Scoring error at Boston.
 

During our Semi-final match, there was a scoring error that occured, were our alliance had 4 total point subtracted from the score. 1 in autonomous, and 3 during tele-operated. The point that was scored in autonomous was not counted, and the other three were subtracted when we scored one, the score went down two. I've viewed this match several times, just to make sure i'm not seeing things. We ended up winning the match anyways, but its a little concerning that there is some scoring issues. I was wondering if anyone else have ran into this problem.


O and you can view the match on the blue alliance right here. http://www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv/match/2010ma_sf1m1

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

You are definitely right about the deductions from your score during tele-op. It looks like you should have score two in auto, but only one was counted.

I know that in boston, earlier in the day points were deducted from the score during a match, and the announcer said something about it. He suggested that there may have been DOGMA penalties. I am not sure if that was a wild guess, or if the scoring system automatically deducts dogma penalties but it is possible that this could have been the cause (I have no idea whether or not their should have been DOGMA penalties). This would atleast give some form of reason to what would allow the score system to deduct points.

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

There were similar issues at SVR. The ball counters in the scoring chute seem to malfunction sometimes when multiple balls are scored. I'm not sure if they ever determined if it was a timing error (there are 2 beam breakers to help with sensing direction), or if the added momentum was causing the balls to bounce back inadvertently.

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

I noticed a similar issue at St. Louis. In one of the elimination matches, a robot scored 3/4 balls at once. The counter started at 2, I think. It went up to four, then started counting from zero again. The team wasn't awarded all the points it scored, but the alliance won, so no one cared. Maybe there is an error handler in the field that cancels points if the photo gate (whatever counts the balls) is triggered too frequently.

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

During one of our Elimination Matches in Philly we decided it would be a good idea to push 4 balls in the goal at one time. It jammed the goal, and then for some reason our score counters did not work correctly. At the end of the match, We and 341 ended up discussing what the actual score was with the refs and they agreed with us.

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

I have a feeling that we are going to need to see a simmilar solution to 2006, with volunteers counting balls as they go in at the Championships.

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

It has been reported that the sensors are very sensitive to balls going backward through the goal. It is not widely documented, but the score system is meant to work this way, based on rule <G16>:
If the ball goes backward through the sensor, even slightly, the score system automatically deducts two points as the penalty.

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

This seems to have happened several times at Regionals, sometimes due to
human error but I didn't see any hands near the ball chutes in this particular match.
Some Regionals posted human scorers at each goal.

I haven't looked at the position of the ball detector beams, but if there is a situation where multiple balls only break the beam once, then there could be conditions that would cause a negative count.
I wonder what the FMS does when more balls are returned to play than it has counted as scored?

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

So a ball scored with a hard kick hitting one already in the ball counting mechaism could result in a reduction in score, or at least the second goal not being scored.

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

It looks like this is what is happening, however, I have seen it happen when it did not appear that a ball was feeding backwards. I am curious how relaible the system really is. It seems that it may be false triggering.

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

I really hope that this problem is rare enough that it hasn't affected any of the Elimination matches at Regionals.

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

It seems like it realistically could be effecting Elimination matches. In the video of the match your teammate posted you guys won by 2 points. My team was on the other alliance and sat dead through the match. Had we not sat dead we could have put in a couple of balls and hung, then the points you guys lost would have been the difference in the match.

It seems like this problem is more likely to happen when good robots pair up. When you have a good bot in the middle zone balls tend to collect right infront of the goal, this makes it easy for the front zone robot to push them in. This also appears to be the direct cause of the problem.

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

There are actually 2 beams for the counter. The FMS determines which way a ball is traveling based on which beam trips first. If the beam towards the field trips, and then the one to the DS does, it is a scored goal. The other way around, it is a double penalty. The situation you are thinking of, however, is most likely where a 2nd ball trips the first beam before the 1st ball clears the second beam. I'd imagine the system is programmed so that if the 1st beam is active when the 2nd beam clears, it detects it as a 2nd score. The only thing I can think of that would miss scoring a ball is an error in the software.

I'm also curious about how it handles a non-scored ball passing through the return

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

There seemed to be multiple scoring errors In Quarter 4 Match 2 at the Boston Regional:

http://www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv/match/2010ma_qf4m2

If you watch carefully, at 1:25 our alliance scores a goal, making it 4-3 blue alliance. Right after that if you look even closer, you can see that we score another point. Instead of adding another point to our score, 2 points were taken away making the score 3-2, red alliance. The score ended 3-2, but for some reason, the final score ended up 6-3, red alliance.

I can't know for sure, since half the time the camera was aimed at our end, but I don't remember seeing the red alliance score 3 uncounted points. The announcer said something about dogma penalties when 3 points were deducted from our score, but I don't know if that's what really cause it.

I can't say I'm not a bit disappointed by the results, since from my perspective, we might have actually won that match. If the end score was the result of a field error, then it might have actually prevented my alliance from winning our 2nd match in the quarterfinals, and going on to the semifinals.

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

Reviewing the original video several more times, I'm not sure I agree that 2 balls were scored by blue in autonomous.

During the autonomous period, red clears one ball, blue kicks 2 balls from midfield, scoring with one of them. There is also a shot from the blue offensive robot which looks like it is being scored since the ball disappears from shot very close to the goal mouth, but as the cameral zooms back there is a ball rolling along the alliance wall.
At the end of autonomous, 1 ball was cleared from defense by red, 2 were moved forward from midfield by blue, and there are 4 balls left in the zone, therefore only 1 was scored by blue.

That still leaves the reduction in points during the match. This could be a field fault as discussed above but can we completely rule out a DOGMA penalty?

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

At the Virginia regional there were multiple occurrences like this affecting multiple teams, us being one of them. In one match, we scored 6 goals, none of them were counted. Apparently this one specific red goal's ball sensor was especially sensitive and even the slightest touch before it COMPLETELY cleared the goal chute would trip the automatic penalty. This problem caused many delays and eventually they just replaced the sensor altogether. I'm pretty sure in the elimination rounds they were using volunteers to keep track of scores in addition to their automated system, but I think that also may have been due to the ball return sensors malfunctioning and they were actually keeping track of the 11 seconds for the balls to be returned. Oh well, hopefully they have these issues sorted out before the championship.

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

After watching that autonomous closely several times I agree that only one ball was and should be scored. It's hard to tell if it was an automatic penalty, or if it was a field error.

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

As far as I've seen, the ONLY penalty (not even DOGMA) that is shown on the live display is the automatic -2 for re-entering the ball counter. In [urlhttp://www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv/match/2010ma_qf4m2]this match[/url], around 1:35 a ball is certainly scored, however it does the 2 point deduction instead of scoring. If it was an HP error, the score would have dropped to 3, since the ball scored would added and offset the -2. However, since a straight -2 was applied, this has to be an error in the counter equipment.

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

It looked to me like the score was 3-3, then a ball was scored, bringing it to 3-4, then the same ball bounced backward through the goal, bringing it to 3-2.

You are correct, however, in saying that DOGMA penalties are not assessed in real time. Every one that I've seen has showed up as a penalty after the match.

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

What I saw was a ball scored, bringing score to 3-4. Another ball was scored a few seconds later, which dropped the score to 3-2. There was enough time between the scores that there is no chance this could have been a situation where 2 balls passing through the counter at the same time messes up the system

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

You're correct. A few seconds before, you can see clearly there were two balls that weren't there before once we pushed them towards the goal. We scored the first ball, and you can see that our human player picked it up. It was not pushed back out. A second ball was kicked, and only then was the 2 point penalty subtracted from our score.

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

Okay then. What I thought was the same ball coming back was actually a second ball going through.

A properly mounted sensor with bug-free software should never encounter a problem like this. As I've said before, if FIRST is going to base the outcome of matches on the reports of computer software (which I have no intrinsic problems with), they should at least allow the community to see the source code and help ensure that software is error-free.

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

The FMS this year isn't reliable at all. Our third quarterfinals match was a 6-6 tie, but the scoreboard showed 8-2 with us losing. We went up to the ref, and they were already changing it, so it didn't end up too badly for us, but still.

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

The scoring system has some bugs, no doubt. I'm just worried that FIRST will go back to manual scoring next year due to all of the problems. IMO, electronic scoring is the way to go - the availability of a (mostly) accurate real-time score display this year was beneficial for everyone - but the system just needs to have a few kinks worked out.

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

DOGMA penalties are not assesed in realtime. However, like the scoring sesor, the return sensors seem to have a couple of glitches. At the Palmetto Regional, there was a qualifying match where a team was penalized 39 points for DOGMA, but it was obvious they returned every ball faster than 11 seconds.

Re: Scoring error at Boston.
 

The scoring system IS better than a manual system, but there are more problems than just scoring. The entire field communications system is buggy. At Wisconsin, there were a lot of comms losses and games being delayed, and just look at the Israel Regional...