[FRC Blog] Orlando Incident

[Jon Stratis]

It will be interesting to see how we're going to be tracking reinspections. As I'm sure everyone can agree, teams make changes or repairs at competition all the time - the work seems to never stop, and just walking around the pits for 5 minutes shows me at least a dozen teams who are doing something that needs reinspection - and an hour later, it'll be a different dozen! This poses some interesting paperwork issues, in that we'll possibly be generating a lot of additional paper to keep track of it!

I know at my regionals, I have inspectors stationed at 3 spots Friday and Saturday - in the queueing line, at the field, and at the inspection station. This means teams can get reinspected when they ask, AND that every team gets a small reinspection before every match AND that every team that breaks on the field has an inspector following them back to their pit to ensure the repair or replacement is reinspected immediately (often because the inspector is helping the team do the repair or figure out what to do!). If we have to keep track of paperwork for all of these reinspections at a regional... yikes! I certainly hope that FIRST can come up with a wireless, computerized solution for us (something like the NI Parkway app so inspectors can document reinspections quickly right from their smartphone or tablet!).

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

It will be interesting to see how we're going to be tracking reinspections. As I'm sure everyone can agree, teams make changes or repairs at competition all the time - the work seems to never stop, and just walking around the pits for 5 minutes shows me at least a dozen teams who are doing something that needs reinspection - and an hour later, it'll be a different dozen! This poses some interesting paperwork issues, in that we'll possibly be generating a lot of additional paper to keep track of it!

I know at my regionals, I have inspectors stationed at 3 spots Friday and Saturday - in the queueing line, at the field, and at the inspection station. This means teams can get reinspected when they ask, AND that every team gets a small reinspection before every match AND that every team that breaks on the field has an inspector following them back to their pit to ensure the repair or replacement is reinspected immediately (often because the inspector is helping the team do the repair or figure out what to do!). If we have to keep track of paperwork for all of these reinspections at a regional... yikes! I certainly hope that FIRST can come up with a wireless, computerized solution for us (something like the NI Parkway app so inspectors can document reinspections quickly right from their smartphone or tablet!).

I like this approach. I know at one of our events this year I had to wander around for 20 minutes trying to find an inspector to reinspect us after we added a GoPro to our bot (we had plenty of weight but given that the LRI at the event had ALREADY cursed at us for asking a question I wasn't taking chances). 30 minutes later one came by and okayed it.

So, I think I might push to have this practice implemented in NE. Thanks

[JeremyLansing]

I for one am definitely looking forward to an improvement in the reinspection process. Given the meticulous nature of initial inspections, it always seemed strange to me that reinspections could be a cursory once-over by an inspector. I would love a bit more thoroughness, even if it means reinspections take a little longer. Hopefully what happened at Orlando won't happen again.

[Ben Martin]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

I certainly hope that FIRST can come up with a wireless, computerized solution for us (something like the NI Parkway app so inspectors can document reinspections quickly right from their smartphone or tablet!).

Funny that you should mention this--the inspectors at Springside-Chestnut Hill and MAR Champs were using tablets with some sort of inspection app. We weren't given any forms to sign, just a sticker when we were done. There were a bunch of features, including a nice diagram of all the teams on a pit map and where they stood in the inspection process.

Maybe they were piloting something? Really not sure.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Ben Martin

Funny that you should mention this--the inspectors at Springside-Chestnut Hill and MAR Champs were using tablets with some sort of inspection app. We weren't given any forms to sign, just a sticker when we were done. There were a bunch of features, including a nice diagram of all the teams on a pit map and where they stood in the inspection process.

Maybe they were piloting something? Really not sure.

I heard there was a pilot of a new event management app in MAR... you never know if pilots will be successful and adopted, or fail and be set aside though - I certainly hope it was successful!

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

I heard there was a pilot of a new event management app in MAR... you never know if pilots will be successful and adopted, or fail and be set aside though - I certainly hope it was successful!

This is correct...I heard the overall response was pretty positive. It was used for everything from judging to inspecting to the game announcer reading off names.

[Orion.DeYoe]

To be completely honest I think the way FIRST (and Frank) handled this problem is unbelievable.
First of all, the "reinspection process" is NOT well-defined in the manual and as such a team has no way of knowing the magnitude of change that requires reinspection (do we need to get an inspector every time we change tread on the wheels?). Team's should not be made to suffer for FIRST's inability and refusal to define many rules properly. A team would have to be obviously and purposefully cheating before I would advocate a ruling like this.
Second of all, the media got involved. Every one of us here in the 21st century should know the kind of damage that the media can do to an organization/individual's reputation. We should also be aware that a ruined reputation for a robotics team will interfere with it's ability to gain and retain sponsors as well as their ability to inspire further generations to become involved with STEM (which, may I remind you, is FIRST's entire mission).
I think that the way FIRST handled the repercussions of this decision were very inadequate. FIRST needs to write a press release to defend the reputation of these teams as well as writing each of their sponsors to explain the situation. It is FIRST's responsibility to make sure that the damage to a few teams' reputation doesn't cause these teams permanent harm as well a to prevent the bad reputation to spread to other teams and the organization as a whole.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Orion.DeYoe

Second of all, the media got involved. Every one of us here in the 21st century should know the kind of damage that the media can do to an organization/individual's reputation. We should also be aware that a ruined reputation for a robotics team will interfere with it's ability to gain and retain sponsors as well as their ability to inspire further generations to become involved with STEM (which, may I remind you, is FIRST's entire mission)
I think that the way FIRST handld the repercussions of this decision were very inadequate. FIRST needs to write a press release to defend the reputation of these teams as well as writing each of their sponsors to explain the situation. It is FIRST's responsibility to make sure that the damage to a few teams' reputation doesn't cause these teams permanent harm as well a to prevent the bad reputation to spread to other teams and the organization as a whole.

Media getting involved is nothing FIRST is liable for...heck, I didn't even know about it until the blog post, FIRST probably didn't know about it until recently, so its not like it was a CNN headline

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Steven Donow

Media getting involved is nothing FIRST is liable for...heck, I didn't even know about it until the blog post, FIRST probably didn't know about it until recently, so its not like it was a CNN headline

I don't think us as outside observers can really adequately judge how local team reputation is affected by local media. Of course you hadn't heard of it, you live in Boston. All it takes is one misunderstood Google search and perhaps a sponsor would look elsewhere for a team to support.

[Abhishek R]

Originally Posted by Steven Donow

Media getting involved is nothing FIRST is liable for...heck, I didn't even know about it until the blog post, FIRST probably didn't know about it until recently, so its not like it was a CNN headline

It was a local media organization, so you would not have heard of it. Does that mean it's OK, just because it wasn't a large headline across FIRST? The image painted of 233 was very negative. I saw a slideshow that had photos of Pink's members doing various things at the competition from repairs in the pit to playing matches with the caption at the bottom of every slide along the lines of "The team was disqualified from the competition for not following the rules." Just because you didn't know about it does not mean no one was affected.

EDIT: I was typing this as Chris made his post. Exactly my point.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Abhishek R

It was a local media organization, so you would not have heard of it. Does that mean it's OK, just because it wasn't a large headline across FIRST? The image painted of 233 was very negative. I saw a slideshow that had photos of Pink's members doing various things at the competition from repairs in the pit to playing matches with the caption at the bottom of every slide along the lines of "The team was disqualified from the competition for not following the rules." Just because you didn't know about it does not mean no one was affected.

EDIT: I was typing this as Chris made his post. Exactly my point.

I wasn't saying this as a criticism towards the general complaint/idea of how this came across in the media; I was saying it in response to the post I quoted which came across as blaming FIRST for the media response.

[RunawayEngineer]

Originally Posted by Abhishek R

It was a local media organization, so you would not have heard of it. Does that mean it's OK, just because it wasn't a large headline across FIRST? The image painted of 233 was very negative. I saw a slideshow that had photos of Pink's members doing various things at the competition from repairs in the pit to playing matches with the caption at the bottom of every slide along the lines of "The team was disqualified from the competition for not following the rules." Just because you didn't know about it does not mean no one was affected.

EDIT: I was typing this as Chris made his post. Exactly my point.

Do you know where that slideshow is? I was only able to find a Florida Today Article about the regional, which is remains positive towards the Pink Team.

Apparently Florida Today follows the Pink Team on occasion. They've done a good job of reaching out to the media - back in 2007 when I was on the team, the only reporter we could get to talk to us was a freelance writer who was related to one of our members.

Some quick Google searches didn't show anything else that mentioned the incident on the first page, so I don't think that this will be a permanent stain for any of the teams.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Orion.DeYoe

Second of all, the media got involved. Every one of us here in the 21st century should know the kind of damage that the media can do to an organization/individual's reputation. We should also be aware that a ruined reputation for a robotics team will interfere with it's ability to gain and retain sponsors as well as their ability to inspire further generations to become involved with STEM (which, may I remind you, is FIRST's entire mission).
I think that the way FIRST handled the repercussions of this decision were very inadequate. FIRST needs to write a press release to defend the reputation of these teams as well as writing each of their sponsors to explain the situation. It is FIRST's responsibility to make sure that the damage to a few teams' reputation doesn't cause these teams permanent harm as well a to prevent the bad reputation to spread to other teams and the organization as a whole.

Hmm, I don't like a call a ref made, I'ma go whine to my local paper. Do you honestly believe I couldn't spin the facts in a way that could get a sympathetic story in some paper? Every reporter loves a story of a big group negatively impacting children. That sells papers. So, now does FIRST have to address this issue?

No.

Besides, did FIRST do anything when people on here attack other teams and accuse them of cheating? Or when students are being harassed? Or heck, when volunteers are being harassed? No. They haven't. They've left us out on our own in the past, I don't see why that would change now.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Orion.DeYoe

First of all, the "reinspection process" is NOT well-defined in the manual and as such a team has no way of knowing the magnitude of change that requires reinspection (do we need to get an inspector every time we change tread on the wheels?). Team's should not be made to suffer for FIRST's inability and refusal to define many rules properly. A team would have to be obviously and purposefully cheating before I would advocate a ruling like this.

T10

If a ROBOT is modified after it has passed Inspection, other than modifications described in T8, that ROBOT must be re-Inspected.

How is that not well defined? ANY change to the robot, except those expressly permitted per T8, requires a reinspection. The problem is teams simply don't follow this rule. They make small changes and think "nah, that doesn't need reinspection"... and there's usually no way for the inspectors to catch on, except when we do the mandatory reinspection for eliminations. Ever wonder why we reweigh the robots, and put our foot on the scale while we do it? It's to get teams to stop and think and tell us what actually changed on their robot, because we know they made changes they didn't tell us about. You wouldn't believe the number of times I've had a team walk up, say "we didn't change anything!" and then when their robot is off by 2 lbs they start saying "well, we took this off here, and we replaced this, and we added supports for this..."

And yes, reinspections should include replacing tread on wheels - that is the main part of the robot that interacts with the carpet, and inspectors need to be able to verify that the alteration does not risk significant damage to the carpet. Specifically, if you're attaching it with a pop-rivets, as many teams do, I need to be able to see that the new pop-rivets were installed properly and won't cause an issue. The same could be said of zip ties (where is the head of the zip tie located?) or gluing (are any exposed rims of the wheels properly accounted for? Is the glue dry so it would get all over the field?) or any other attachment method you can think of.

These reinspections are not cursory, they are not lighter or less rigorous than the initial inspection. The only difference is the scope - we don't have to worry about the entire robot any more, just the small area where the change was made.

[FrankJ]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

How is that not well defined? ANY change to the robot, except those expressly permitted per T8, requires a reinspection. The problem is teams simply don't follow this rule. ...snip..

And yes, reinspections should include replacing tread on wheels - that is the main part of the robot that interacts with the carpet, ...snip...

These reinspections are not cursory, they are not lighter or less rigorous than the initial inspection. The only difference is the scope - we don't have to worry about the entire robot any more, just the small area where the change was made.

What is not well defined is exactly what is an "re-inspection" & how it gets documented. T8 speaks to modification not repairs. Just when a repair becomes a modification is a judgement call not all defined by the rules. If you expect robots to be reinspected after every repair, then the process is fundamentally flawed & you can't fault teams for not following it a 100%. You are also going to need a lot more inspectors. The other Frank says the process is going to get some attention. I am expecting positive changes.

Removing a mechanism present during the original inspection does not trigger a need for re inspection per T8. Adding the ballast to compensate would require reinspection. As a side note reinstalling the mechanism if the ballast + mechanism exceeded the allowed robot weight would probably be against the rules.