Quote:
Originally Posted by apalrd
We always reset everything when we exit disabled mode (disabled bit goes from low->high). This is done as a safety features, so that the robot will never do anything when entering enabled mode. Autonomous is also reset when this happens. This is also a development feature, as we frequently run auto many times during calibration and we don't want to have to reset anything in the software realm to run again. If we are ever in a situation where the field disables us and robs us of a second of our 10 second autonomous mode, we will contest it as a field fault to the highest level required and demand a replay.
FMS stands for Field Management System. Its job is to Manage the Field, its FIRST job is to make sure the match runs properly (secondary tasks include saving scores, audience displays, ranking calculations, ...). This includes correctly forwarding communications between all teams playing (which it failed at the 2012 Championships), and correctly time the match (which it has failed at every event this year). There is absolutely no technical reason that the FMS should be more than 20ms off on any time event that happens during the match - The enabling transitions of the robots, the actuating of the hot goals, the lighting of the pedestal, etc. and yet the FMS still manages to screw it all up. We can get timing accuracy of 10ms on our robot controls, and we could achieve 5ms if we wanted to. I have systems at work and in FSAE that go down to 1us or less, on processor hardware that has been in production for around 15 years. Why can't the FMS maintain time to half a second?
FIRST is telling the teams (and the poor refs) that they are held accountable to every plane in space and many totally subjective calls, yet they can't maintain the match or hot goal timing to any reasonable accuracy by week 7. This is absolutely unacceptable. I am happy that the decision was made at MSC to replay the match as many times as necessary.
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I agree. With our robot, our code is written so that after the first autonomous mode runs, we must launch our debugging/tuning application and request another auto mode. Why should we have to remove safety features so that our robot works? The Fms seems like a horrible hacked together piece of software that isn't accurate or maintainable. I'm also curious as to why they decided to make the software delete logs from stopped matches. When a match is stopped, it is because of a field fault, so wouldn't it make sense to sAve logs from matches where the field didn't work? It would also be really cool if first was at least a tiny bit transparent about some of these issues. They could at least formally acknowledge that hot goal timing, pedestal timing, and match timing are all still flawed instead of just hopng that if they ignore their problems that they will go away.