Practice field at champs

[Doug Frisk]

Now that I'm almost recovered from the flu I picked up in St. Louis I'm working on an email about what worked and didn't work well on the practice fields this year.

I want to thank all the teams that came out to use the field while respecting the space and time of the other 599 teams at the event. It was a barely controlled chaos that worked pretty well this years.

From my perspective:

The FIFO queues worked well except right at opening and after lunch but even there, the lines generally cleared up within 30 minutes or so. I'd be very interested to hear your perspective though.

Having the practice field closed during lunch worked well. We had very few volunteers wander off and never return this year. In fact, none of the group I was managing did that. I know a lot of teams didn't appreciate the closing, but the 8 FTAs and 50 volunteers did. Trying to remain open while staggering lunches is a lot harder than you'd think.

The location of the wooden practice fields was sub-optimal. By design, they were supposed to be back by the FLL area. We had a continual problem all week of teams walking off the full fields and onto the wooden fields bypassing sometimes 12 to 15 teams in line. Had the wooden fields been along the back wall, there would have been a physical barrier that would have reduced that to almost zero.

The "forward queue" for the wooden fields worked mostly, new teams were going on the field as older ones were leaving. The problem was in communicating that to teams, it was pretty common early on to have teams head directly from the main queue to the wooden fields bypassing the couple of teams waiting in the center of the room. Like most of the failures, that was a communication issue.

Some things I'll recommend for next year.

Better signage. Try as we might, directing people to the "tethered" or "wireless" queue a surprising number of people got in the wrong line.

More carpet and a larger area for the wooden/informal practice areas. A surprising number of teams just wanted some carpet to drive on. The folks from FIRST did look for more of the small practice area carpet pieces on Thursday, but unfortunately there weren't more.

Clearer or at least more explicit communications regarding the hours of operations. The schedule saying "Practice fields open 7:30 - 12:00 and 1:00 - 6:30" was apparently not clear to some people that the fields would be closed from 12:00 to 1:00. I put the sign up at the entrance 2 hours before lunch and about 40 minutes before lunch I was reminding as many teams as I could that we were closed from 12 to 1 but it still came as a shock to some.

What are your thoughts? What did you like, what would you like to see changed?

[Chris_Elston]

I really, really liked the way the practice fields were handled this year. TWO THUMBS UP.

[Thad House]

A lot of teams, especially this year just wanted the goals to calibrate their shooters. For shooter years, it would be nice to have like a wall of goals with the right tape so teams could check their distance properly. There just wasn't enough space or time to do this with the way the fields were set up this year. Otherwise I felt the practice fields were ran very well. Much better then the coupons they used for a few years.

[Doug Frisk]

Originally Posted by Thad House

A lot of teams, especially this year just wanted the goals to calibrate their shooters. For shooter years, it would be nice to have like a wall of goals with the right tape so teams could check their distance properly. There just wasn't enough space or time to do this with the way the fields were set up this year. Otherwise I felt the practice fields were ran very well. Much better then the coupons they used for a few years.

Yep. On Wednesday morning I discussed rearranging the wooden fields. I thought that moving the defenses and climbing towers onto one carpet and the shooting targets onto opposite sides of the other would have allowed more teams to use the fields concurrently. We decided to wait and see how they actually ended up getting used and then there was no time.

[dellagd]

I also liked the removal for the coupons. Much simpler and worked just fine.

As always, my one request would simply be to provide more wooden fields for teams to do simple calibration on. It feels like somewhat of a waste for your team and others having to wait in line for an offical field at times when all you need is a single high goal face.

[nuclearnerd]

Thanks for the summary! Since most teams wanted the "wood" fields for shooter calibration, we were always able to get on the formal fields with little wait. Also thanks to the FTAs for being patient with connection issues.

I would agree that more signage is required, especially between the queue and the fields. Volunteers would direct us to "Field 3" (for instance) when we asked for a wireless match. I couldn't see field numbers, and the volunteers pointed us in the direction of a 10 minute long lineup for a tethered field. I don't think they knew which was which either

I also like the idea of more informal testing areas. Teams that want to test mechanisms against defenses, or take shots against a goal don't need a full field - just some carpet and elements. You could fit a half dozen of these types of practice area.

[Doug Frisk]

Originally Posted by nuclearnerd

I would agree that more signage is required, especially between the queue and the fields. Volunteers would direct us to "Field 3" (for instance) when we asked for a wireless match. I couldn't see field numbers, and the volunteers pointed us in the direction of a 10 minute long lineup for a tethered field. I don't think they knew which was which either

So... the fields were numbered 1 to 4 counterclockwise starting from the far field on the left side. The tethered fields were either 1 and 4 or 2 and 3 depending on time of day. Personally, I wanted the tethered fields to be 2 and 3 exclusively, but the FTAs on the tethered fields get bored out of their skulls on those fields and really want to swap. Hence the post lunch confusion where the volunteers and the teams needed to adjust to the change.

Sorry if you ended up in the wrong place. I agree a big sign with a map of the pits would have helped.

[lethc]

Practice fields this year were handled way better than last year imo. It seemed like everyone that wanted onto a practice field could get on within 30 minutes and from what I remember that was not the case last year. Way to go volunteers

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by DareDad

So... the fields were numbered 1 to 4 counterclockwise starting from the far field on the left side. The tethered fields were either 1 and 4 or 2 and 3 depending on time of day. Personally, I wanted the tethered fields to be 2 and 3 exclusively, but the FTAs on the tethered fields get bored out of their skulls on those fields and really want to swap. Hence the post lunch confusion where the volunteers and the teams needed to adjust to the change.

Sorry if you ended up in the wrong place. I agree a big sign with a map of the pits would have helped.

Would it be feasible to have the FTA's switch fields instead of having the fields switch roles?

[bobbysq]

I'd like to see them have a full, wireless practice field that doesn't strictly run matches for the purpose of testing things that may be difficult to test while tethered, such a s auto programs.

[ATannahill]

Originally Posted by bobbysq

I'd like to see them have a full, wireless practice field that doesn't strictly run matches for the purpose of testing things that may be difficult to test while tethered, such a s auto programs.

How would you go about this while keeping safety, fairness and feasibility in mind?

It is not feasible for you to reconfigure your radio for use on the practice field and them again for the competition field when you finish, but without doing that the FMS will lock your controls so you cannot initiate autonomous on your own.

I also have issue with teams resetting their robots while another team is running an untested autonomous program. This makes me want to prohibit teams from being on the field while other teams are testing, this makes reset to try a different autonomous program difficult.

Would you have a field that strictly runs autonomous and not tele-operated? How many autonomous routines would be equivalent to a practice match, i.e. how many until teams are cycled off the field. What do you do if a certain team is taking a long time to reset their robot for another go, such as tethering to reset an arm?

[Bpk9p4]

i would agree with more wooden fields. However my biggest complaint was that the practice fields were closed on Saturday. Lots of teams would have loved to get there robot out there to make sure everything was working fine and maybe change things up

[hionwind]

I agree with others that the practice fields were managed much better this year than last. Doug was super friendly and willing to work with teams on what made sense for everybody. My only thought is why not open the practice fields at 7:00 when the pits open? The volunteers were all there and it would have at least somewhat alleviated the lines building up on Thursday morning.

[mdituri]

Originally Posted by hionwind

...Doug was super friendly and willing to work with teams on what made sense for everybody. My only thought is why not open the practice fields at 7:00 when the pits open? The volunteers were all there and it would have at least somewhat alleviated the lines building up on Thursday morning.

I agree. Thursday morning needed a 7am opening. I was there from Newton division by 7:10 am which was physically the fastest we could get there after having our backpacks searched (haha) and Speedwalking to the pit and then the practice field. We were already 20 deep. I am very grateful for the teams and volunteers that were incredibly gracious to allow us to move to the front since we were in match one on newton. We needed five minutes at a tower and to scale once. Thank you so much.
FYI we tracked or pit crew..on Thursday they walked 13.5 miles, Friday 12.6 miles.

[Doug Frisk]

Originally Posted by Bpk9p4

i would agree with more wooden fields. However my biggest complaint was that the practice fields were closed on Saturday. Lots of teams would have loved to get there robot out there to make sure everything was working fine and maybe change things up

I fully understand why folks want the practice field open on Saturday and it does make for a boring Saturday for me, I offered to score keep on Einstein but they didn't take me up on it.

I can tell you why the practice fields were closed on Saturday. It took us 3 hours (until 9:30) Friday night to pack up the practice fields. That was ALL the FTAs plus some FIRST staff plus a couple of other folks working non-stop.

You may have noticed that as soon as playoffs ended Saturday on the subdivisions the FTAs began teardown on the six non-Einstein play fields. They didn't finish until 10:00 Saturday night. Moving the 3 hours of practice field teardown to Saturday means the FTAs would need to pack fields until at least 1:00 AM.

It's just not logistically possible to have the practice fields open on Saturday.

No, you can't bring in more help, because many of the fields are going to off-season events and it's important that they get packed with all components. As it is, there's a laundry list of stuff that FIRST is needing to ship to the Minnesota Championship because it wasn't found at the practice field. Adding more hands just makes it harder to ensure stuff goes with the right field.