FrankAnswersFridays: October 25, 2013: Safety at Championships

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Cory

Given the option I don't think there's a single team that would rather watch the match on a screen rather than live when it comes to scouting.

Agreed. As someone who takes scouting very seriously I have never seen a video stream or angle that would come close to being a supplement for scouting. I remember scouting at Champs in 2009-2010 in some of the very back rows and still be able to do so successfully with identifying bumper numbers and where people were on the field.

There is a small level of scouting you can do via a video feed but if you want to do it properly you need to physically be watching everything on and off the field. I am curious to see the 610 setup for their regional but I am still very, very skeptical.

[Ernst]

Originally Posted by Cory

Given the option I don't think there's a single team that would rather watch the match on a screen rather than live when it comes to scouting.

I did data entry for my team's scouting group at MARC over the summer. I set up at a table in a hallway. It was quieter, cooler, and I could lay out everything I was looking at instead of balancing a laptop and several accordion folders on my lap in the bleachers. Given the choice of entering data in a hall like I did, in the stands, or in a room with tables and a stream of the match, I would pick the streaming.

I don't think that the whole scouting team would have liked the secluded room, given that a lot of the fun is getting to sit as a team.

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by Cory

Given the option I don't think there's a single team that would rather watch the match on a screen rather than live when it comes to scouting.

Originally Posted by BrendanB

Agreed. As someone who takes scouting very seriously I have never seen a video stream or angle that would come close to being a supplement for scouting. I remember scouting at Champs in 2009-2010 in some of the very back rows and still be able to do so successfully with identifying bumper numbers and where people were on the field.

There is a small level of scouting you can do via a video feed but if you want to do it properly you need to physically be watching everything on and off the field. I am curious to see the 610 setup for their regional but I am still very, very skeptical.

I understand that. And that's why I'm curious to see how well 610's setup will work.
However, given the choice of not having seats to scout or scouting via full-field-fisheye (henceforth known as F^3), which would you choose?

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Thunder910

I understand that. And that's why I'm curious to see how well 610's setup will work.
However, given the choice of not having seats to scout or scouting via full-field-fisheye (henceforth known as F^3), which would you choose?

Neither. I would show up at 5 AM and get seats.

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by Cory

Neither. I would show up at 5 AM and get seats.

Fair enough.

[JB987]

Originally Posted by Cory

Neither. I would show up at 5 AM and get seats.

And we will still show up at 4:59 am

[Nate Laverdure]

I don't understand the basic foundations of this discussion. It's the Championship-- stop sitting and start walking around.

[Mr. Lim]

Originally Posted by Cory

Given the option I don't think there's a single team that would rather watch the match on a screen rather than live when it comes to scouting.

There are tables to setup servers and printers, power outlets run to every few block of seats, stadium seating in comfortable chairs, and guest Wi-Fi internet access.

The premise is to provide scouts with all the things we wish our own scouts had at the events we've completed at. Of course the video/audio feed has to be good enough at the end of the day, but it needs to be good enough to identify the robots, and what they're doing. Having watched the streams from MI champs, and the HD WatchFIRSTnow streams, they were good enough for this, when they stuck to a fixed, full field view. With those streams and fixed views, I'm pretty sure our scouts could've tracked all the info we had asked them to record on our match scoring sheets.

We're even going to share our own team's live scouting data on secondary a screen off to the side for teams to cross reference their own, and live rankings on a third screen, all right beside the large HD video feed, so you don't need to run to the pits just to see the rankings.

I don't think any other event has tried this before, but I know our scouts will be lining up to set up in the ScoutCentre at the GTRW.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by Nate Laverdure

I don't understand the basic foundations of this discussion. It's the Championship-- stop sitting and start walking around.

But who will save my seat when I get up to look at things?



I'll be competing at GTRW with the remote scouting room. I'll relay observations to CD.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Pat Fairbank

I think the fairest system, and the one requiring the least amount of work to implement, is the one that many teams (including my own) try to follow now -- you show up early in the morning with as many people as seats you want to claim, and stand in line.

Originally Posted by Karthik

I'm 100% in agreement with Pat here. If lineups were clearly marked and enforced each morning, there would be absolutely no issues. There's no need to implement a complicated solution for what is a relatively simple problem to solve.

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Lotteries, etc... are silly and resource intensive.

From the perspective of someone who only needs to line up early when I'm visiting with a team that has that objective, and even then, only when I'm not otherwise engaged as a volunteer, I'm not really in favour of making the line at the door into part of the competition.

Sure, it's one more way that a motivated team can gain a useful advantage through their disciplined efforts off the field—but it's also an arms race in which the fanatics and the scouts will be keeping each other company for the lonely hours before sunrise. And while I suppose it's their prerogative, it's a little undignified and kind of overlooks the bigger question: is the first-come-first-served allocation of seats so essential to the competition (as a whole, rather than on a per-team level) that it couldn't be replaced with a system that is fair through randomness? If the few teams currently lining up very early lose their advantage, but everyone gets more sleep and less stampeding happens, are the event and the experience improved or degraded overall? I don't have data to estimate the relative benefits, but the costs to the event of enforcing an orderly line seem greater than the costs of assigning scouts' seats in advance.¹


Also, lotteries are easy when you have a known set of entrants and don't need to do it in real time. The week before the event, with great pomp and circumstance, the regional director selects a hat and draws team numbers from it. A set number of that team's representatives are assigned to predetermined seating blocks in the order drawn. A slight improvement/complication involves the teams ranking their preferences for blocks of seating beforehand; when drawn, they get the most preferable block not already taken.

¹ Despite that, I have to admit, I'm sympathetic to the teams that are annoyed when their scouts are beaten to the front row seats, and then have to endure sitting behind people that stand up and cheer for their team instead of quietly observing the match. I'd wager that the loss of productivity of the scouts in the 2^nd row is greater in magnitude than the benefit the 1^st-row team gains by cheering—and in effect harms the competition compared to the situation in which the seats were switched.

[DampRobot]

Isn't the solution for this problem a bit obvious? If there was someone with a FIRST volunteer shirt to walk around and tell off the most egregious violators of the "no saving seats" rule, I'm sure a lot of the motivation for the stampede to the stands would be gone.

In terms of saving seats, I'm not talking about a kid for holding a seat for their friend who's in the bathroom, I'm talking about the one person defending a huge block of seats like the people just trying to get off their feet are zombies coming to attack them. Those are the people that are causing a problem, and breaking a rule by the letter and in spirit.

Most teams get up early and run to the stands because they know that if they don't: a, they won't get good seats to watch/scout/cheer, and b, they won't be able to get them later, because those seats will continue to be saved. If they knew that they could simply sit where there is room, rather than where other teams have not claimed, teams wouldn't be so motivated to get up at the crack of dawn or sprint to the stands. They would know that there would likely be plenty of fine seats left, and as they day went on, they could move up into better unoccupied seats.

Of course, a lottery system or multiple coordinated entrances would be good ideas, but they'd likely take a fair bit of organization and work to implement. I'm not sure that they get to the root cause either, that people are very motivated to get to the stands as fast as physically possible to save seats for their team.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by DampRobot

Isn't the solution for this problem a bit obvious? If there was someone with a FIRST volunteer shirt to walk around and tell off the most egregious violators of the "no saving seats" rule, I'm sure a lot of the motivation for the stampede to the stands would be gone.

It'd take a lot more volunteer-power than just one person to actually enforce this to the point of removing the motivation. Culture changes are hard, especially when the benefit of not changing is precieved as so high. I think it's the correct approach--the message is certainly correct, effective delivery may be a question. It's less organization intensive than a lottery, but it's not a trivial addition of volunteers, at least for the first few years until the culture changes.

Further, the entire seat-sprint-struggle is over just saving. I've seen it between groups who have their members, to the point of fights almost breaking out as one group tries to cut in front on another. There are better and worse seats, and the former can (and likely will, no matter what) be defined such that it's a scarce resource, so from an economic perspective the competition is built-in.

[MrTechCenter]

They really shouldn't have two divisions on the shorter side of the dome, that lead to a lot of clustering between Archimedes and Newton, Curie was perfectly fine, Galileo had a lot of spectators but at least everyone managed to find a seat.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by MrTechCenter

They really shouldn't have two divisions on the shorter side of the dome, that lead to a lot of clustering between Archimedes and Newton, Curie was perfectly fine, Galileo had a lot of spectators but at least everyone managed to find a seat.

One of the reasons Galileo had so many spectators is because it had a lot of teams who bring a lot of people to the event, but it worked out because it was placed on the side of the dome where you realistically can't properly place another division. Because of the breezeway that connects the convention center and arena being where it is, fitting two fields on the near side of the dome is probably worse than fitting them on the endzone of it. You could move the stage to the other end of Einstein to slide both division fields up, but you then run into a seating issue with a division and Einstein, and a cosmetic issue where you'll have a field teardown going on during Einstein, right next to Einstein, instead of behind it.

The only thing I could think of doing was work better to squeeze two divisions on the far side and far left corner of the dome, where you could still run into overlapping seating and have a division placed really awkwardly on the corner.

Basically, I don't know how they could make that better.

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by Mr. Lim

The premise is to provide scouts with all the things we wish our own scouts had at the events we've completed at. Of course the video/audio feed has to be good enough at the end of the day, but it needs to be good enough to identify the robots, and what they're doing. Having watched the streams from MI champs, and the HD WatchFIRSTnow streams, they were good enough for this, when they stuck to a fixed, full field view. With those streams and fixed views, I'm pretty sure our scouts could've tracked all the info we had asked them to record on our match scoring sheets.

This is a fantastic idea. While I agree that there is no replacement for watching a match in person, especially at a reasonable viewing distance (and angle, which may be more important) I think that a high quality fixed feed is a appropriate substitute. It would be interesting to see this expand to all events, although more than likely it would require quite a bit of legwork to make it happen.

Just thinking out loud here, but I think it would be amazing if each of the divisions at the championship had the sort of video feed that's being planned for GTRW and it were webcast-ed along side (separate feed) the traditional webcast. At that point, it would open up a handful of different options for scouting, or at least provide a secondary reference for gathering data. I guess the most obvious problem here would be how teams on site would access the cast without some sort of public wifi or a 3G/4G/LTE connection, but even those can be worked around... I know I was able to stream eliminations matches of Waterloo over 4G/LTE while at another event this past season without issue. (There's also the potential of logging the full field stream throughout the day and splitting it for reference later - some teams already do this with personal cameras.)

It seems like some other great ideas are being thrown around in here as well - especially regarding crowd control. Splitting each division/level up into it's own entrance or series of entrances would do wonders for organizing the chaotic 'mad dash' to the stands in the morning - and would hopefully eliminate some of the need to have a group of kids up as early as is needed now especially on Friday, since we know the scouts are going to have a late enough night as is.

Also, last year, and possibly years before, there was a second entrance into the Dome/Center that was immediately across from Starbucks. Out of sheer dumb luck (or an appropriately timed breakfast craving) another mentor and I happened to walk through this door as it opened, and into the pits with a much, much calmer pace than if we'd gone through the main doors.

One last thing, as someone that carries a backpack more often than not during events, I can assure you that I was asked to open mine each time I walked into the Dome/Center complex. The bag check is a necessary process, especially considering the timing of last years CMP, but I think it might benefit everyone if during morning opening, anyone with a bag/box/tote/etc were to go through a separate door than those without. That might help to cut down a bit on the stop and go as people are getting through the doors initially. (Not to mention that it should benefit those who are bringing in carts and things of that nature on Thursday morning.)