Safety Issue: Robots Moving in Pits

[robochick1319]

I brought this up in another thread and it was recommended that it become it's own topic so here it is.

I have a major concern about teams running/driving/powering on their robots in the pit. There are 3 places where a robot is turned on and enabled: the practice field, the team's pit, and the competition field. When the robot is on and enabled in the pit, it should be on blocks of some kind that prevent the wheels from touching the ground.

My team had serious safety incident at a regional when another team was "practicing driving" with their robot in the pit directly across from us, lost control, and literally ran one of our mentors over. It was reported and dealt with but the story doesn't end there. It's been a few years and I STILL see teams running their robots on the pit floor, intentionally or not.

It is particularly alarming to me since I see children and disabled visitors in the pit area who could be greatly injured by a rampaging robot and couldn't easily run away.

Has anyone noticed this safety issue? Any ideas of what can we do as a community to raise awareness of it?

(Also, this is my first time every starting a thread. That's how much I care about this. Yikes )

[thatprogrammer]

To keep it safe, we run our robot (if we ever need to at the pits) in our cart, which has slots for the robot's wheels, so it doesn't drive out of the cart. To raise awareness, I would recommend suggesting to the pit administration at your regional to announce not to run robots in the pits on the floor.

I'd say that, like the last thread about safety, the only answer to this is to use common sense, and that the correct form of action is based on a case by case scenario. Everyone tests their robot systems while in the pits, usually to a smaller extent due to pit sizing, but everyone does it nonetheless. It's essential to getting things working. Testing is part of the engineering process (and this is an engineering competition after all). However every once in a while, like you mentioned, someone doesn't think (or doesn't know), and does something that ultimately results in an injury - either to themselves, or to someone else. Are these actions a danger? Yes. Should the mistakes of a few penalize everyone else who does these practices safely? I'd say not.

Throwing rules at the problem won't make people more safe - it'll just make more people rule-breakers. The best solution is to create a culture that respects safety and is well-educated on its finer points. Safe practices and common sense should be the norm, not the outlier. Set it as the default standard that everyone should be held to. Don't parade around a team and give them a safety award for doing what everyone should be doing already. I'm being realistic here: The average team gives 0 fluffs about the safety award. Why? Because it's not an achievement - it's a standard. Teams shouldn't be celebrated for being safe in the same way students shouldn't be celebrated for doing their homework - it's what they're supposed to do. The more safety is celebrated as "special" and treated as "outside the norm", the more it's going to become so.

If you're serious about safety, straighten up, buckle down, and make a culture within your team and your community where safe practices are expected and respected, not celebrated.

[robochick1319]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

If you're serious about safety, straighten up, buckle down, and make a culture within your team and your community where safe practices are expected and respected, not celebrated.

I agree with you on many points. My team takes safety very seriously but as my incident shows it doesn't matter how safe we are if those working in our area make blatantly wrong and unsafe decisions. Especially when they do these things after being told they are unsafe and even seeing that they are unsafe.

Maybe FIRST can't make a solid rule in the manual. Maybe volunteers could just go around enforcing the "no testing the robot on the floor of the pit" rule just like they enforce the safety glasses rule. The only way it will become a standard is if we start addressing it like a standard.

[xXhunter47Xx]

Our robot cart has the robot sit on blocks and it's secured via bungee cords so it's safe to run as long as it's on the cart and is clear of people.

We take safety very seriously. It's not really even a discussed thing, it's just kind of a common knowledge unspoken rule. Anything that poses an immediate threat means safety glasses, tied up hair (haha nobody has long hair but for the sake of safety), situational awareness, and anyone who is not working with the tool is required to stand a safe distance away or back into the room (we drag our large power tools outside the classroom, so if you're not working outside you're inside).

We did have an incident where a new student (who wanted to join mid-way through build season) used the belt sander with a kitchen mitt (one that's not owned by the team, nonetheless) and got a serious talk with everyone on the team.

I digress, from what I've noticed teams at the SD Regional 2014 have robot carts that lift the wheels off any points of contact and then is run when clear.
It was also made fairly clear that any robot operation would be done at the practice field, and luckily for us we were 20 feet away from the practice field so it wasn't that big of a deal to us.
But it was very clear that the robot shouldn't be run in the pit without it blocked up properly.

Originally Posted by robochick1319

I agree with you on many points. My team takes safety very seriously but as my incident shows it doesn't matter how safe we are if those working in our area make blatantly wrong and unsafe decisions. Especially when they do these things after being told they are unsafe and even seeing that they are unsafe.

Maybe FIRST can't make a solid rule in the manual. Maybe volunteers could just go around enforcing the "no testing the robot on the floor of the pit" rule just like they enforce the safety glasses rule. The only way it will become a standard is if we start addressing it like a standard.

I know your team is safe (Flash is one of the great role models in safety) - I'm saying this is something the community needs to do. It's a culture that needs to be made and respected by everyone. There doesn't need to be rules against potentially dangerous things (like testing in the pits) if the potential for danger is removed from the equation by everyone executing safe practices. I love testing my robot on the floor of the pit - it is a quick and easy way to make testing game object collection and small driving tests more reliable and realistic to being on a field, and as long as I am taking the right precautions in regards to the safety of myself, my team, and those around me, I see no reason why I should be required to not test as I please. The same applies for everyone else. Like I said - it's a case by case scenario. If Johnny Teammember is doing some unsafe testing, maybe the pit safety advisers can take away his team's privileges of testing in the pit until they understand how to correctly and safely test, but there's still no reason why everyone else should be punished because of the actions of a minority group of people.

You are right that the only way it will become a standard is by addressing it as one, and the proper way to do so is to educate everyone on the correct way of action instead of punishing everyone for something they didn't do.

[robochick1319]

I'm glad to see that there are so many people out there who recognize this safety issue. And you are all absolutely right: politely reminding teams and reporting issues to the UL Safety Judges are the ways to handle it. I'm just dreaming of a time in FIRST when running the robot on the pit floor cause you want to go for a "test drive" will be as obviously wrong as wearing open toed shoes and no safety glasses in the pit.

[Oromus]

I think that there shouldn't necessarily be a rule against testing in the pit, with or without blocks. If a team is testing their robot unsafely (i.e. running autonomous, drive testing, ect...), someone should be told (i.e. a mentor or safety inspector). However, testing your robot on the floor alone shouldn't be considered unsafe or be against the rules. In some cases, like the mentioned incident of a neighboring team running over a mentor with a robot, teams testing their robot on the pit floor have gone about it unsafely. Some teams, however, make sure to safely test their robot when in the pits. For example, we needed to test our automatic tote stacking button. To do that, we put our robot on the pit floor and ran it. However, we made sure before hand that driving was completely disabled. The worst our robot could do is move it's lift. I think IF a rule should be made/actually enforced about robot operation in the pits, it should be preventing robots from driving on the floor of the pits; that's what seems to be really unsafe.

TL;DR: I think robots being active on the floor of pits are fine; just don't drive or have driving enabled.

[xXhunter47Xx]

Originally Posted by Oromus

TL;DR: I think robots being active on the floor of pits are fine; just don't drive or have driving enabled.

Here's the thing though,
you can't visibly tell if a team has disabled drive. I don't doubt you or your team's skill to disable code, but some teams aren't as savvy or experienced with FRC programming. If this is introduced, it only takes one incident (See the OP's) to instantly ban it again. It's safer to just not allow it to be run on the ground at all.

TL;DR it only takes one bad apple etc etc.

Originally Posted by xXhunter47Xx

Here's the thing though,
you can't visibly tell if a team has disabled drive. I don't doubt you or your team's skill to disable code, but some teams aren't as savvy or experienced with FRC programming. If this is introduced, it only takes one incident (See the OP's) to instantly ban it again. It's safer to just not allow it to be run on the ground at all.

TL;DR it only takes one bad apple etc etc.

Following that logic:

"You can't visibly tell if a team has a safe robot. I don't doubt you or your team's skill to make a safe robot, but some teams aren't as savvy or experienced with making them safe. If a rule to allow robots at competitions is introduced, it only takes one incident (see any) to instantly ban them again. It's safer to just not allow robots at the events at all.

TL;DR it only takes one bad apple etc etc."


The reality is this isn't a soft pillow tossing competition. It's robotics. It's going to be more dangerous, and there is going to be a higher potential for mishaps. Robotics is what is it - the more you try and change it, the further you get from what it is. Don't change the game - change the approach.

[robochick1319]

Originally Posted by xXhunter47Xx

Here's the thing though,
you can't visibly tell if a team has disabled drive. I don't doubt you or your team's skill to disable code, but some teams aren't as savvy or experienced with FRC programming. If this is introduced, it only takes one incident (See the OP's) to instantly ban it again. It's safer to just not allow it to be run on the ground at all.

TL;DR it only takes one bad apple etc etc.

Exactly. I'm sure teams like 1902 can take precautions to disable the drive train but accidents do happen. Even lifting the wheels a little bit off the ground shouldn't drastically affect what you're testing, right? And it adds an extra layer of protection for everyone. It accounts for what causes most accidents--operator error.

[SousVide]

One of the issues that I've seen is that the operator on it (we were in the practice field at the time) mistakenly left the DS with autonomous selected. The driver enabled the robot and it took off. Had we been in the pits, it would been on the blocks and wouldn't have actually gone anywhere. Do we double-check that the DS is in the intended mode ? Yes. Will someone make a mistake - it's still a possibility.

We make checklists for a lot of things that we do - but for some reason, the majority of the teenagers/young-adults despises checklists; it takes them a year and a half to get warmed up to the idea. So, we have checklists, and there are angry eyes every time that I make them use it.

Having said that, if we are doing anything other than running the drive wheels while we are in the pit, we let our neighbors know so that they know to be ready if we start yelling.

[asid61]

I can see a robot being on the floor of the pit, but I definitely agree that robots should not be driven in the pit at all. Disconnecting motors would be the safest way to test IMO if the robot has to be on the floor and enabled.

EDIT: I can see "safety culture" being a good thing, but it should be taken as a given that although not everyone will follow the rules, most will if there is a rule and it's at least mildly enforced, especially by people with authority like safety inspectors. But there will always be exceptions. Without a rule it makes it a lot easier to justify doing unsafe things.
Promote safety culture but don't expect everybody to just be safe all the time with no penalties. It's naive to expect everybody to follow something ethereal like that.

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by robochick1319

I'm glad to see that there are so many people out there who recognize this safety issue. And you are all absolutely right: politely reminding teams and reporting issues to the UL Safety Judges are the ways to handle it. I'm just dreaming of a time in FIRST when running the robot on the pit floor cause you want to go for a "test drive" will be as obviously wrong as wearing open toed shoes and no safety glasses in the pit.

I have to wholeheartedly disagree with this standpoint. Operating a powertool like a table saw or mill is inherently dangerous. There is an accepted and understandable level of risk that people have to accept when doing any activity. We can strive to be accident free and have a good safety culture, but having a safety culture means understanding there is a certain amount of risk in any activity.

The safety argument you're making always sounds good - you always have the 'we can prevent accidents' and 'think of the children' arguments to fall back on. It is up to us filter those arguments through a seive of common sense that says there is a certain amount of risk pursuing any activity and that we accept that risk as part of what we do.

I disagree with restricting our ability to safety test a robot on the pit floor.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

I have to wholeheartedly disagree with this standpoint. Operating a powertool like a table saw or mill is inherently dangerous. There is an accepted and understandable level of risk that people have to accept when doing any activity. We can strive to be accident free and have a good safety culture, but having a safety culture means understanding there is a certain amount of risk in any activity.

The safety argument you're making always sounds good - you always have the 'we can prevent accidents' and 'think of the children' arguments to fall back on. It is up to us filter those arguments through a seive of common sense that says there is a certain amount of risk pursuing any activity and that we accept that risk as part of what we do.

I disagree with restricting our ability to safety test a robot on the pit floor.

I wholeheartedly agree.

This is a robotics competition which means there are large moving objects, power tools, pinch points, heavy lifting, etc which means by being involved in the program or being present in the pits you are exposing yourself to risks. While I agree that the pits should be a safe environment they should also be an environment that still allows teams to operate as a team which occasionally does require testing. Yes some testing can be done on the practice field however teams do not get sufficient access to practice space at events nor are they suitable for quick testing when something breaks or you need to tweak something and quickly test it before getting to your match.

Always exercise caution, talk to the team, and consult the safety advisers if you need be. I don't think a once size fits all approach works in these situations.