Team Update #20/Scoring Examples

[Matt Reiland]

I think the worst part about this whole deal for Truck Town is that in my head you are going to get penalized for showing off your design before the first regional. I would think that if you stayed stealth and never showed it off, the people that were so excited about it, saying it was blatantly illegal and unstoppable, wouldn't have even thought about it. This year after the first regional we may have heard through the grapevine that Truck Town has the most incredible unstoppable robot just like 71 last year. But hey 71 could be beat last year with the right match up. If Beaty last year told everyone in week 5 how they were going to use file cards 2 feet long and people started saying boy we can't even compete with that, FIRST it might/will ruin the carpet for sure with metal fingers sunk into the carpet, the same thing MIGHT have happened last year. Notice how Beaty comes up with out of the box strategies (Like 68 this year) but we don't see the preview that could come back to haunt them. Maybe that is a better strategy than we all think

I for one am very impressed with your bot, I know if we had to go against it we would give you everything we got, if that's not enough, you deserve to win with the better bot and strategy.

I also agree that the idea of straddling the bar is not in the black & white area and depends on how you interpret the rules. Sadly though I hate to see this kind of rule clarification after the ship period, after I was so fed up on the tethers from last year.

[Rook]

It's obvious that the GM31 update was written with Team 68's design in mind. I'm glad FIRST made a ruling before the first regional was played. I don't like the new wording of the ruling. Mainly this part...

[[Robot devices which are deployed or in a fixed position in order to avoid being pushed under the midfield barrier are designed to react with the field and will likely be disallowed.]]

I just think that adds more confusion to the issue. Many robots have arms that deploy and are meant to stack boxes or load catapults. These arms could also react with the midfield barrier to prevent the robot from being pushed. This could happen on accident or it could be intentionally done. During the middle of a match, it isn't going to be easy to determine if a robot intentionally or unintentionally uses its stacker arms to brace itself.

Though Update 20 clarifies GM31 in the case of Team 68, it only adds more confusion to the issue.

[ChrisH]

No robot is unstoppable. But some are harder to deal with than others. We have developed a strategy to deal with 68 or other similar robots and get our robot onto our side of the field so that maybe we can score some points.

Will it work? only time will tell. Whether it works or not, it WILL be very hard on all of the robots involved, maybe the field too. Any team in a match with any robot that can completely block the field is in a fight for their competitive life. They will take all means possible to prevent full deployment. If they are smart enough with how they do so, they certainly could damage their opponent. This may result in damage to the field in the process.

Suppose our original strategy fails and our robot and it's partner are trapped on the far side of the field where we are unable to score any points. What do we do then? Curl up in a corner and wait for time to run out? Not hardly.

In our case. the only option is to go down to minimum height and keep slamming against the robot blocking our way under the bar. If our partner is capable of going under the bar, then they will probably be right there working with us.

Now unfortunately, the field gets broken. The bar was never intended to stand up to two robots charging it repeatedly at full tilt.

We didn't break the bar, we never touched it. We slammed into another robot in an attempt to accomplish a legitimate game objective, namely cross to the other side of the field and score points. You could say it was our fault, because we repeatedly slammed into our opponent. But there is also a rule against designing your robot to use the field for support. Which the blocking robot obviously was. Therefore since our slamming was intended to accomplish a legitimate game objectiveand therefore legal, and the other robot was breaking a rule, using the field for reaction force, they must be at fault.

FIRST's primary objective in the design of the field elements is safety for human beings. The second is to have it around for the next round. Any robot that interacts with the bar much more than incidental contact is definitely in conflict with the second objective.

68 and any other teams that built similar robiots took a technical risk. One of the posts at the time 68 published the first photos of their robot said they realized that their design was controversial and that they were knowingly taking that risk. It sounds as if they lost, Oh Well.

Some of us built Stackers or King of the Hill robots, six weeks from now we might be kicking ourselves too. That is the nature of the game.

The company I work for plays a similar game continually. Sometimes we lose, and it hurts, big time. It's not easy to watch five or six years of sweat go to waste in the few seconds it takes to announce the contract winner, not to mention hundreds of millions in development money.

Other times we win and that makes the defeats worthwhile, because they are never a total loss, you always learn something...
if you're paying attention.

[sanddrag]

in a fixed position in order to avoid being pushed under the midfield barrier are designed to react with the field and will likely be disallowed

I personally hate the wording of this. How about a robot more than 14 inches tall gets pushed up against the midfield barrier. Their tall frame is a device in a fixed position right? What then, are they DQ'ed?

Also, let's not forget the event where a robot puts boxes in front of the barrier to keep an opponent from going through. Then the opponent (say 13 inches tall) slams into these boxes and they push against the bar.

This rule is trying to stop half the things that will be going on in the game.

[DougHogg]

In other sports, officials have years to iron out the gray areas and loopholes as they crop up. Because we have a new contest each year in FIRST, that isn't possible. And so FIRST officials have a tough job.

It certainly isn't clear to me that a robot straddling a bar has been designed to react against the bar. It would depend on one's definition of reacting against. Does it mean actively pushing on the bar, or does it include being pushed against the bar.

I feel for the FIRST officials who had a game in mind, and are trying to preserve it. I also feel for Team 68 who thought outside of the box. Your robot design is an inspiration to us all, because you had the spirit to leap beyond the barriers which were meant to contain us.

Given the nature of FIRST, and the fact that we have a lot of intelligent people involved who will think outside of the box, I am afraid a certain amount of this kind of controversy goes with the territory.

However, one thing that we can perhaps do in the future is have a glossary of the important terms in key rules (such as "reacting against"), which might make things a little more certain. After all, a lot of words in our language have more than one meaning. It would be good to spell out which meaning is meant.

In this case, I think that Team 68 got further out of the box than the creators of the game and I think that it took us all aback somewhat. It certainly surprised me. Congratulations to your team on creative thinking that pushed the limits. Congratulations to FIRST also for handling a very difficult area. May we all do better at it in the future.

Good luck 68. Your team has the heart of lion. Look forward to meeting you in Phoenix.

[Gope]

I think that the "rule change" to GM31 isn't a change as many people are saying. I think it is a clarification. All it did was explain more clearly the intent of GM31.

It is almost the opposite of what they did last year when they allowed measuring tapes.

Regarding 68: Although I feel the "change" was merely a clarification that was needed, due to the poor quality of the original rule phrasing I feel that all teams that are now in obvious violation of rule GM31 should be given extra time to change their robot. However, how/when/where they would modify them would be a big problem to overcome.

[Jeff Waegelin]

Originally posted by Gope
I think that the "rule change" to GM31 isn't a change as many people are saying. I think it is a clarification. All it did was explain more clearly the intent of GM31.

I definitely agree. All of this was mentioned before, it's just being clarified now. I've had some doubts in many of these areas before, and now those areas are a bit more clearly defined.

[Vincent Chan]

I think it's apparent what the whole 'reacting against' deal is supposed to mean:

If you are using something designed to stop another bot from getting under the bar that comes in contact with it to do so, it is disallowed. Sure, you can say, 'well what about the frame of a robot?' Use common sense: how would you rule? If a bot is pushing against another bot that is too tall to pass under, it's just an inadvertant design flaw (or maybe it was meant to do that... but it just causes the bot to get stuck in midfield). I think they will rule on the intent of the design.

And as far as the entire build thing goes... wouldn't it just be more fair to stop all building the Wednesday before the first set of regionals and then allow the teams to build from Thursday of their regional through the next Wednesday?

It would've been nice if they had specified post-ship build rules earlier on.

[Rook]

Originally posted by Vincent Chan
I think it's apparent what the whole 'reacting against' deal is supposed to mean:

If you are using something designed to stop another bot from getting under the bar that comes in contact with it to do so, it is disallowed. Sure, you can say, 'well what about the frame of a robot?' Use common sense: how would you rule? If a bot is pushing against another bot that is too tall to pass under, it's just an inadvertant design flaw (or maybe it was meant to do that... but it just causes the bot to get stuck in midfield). I think they will rule on the intent of the design.

What about robots that have arms? When the arm is raised, it can't be pushed under the bar. The arms, however, were designed with other functions in mind such as loading boxes or stacking them. Does such a robot get DQ'ed if it's arm is deployed and happens to prevent it from being pushed under the bar? It's not all just "common sense" the way Update 20 was worded.

[Vincent Chan]

Originally posted by Rook
What about robots that have arms? When the arm is raised, it can't be pushed under the bar. The arms, however, were designed with other functions in mind such as loading boxes or stacking them. Does such a robot get DQ'ed if it's arm is deployed and happens to prevent it from being pushed under the bar? It's not all just "common sense" the way Update 20 was worded.

So take a look at it: did they come up and deploy arms in order to block? Could they have lowered their arms to get out of the way or effectively push back? Were the arms utilized in multiple instances in order to block by using them as a support with the bar?

And besides: if such a design was used, with the most common blocking ability of arms in mind, it would just put the two bots at a stalemate. One is stuck between the bar and the other bot, and the other bot is incessantly and needlessly trying to push the other one out of the way. Doesn't sound very useful to me, personally...

[Mark Garver]

Originally posted by Rook
What about robots that have arms? When the arm is raised, it can't be pushed under the bar. The arms, however, were designed with other functions in mind such as loading boxes or stacking them. Does such a robot get DQ'ed if it's arm is deployed and happens to prevent it from being pushed under the bar? It's not all just "common sense" the way Update 20 was worded.

I agree completely with what you are saying!! I know my other team 857 has the ability to do just that. Now we could lower it and be allowed to be pushed throw, however our arm any allows it to go one way. Being pushed in the other direction would do no good and break our robot.

All this talk about robots trying to prevent themselves from being pushed under the bar makes me think that there is some great advantage that I haven't thought about... Any help here? All you would be doing is stopping other limbo bots, however why do you ever need to stop robots? I thought the game was about bins? Maybe I misread the rules about the purpose of the game; again!! according to some...