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yaron 24-03-2010 06:35

A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
Before reading this just know that I am proud of the FRC community in Israel, and I think we could have the best regional in the world.
  • Each team needs to pay $11,500 for participating in the program this includes the regular registration that goes to USFIRST and the rest devoted to subsidize FIRST Israel budget.
  • As a result of 2009 year, a meeting among senior mentors, inspectors & judges with FIRST Israel management was held. Many aspects of improving Israel regional were discussed. No summary of this meeting was spread to the FRC community and nothing from the suggestions which were raised in that meeting was implemented in the 2010 year. Actually this paper will reveal that the management of FIRST Israel only led the regional to a greater disaster.
  • As a non profit organization FIRST Israel should present to its community an annual report on the organization. No such report was published or at least no report became available, to the best of my knowledge, at least to the senior mentors.
Pit area
  • The practice field inside the pit area is not legal. In 2009 it was identical to the surface that FIRST Israel declared to be 95% close to the official Lunacy surface. In 2010 the tower was constructed from wooden square beams and not 1.5 inches pipes. In addition not even one gate and target were available. The carpet that was brought by one of the team was two small to even practice with one robot.
  • There was no list for practice schedule inside the pit practice field and no one supervises which team is practicing or for how long the team practice.
  • Inspection process was held by inspectors who were not familiar with the Robot's rules or any other rules. This was one of the suggestions to improve the Israeli regional that I and other senior mentors suggested at the end of the 2009.
  • As a result from this, many robots were illegal including robots which used motors not from the KOP.

Practice games
  • Even in 2009 with less communication problem not all practice games were held in the first day, but at least every team was able to test the robot inside the official arena. In 2010 many teams were not allowed to test their robots on the official arena because of the communication problem. They simply did not manage to insert all teams by 10pm on the first day. Although they promised they will give practice time on the second day before the opening of the qualification matches many teams did not tried their robot inside the stadium.
  • The management requested from six teams to leave their robot inside the stadium in order to examine the communication problem and fixed it. It seems a very good idea if all the teams were able later to test their robots and verify that they are working with the field system.
  • I know that at least one team was able to test their robot from each of the six stations doing so for 2 minutes from each station.
The official arena
  • This year although FIRST Israel declared that the arena will be brought from the US (This is one of the reasons the registration fee is so high), we know that it was constructed by a local constructer who ignored or did not understand the technical drawings.
  • The actual official Israeli arena did not match the design according to it many teams designed their robots. The bumps were not according to the dimensions and there was a significant difference between the blue and the red bumps giving an advantage to the blue alliance.
  • Beneath the bumps there were two wooden surfaces that actually changed the structure of the bumps. This impacted severely the autonomous section of the game. These surfaces do not exist in the arena drawings.
  • When I (FRC senior mentor) asked two hours after the opening of the stadium to measure the diameter of the pipes I was rejected. Our team coach took with him a caliber to measure it during the drivers meeting. Only then we discovered that the pipe's diameter is 42 mm.
  • FIRST Israel claimed that 42 diameter is with the tolerance of 4 mm that is mentioned in the drawing. This is very serious mislead because the tolerance for pipe's diameter is only 0.2 mm. The 4 mm tolerance is for dimensions of the length if the pipes not the diameter. A 1.5 inches pipe is a fixed diameter and is not negotiable.
  • The height of the ramps beneath the tower was not identical in the blue and the red ramps. Teams who designed their robots according to the declared height were surprised to discover that their robot is not able to drive via the tunnel beneath the tower. My team did not have this surprise because we did not plan to drive our robots via the tunnel. Anyway, we were not able to test our robot prior to the qualification matches.
  • Different dimensions of the ramps cause robots to fail in climbing the ramp or using it to hang on the tower. Again my team was not impacted by this. This could also impact the scoring decision of the judges while trying to determine the eligibility of the bonus on hanging.
  • In the front of the ramp was existed an additional part that is outside the dimensions. This might be the cause that robots failed to hang on the tower. Although were able to do so in their self-design, self constructed & legal arenas at home.
Communication network
  • FIRST Israel failed to use the (Access point) AP system that was sent by FIRST to Israel. According to the management it was not working at all and they knew of this problem three days before the practice day.
  • No site's survey was done prior to installing a wireless network inside the stadium. They could discover many wireless networks that cause communication interferes.
  • When they discover the communication problems they did not invited ant experts to check it or suggest alternative solutions. Although they keep telling the teams that the best expert from Israel and online from the US working on it.
  • Instead of a six AP (for each robot a cell with 300MB width) they used a single N AP meaning for all six robots the width was 150MB instead of 1.8GB.
  • When eventually activate the system with one AP no security mechanism, were implemented. Any wireless phone or computer could access the network and caused the available width to be reduced.
  • Ideas we offered to the management to use three regular AP and connect each one of the three to two access point bridge and creating three different cells with the assistance of security WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) & Pre-shared key mode (PSK, also known as Personal mode) were not implemented.
  • Network experts that were presented as guests offered there assistance and were rejected.

Disqualifying a team without checking what really happened
  • First, does equal chance to play is an idea that is against FIRST spirit? Instead of taking advantage a situation when one (and many times) three robots were not active because of the failure of the arena communication system. The coaches (all in Israel are team students) decided that when this situation will happen the teams without communication problem stop the activation of their robots until the communication will be available equally to all playing robots. Isn’t this exactly FIRST spirit? We do not want to beat an alliance or even a robot that can not communicate with the arena network as a result of the poor system we have discovered that was installed in the arena.
  • Before our team was disgraced by FIRST Israel general manger no inquires were made to reveal if the idea of what they called it "MisCar Rebellion" was really our team captain idea or maybe a decision of many captains after they had a meeting and suggesting that this is their way to show FIRST that the regional is unfair.
  • If the general manger wants to blame the team for this, why no mentor was informed that this decision is going to be declared in the award ceremony of the second day.
  • What right does the general manger have to threaten a student and try to force him apologizing and telling him not to tell anyone especially team mentors. Is this a proper behavior of a general manger of an organization which hosts an educational competition with high respected educational values?
  • If this entire picture is not enough how the general manger could tell this team captain that his mentors are the worst in the country (Two of them are Woodie flowers award regional, and two others are FRC senior mentors).
In the stadium
1. According to FIRST spirit no sirens are permitted in the stadium or megaphones. The noise some teams created uses these instruments could impact the hearing quality of people.
2. In the first day only one entrance to the stadium was opened. Only after we asked they opened in the third day a second entrance (This was again one of the requested I mentioned in the meeting from 2009 to improve the regional).

gvarndell 24-03-2010 07:12

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
This is not a rhetorical question, and it's not necessarily directed only to the OP.
Is there anything anyone outside Israel can do to help fix the systemic failures described here?

Racer26 24-03-2010 09:43

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
Excellent post. Not being there, I can't be entirely sure of what was done and what wasnt done, but with more and more people posting their take on it, the rest of the FIRST community can get a better idea of what really went on.

It seems to me FIRST Israel has some major issues that need to be worked out, and I think it is probably prudent for FIRST HQ to get involved.

DavidGitz 24-03-2010 10:29

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by 1075guy (Post 942422)
Excellent post. Not being there, I can't be entirely sure of what was done and what wasnt done, but with more and more people posting their take on it, the rest of the FIRST community can get a better idea of what really went on.

It seems to me FIRST Israel has some major issues that need to be worked out, and I think it is probably prudent for FIRST HQ to get involved.

Who wants to volunteer at FIRST Israel next Year? I Do:)

sparrowkc 24-03-2010 10:39

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by yaron (Post 942361)
Beneath the bumps there were two wooden surfaces that actually changed the structure of the bumps. This impacted severely the autonomous section of the game. These surfaces do not exist in the arena drawings.

I'm not sure if this is what you're describing, but I think its worth mentioning that there is supposed to be a plate under the carpet near the bumps.

From THE FIELD, section 6.2.3:
Quote:

The BUMPS are fixed to base plates that are secured to the carpet of the FIELD to keep them from moving. The base plates are covered with the same carpet as the FIELD. Note that this forms a small (approximately ½-inch tall) transition from the FIELD surface onto the base plates.

gvarndell 24-03-2010 10:44

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidGitz (Post 942443)
Who wants to volunteer at FIRST Israel next Year? I Do:)

Personally I'm waiting for an SOS from FIRST Bermuda -- if there is such a thing...

Jon236 24-03-2010 10:58

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidGitz (Post 942443)
Who wants to volunteer at FIRST Israel next Year? I Do:)

David, we look forward to seeing you there! The volunteers that put on the Israel Regional are promised a lot of hard work, no sleep, but lots of hummus!

It was obvious to me, as Judge Advisor, that for the most part, as in the US and elsewhere, that FIRST Teams in Israel 'get it'. Their contributions to their school, their community and to the principles of FIRST are truly outstanding. We were able to recognize many of these teams with awards; but many other teams also deserve recognition for maintaining their spirit and demonstrating GP, despite the difficult circumstances.

The fact that the vast majority of Israeli teams understand the principles of FIRST is due in no small part to the dedication of Alisha MacIntyre and Yaarit Levy. They work basically 24/7 during Build Season. During the competition, we stayed at the field to work out the technical problems. It also says a lot about the importance of FIRST in Israel to understand that FIRST Israel has 2 full-time Regional Directors.

There will always be challenges to overcome in FIRST, especially as we try to stay on the cutting edge of technology. Obviously we had no idea that the communications system, which worked last year in Israel, would have as much difficulty as it did. But it is also apparent that the Israeli Regional is not alone in experiencing technical difficulties. Suffice to say, these issues will be addressed before next year.

I am proud to be part of FIRST Israel.....I have seen so many of the kids who graduate from high school continue their FIRST activities as mentors and volunteers, like Leav, despite their military obligations. There seems to be a strange 'illness' that infects the IDF during March as the Regional approaches........

Once a Tick....always a Tick!

RandomStyuff 24-03-2010 13:54

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
As the programming lead of an Israeli FRC team, and someone who was involved in fixing many of the communication problem (I stayed all night to help fix it, having found myself with my shoes not having left my feet for 40-ish hours) I feel I'm somewhat qualified to represent the other side of things in many of the subjects from the post above (-not all; things relating to the cost of things and the exact dimensions of the field are not what I worked on)

I will skip the first list of complaints as they talk about organisational complaints and I would not be a reliable source for facts on them.

Quote:

Pit area
  • Inspection process was held by inspectors who were not familiar with the Robot's rules or any other rules. This was one of the suggestions to improve the Israeli regional that I and other senior mentors suggested at the end of the 2009.
  • As a result from this, many robots were illegal including robots which used motors not from the KOP.

My team did not use the practice field so I can't say anything about that. It seemed like it was enough carpet though, but I never really had time to go look. As for the inspectors, they seemed very professional and the inspector that handled my team seemed to know his FRCs and the rules, but I didn't have experience with all inspectors, nor illegal parts in an inspection, so it is possible.

Quote:

Practice games
  • Even in 2009 with less communication problem not all practice games were held in the first day, but at least every team was able to test the robot inside the official arena. In 2010 many teams were not allowed to test their robots on the official arena because of the communication problem. They simply did not manage to insert all teams by 10pm on the first day. Although they promised they will give practice time on the second day before the opening of the qualification matches many teams did not tried their robot inside the stadium.

The communications problems, which I will detail more about bellow, were the cause of this. There isn't much FIRST could do about it -teams barely got to play 3 games as it is!
Quote:

  • The management requested from six teams to leave their robot inside the stadium in order to examine the communication problem and fixed it. It seems a very good idea if all the teams were able later to test their robots and verify that they are working with the field system.

I was the one who went to request it from the teams. We used the robots to try the system under load and to simulate a game for testing the FMS (Field Management System). The fixes that we found were then implemented on ALL routers, one by one, and there was no advantage to having left your robot on the field. The only thing we did with the robots was test our fix! After that we went router by router and reconfigured them one-by-one!
I repeat: There was no inherent advantage to having left your robot on the field as part of the 6!
Quote:

  • I know that at least one team was able to test their robot from each of the six stations doing so for 2 minutes from each station.

While I don't know if this did happen (at 7 or so when teams came to get their robots from the field I went on my search for something with caffeine) it still doesn't give any teams and inherent advantage. Each station is pretty much the same when alone, and therefore they were just waisting their time!

Quote:

The official arena
  • Beneath the bumps there were two wooden surfaces that actually changed the structure of the bumps. This impacted severely the autonomous section of the game. These surfaces do not exist in the arena drawings.

While I am not an expert on the Breakaway Arena, I'm pretty sure that the wooden platforms near the field were perfectly legal and in fact part of the official spec. I recall an update having been made early on in the season which stressed the fact.
(On the rest I am not knowledgeable enough to answer)

Quote:

Communication network
  • FIRST Israel failed to use the (Access point) AP system that was sent by FIRST to Israel. According to the management it was not working at all and they knew of this problem three days before the practice day.

The AP supplied by FIRST this year were worse than those from the years before. We tried them during the night in many different combinations and settings. From what I understood, work on getting the FMS (Field Management System) to work started the moment it arrived. The APs supplied by FIRST this year were chosen because they were cheaper, not because they were better, at least according to our FTA from the USA. We saw no increase in performance using them.

Quote:

  • No site's survey was done prior to installing a wireless network inside the stadium. They could discover many wireless networks that cause communication interferes.

The Yad Elyuah stadium has free WiFi - That WiFi was disabled. The correct tools for wireless surveying are slightly grey-line on legality in Israel due to military purposes, yet we still checked for interference and found that while it did exist, it alone was not enough to cause the problems.
The stadium is not far away from the "Kiriah" - The top Israeli Military center- a Pentagon of sorts (and to all Israelis who are jumping up to say that it's not 100% accurate, it's close enough for the Americans to understand) which obviously also has sophisticated radio equipment. There is no real solution to this problem. You can't ask all of Tel-Aviv and the entire Israeli Military to stop working for three days or stop using their equipment just for a 'bunch of high schoolers with some robots'. Everything that could have been disabled, was disabled, and overall, interference was not the problem.
Quote:

  • When they discover the communication problems they did not invited ant experts to check it or suggest alternative solutions. Although they keep telling the teams that the best expert from Israel and online from the US working on it.

Now let me be a little bit more vocal on facts:
1) FIRST Israel invited a company with experts in the field of wireless networking to come help us. They came, and they tried fixing it. They didn't manage because the problem wasn't with the wireless!
2) At this stage, FIRST Israel invited an expert from the top Israeli Millitary's Intelligence group's (8200) Networking team. The guy is part of a team that has been credited as one of the best computer intelligence teams in the world, and is one of their elite networking experts. I think that would qualify as an expert from outside. The expert stayed with us all night long, and although he went to work or rest (not sure) for some period, he was back in the arena in time for the finals to make sure that everything was running properly.
I doubt he is reading this or will get this in any way, but he is:
It was truely a mindblowing experience working with you; I consider myself somewhat of an experienced networker and my understanding of networking nearly doubled over that one night. Thank you!
3) Throughout the whole time, we had experts from the USA, including the designer of the system himself with us on Skype. While they tried to be helpful, we always seemed to be a couple of steps ahead of them and they weren't much use in the end.
Quote:

  • Instead of a six AP (for each robot a cell with 300MB width) they used a single N AP meaning for all six robots the width was 150MB instead of 1.8GB.
  • When eventually activate the system with one AP no security mechanism, were implemented. Any wireless phone or computer could access the network and caused the available width to be reduced.
  • Ideas we offered to the management to use three regular AP and connect each one of the three to two access point bridge and creating three different cells with the assistance of security WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) & Pre-shared key mode (PSK, also known as Personal mode) were not implemented.

The problem was not with the WiFi; bandwidth wise, there was no problem at all! Follow me with the math:
Assuming absolutely no compression, and maximum resolution (640*480), a single frame from the camera is 900kb: The maximum FPS if I remember correctly is 15FPS. That means 13.5 MB/s MAXIMUM per robot on camera info. All other info is at worst half a MB per second (and I'm exaggerating here). That means 14MB/s/robot*6 robots (again, assuming all robots are using their camera at full resolution, with no compression and full FPS)=84MB/s - Well bellow the spec of 802.11n! This is also assuming all robots on the field have cameras at that full bandwidth, which was clearly not the problem at the Israeli Regional this year.
Now, even if we did decide that we wanted to go with a direct method- It is IMPOSSIBLE: The FMS is not build for that - it is built for a single router that communicates with the robots, and if anyone believes that they can write a new FMS during a regional, and test it to a level where teams won't try to crucify you like this mentor for example, then you are clearly either on something, or inexperienced in software engineering. Actually, you'd have to rewrite part of the FMS protocols for this to work which would mean changing the code for each driver-station and rewriting the dashboards.

WEP was not necessary after the steps we took which I will explain bellow- a laptop or cellphone COULD have connected, but because we disabled the DHCP server they would have to have defined a static IP which was in our subnet, something which I doubt anyone would do on purpose, and I doubt even more that it could happen by accident.

Quote:

  • Network experts that were presented as guests offered there assistance and were rejected.

We had an expert from the IDF (Israeli Defence Force), any more expertise and it would have just become disturbing and overlapping. It would have made us inefficiently redundant.
--
Now to explain some of the problems we fixed: (not all)
- The DHCP server was on at first, and the WiFi did start off as unprotected, although it was protected before the first robots tried entering the field. The problem this caused is that the DHCP tables filled up and the leases of IP addresses were far from expiring, which means that the router did not have the resources to manage the new IP addresses connecting to it. Disabling the DHCP server and cleaning the tables, moving everything to static IPs fixed part of the problem (this is the 1AM part)
- After that was fixed, we discovered that the FMS router and the robot APs were not on the same subnet class. The robots were correctly configured on subnet class A, but the FMS was somehow locked on class C. We tried to unlock the FMS's router to work on class A, but nothing seemed to work. At this point the expert from the IDF went home and returned with his router from home, and we used it for the rest of the testing and the competition. (This was approximately 4 AM, when my dad woke up having fallen asleep in the car, after I told him to wait for me because I'll "be there in a minute"...)
- Although I was so tired I was nearly out of it by then, I think that we also limited the bandwidth per connection to make sure that it wasn't that problem. No robots reached their maximum bandwidth.


Although this hasn't come up in this thread, but in others before it: some people claimed that bad programming was to blame. I disagree. I saw the code of many robots, my robot also can communication problems and I had 6 programmers go over the code line by line, of which one is a software engineer and one is a former software engineer which now teaches computer science. If something like bad code on one robot can crash the whole system, then something is inherently wrong with the FMS.

I will not respond to the whole MisCar disqualification story, I don't know what happened there with enough certainty, nor do I wish to get involved. As for the stadium, that is logistics and organisation, of which I had no involvement either.

I hope this post brings new information to light and explains part of what happened. I would actually take the opposite stance and praise FIRST Israel for doing everything within their powers to get things working, even when it cost them more than they could usually afford. (Thanks Alysha for offering me a hotel room, even though we never actually got to the going to sleep part of the night :P)

Yoel2630 24-03-2010 14:53

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
Dear RandomStyuff,
I haven't read the whole post but from what I got to I see that you are mixing things.
Yaron pointed out things from his point of view, so don't judge him too harshly. Inspections were horrible, you may have not experienced it because you didn't pass through pits or that you don't know the rules. The practice field was small, and the fact that it wasn't real is even more frustrating.
I am sure Yaron is aware of the fact that you guys stayed up all night (I helped the first night). And he is not blaming you for helping, but blaming FIRST for not getting proper help. Or being stubborn in using the same methods again and again with slight adjustments.
And before you say they did bring experts let me say, it was too late.
The problem should have been found and fixed by the first day. And any other problems by noon the next day.
Yaron is right in my opinion when he said that every robot should be checked because you yourself didn't know what the specific problem was, as I understand these comm problems can come from bad code to bad routers to magnetic disorders, which some robots might have due to bad inspections(I know ours was checked for grounding, but that was ours) and problems such as bandwidth load. So by not eliminating the problems one by one, we can only guess what the bigger problem was. I know there wasn't time, but tough and wise decisions should be made, and not rash and unfair ones.
I am sure that with so many people activated the right way we could have achieved much better results.

yarb65 24-03-2010 15:08

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
I am glad we came to the Israeli Regional and have refrained from weighing in. But, I must clarify the above comments of the professional inspectors. Our inspector was not going to pass our robot because he could not find a volt meter on it. He had no clue about FRC rules.There were indeed robots with illegal nonKOP motors. I and my students saw them and could not believe it. Agian, this is not to bad mouth anyone or the competition but just making sure that the facts are true.

Ed Sparks 24-03-2010 16:22

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by yarb65 (Post 942602)
... There were indeed robots with illegal nonKOP motors. I and my students saw them and could not believe it. ...

As a Lead Inspector at the Championship, this makes me very nervous. I had similar issues last year at the Championship and it was stressfull on the team, the Israel Regional Director, the inspector, and me.

Let's hope these issues are identified and worked out before the championship........please ........ (I'm bringing my Tylenol).

Gary Dillard 24-03-2010 17:49

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by yaron (Post 942361)
The practice field inside the pit area is not legal. In 2009 it was identical to the surface that FIRST Israel declared to be 95% close to the official Lunacy surface. In 2010 the tower was constructed from wooden square beams and not 1.5 inches pipes. In addition not even one gate and target were available. The carpet that was brought by one of the team was two small to even practice with one robot.

Just so you are aware, FIRST does not supply a separate practice field for the regionals. From The Competition Manual:

Quote:

3.9.6 Practice Field
Many events will have practice fields on which teams can share practice time. Adhere to the system in place, work with the schedule and make every effort to keep the area safe, both in and around the perimeter.
The practice fields are generally supplied by one or more of the local teams; the regional committee coordinates to see what teams have available. The 4 x 4 posts that you saw on the tower are from the specification for the low-cost version of the field found on the FIRST website; as you are aware, they are not very representative of the actual field elements but would be sufficient for some testing if you don't grab the bar. As an example, our team wasn't going to go through the tunnel so we didn't build it, but we were grabbing the vertical bars so we had to make a tower that was more representative of the field than the low cost version.

In the future, I recommend you coordinate with your regional committee and the other teams to see what field components can be made available.

I appreciate your taking the time to detail all of your frustrations. We are listening. We are extremely proud of the efforts you are making and I look forward to seeing some of your teams at the Championship.

EricH 24-03-2010 18:01

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Gary Dillard (Post 942697)
Just so you are aware, FIRST does not supply a separate practice field for the regionals. From The Competition Manual:

Gary, each FRC field comes equipped with a selection of low-cost field elements and a piece of practice carpet. At least, for the fields here in the U.S., if there's space, those are pulled out and setup, unless a team brings one. The official contents of the practice field this year: 1 goal (with target, and chains that doubled as spares for the official field), 1 tower with platform, and 1 bump section, plus carpet. Not sure if the bump and ramp had carpet on them.

Israel is another story. It's pretty expensive to ship an FRC field over there, so they have to build it there. Then the practice field may or may not be built. If it is built, you can expect it to be the low-cost one, or brought in by teams. The official field, though, should not be.

If, for some reason, the official field is not built to official specs, or is built highly unevenly, then I think that FRC HQ, here in the U.S., needs to know. Whoever is responsible for building the field according to the drawings needs to know how to read them. If you can't read the drawings, you probably shouldn't be building the field.

Molten 24-03-2010 19:33

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Yoel2630 (Post 942594)
I haven't read the whole post but from what I got to I see that you are mixing things.

If you are going to complain about something, at least read the other side of the story if your blessed enough to receive it. To claim someone wrong without hearing them out is to show a disregard for the discussion itself.

PS: Thanks to Random for presenting the other side of the coin. It just makes the picture a bit more clear.

Jon236 24-03-2010 19:37

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
Several allegations have been made that the field in Israel was not to FIRST standards. That was not the case.

From "The Arena" Section 6.1

"The competition ARENAS are modular constructions that are assembled, used, disassembled, and shipped many times during the competition season. They may undergo a significant amount of wear and tear. The ARENA is designed to withstand rigorous play and frequent shipping, and every effort is made to ensure that the ARENAS are as identical from event to event as possible. However, as the ARENAS are assembled in different venues by different event staff, some small variations do occur. Fit and tolerance on large assemblies (e.g. the TOWER) are ensured only to within ¼ inch. Overall gross dimensions of the entire field may vary up to 4 inches. Successful teams will design ROBOTS that are insensitive to these variations."

The field in Israel was built with metric components to the specified tolerances. Our Head Referee, Stuart Bloom, measured the contested field elements and declared that they met 6.1 requirements.

Gary Dillard 24-03-2010 20:36

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by EricH (Post 942706)
Gary, each FRC field comes equipped with a selection of low-cost field elements and a piece of practice carpet. At least, for the fields here in the U.S., if there's space, those are pulled out and setup, unless a team brings one. The official contents of the practice field this year: 1 goal (with target, and chains that doubled as spares for the official field), 1 tower with platform, and 1 bump section, plus carpet. Not sure if the bump and ramp had carpet on them.

Thanks for the clarification Eric; that is certainly different than it used to be.

When you say "low-cost field elements", are you referring to the low cost design drawings on the FIRST website under the "Arena" section? Because this year, as I stated, the vertical posts in the low cost design were 4 x 4's, not 1.5 diameter tubing.

EricH 24-03-2010 22:57

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Gary Dillard (Post 942813)
Thanks for the clarification Eric; that is certainly different than it used to be.

When you say "low-cost field elements", are you referring to the low cost design drawings on the FIRST website under the "Arena" section? Because this year, as I stated, the vertical posts in the low cost design were 4 x 4's, not 1.5 diameter tubing.

Exactly, Gary. The sort of thing a team would build to practice with.

Nadav Zingerman 25-03-2010 11:51

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon236 (Post 942756)
Several allegations have been made that the field in Israel was not to FIRST standards. That was not the case.

From "The Arena" Section 6.1

"The competition ARENAS are modular constructions that are assembled, used, disassembled, and shipped many times during the competition season. They may undergo a significant amount of wear and tear. The ARENA is designed to withstand rigorous play and frequent shipping, and every effort is made to ensure that the ARENAS are as identical from event to event as possible. However, as the ARENAS are assembled in different venues by different event staff, some small variations do occur. Fit and tolerance on large assemblies (e.g. the TOWER) are ensured only to within ¼ inch. Overall gross dimensions of the entire field may vary up to 4 inches. Successful teams will design ROBOTS that are insensitive to these variations."

The field in Israel was built with metric components to the specified tolerances. Our Head Referee, Stuart Bloom, measured the contested field elements and declared that they met 6.1 requirements.

I didn't measure the field elements myself, but I recall Leav (Sorta FTA) going through each team's pit and telling them the tunnel was significantly smaller than it should be.

Leav 25-03-2010 12:57

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Nadav Zingerman (Post 943079)
I didn't measure the field elements myself, but I recall Leav (Sorta FTA) going through each team's pit and telling them the tunnel was significantly smaller than it should be.

The tunnel was actually not a problem, lower than the nominal* dimension but within tolerances.

Since we were allowed to measure the field, I wanted to make sure all teams knew the measured dimension so that my team would not have any advantage over teams that were not there at the time.

Also I had no official position this year I just lent a hand where it was needed when my team didn't need me.

-Leav

*nominal - number specified on drawing, actual dimensions will vary between two dimensions specified by the tolrerances.

yaron 25-03-2010 18:07

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon236 (Post 942756)
Several allegations have been made that the field in Israel was not to FIRST standards. That was not the case.

From "The Arena" Section 6.1

"The competition ARENAS are modular constructions that are assembled, used, disassembled, and shipped many times during the competition season. They may undergo a significant amount of wear and tear. The ARENA is designed to withstand rigorous play and frequent shipping, and every effort is made to ensure that the ARENAS are as identical from event to event as possible. However, as the ARENAS are assembled in different venues by different event staff, some small variations do occur. Fit and tolerance on large assemblies (e.g. the TOWER) are ensured only to within ¼ inch. Overall gross dimensions of the entire field may vary up to 4 inches. Successful teams will design ROBOTS that are insensitive to these variations."

The field in Israel was built with metric components to the specified tolerances. Our Head Referee, Stuart Bloom, measured the contested field elements and declared that they met 6.1 requirements.

1.5 tube is 1.5 tube, a tolerance for a diameter is not 4mm maybe 0.2mm. It is very reasonable for a team to design a lift system based on this dimension.
Another thing is the visible difference between the blue bumps and the red bumps. If it is so different than it is not engineering, and I thought one of the purpose of FIRST is to celebrate science and technology. You can not celebrate science and technology and forget about engineering. You invest hours volunteering and mentoring students in more then one team and assisting many others teams in order to eventually participate in a celebration of science and technology. The Israel regional, and I am maybe the most sad person in Israel to admit it, was far from a celebration of engineering, it did not serve as inspiration to many teams. Having said that and all what I mentioned in my previous post - nothing, and I repeat nothing is directed to the field people who were brought to an unbelievable situation by wrong decisions for the second year.
As a volenteer who spent three months with 3-4 hours sleeping each night being away for the whole night several times I am the last to show any disrispectfull to any volunteer in FIRST, and if someone took my "complains" as personal, this was not my intentions. I still want Israel to be the best regional in the world. Else, why would I mentor my student to assist so many teams in Israel. The general manger called me and the other mentor of MisCar the worst mentors in Israel because we push student to follow the system approach thinking model engineer follows. For me the FRC competition is very important, not because it is so important to MisCar to win, but because the competition is the only way to examine our process, to show students that inspectors, judges, teachers, engineers and other student appreciate thier achievements. If a well designed, well written code was able to be tested only for one game and only for 1 min and 50 seconds because of communication problems (the lift system was cancelled because the diameter was so out of the range, it was too danger even to try it), then something is wrong. No matter what best IDF or any other expert in the whole galaxy will say - this is not the way to run an event of 52 teams with over 1000 HS pupils and more then 100 mentors. You can not expose students to such a disaster. Too many pupils were crying, our captain was even brought to a first aid assistance because of what FIRST Israel general manager forced him to do!!!
And you know what, if all this was happening only to one team then I would say, sure they need to check themselves first, but it happened to many other teams.
Having expressed my self so long, I must also refer to another issue. You know me since 2006 we have been meeting In Israel and in Atlanta every year. Mentors in MisCar are devoted to FIRST goals and spirits - to all of them, and when FIRST-ISRAEL general manger blames us as people who are nor educating our student to the same values as we believe is .... I can't even find the word (and not because of the lack of English) to express my feeling on this.
And regarding your post about the FRC community in Israel - For all the US readers, I repeat again, Israel could be the best regional in the world because of the teams in it - only the management should be replaced. And I am not speaking on ALISHA who you know I respect and care for.

45Auto 25-03-2010 18:20

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
In the US, standard steel tube diameter tolerance for .500" to 1.700" steel tube is plus .005, minus .000. That works out to a metric tolerance of plus .127mm.

I can see where it would be very aggravating if the field wasn't even built correctly on top of all the radio problems ......

yaron 25-03-2010 18:41

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by RandomStyuff (Post 942552)
I hope this post brings new information to light and explains part of what happened. I would actually take the opposite stance and praise FIRST Israel for doing everything within their powers to get things working, even when it cost them more than they could usually afford. :P)

Dear RandomStyuff
It is pretty annoying that I do not know your name (Yaron is my real name :) ).
Your post really brought new issues to consider. I want to assure you that I respect the hard work and the extremely long hours you were exposed to failures in engineering that you are not responsible for. I (and everyone from MisCar and from any other team who know how much work need to be done in order to organize such an event) appreciate very much every single step you and others have taken to assist in solving problems. There is an idiom: a smart move is not to enter a situation that a clever move can fix - this is what FIRST ISRAEL should have done. Almost all of the details you mentioned are known from 2009, nothing have been changed, on the contrary probably got worst with communication networking in Nokia. Israel is known for best HiTech - no reasons can justify Israel regional to be less quality regional than NH!!!
I hope that you accept this and understand that not even one word of my long posts are referring personally to anybody. I want to improve FIRST ISRAEL at least as you, but unfortunately I can not join you in praising FIRST Israel for the 2010 regional.
My feelings are heart not only because of all the mentors from many teams who are desperate but also for students who said never again - there are other excellent robotic programs with lesser disappointment from the final celebration of science and technology - the competition - mentors and students might consider these. I personally will not do so, and continue in assisting FRC teams in order to improve the FRC community and hope FIRST Israel regional will be a better celebration of good engineering.

yaron 25-03-2010 18:50

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by EricH (Post 942905)
Exactly, Gary. The sort of thing a team would build to practice with.

In Israel you could find at least 8 arenas, teams constructed according to the full details of FIRST drawings. The tower is so important in the 2010 game to demonstrate capabilities of creative solution to lift the robots. If only we knew that in the PIT there will be such a poor arena could spread it to the team I am sure many would volunteer to bring an official arena to the pit. Actually, last year, one my suggestions (as FRC senior mentor) to lower the cost of the Israel regional was to have different teams be responsible for the different parts of the official arena, but make sure in advance that all parts are exactly like the official drawings. There are many teams who construct official arena anyway.

RandomStyuff 26-03-2010 05:39

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
Well, first of all, my name is Niv, I'm the programming lead of #2212 (The Spikes from Aleh Madaim Lod), so now you know my name.

I apologize about my rant earlier, I know that it wasn't a personal attack of sorts against FIRST Israel or anyone in particular. At that moment I saw it as somewhat of an attack and therefore had to respond.

I think FIRST Israel did most of what is in it's powers to get things working. That's what I said throughout my post earlier. I did not imply in any way that the Israeli Regional was done well! I see the Israeli Regional as a failure in many areas, including the technical areas I helped fix. I do not think that blaming anyone is the correct thing to do, it will not solve anything and we will not redo the regional this year. I do think that finding the problems so that we can attempt to fix them is the correct thing to do, and if what you tried to do was give constructive criticism to help for next year I apologize for the way I reacted.
The problem is that statements such as "the management should be replaced" does not constitute constructive criticism in my opinion, and should not be thrown around without having seen their side. I can only give you the part that I saw, during the night. Yarit and Asaf Agmon stayed with us until nearly morning, and Alysha stayed for pretty much the whole night. They really did everything within their powers to fix what they could, and gave us all the resources we asked for. So who do you wish to replace if everyone was doing their job to the fullest? Maybe the addition of a technical manager to the management with more experience in networking is in order. Maybe more coordination with the teams on building the field is in order. But the management of FIRST Israel did nothing less than everything that they could.

I agree that the Israeli Regional can be much more than it is. For the past two years, ever since we have moved from the old radio based system to a fully IP based, networked system, nothing but problems have plagued us. Some of it is related to us having to use equipment that is different from that of FRC regionals in the USA (due to military usage and decisions of our version of the FCC, the frequencies used in the USA and some of the channels used are illegal here in Israel, and therefore some equipment that uses these settings is also illegal and not permitted into the country!). In my team, the programmers and some of our builders (most of our team is majoring in Computer Science, including our builders, which is pretty awesome because they actually understand what is possible in code) have started talking about possible solutions for next year, because even with this year's "fixed state" there were problems.

Communication:
The communications problems were mainly due to networking, not wireless, but they stem from the wireless in the equipment other regionals use not being legal in Israel. One possibility is asking for the FMS equipment to be sent earlier, and then tested with 6 demo-bots, and fixed before the competition. Another possibility is contracting the networking to an external company with expertise in the field. From the awe of the networking expert from the IDF that I worked with, he was amazed by the robots. Although it is not the goal of FIRST to bring adult technologists into FIRST but make FIRSTers into adult technologists, I believe this time it might have proved to be a two-way street and would certainly not be surprised to see him next year at the regional. With enough time and now greater understanding of the FMS, I'm sure that he could help iron out all the little bugs that made even the eliminations un-optimal.

As for the bad code issue;
I am not sure if the issue stems from bad code locking up the field, but just in case it does: Most of the teams have programmers which barely know their code or what they are doing. Last year I went to two teams, both rookies, and taught them programming from the basics of what is an IF and a WHILE to moving the code onto their robots. This year, one of my programmers went and did the same to an additional rookie. I'm sure other teams exist with programming experience that stems from what they taught themselves or what other teams taught them in 4 hours, or even only from what they learned during the 2 hour lectures at Tel-Nof (I'm pretty sure that identical lectures existed also in different places, but Tel-Nof is closest to me.
These quick courses do not teach proper programming, and many teams stick with what they see makes the robots move, even if it's not well done. While I doubt that these coding errors are the cause of the problem, cancelling out that possibility is very important, and better programmers overall would raise the level of FIRST in Israel. An idea that came up in my team(and yes, we do sit around a table and just talk about ideas related to FIRST, we are a bunch of people with no life :P) is to host a summer programming week.

I'm sorry for my posts being this long...

yaron 26-03-2010 07:13

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by RandomStyuff (Post 943352)
An idea that came up in my team(and yes, we do sit around a table and just talk about ideas related to FIRST, we are a bunch of people with no life :P) is to host a summer programming week.

Niv, Thanks for your warm words, now we both know that we have one goal in common, improving FRC comunnity in Israel.
My main job is a director of the Israeli natonal center for technology teacher. Although I can not run workshops for students I can organize workshops for teachers (or mentors). We have just finished one in Tel Aviv. We will have another one this July, all details (in Hebrew), in the center website: moretech.technin.ac.il
I think we luck mentors with deep understanding of engineering education especially in the field of progrmming, networks, communications and sensors.
FRC is for students being mentored by adults, let us work in both direction, improving the mentoring process will improve student learning, improving student learning will teach mentors new and facinating domains, my best teachers in my 22 years of field practice were my students.
Leomi Robotic center at the technion has the resources to orgnize workshops for students and I began working with the director to organize joint workshops.
In the meantime, MisCar organized in the north severl times in the last four years intensive seminars open for all teams in all aspects of FRC. In the last workshop seven teams came from all part of Israel. We will continue to assist any team.
Take care,
Yaron

RandomStyuff 26-03-2010 11:17

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
I'm not sure that going through the mentors is the correct way here. I know FIRST is partially about the students learning from the mentors, but I think that in every field where students can manage alone, it's even better. For example, in my team, we have 4 programmers who are all students, and a mentor which is half mechanical and half programming. In terms of mentoring us in the programming team he sits with the team and helps prioritize different goals (such as that it's more important to get our swerve drive system done than program our own event-based library) and goes over our code at the end to see that we have no errors. Now, maybe that's just our team, and I do realize that my school is not normal in that computer science is our expertise, but I really do believe that when possible, FIRST should be a student thing.
I think a better solution is rather than mentors teaching mentors which teach students having students teach students. I've already started getting the ball rolling on this with my school to try to organize this. I assume that if I do manage to get this up and running you will hear about it soon enough...

yarden.saa 26-03-2010 16:02

Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel
 
FIRST Israel had many problems that not communicate to the field.

THE INSPECTORS
they were not following the rules at all

THE PIT PRACTICE FIELD
I didn't know that teams brought their field. If I knew it my team would have bring tower and bumps as the rules which looks good(the tower in the practice field was looking very bad)

THE PIT AREA
The light in the pit was weak. we could not see any thing in the robot circuits. the reception desk could not say any announcement to the teams becase the noise. the pits were not orgenized and there was a full mess.

THE STADIUM
To get to the pit you had to go by a kiosk becase the gates were not open.

THE FIELD
I agree that the field looks smaller. the field in the pre seasom was much bigger(the pre season field was by the rules of length and width).
the bumps if many teams robot tried to drive over the bump and fail it's okay, but they were not trying if the knew in their school that their robot can drive over the bump. the tower was okay(my team's robot has an hanging mechanisem and it works)
the tunnl was okay and you cannot blame it was not okay because I saw many robots that designed to drive in the tunnel by querter of a milimeter less then its height. it's not wise because the tunnel cannot be built ecsactly every time.

THE COMMUNICATION]
As I said before, the system had to be test at least 3 weeks before the competition with 6 robots in NOKIA Arena. everyone know what happened in 2009. everyone know that what is legal in US is not legal in Israel. everyone knows the BIG problem was becase something they don't know till now. the guesses of what the problem was are fine but truely; one team wrong code cannot affect 5 other robots. my guess I think should be test more seriously;
the place of the arena is bad. it's near to the "kerya" - "Israel pentagon", there are 150 wireless networks that you can to connect with the laptop in NOKIA Arena. the signal is not the signal in US. the routers place was not the most intelligent as our mentor who works in this section said. the routers place was wrong and how big the router is ("the biggest router in israel") it doesn't matter the need to provide communication to a little place of 54*18 foot(if i am not wrong).

THE EVENT COST
the teams should not pay 11500$ every year regulary. it's not realistic. the Arena is free (TEL AVIV muni. donate it).
The field router should be rent by a company in the US or to buy one after 2 years of event testing if the router is successful(eventhough I don't think the router had a problem). the field except to the electrical should be built in israel.


as a new member in this events(See you in the championship) it was painful. but I have to say some good words; I think FIRST spirit was the best thing that happened to Israel regional. it happened thank for the mentors, volunteers and the best students of ISRAEL.


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