FIRST's statement on Einstein

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by EricH

As I said before, the winners here were the teams that best dealt with the challenge that was nowhere in the rules but enforced by the conditions: maintaining communication with the field. It's a lot tougher than any other part of the competition if stuff isn't working, and should be easier than any other part if stuff is working.

The only problem with this line of thought will be if there really were field problems that favored a specific alliance. In that case then the efforts of the teams to maintain communications were valuable to a point and the rest was dictated by their simple field interaction.

Personally I have already congratulated the victors. The game is just a small part of FIRST. Let's move beyond it.

[twetherbee]

Here are some of my thoughts about Einstein on the plane ride home last night that we can teach our teams:

1) S#*^ happens in FIRST and in the real world, so you had better be prepared to roll with the punches.

2) Things in life aren't always fair, but if you do your best then always hold your head high and be proud of your accomplishments.

3) All four alliances on Einsten this year were of IRI caliber and it is a shame that the field issues got in the way of what had the potential to be epic matches based on the division eliminations. We have all collectively put in thousands of hours, millions of dollars, gallons of blood sweat and tears into this season, but in the end it is just a game. And while the FIRST community debates things like field issues, FIRST's handling of Einstein or a "tainted" win, there is a family in St. Louis who is making funeral arrangements for someone who was watching another type of game and was in the wrong place at the wrong time while the Einstein field issues kept tens of thousands of us all safe and sound inside the Edwards Jones Dome. Perspective is everything.

I personally am going to take a cue from my new friends the Novak's and look forward to IRI and the 2013 season. FIRST now has to address and fix what has been a season long issue that was unfortunately put into a glaring spotlight on the world stage.

Congratulations again to Teams 180, 25, and 16 on being the 2012 World Champions.

[JennyR]

Those who win Championships are the ones who overcome ALL the hurdles...bad weather, bad calls by refs, bad conditions on the field...as it is in sports, so be it in Robotics. HEARTY CONGRATULATIONS to 16, 25, and 180! A well deserved win! Looking forward to either joining you or competing against you in 2013...you have set the bar HIGH!!!

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by Nick Lawrence

Make a case study out of it, and put it to rest, then fix the issue, wherever it lies. Then we can all collectively learn.

Re-quoted for truth. We all can learn something here

Originally Posted by JTN

All I am going to say is that people need to be quiet about our so called "tainted win" and look at IRI and the 2013 season.

Through no fault of your own, some will think this. You deserved to win, and you did. Good job!

Originally Posted by Libby K

I'm sure FIRST will make sure this never happens again.

I truly believe that. Once I saw Dean trot over and get involved, I knew that there'd be bloody heck to pay if answers weren't forthcoming in the near future.

Originally Posted by twetherbee

3) All four alliances on Einsten this year were of IRI caliber

That is such an awesome statement. Where else can you say that those who won the world championship were good enough to compete in an off-season event*?

Don

*Well, maybe THE off-season event. But still.

[Bryscus]

Hi Guys,

I'm the coach for team 180 SPAM. I feel for the teams that had communications problems. We were also one of them when we switched from blue to red. We lost comms for a good 30-45 seconds in the second half of the last match and then connected for a last futile 10 seconds of play. We have had comm problems this year as well, and I worked very closely with Joe Hershberger to help find and solve (or at least patch) our problems.

At the South Florida Regional, we had a match where the field was having problems connecting to the other teams on the field and so our robot sat for a while. Even though everything was green and we never lost comms, our robot never moved. It turns out that our code had thrown an exception at one point and VXWorks had killed our main robot task. There is a network communications task however, that remained operational - thus, we never lost comms, but the robot was dead.

After talking with Joe, we found that we could tell the cRIO to reboot from the driver station if we saw a problem. On the charts tab on the driver station there are two lines that show the status of the system. There's one line for what the field or driver station is commanding and another line for what the robot says it's doing. When we looked at the logs, we could see that the line for the robot just stopped. It didn't show disabled or any other state, it just wasn't there. From that point on we made it a point to leave the charts tab open and reboot the robot in the event of a problem.

Now, fast forward to the Championship. After seeing 118 stationary in the first match I went over to share my sentiments about the situation and impart the valuable knowledge that I had gained over the season with them. I have no desire to win anything knowing my competitor was maimed because of something out of their control. They are a great team and don't deserve to not compete. I don't know if they ever used my suggestion, but I know that rebooting the robot was the only reason we moved again in our final match. I was also rebooting our robot every couple minutes when we were sitting for a while to make sure we didn't run into the same problems as at the SFR.

It seems to me that there is either a bug in the networking stack on the cRIO or in the field communications computer. Even until the last match, I would occasionally see networking errors on the diagnostics tab. I hope this can be rectified in the future and I'm sure FIRST is putting every effort forward to resolve this debacle.

As for the 180, 25, and 16 alliance I feel that we really were one of the best alliances out there. I feel that 16 was by far the best defensive robot at the competition. No matter who we went up against, 25 and 180 always had balls to shoot. It's a testament to 16's rugged design that they could even stay together with the incredible pounding they took every match. We never ran dry, while the other alliances were scrounging for ammo. 25 played brilliantly - both accurate and efficient. We were an alliance that worked well together and the cunning and experience of 25 and 16's coaches was invaluable in maintaining our advantage. I still can't believe the stars aligned to allow such an alliance to happen. It was an absolute pleasure to compete with both teams and I'm proud that we can now call them friends.

I do not feel that we had a tainted win, but I also do not feel that our competitors (especially in the semis) were given the chance to make their mark. I'm proud to have been able to compete against such marvelous alliances. I sincerely hope that this never happens to any teams again. There is nothing more painful than spending hundreds of hours painstakingly designing, building and perfecting a robot to have issues beyond one's control. I don't think any team on Einstein feels that the competition was completely fair, but I think FIRST handled the situation as best they could at that very moment in time. I hope that no one spouts ill-will towards any teams that competed on Einstein because the issues encountered seem beyond their control. We all stepped out onto the field, did our best and played our hearts out. It was a day I'll never forget and will cherish forever.

- Bryce

P.S. On a lighter note, we should really just enjoy the moment since the world is going to end in December anyway .

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by Bryscus

I have no desire to win anything knowing my competitor was maimed because of something out of their control. They are a great team and don't deserve to not compete. I don't know if they ever used my suggestion, but I know that rebooting the robot was the only reason we moved again in our final match.

To me this is shining example of why you deserve the victory. You offered to help them even if it meant it might cost you.

[sandiegodan]

I hope FIRST can get to the bottom of this.

As I understand it, the Einstein field itself was a spare field and had never been used in competition before? Even in the best of circumstances I can't see this being a great move. I think we all know that until something has been "battle tested" it hasn't really been proven. I'm hoping this factor doesn't go unnoticed in the ensuing investigation.

Congrats and much respect to the winning teams. You played the "whole" game and won. Inspiring.

[Renee Becker-Blau]

I'm glad to see that FIRST issued a statement about Einstein and they recognized the problems going on and will be looking into it. What happened was unfortunate but it is clear that everyone at FIRST is working their hardest to find out what happened and work to prevent issues like this in the future.

FIRST has given all of us in the FIRST community a program that has changed our lives. Sometimes bad things happen to good programs, but we have to remember that FIRST is a program that was there for us as we grew and has given us some of us the best times of our lives.

It's time to be supportive to FIRST as they work through some of these problems and I'm proud that I've already seen many people in the FIRST community who are posting positive and thoughtful comments on Chief Delphi about this situation.

Congratulations to all the teams who made it to the finals on Einstein and congratulations to Teams 180, 25, and 16 on being the 2012 World Champions!

[MaxMax161]

After reading this thread I think it's safe to say that 180, 25, and 16 didn't have a tainted win, but the game they won wasn't the game anyone expected to be playing.

It's funny (or it's depressing, but I choose to laugh rather then cry) that in arguably the most robotically and problematically precise game in the world luck and factors beyond human control can have such a large impact.

[stuart2054]

Originally Posted by Bryscus

Hi Guys,


As for the 180, 25, and 16 alliance I feel that we really were one of the best alliances out there. I feel that 16 was by far the best defensive robot at the competition. No matter who we went up against, 25 and 180 always had balls to shoot. It's a testament to 16's rugged design that they could even stay together with the incredible pounding they took every match.


- Bryce

P.S. On a lighter note, we should really just enjoy the moment since the world is going to end in December anyway .

Bryce,

Your alliance was awesome. When our guys played you in the Galileo Semifinals, you guys ran over us like "Grant took Vicksburg" I could tell just how effective Bomb Squad was by my rising blood pressure and you guys and 25 just kept ringing up more baskets while 16 kept stealing our ammo and dumping them on your side. I think indivually you were all very tough competitors but your combination of skills and game strategy made you the champion alliance. Congratulations to all.

[S.P.A.M.er 17]

My thoughts about Einstein.

[MooreteP]

I believe that this will be remembered as a watershed year for FIRST

There are things that will change after this year.
There are many intelligent people cogitating on the season.
We will engineer a better solution.

This was a great game this year. The winning alliance were teams with 15, 16, and 17 years in FIRST.
The universe conspired and after all is said and one, the result was inspiring.

[remulasce]

Originally Posted by EricH

I wouldn't call it a "tainted" win. Everyone on that field had the same issue to one degree or another.

I look at it as, "Who has the best alliance", with an unannounced--and unplanned-for--factor contributing to that called, "Who maintains connection the best".

This is a competition. The winner is supposed to be the best at building and driving robots. Maintaining a connection is not the thing that's being tested, it's the prerequisite. Further, can you point to a thing that a team can do to maintain connection better? Because if you can, you should have spoken up to all the teams on Einstein, who were being randomly dropped with no discernable solution. This was not a competition, this was a lottery. I put no faith in the results of the event to speak to who built the best robot.

Every alliance on Einstein made it there because they deserved to be there, and they each had a shot at winning. They were never given that shot. The results to me are as though Einstein never happened- all four alliances are the best alliances in FRC 2012.

[nlknauss]

Originally Posted by Bryscus

After seeing 118 stationary in the first match I went over to share my sentiments about the situation and impart the valuable knowledge that I had gained over the season with them.

As techhelpbb already pointed out, this is simply awesome.

What can the winning alliances say to anyone who says that they have a "tainted" win? I've already spoke to this Saturday night. All of the competitors did the best they could in the provided conditions. The absolute best thing that can happen from this is that everyone learns from the experience. Even if you're not directly involved with the teams on the field, I think you can take something away from the 2012 season.

I trust that all of the right people are examining the data and will present a solution that will improve us moving forward. As much as possible, let's keep a positive outlook towards the future and look to the past AS needed.

[wireties]

Originally Posted by Bryscus

It turns out that our code had thrown an exception at one point and VXWorks had killed our main robot task. There is a network communications task however, that remained operational - thus, we never lost comms, but the robot was dead.

The (work of) the network stack in VxWorks is accomplished in the "netTask". One can alter the relative priority of this task to application tasks to achieve desired behaviors. The netTask was probably alive as well as the FRMComm task.

The standard behavior of VxWorks to an exception is to suspend the offending task (not the entire system) and print out a message to the console. So what you are saying makes perfect sense!

Our students had many such problems (during development) where the robot seemed to still be connected but some portion of it stopped operating. We separate the control of every major component into a separate task (drive, gather, shoot, autonomous, etc) so any one of the subsystems might fail. It was ALWAYS because of a human programming error. Luckily I teach Wind River courses and knew exactly what to look for.

Many of our problems came from the C/C++ code for capturing and analyzing images. One really had to know what was going on to migrate the NI Vision stuff to C++ (while removing some of the memory allocations that slowed it down) and get it just right. I BELIEVE there are comm problems with the FMS this year but I'll bet a lot of teams issues relate to the camera/analysis code and memory allocation/manipulation errors.

Originally Posted by Bryscus

Now, fast forward to the Championship. After seeing 118 stationary in the first match I went over to share my sentiments about the situation and impart the valuable knowledge that I had gained over the season with them. I have no desire to win anything knowing my competitor was maimed because of something out of their control. They are a great team and don't deserve to not compete.

An exemplary example of GP - your alliance was talented, gracious and professional!

Originally Posted by Bryscus

It seems to me that there is either a bug in the networking stack on the cRIO or in the field communications computer. Even until the last match, I would occasionally see networking errors on the diagnostics tab. I hope this can be rectified in the future and I'm sure FIRST is putting every effort forward to resolve this debacle.

The network applications could be buggy but the network stack is pretty bullet-proof. It is derived from the BSD 4.4 stack and pretty well exercised in the real world.

Originally Posted by Bryscus

As for the 180, 25, and 16 alliance I feel that we really were one of the best alliances out there. I feel that 16 was by far the best defensive robot at the competition. No matter who we went up against, 25 and 180 always had balls to shoot. It's a testament to 16's rugged design that they could even stay together with the incredible pounding they took every match. We never ran dry, while the other alliances were scrounging for ammo. 25 played brilliantly - both accurate and efficient. We were an alliance that worked well together and the cunning and experience of 25 and 16's coaches was invaluable in maintaining our advantage. I still can't believe the stars aligned to allow such an alliance to happen. It was an absolute pleasure to compete with both teams and I'm proud that we can now call them friends.

I enjoyed the matches and have no problems lauding 180/16/25 as our 2012 FIRST champions! But to FIRST - please fix the FMS! And please start by rotating out the D-Link router/bridges/radios.