I am glad however it wasn't just us that have had the problem.

Re: Scoring System Problems
 

i saw several goals not get scored on the blue side at wisconsin. but like everything else at wisconsin the field staff was oblivious and no one fixed it. just one more way the outcome there was very messed up.

Re: Scoring System Problems
 

Did you verify that the number of balls the scoring system recorded as scored matched the number of balls that went into the goal and that all the balls that were "returned" passed through the ball counter on the rails?

Re: Scoring System Problems
 

Yes. All these errors were verified (by the head ref) and every time the robot scored a ball, the counter counted down, not up. The matches were replayed because of the issue. It wasn't the ball return penalty. Does the system automatically count the penalty? Because I think (not at all sure) that those are factored in after the actual score. Otherwise, wouldn't the other team's qualification points be altered by them scoring??

Re: Scoring System Problems
 

The scoring system is designed intentionally to subtract two points if a ball passes backwards through the ball counter in the goals. This does not show up as a penalty, it just decrements the score. If the ball bounces in such a way that it is seen to go forwards and then backwards, the scoring system will decrement the score by 1 instead of increasing it by one.

Re: Scoring System Problems
 

Arizona also saw 4 balls counted as 2 for some reason. That one was caught and fixed.

The refs can't review video per <T03>. There have been several threads on making video replay official, but the general consensus from those is 1) there isn't a good way to do it under time constraints, 2) there isn't a good way to do it under cost constraints, and 3) it wouldn't change a whole lot of calls.

Re: Scoring System Problems
 

Yes. It counted a total of 8 shots and 7 of the balls were returned. The last ball shot was in at the very last second so it didn't count as one needing to be returned to the field of play.


We did discuss it with the head ref and he told us there was nothing we could do. There was no replay of our match, nor were there any point altering. We just took the 22 point hit for the match.

Again, the team isn't bitter at all about what happened. It's more of we want to make sure it's known as an issue that should be made aware of.

Re: Scoring System Problems
 

At FLR there was one match where midway through the match a robot's battery fell out and disconnected, and at the same time scores for that alliance started to go minus and not plus, reaching a grand total of -2 at the end of the match

Re: Scoring System Problems
 

In the second match of Friday, this occurred at Wisconsin. It was noted that scores were decreasing. The second match was reviewed for the number of scores and corrected. Thereafter, scorers were placed to count the number of balls scored. So, while the number shown initially might not have been accurate, the final scores should have been accurate with the exception of penalties due to not getting the ball in on time as the system was unreliable. However, teams did not use this to hoard ball.

As noted, it seemed to be related to putting the ball back through the counter on accident.

Re: Scoring System Problems
 

In Ann Arbor we had a match where a ball got counted twice. Which was great as we got two points for one ball...

... until the auto scoring system started to look for the second ball to be returned to the field. Our alliance lost like 4 or 5 points because of this. The field crew knew that it was an issue, but they said they couldn't change it because the field was automatic.

Not much we could do about it. Of course, that wasn't as upsetting as all the communications issues with the field. One of our partners had their robot drive around on the field without any driver input in teleop, while we lost all control in teleop. Also nothing the field crew could do.

Oh well... I think FIRST knows that the fields are buggy and unreliable at this point. No point in beating a dead horse. The field crews did the best job they could with the equipment they had. I don't envy their job at all - I'm glad they survived the weekend! Thanks field crews.

Re: Scoring System Problems
 

This is perhaps the most perplexing of the field faults for me, mostly because I have a hard time wrapping my mind around how you mess this up.

Does anyone know of a legitimate reason the real-time score should ever be negative? The rules have always been pretty clear on the issue of negative scores...granted, the rule says "Final score" but I still think that displaying a negative score does nothing but cause confusion.

Jacob