[Greg McKaskle]

I think the original topic was something along the lines of ...

" At the FLR regional, there were a number of robots that seemed to not be controlled by their team DS. They seemed to ignore inputs, would deploy minibots on their own, or lose comms and come back just as the match was ending. What are some possible explanations? Is is possible or likely that someone hacked the field or some of the networks and took control of the robots?"

On that topic, I'd say that another possible explanation for some of the robot movement that doesn't obey joystick input is that the team autonomous code wasn't finished. In NJ, I believe we saw five teams using Java and C++ whose exit condition for autonomous was not correct or whose autonomous would destroy objects that teleop would try to use. The result was that their tests worked fine in the pits, but on the field, their robot would mostly sit there and ignore controls. Sometimes the robot would crash due to null objects or invalid objects. Running a DS practice mode test would usually reproduce the effect in the pits. Other times it was necessary to alter the device boot sequence and run the practice match. If this happened, and a team had a more active autonomous, their robot would effectively be taking the DTF challenge of full auto. That may explain some of the odd behavior.

Other explanations -- low batteries can cause intermittent dropout of pretty much anything on the robot, and devices take different amounts of time to boot. If the robot reanimates after about a minute, I look at power to the radio. If it reanimates after ten to fifteen seconds, I look at the cRIO power.
Mechanical difficulties or loose wires can easily cause some inputs to make sense and others to be ignored. Robots that lose chains or PWM cables are really hard to drive, and until the team finds the smoking gun their mind is racing as to what caused that behavior.

As to whether or not it is possible to hack the field, I'd say that it was made my man and can be broken by man. It is possible. However, it is far more likely that a tornado will tear off the roof and six lightning bolts simultaneously scorch each of antennae on the field radio.

Also, if the field is hacked, hackers almost always leave footprints. I'm pretty sure FTAs and FIRST would quickly spot it and have tons of data to identify how it took place.

Finally, there are tons of easy ways to have fun at a FIRST regional. I suspect even the most hardened hacker would rather collect buttons or watch scoring trends. Making a team's robot sit still for 90 seconds just isn't that great by comparison. Maybe it would be fun to make their BFL blink morse code messages such as "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!", "I'll be back", "Hasta la vista, baby", or "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.". When I see that, I'll believe the field hack is more likely.

Greg McKaskle