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

Is there any proof of the value of a retrieving system in the last 30 seconds? Like a video simulating the conditions and performance.

[Libby K]

Bad timing? Yes. Teams have been planning on this and it's a little (or a lot) disappointing to have things changed so late in the game.

Necessary safety solution? Very yes. I'd much rather not see the 'blizzard' if it means my Grandmother won't be risking a black eye while she's watching the elimination rounds.

[KrazyCarl92]

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)

Part of what this analysis is missing is a marginalized wholistic game strategy perspective. What I mean by this is that if your goal is to maximize your robots scoring potential, you should always look to what will add more additional points to your score when analyzing different parts of the game. For example, with the old rules you may figure the following scoring during the end game:

No floor pick up, spend last 30 seconds or more climbing for 30:
30 points
(possibility of additional 20 pts here too)
30-50 points total

Floor pickup with 10 point hang in last 30 seconds (field littered with discs):
12-24 points from frisbees
10 points from hang
22-34 points total

When deciding that trade off, we said the second option gave us an advantage in autonomous, didn't hurt us much in the end game, opened up a variety of wonderful alliance strategies for any alliance we're a part of, and significantly simplified the design of our robot. We designed our robot such that it shoots and hangs from the same location on the field, so it's not even about collecting two rounds then hanging, it's really just collecting two rounds of discs and the hanging will happen because we won't need to go anywhere.

I personally believe that good strategy and general game play will result in a field with lots of discs anyway, so I don't think it's that big of a deal. However, there will still be some matches where the rate of our robots scoring in the end game is limited by the number of discs on the field, whereas by the old rules this wouldn't have been the case ever.

The frustration comes out of making a significant design trade off decision based on the old rules, and now having them changed in a manner that makes the decision less of an advantage, or possibly even a greater disadvantage, we will never know.

I understand FIRST's decision and while I think there may have been better solutions to explore (no upside down throws allowed???, hammer throws are still allowed so as far as I'm concerned the safety hazard is not mitigated), it is for the best to have a safer environment at the events. All we can do as teams is try to do the very best we can to work within the new rule, take it in stride, and work toward continuous improvement of our robots and strategies to be the best we can within these new parameters. Anything less would not be gracious professionalism.

[sdcantrell56]

Originally Posted by MrForbes

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.

Perhaps we didn't see the blizzard "problem" because we were anticipating using it to our advantage. We correctly predicted game play and built a robot to take advantage of it only to have this advantage taken away at the end of build.

Pretty shady move on the part of the GDC, although after so many years in this program it seems this is to be expected.

[45Auto]

We correctly predicted game play and built a robot to take advantage of it only to have this advantage taken away at the end of build.

No, you ALMOST correctly predicted game play. Some teams CORRECTLY predicted game play in that the frisbee free-for-all at the end of the game would be drastically modified or removed during the build season updates and built their robot accordingly.

[Madison]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

To some extent, FIRST is simulated life. In life, sometimes the rules change, even when you don't want them to and were told they wouldn't.

Adapt, survive, get over it. I think they made a good call, here, and can't be too judgmental about their not foreseeing the problem.

In real life, if someone asks you to build a boat and then, when you deliver it, they say, "There's actually no water here. We want a plane instead," your performance isn't judged on the effectiveness of your boat as an airplane.

In this case, we are in no position to make material changes to our product in response to the shifting requirements and we will be judged, in terms of our performance on the field, based on the outdated result.

Apples and oranges, in my opinion.

[sdcantrell56]

Originally Posted by 45Auto

No, you ALMOST correctly predicted game play. Some teams CORRECTLY predicted game play in that the frisbee free-for-all at the end of the game would be drastically modified or removed during the build season updates and built their robot accordingly.

You're correct, all of the teams who chose to forgo the added engineering challenge of designing an effective floor pickup correctly predicted the GDC making yet another late season game change.

In the future I will encourage my team to always choose the simpler path so we hopefully won't be effected by these last minute game changers. Lesson learned.

In the meantime I would love access to the crystal ball granting you the insight into these changes.

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by 45Auto

No, you ALMOST correctly predicted game play. Some teams CORRECTLY predicted game play in that the frisbee free-for-all at the end of the game would be drastically modified or removed during the build season updates and built their robot accordingly.

I undoubtedly tip my cap to the teams who built their robots KNOWING the game would be drastically modified the day of bagging....

-Brando

[ghostmachine360]

I'm glad, just as a referee. Had to dive out of the way of some frisbees during a Frisbee blizzard in a scrimmage match.

[billbo911]

Originally Posted by sdcantrell56

In the meantime I would love access to the crystal ball granting you the insight into these changes.

You might be better served by an "Uncertain 7-Cube". See the second video in that link.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by sdcantrell56

You're correct, all of the teams who chose to forgo the added engineering challenge of designing an effective floor pickup correctly predicted the GDC making yet another late season game change.

In the future I will encourage my team to always choose the simpler path so we hopefully won't be effected by these last minute game changers. Lesson learned.

The sarcasm is strong in this one. (Please don't stop building complex and awesome robots.)

I'm pretty sure the GDC was able to predict the blizzard. You just have to go back to the past 2 years and see how a flurry of game pieces were always being hurled. However, I don't think they estimated the amount of force that a desperate human player imparts on the frisbee when trying to score it. The amount of force and the nature of the disc itself was a major safety hazard

Right move? I don't know. While our robot's floor pickup was going to be only used for autonomous and missed shots, I do feel somewhat wronged by the GDC for developing a floor pickup. I feel like instead of outright limiting the number of discs thrown, the GDC could've spent at least another day figuring out another way to make the game more safe, but not rule out many strategies.

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by 45Auto

No, you ALMOST correctly predicted game play. Some teams CORRECTLY predicted game play in that the frisbee free-for-all at the end of the game would be drastically modified or removed during the build season updates and built their robot accordingly.

Therein lies the problem. FIRST has had over a year to develop this game. Moreso than they have in the past, they have made efforts to fully test the gameplay to the best of their abilities. Many, many teams were able to correctly predict that there would be a hailstorm of frisbees at the end, and assumed that the bright folks at FIRST would also have anticipated that and had tested it well enough prior to kickoff that the safety features (nets, high walls at either end of the field) to mitigate the risk.

In short, we put our faith that if we were able to easily anticipate the hailstorm, FIRST did to and had chosen to leave it in the rules because their field design adequate to provide a safe environment. There is an inherent expectation by the teams that the gameplay allowed in the rules will be safe. It is the teams' responsibility to analyze the rules and determine the appropriate strategy, it is NOT the teams' responsibility to determine if parts of the rules present an unsafe situation and anticipate a GDC rules change.

To all the teams who are saying "Why didn't you anticipate they would change the rules and plan accordingly?", it's just not that simple. The ONLY strategy basis teams should have to go off of are the rules as they are written. What if a team designed their robot anticipating this rule change, and it didn't get changed? Would they then complain about an unfair disadvantage because they think it's unsafe but the GDC doesn't? If a team anticipates it would be a safety issue, why didn't they make an attempt to inform the GDC of this during build season? I'm guessing the answer is because they, like everyone else, assumed the GDC was aware of the potential hazard and the lack of any changes meant that the GDC was confident in the safety of the field and gameplay.

That being said, I don't think it's the hail of frisbees that caused this ruling from the GDC, but rather the number of frisbees that left the field entirely during this period and sailed off into the stands/scoring table/etc. They pose a hazard for spectators, field personnel and judges, as well as being a field reset issue. As unfortunate as it is that it took week 0 events for this to become apparent, that's what happened, they made the change because they had to, and we will all deal with it. I agree with Karthik and others, I do not think it will be as big of an issue as most people are making it out to be.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Madison

In real life, if someone asks you to build a boat and then, when you deliver it, they say, "There's actually no water here. We want a plane instead," your performance isn't judged on the effectiveness of your boat as an airplane.

In this case, we are in no position to make material changes to our product in response to the shifting requirements and we will be judged, in terms of our performance on the field, based on the outdated result.

Apples and oranges, in my opinion.

Doesn't mean you can't have the best of both worlds...

I totally agree though. FIRST doesn't have anything to lose in making these changes except their credibility*, and based on the reaction here it looks like they had already lost that in the eyes of many old timers.

*This is regardless of whether it was a necessary change or not (and it sounds like it probably was). It just means that participants will not trust FIRST in the future to keep to their original specifications, which breeds ill-will in any organization.

[billbo911]

My $.02?

I am 100% certain floor pick up will be a valuable asset.
I can absolutely guarantee that there are going to be missed shots on the floor. Not every robot is capable of 100% accuracy.

That said, the number of disks on the floor will diminish as you progress through eliminations. Regardless, disks will still be on the floor.

Consider the alliance that has a robot parked in the loading station to simply forward disks to the brutally accurate shooting robot that feeds from the floor.

[sircedric4]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

I totally agree though. FIRST doesn't have anything to lose in making these changes except their credibility*, and based on the reaction here it looks like they had already lost that in the eyes of many old timers.

*This is regardless of whether it was a necessary change or not (and it sounds like it probably was). It just means that participants will not trust FIRST in the future to keep to their original specifications, which breeds ill-will in any organization.

I am not quite as old timer as some of the other mentors and teams here but I can't remember a year where FIRST didn't make some controversial change after kick off. Sometimes it affected us, sometimes it didn't.

One thing we did take away from the years we have been here is that like a customer at a job, FIRST is just as likely to introduce scope creep and make your wonderful solution obsolete.

I feel for those that have had their strategy effected. We always discuss in our strategy meetings what are possible gotcha's for the year and as my fellow mentor said in a more inflammatory way, we did see the frisbee blizzard as a possible gotcha. Heck, we went into our current strategy with the foreknowledge that FIRST can change our scoring later, but built the best bot we could with the resources and commitment we have. I am sure the floor loaders will still find frisbees to play with.

Participating in this game reminds me of the rocket science I used to do; it has extremely high highs, but also extremely low lows. Don't lose heart and the high from overcoming an incredible challenge will help you forget the disappointments. Have fun at the competitions and enjoy the incredible machine you have spent 6 weeks building. :-)