Team Update 2-19 and FRC Blog - Week 0 Observations and Stop Build Day

[Mike Copioli]

Originally Posted by MooreteP

Mike, the successful shots from the Human Players were with a "hammer throw". It is different from a frisbee launched by a 5000 rpm spinning wheel in that it has a much higher translational velocity.

These hammer throws were traveling TWICE the distance of the field. Spectators on the ends of the field are already at a viewing disadvantage due to the goals this year, which really block the view of the gameplay.
They would not see it the disk coming at them and could easily suffer facial contusions. (the term that a lawyer would use when suing FIRST)
I was at the Suffield Shakedown and witnessed more than a few spectators sitting at the ends of the field "bonked" by a disk.

The public has not signed (nor electronically submitted ) a Consent and Release form. While an injury and attendant lawsuit at a FIRST Robotics Competition would increase our media presence, it is an unacceptable risk.

Placing more netting at the ends of the field is not impossible, but more problematic given the less than two weeks until the season begins and the variety of venues at which the events are held.

A better solution may have been to allow the human players to throw around the feeder stations and disallowing the hammer throw. Spectators and human players would be more familiar with that style.
The GDC does not have the luxury of assessing this adjustment, so they erred on the side of safety. (As we all try to.)

Nonetheless, "what's done cannot be undone" ~Shakespeare.

Or can it? ~Mooretep

Thank you for clearing up what the actual problem is. I was not aware that teams were "hammer throwing" discs. I can see how this could become hazardous. However, it seems to me that the ruling is equivalent to using a shotgun to swat a fly.

As you stated, why not just disallow humans from hammer throwing? This would have much less impact on game play.

[ToddF]

Originally Posted by robochick1319

I couldn't agree more. People are upset about FIRST changing the rules at the last minute and having it affect their robots and strategy. This is awful, I agree. But why turn around and do the same to someone else?

Where's the GP in that?

Yep. That's why I called it the "everybody loses" option.

Originally Posted by robochick1319

I liked the idea of adding more discs on the field in the beginning though. That would certainly help a bit.

Does anyone else have suggestions for "everybody wins" options? Maybe if we develop a good proposal, it could be adopted...

I like adding a few more disks at the beginning because it encourages teams to develop more creative autonomous routines. Adding them at the end undoes some of the inbalance that results from prohibiting thrown disks, but in a safe way.

[Djur]

Originally Posted by JHammond

Would not be surprised if the GDC did not anticipate human players throwing discs at a vertical orientation high and hard so that some carried 10+ feet over the field ends or spun out far beyond the corner of a field. In practice these flew very differently than a traditional horizontal Frisbee throw. They were more like missiles than anything at the Nashua event. You'd get 5 or 6 of these high hard throws in the air and it was a bit dicey.

Seconded. Our human players had to be careful not to get brained by frisbees.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Mike Copioli

Karthik,

I disagree with your comparison to 2012 in regards to shot percentages.

This years target is much larger than last years. The projectiles retain their form better and are more stable during flight. While your initial projections may be close I think you will see a marked improvement in percentages as the season progresses.

Time will tell.

I would suspect at the regional level in 2012 the scoring percentage was significantly lower than 66%, which is why Karthik used the Championship percentage. I must say I am a big fan of these game pieces though, there are lots of examples of open loop launchers with repeated trajectories, and I imagine the closed loop ones are probably even better.

[Squeakypig]

In the whole banning of the hammer throw people are mentioning, I feel like that would hurt the cause more than it would help it. I do not see any of our human players throw discs outside of our arena while using the hammer throw, but when using a normal frisbee throw, due to the steep angle you have to throw the frisbee, they fly out at a 50% rate. The toss might be harder, but in these circumstances, they seem to be more controlled.

[BrianT103]

I fully support FIRST's decision behind changing the rules on this one as it mitigates some serious safety concerns. However, I think a better solution would have been to ban hammer throws and/or assess a FOUL for a disk leaving the field from a HP.

[OZ_341]

I do think the GDC should find some way to place a fair estimated percentage of the HP disks on the field in the last 30 seconds. Placing these disks at center field (or at both ends) in the last 30 seconds would more closely simulate the original game design.

[EricLeifermann]

Originally Posted by Squeakypig

In the whole banning of the hammer throw people are mentioning, I feel like that would hurt the cause more than it would help it. I do not see any of our human players throw discs outside of our arena while using the hammer throw, but when using a normal frisbee throw, due to the steep angle you have to throw the frisbee, they fly out at a 50% rate. The toss might be harder, but in these circumstances, they seem to be more controlled.

Our HP jumps up and throws the discs "normal" over the player station. He was quite good. Now he's talking about just wearing our mascot outfit as he feels the HP has become rather useless now.

[Kims Robot]

I've been watching this thread for a while now, and I completely understand the frustration - especially for all those teams just coming off of soooo many sleepless nights!!

Several good points have been made already. Karthik's was the earliest one that made a ton of sense, and Pete's more recently echoed my thoughts.

But here is another thought... many have been mentioning banning hammer throws, or only allowing a certain number of white disks to be thrown, or several other limitations that aren't quite as restrictive as the "only colored disks" ruling. The problem with this is that it places a lot more work on the referees... what happens if they miss "how" the frisbee was thrown because they were trying to watch a robot climb?, who is going to count how many white disks a human throws? I think this would just lead to more referee errors, and extend the problems.

Netting over the goals - this is a possibility, but the structures are already really really tall, and I think it would be hard to add onto the structures in such a way that it worked for all venues. Sure many of the Regionals have lights and everything rigged, but you don't want to hang nets that will be hammered by frisbees on expensive lighting. Plus District events (and offseasons) won't have anywhere near the same ability to rig. Making the structures taller with nets seems even more dangerous. I helped set up the home made field for the Rochester Rally and while it was a lot more stable than we would have expected, putting up really tall nets would have been tough.

For teams that are upset about the last 30 seconds, I'm really surprised that so many think that will be such a disadvantage. In reading strategies early on, it seemed like the clear advantage to floor collectors was in autonomous. I would be surprised to see more than a handful of robots that can get more than one cycle in the last 25 seconds of play (presumably it would take at least 5 seconds for 4 human thrown frisbees to be on the floor - and that assumes they all land within easy pickup range).

For the human players that put in a ton of practice... I do feel a bit bad for them, but I think they still have potential to win games that are close. In watching the preships, it seemed like it was possible that humans would score a lot more points than robots... and that doesn't really make this a robotics competition - it makes it a human competition with a robot component. I think the humans are just going to have to work harder at increasing their accuracy... before you could get away with mere chance... 2/20 was still two scored... now each disk has to really really count. Its a little more like last year where when you weren't bombarded by a high scorer, you had a limited number of balls in endgame, so each had to count. We still saw some amazing shots.

And for anyone wondering what the netting looks like, there may be more recent photos from any changes from Suffield or NH, but at Kickoff they looked like this. They are right up next to the field.

In all - I get this change. At the Rally, there were points where we just had to tell the humans to stop throwing because it was getting dangerous to walk anywhere in the gym. And while I get the frustration, as others have said, I don't think its as detrimental to robot designs as many are making it out to be. In fact I'd wager that if we played an offseason half with and half without the change, we'd end up with nearly exactly the same scores robot-wise. As with every year, I think everyone is overestimating their ability to score as they haven't played against defense or with 6 robots on the field or with frisbees littering the field.

Hopefully everyone takes a breather, gets some sleep, and figures out how to play an amazing game!

[JGecko146]

I was at a Week Zero event. Not only was this a very serious safety issue, but dozens of disks hitting the driver stations caused so much chaos that most drivers weren’t able to see/focus enough to score during the last thirty seconds anyway. In my opinion this rule change will actually greatly help teams during the final thirty seconds. With regards to "epic" human player shots, I only saw a handful of shots go in during the entire day. It's a lot harder than you think. Just my two cents.

[berrybotics]

First, let me state, we are not using floor pickup as a strategy, we are strictly feeding station loader.

I am not sure how this is a huge blow to floor pickup strategy. Yes, it changes the strategy and the amount of time to score, but I fail to see that this changes everything as that seems to be the theme for a floor strategy.

The rule states

"DISCS may be fed onto the FIELD only under the following circumstances:

A. during TELEOP through the FEEDER SLOTS for any DISCS and

B. during the last thirty (30) seconds of TELEOP over the FEEDER STATIONS for Red and Blue DISCS."

Though it will be a little bit more tricky to pick up as many times to shoot, frisbees can still get on the floor through the feeder station and then they can be picked them up from the floor. You can only hold four at a time anyway, so it is not like you can drive around looking to pick up more than that. Those of you picking up from the floor, you will be able to load much faster over us that are loading from the feeder station (at least ours). We have to slow down, make a turn, line up, load and then go. It will take us longer to get four in, from what videos I have watched.

Now part of the strategy has changed slightly that you have to fend off another team trying to take your frisbees being dropped by your HP but once they get four they have to move on. For a true rookie team, by true rookie team I mean having no one on the team that has ever done this, I see this as helping us be more competitive. Maybe it is a little naive to simplify this issue, but I for one want to be able to watch a match with out also looking for flying discs coming at me.

I am open to hear what I am missing here, since I am newbie and could only help us understand better game strategies in the future. I have been around enough complex issues that there is always a way to over come a set back like this and will be looking forward to the creative ways those of you that have been doing this will over come this one!

My views don't necessarily reflect that of our team. -Cyle (Asst. Coach for BerryBotics)

[Arefin Bari]

Safety issue - completely understandable and I agree 100% with GDC. But we should have had this change made atleast 2-3 days prior to bagging so we could have made appropriate changes. Week 0 events were mostly on saturdays. This update should have came out on saturday night to warn teams like us who is planning on floor loading. Yes yes I get the point that there will be a lot of disks laying around but it still doesnt satisfy our strategy with our human player to be able to throw the frisbee at the same spot everytime.

On a completely different note, FIRST should allow teams to unbag their robot for a 8 hour period to make appropriate changes. After all we made a robot according to the rules GDC gave us. And now GDC has changed the rules on us.

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by berrybotics

First, let me state, we are not using floor pickup as a strategy, we are strictly feeding station loader.

I am not sure how this is a huge blow to floor pickup strategy. Yes, it changes the strategy and the amount of time to score, but I fail to see that this changes everything as that seems to be the theme for a floor strategy.

The rule states

"DISCS may be fed onto the FIELD only under the following circumstances:

A. during TELEOP through the FEEDER SLOTS for any DISCS and

B. during the last thirty (30) seconds of TELEOP over the FEEDER STATIONS for Red and Blue DISCS."

Though it will be a little bit more tricky to pick up as many times to shoot, frisbees can still get on the floor through the feeder station and then they can be picked them up from the floor. You can only hold four at a time anyway, so it is not like you can drive around looking to pick up more than that. Those of you picking up from the floor, you will be able to load much faster over us that are loading from the feeder station (at least ours). We have to slow down, make a turn, line up, load and then go. It will take us longer to get four in, from what videos I have watched.

Now part of the strategy has changed slightly that you have to fend off another team trying to take your frisbees being dropped by your HP but once they get four they have to move on. For a true rookie team, by true rookie team I mean having no one on the team that has ever done this, I see this as helping us be more competitive. Maybe it is a little naive to simplify this issue, but I for one want to be able to watch a match with out also looking for flying discs coming at me.

I am open to hear what I am missing here, since I am newbie and could only help us understand better game strategies in the future. I have been around enough complex issues that there is always a way to over come a set back like this and will be looking forward to the creative ways those of you that have been doing this will over come this one!

My views don't necessarily reflect that of our team. -Cyle (Asst. Coach for BerryBotics)

The problem is with frisbees being thrown the floor feeders wouldn't have had to drive across the field to get to the feeder station to pick up discs.

[Isaac501]

Late rule changes (or spec changes) in the name of safety and user experience, pre-release, are to be expected. This is just a taste of real-world engineering.

Keep calm and robot on.

[MrForbes]

I was up late working on a robot Tuesday, and yesterday we had no internet at our house. So I missed all this fun. Oh well.

I got beaned in the nose by a human-thrown DISC on kickoff day. I like this rule change.

And....I can't see any way that the rule change affects how our robot plays the game.

I also wonder how those teams that anticipated the blizzard problem, could not foresee the GDC's solution, or at least have notified the GDC that there was the potential for a serious safety issue.