Lessons learned 2005: The negative

[Koko Ed]

What did FIRST do this year that could be done better next year?

[Starke]

I would say less penalties.

[Alex Cormier]

one thing i regretted the most was. the 40 minute waste of time for the robot to go out to the match, wait, play the match and then return to the pits. I had our robot stay out by he filed for a few matches on Friday and i thought it was a great idea until i realized thee is no one in the pits to talk to judges or other teams. this problem should be addressed. the walk for the robots was horrible but not the walk for humans. i believe the walk for robots should/must be shorter then humans. good day. im tired.

[Doc Wu]

Originally Posted by Alex Cormier

one thing i regretted the most was. the 40 minute waste of time for the robot to go out to the match, wait, play the match and then return to the pits. I had our robot stay out by he filed for a few matches on Friday and i thought it was a great idea until i realized thee is no one in the pits to talk to judges or other teams. this problem should be addressed. the walk for the robots was horrible but not the walk for humans. i believe the walk for robots should/must be shorter then humans. good day. im tired.

Amen! Besides the fact that I (a 51 year-old Team Coach) was exhausted from a 10-12 hour day of nearly constantly being on my feet, all the travelling from pit to field and back is a huge waste of time that teams may desperately need for other things.

I saw a few teams that found a spot half way out in the labrynth to stop and work on their robots, but even that is less than ideal. Someone would still need to run to the pit for any part or tool you didn't have. Communications from a team to their pits is very difficult and a way to legally provide it needs to be addressed.

It's nice to have a big event, but maybe it's gotten too big, or because they are trying to make it run at a pace that remains interesting to spectators, the whole thing is forced to run faster than we as teams can handle. The alternative, making the time between matches longer, maybe by using fewer fields so that the pace could be maintained, would make a three day event impossible.

If the pits could be put closer, maybe in four different, but closer areas by division, would help. I wouldn't care if they were as nice as the room we were in, even the dock areas we walked through could be used for pits, they just probably wouldn't be able to be open to the public. A room with team booths for displays and team promotion could be substituted for the public.

Maybe I'm a bit cranky from a 18-hour drive home pulling a trailer through a blizzard but I'd sure like the pit to arena travel situation improved.

One thing that was done right and helped make things run smoother was the Wednesday night unpacking. For those of us who could do that, it really made Thursday a little less hectic. It probably even helped those who couldn't get there Wednesday, by getting us out of the way at the curb...

[allyphant]

overall, the only thing that irks me is seeing teams that are composed of mostly retired engineers, parents, and other adults working on the robot and the kids merely helping by handing over the occasional drill. There are several teams that are organized and run by students and I really admire their dedication. I think FIRST should benefit the kids that participate more than the parents. Its also insulting when other teams came over to our team's pit and requested to "speak to someone in charge"(meaning an adult) only to ask questions that the students who built and designed the robot could have easily answered. This kind of behavior makes us feel incapable and insignificant.

Also, it was annoying how many kids that went to the after party in the park were taking WHOLE CASES of sodas with them instead of leaving some for the rest of us thirsty folks. Max and I were arguing over this b/c he couldn't believe robotics kids could be so rude and inconsiderate. pretty ironic considering he has no faith in humanity whatsoever and I'm much more trusting.

Our team and several others stayed at the Marriot Courtyard and Fairfield Inn. THey had a pool and a hot tub that many of us took advantage of and rightfully so ( we paid for it ). However, some idiots decided to dive into the shallow end and the manager of the hotel imposed a curfew on all the teams and refused to let us use their pool and hot tub. When I went to talk to other teams, some members told me to <disguised expletive deleted - ab> off. which is annoying considering I went to the manager and got her to open up the faciliites for us. Anyway, I was really dissapointed by the behaviors of several members of the FIRST community.

i forgot to say that the sedar was cute and fun and i've never been to a sedar before. also, props to the cute israeli kid at our table that was sad cause we didnt get to finish saying dayenu.

[Kevin Sevcik]

I have exactly three negatives, I think anything else could really be lived with and worked out fairly simply.

- Rules consistency. As everyone has mentioned, it was rather vexing to have rules change from week to week and regional to regional. And sometimes from day to day at a competition. I think it's great that FIRST addressed many of the issues that were brought up, but the sheer number of updates after regionals started is odd. Not to put too fine a point on it, but after this move towards simpler, less complicated, more common sense rules we had a total of 21 updates, 7 after the first regional. In 2004 there were 15 total updates, 1 after the first regional. In 2003, there were 20 updates, 0 after the first regional.

- Penalties. I have no problems with the various 10 pointers for safety and aggression, but the 30 pointers still irk me. My team actually won our last match by one point.... thanks to a 30 and a 10 on the other side. I'm still chagrined by that win. I think the obvious solution is not to design such obvious choke-points into the game that they must be protected by match losing penalties for robots bumping into each other.

- Alright, I forgot my third point while researching the first one. There's a big mish-mash of whining about the trip to-from the pits, no match time announcing, no anything announcing that made our team rep late to alliance pairings, and various other small things, but the above two are the only big problems I had all season.

EDIT: Oh yeah, safety. Needs to be more of it. I couldn't believe it when I saw field resetters standing almost right next to the auto load zones. Didn't they know the some robots go in there at high speed? I saw one or two lean back a bit when an arm whipped in front of them. I'd have been diving for cover, but maybe I'm just a chicken. Not to disparage the ThunderChickens. Those guys are a whole different breed of poultry.

[Nitroxextreme]

one of the biggest poblem in my eyes were the penalties and the incositancies between the matches

it ended up being the refees descrection as to who won many matches

also all of the peopl e that went to the drivers meeting could see how many important problems were discusses BUT none of these conclusions the refees ingeniously came up with were used when the penalities they talked about occured

on a different note:
i disliked the fact that some regionals were within a month of the championship and people that may have gotten a last minute spot could not use the first hotels prices and had to scramble to find any reasonable price for any hotel that may end up being far away and/or poor quality

[DarkJedi613]

- When are we supposed to queue for matches? This needs to be addressed by either announcements, or perhaps on the standing's screen display a "Current match", "First call match", "Second call match", "Final call match".

- Speeches are too long, apparantly Dean found someone who can relate to us, but still didn't relate. We're teenagers, we don't want to hear speeches that are more than 10 minutes long. Also - speeches lasting too long the first day and causing matches to start late - thats so...counter productive.

- If you're on the drive team & pit crew - there is literally no time to do anything between matches if the robot needs to be fixed.

- FIRST just putting things on our tables in the pits (Chairman's schedule & match schedule). Our table is messy and we almsot didn't see them (we actually didn't see Chairman's until 365 told us we had gotten it - thanks.)

- The drivers meeting was great, but it seemed like "We're gonna call these following things, for these reasons" which was all great, but the next day nothing was called!

- Grass on the frisbee field being dead.

[KathieK]

I enjoyed being part of the 2005 FIRST Conference, and really appreciated those of you who attended the sessions I was presenting at. However I will suggest to FIRST a different schedule to follow (PM me if you have any suggestions) since I missed Opening Ceremonies on Friday - including missing seeing the mascot I spent so much time making in the parade, missed the awards that were given, missed seeing the scholarship winners, the Regional CA winners and missed the National Anthem. I think Opening Ceremonies should be done at the beginning of Thursday since that is the true opening of the event. And we expected that some awards would be given out on Friday evening as they are at the Regionals. Consistency would help a lot.
The Closing ceremonies were tedious after a long, long day and we could not hear much of what was being said where we ended up sitting - in the far top corner of Curie - despite calling down to the floor to see if the sound guys could adjust the volume/clarity. Several times we turned to one another and had to ask, "What was that award for???" and "Who got it???" The teams who are competing in the Finals and the teams who are winning these awards deserve better!
If we have grown so much then we need to either add another division so that fewer teams are playing on each, and so they end the matches earlier; or expand the Event to start on Wednesday with pits opening Wed morning and practice rounds starting in the afternoon so that matches could start after lunch on Thursday, finish by Friday, have the finals on Saturday morning and the ceremonies and wrap party in the afternoon/evening. I know, the costs would be enormous to all teams if the Event were expanded. Or maybe SHRINK the Event by making it a true CHAMPIONSHIP where you have to qualify in order to attend. No easy solutions...

Please move the Hall of Fame out where it is more accessible to all - I never got a chance to view it because it took me so long to get from one venue to the other that I didn't have any "leisure" time - walking from Archimedes all over to the other building where the pits were and then the walk to Gate C and to go back took a long time. Or open the other Gates for those of us in the far corners of the Dome! Going to the pits, Vex, FLL, LogoLoc store, conference sessions or Hall of Fame was difficult for the people on our team who had difficulty walking to begin with!

Safety glasses were not being worn by many of the spectators visiting the Archimedes field. I was going to speak to someone about it when I realized there were so many glasses-less people that it was simply not being enforced. And why were so many people allowed down there in the first place?

[rocknthehawk]

I had an awesome time.....the only thing i really disliked was the walk to the playing field. I agree with what was said before....if you are on the pit crew and drive team, there was no time to do anything inbetween. The walk made the game boring in a sense...we had to walk 10 minutes just to get to the field, and then wait another ten before we even got onto the field, just to play for 2 minutes, and then make another ten minute walk back. It made me not even want to go out for practice matches.

Another dislike that was no problem by FIRST was the final matches. (i didn't see the final match or two because iw as busy crating up our bot). It seemed the finals were just capping matches, who could cap more higher and quicker. WHERE WAS THE DEFENSE??? It seemed like every match was the same...not too entertaining.

I guess there is one last thing i thought of while typing. It was waiting during the finals on our field. Since we were 13th or whatever, they said we had to wait, because if two robots broke, we would be allowed in. We had to sit and wait in the back with our bot for the finals on Curie, and the finals on Einstein until Curie was eliminated....i think that sytem could use work, but i guess there isn't much you can change.

[Cory]

I still don't understand why people are complaining about penalties. How hard is it to stay the heck away from a robot that's in a loading zone?

It absolutely baffles me that after four months of knowing that you WILL get a penalty if you hit someone in the loading zone, people still haven't figured out that you don't push a robot that's loading.

As I said before, and I'll say again, it's really not that hard to avoid penalties.

It'd sure be nice to hear everyone complaining about inconsistency between regionals offer some suggestions to remedy the problem (thank you, Amy, for being constructive)

Head refs are volunteers also, not FIRST staff. You could not possibly standardize the sets of head refs across the nation. It would not be right for FIRST to ask them to devote even more time away from their jobs/family/etc. Unless someone figures out how to make 30 clones of Benge, it isn't happening. There will always be discrepancies when humans are involved.

Updated versions of the game rules were distributed to all refs at nationals. They had the team updates incorporated into the text of the rules, and important Q&A answers in the back. They also included a list of all possible situations that warranted penalties/disables/dq's.

It would be nice if FIRST officials were active on CD, but why should they want to be when volunteers are attacked left and right? Look what happened last time FIRST did something for us. They got stabbed in the back by a group of people discussing how to hack the manual.

CD is not an official medium for releasing game decisions, and any discussion on CD will not be seen by the majority of FIRST, causing even MORE issues.

also all of the peopl e that went to the drivers meeting could see how many important problems were discusses BUT none of these conclusions the refees ingeniously came up with were used when the penalities they talked about occured

- The drivers meeting was great, but it seemed like "We're gonna call these following things, for these reasons" which was all great, but the next day nothing was called!

I don't know what you saw, but I find that extremely hard to believe. In addition, to be completely blunt, a good number of questions asked at the drivers meeting were quite stupid, and made me wonder if half the drive teams had even thoroughly read the rules.

Suggestions for next year-

*Hire Dean a speechwriter. Seriously.
*Limit all speeches to a maximum of 5-10 minutes. I fell asleep twice before the finals on Einstein.
*Do the opening ceremonies Saturday, not Friday. At least play the national anthems Saturday morning.
*Do not let the opening ceremonies run late, delaying matches.
*Make sure all signage at events has the new FIRST logo (I can understand why they did not this year)
*Limit the number of people with field access.
*Work on answering Q&A questions more clearly. Many times it seemed FIRST did not give an entirely straight answer when the intent was obvious but not spelled out crystal clear.
*Similarly, to help FIRST, make sure your Q&A questions are crystal clear.
*One of my larger gripes-bring back the ability to disable robots through the scoring software By the time a referee decides a robot needs to be disabled, makes sure they have the team number right, tells the head ref, and finally slaps the E-stop, the match is over, or near to it. This is a safety hazard
*Another big peeve of mine was the fact that rankings were never shown on the field throughout the weekend at nationals, or any of the three regionals I attended, unlike previous years. PLEASE start doing this again. Having to walk all the way to the pits to see the rankings is fairly annoying, and impossible if you're volunteering on the field.

[AmyPrib]

Originally Posted by Cory

It absolutely baffles me that after four months of knowing that you WILL get a penalty if you hit someone in the loading zone, people still haven't figured out that you don't push a robot that's loading.

Updated versions of the game rules were distributed to all refs at nationals. They had the team updates incorporated into the text of the rules, and important Q&A answers in the back. They also included a list of all possible situations that warranted penalties/disables/dq's.

It would be nice if FIRST officials were active on CD, but why should they want to be when volunteers are attacked left and right? Look what happened last time FIRST did something for us. They got stabbed in the back by a group of people discussing how to hack the manual.

CD is not an official medium for releasing game decisions, and any discussion on CD will not be seen by the majority of FIRST, causing even MORE issues.

In addition, to be completely blunt, a good number of questions asked at the drivers meeting were quite stupid, and made me wonder if half the drive teams had even thoroughly read the rules.

I think people know not to hit anyone in the loading zone, but there are accidental hits, due to visibility, or not seeing the robot is "in" the loading zone, or because of close proximity of the loading zone to a corner goal where it's tighter to maneuver, for example. And after the late G15 rule change, it made it more possible to draw a penalty when technically you weren't loading a tetra.

It's good to hear that rules were at Nationals - hopefully they are available at regionals in the future. I think the separate Updates should also be available, as there was an issue with the full G15 update not being incorporated into the rules correctly, which caused an issue at at least one regional. So if that happens again, there could be issues. I think refs need to be more familiar with the rules and Updates than teams are, and that hasn't been the case in some situations.

I didn't intend for CD to be the official game release decisions, but they could be providing feedback, or acknowledge there are issues they are working on, so that people don't feel as if they're making suggestions or asking questions that go into a black hole. It's tough to be arguing back and forth over something, and not have any clue whether or not FIRST is addressing it or even know that it's a concern. If there were FIRST officials that were to be active, it could possibly be a moderated section so they don't get attacked, but they shouldn't shy away from good debate or arguments on topics.

Perhaps instead of being active on CD, FIRST could implement a "suggestion" system, similar to Q/A, where we can all post these ideas directly to them, and they can respond with some sort of feedback. But is there somebody from FIRST that knows I'm making this suggestion and to possibly consider it? I think there needs to be a way where people can get feedback directly from FIRST for improvements. If FIRST isn't willing to accept the suggestions and perhaps act on some (which I think they would), then we have a problem. But we need to know that FIRST is hearing us.

I agree on silly questions - I am amazed at some of the ones I read on Q/A. Maybe FIRST should moderate the Q/As for ones that are blatantly answered in the rules. I have never received an answer via email from Q/A even though it says I will, so maybe they can start using that when silly questions are asked, and reduce the number of Qs everyone else has to read through. Some say "no question is a stupid question", and I agree to an extent - just please read the rules first!
Well, some of this may have gone off topic a little. Sorry.

[Doug G]

Originally Posted by Cory

I still don't understand why people are complaining about penalties. How hard is it to stay the heck away from a robot that's in a loading zone?

It absolutely baffles me that after four months of knowing that you WILL get a penalty if you hit someone in the loading zone, people still haven't figured out that you don't push a robot that's loading.

As I said before, and I'll say again, it's really not that hard to avoid penalties.

While at the regionals, I think many of the penalties could have been avoided, however at nationals, I noticed a major decrease in penalties, however, they still played a major role. And many of those penalties were mostly incidental / accidental, but nonetheless they still occurred. Attached is a 30pt penalty on our team because we collided with another team, which then hit a tetra, which then hit a robot in a human load zone. We still won the match and wouldn't urgue the call anyways, it interfered with them loading. I think the whole loading zone issue this year caused a lot of grief, they're may have been a different solution. I also noticed the youngsters working near the auto loaders almost getting clobbered every match. I wouldn't want my youngster that close to some of those robots.

Originally Posted by Cory

Suggestions for next year-

*Another big peeve of mine was the fact that rankings were never shown on the field throughout the weekend at nationals, or any of the three regionals I attended, unlike previous years. PLEASE start doing this again. Having to walk all the way to the pits to see the rankings is fairly annoying, and impossible if you're volunteering on the field.

ABSOLUTELY!!!

[xzvrw2]

It is not the fact that there where 30 pt penalties for hitting the robot in the loading zone, it was the inconsistency that really needs to change. One match a penalty would get called, and the next match it would happen again and it didn't get called. I think that the consistency of the calls should be changed not so much as the penalties them selves.

[Kims Robot]

I think most of my issues that should be worked on are here, but I will reiterate a few, and add a few here.

1. Consistancy of penalties (especially within regionals... nevermind even between regionals). There were several calls that I saw made that were not made in a previous match, or on a previous day, and this made it hard for teams to keep their cool.

2. Announce the penalties!! It was impossible for people who were not in the game or on the field to tell what the penalties were for or who got them. This is important for people just coming in to watch the competition, as well as for scouting.

3. Consistancy of inspections. At Buckeye, they tried to force us to have a "safety inspection" which was 3/4 of the real inspection, before we were even allowed to go out on thursday to practice. This is absurd and not in the rules. You better bet I argued my way out of that one! And a smaller one is to have the inspectors actually read THIS years rules... we had an inspector in Atlanta try to fail us because he said we could not put a 40Amp breaker on a window motor(10AWG on a speed controller). Rule 83 specifically states that any breaker can be used with any motor... it allows teams to do their own engineering. I know in the past that was true, but it wasnt THIS year. ::sigh::

4. More exits at the final social event. I get the one entrance thing... but the exit was as far from our hotel as it could be, and got incredibly congested. They could have allowed teams to exit through other locations. We went to one spot where we just saw 5 members of another team exit, and a cop got all huffy with us and said it wasnt an exit (despite the fact that we had just watched another team walk through there).

5. Better organization of the FLL shadowing at the championships. There were a lot of teams that wanted to offer to have an FLL team shadow them, but with no coordination (mentors had to email FLL teams to see if they wanted shadowing), and a very late notification, many of us were unable to help out.

That brings me to my final and largest suggestion:
6. FIRST needs to create a forum where THEY can ASK for help. Anything that they have trouble getting done, I am certain that there are many of us out here that would be willing to help... if we only knew they needed the help (with enough notice). It could be as simple as sending an email to all of the team leaders when they come across something they need help with, or something a little more like the Q&A or TIMS where certain people can sign in and look at the needs that FIRST has. We would have taken on the organization of the FLL thing, but didnt have a clue it was needed until too late.

*edit* Oh yeah and I was reminded by another post...
7. Bring back Robot stop buttons... make sure every team has a disable button, and disable buttons are easily accessible to refs. In toronto, a robot threw a tetra at our drivers, and was not disabled until 30 seconds later, when the ref pulled their human player off the pad. At our scrimmage, we had two people with three shut off switches (one for each team) watching each allaince, and if there were any times that safety came into question, they were to shut the robot off immediately. (matches can be rerun, people take much longer to be fixed!)