FRC Blogged - Disc Counting System

[Hallry]

Taken from the FRC Blog, 2/28/13: http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...ounting-system

Disc Counting System

Blog Date: Wednesday, February 27, 2013 - 14:16

I thought you might like to know a little about how the scoring system will work this year. For this year’s game, we created a system that weighs the goals to determine the number of discs they contain. Our testing over the past several months has shown that this scoring system is accurate most of the time, but because of the number of variables involved, the reported number of discs may be off by a disc or two from time to time. We know how important it is that the scores are correct, so we will be verifying disc counts manually at the end of the autonomous period, and at the end of the match. There will be no extra pause in gameplay between Autonomous and Teleop, but the folks checking the count will be taking a ‘snapshot’ of the number of discs in the goals before Teleop starts.

During a match, you will still be able to use the scores displayed as a reference to how you are doing, but you should recognize that the final scores may change once the disc counts are verified. If the match is one sided, and a small correction to a disc count is unlikely to change which alliance won, we will announce the winner right away, and update the actual scores in the system shortly afterward. If the match is close, we will wait until the count is verified, then announce the winner.

Good luck to all teams participating in our Week 1 events!



I’ll blog again soon.

Frank

Most Interesting:

We will be verifying disc counts manually at the end of the autonomous period, and at the end of the match. There will be no extra pause in gameplay between Autonomous and Teleop, but the folks checking the count will be taking a ‘snapshot’ of the number of discs in the goals before Teleop starts.

Well, they're slowly edging their way towards instant replay...

What does everyone else think of this?

[synth3tk]

Originally Posted by Hallry

Well, they're slowly edging their way towards instant replay...

At the rate they're going, the water game will be the first game to implement instant replay.

[George1902]

I'm happy that no team's score will be DISCounted.

[synth3tk]

Oh no. I've been avoiding Reddit on purpose. Please don't start a pun thread, or I'll have you thrown out.

[savage]

Originally Posted by synth3tk

At the rate they're going, the water game will be the first game to implement instant replay.

Yes there will be a time when we will have instant replay but its going to take a few more years. But i miss the days of crab drive bots and bots without Bumpers!

This scoring system is very simple compared to how lunacy was scored. talk about match delays.

[Bryan Herbst]

While I recognize the difficulty of counting frisbees, the need to manually verify the score will be very time consuming, and I'm worried about how quickly we will be able to run matches under these conditions.

Keep in mind that not only do we need to manually count the frisbees that have been scored, but field reset then needs to take all the frisbees out and count out the appropriate number for each alliance.

[45Auto]

FIRST isn't smart enough to have TWO sets of discs at each regional, one in play and the other counted out and ready to be placed on the field for the next game?

[Jay Trzaskos]

Guys, don't worry so much. The weighted scoring system will give field reset a baseline to start from while they manually sort the discs into the various sets for the following match.

"Red Alliance supposedly scored 14, but I just counted 16 while prepping the alliance station for match ##, I'll tell the scoring table."

I honestly see this as adding little to no time to the field reset they already have to do.

Also, don't assume that FIRST won't have multiple sets of discs (odd and even matches?) to facilitate faster field reset. They have done this before guys, they should only get better with each year.

[Bryan Herbst]

Originally Posted by Jay Trzaskos

Guys, don't worry so much. The weighted scoring system will give field reset a baseline to start from while they manually sort the discs into the various sets for the following match.



I honestly see this as adding little to no time to the field reset they already have to do.

Also, don't assume that FIRST won't have multiple sets of discs (odd and even matches?) to facilitate faster field reset. They have done this before guys, they should only get better with each year.

Each event will have around 130 white, 15 red, 15 blue. Each event will also receive a number of replacement discs, but not an entire second set by any means.

I'm sure it will all work out in the end, but I foresee some more tweaks before it becomes a reliable system within the time constraints.

Originally Posted by 45Auto

FIRST isn't smart enough to have TWO sets of discs at each regional, one in play and the other counted out and ready to be placed on the field for the next game?

I'm sure FIRST would love to. Unfortunately, it probably wouldn't be very cost- or space- effective to send that many discs to all the regionals. Plus, it's hard to guage whether or not it will be necessary. I'm definitely going to wait and see how this weekend goes before I start getting too worried.

[Gregor]

From what I saw, the weight sensors were pretty accurate. Field reset takes forever, but that just may be because it was the practice day of a week 1 regional.

[Deetman]

Having just seen this today and not having heard anything about this in the scorekeeper training sessions, I headed over to the scorekeeper volunteer forum to see if I missed something. Sure enough, some new documents were uploaded including the procedures for this.

To summarize, field reset will be assigned to specific goals and counting during the match. Counts will be recorded and relayed to the scorekeeper after autonomous and at the end of a match. If a discrepancy is suspected, person loses count, etc. a manual count will be performed at the end of the match. All of this information will be gathered and reported to the scorekeeper for recording for every match.

The procedure indicates revision 1.0 so this is apparently subject to change and just a summary. Specific regionals/districts may be run differently, I'm not sure how much latitude FIRST has given the FTAs, etc. with respect to using what works best for the team running the field.