[yaron]

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).