What defines a field fault?

[rich2202]

In general, if it is a problem with the Field or FMS that is caused by Field Personnel or FMS, then it is a Field Fault.

Acts of God can go either way.

Stuck Portcullis gate: Probably a Field Fault (not working the way it should)
Cover for Sally Port is knocked off by a robot: Probably Field Debris (can be reasonably anticipated from its design).

[scottgoering]

Originally Posted by rich2202

In general, if it is a problem with the Field or FMS that is caused by Field Personnel or FMS, then it is a Field Fault.

Acts of God can go either way.

Stuck Portcullis gate: Probably a Field Fault (not working the way it should)
Cover for Sally Port is knocked off by a robot: Probably Field Debris (can be reasonably anticipated from its design).

There's 3 parts to a field fault. They are stated in the rules, but basically they are:

1. There was a problem with the field which caused an arena fault. Something came loose (like a defense), some electronic error occured (ref tablet, ball counter failed), or some other thing happened which raised the question.
2. The fault (likely) affected the outcome of the match. For example, if a defense comes loose, but it has already been breached and no one tries to cross it again, likely didn't affect the outcome of the match. If a team got stuck on a loose rock wall, likely affected the outcome.
3. A single team on the alliance that was affected has to request a replay. Doesn't have to be all 3 teams or a majority, just one of them.

All 3 of those conditions must be met in order to perform the replay. You may be thinking why all 3 are required, especially when the field fault was obvious and affected the outcome of the match. This actually happened to me at KC this year. I can't remember exactly what happened (maybe a ref realized he missed some crossings or something), but the match continued to play out. We (the head ref and I) discussed after the match and decided it was a field fault. I went and talked to each of the teams, and they decided not to replay the match. Their reasoning was that they won the match and got the 2 RPs and didn't want to risk losing the rematch and thus losing those RPs.

[Bob Steele]

Originally Posted by BethMo

We had a fascinating one in the finals of this year's Pacific Northwest District Championship. Here's my best recollection of what happened:

The defenses were set up incorrectly, and the field "pre-start" was initiated before it was noticed. They fixed the defenses, restarted everything, and ran the match. Team 1425's robot was immobile for most of the match, then ran into the wall until it was e-stopped (looked like it might have been running autonomous routine).

After the match ended, no score was announced, as the head referee, FTA, and table staff conclaved for a very long time (I believe it included a call back to FIRST headquarters). Then they announced the field fault. They said that it was known previously that 1425's robot needed to be tethered and re-initialized after a "pre-start" before it would respond properly to another "pre-start", and that the team had not been given a chance to do that. That made this a field fault.

The match was replayed, and this time 1983 (Skunkworks, the alliance captain) disconnected for half the match, so the outcome was the same.

The field fault match and the explanation for the replay don't seem to have been included in the Youtube playlist, so I wasn't able to double-check my memory. If anyone has more details, please add them!

(The alliance had already lost the first match playing two-on-three with the third robot undergoing repairs. An astounding run of misfortune... but 1983 still ended the event in the #1 position for the district. Hopefully they've now used up all their bad luck quota and everything will be great at St. Louis!)

This is a pretty accurate description of what happened. The only addition I would include is that in the last match 1425 also lost connection for a period of time so we were playing with only a single robot (2907)

I just want to say that the other alliance ( 360, 4469 and 3238) played a terrific finals and they were a very deserving winner!! Even if we had all of our robots playing we would have had a difficult time beating them.

Thanks for the good wishes!! Given that the only connection issues we have had in 75 matches so far this season were in the finals of a district and the District champs finals we also hope that our luck turns.

[Jeffrafa]

Originally Posted by alicen

At SVR, the very first match on Friday saw a field fault. This was due to none of the game sounds going off. When autonomous ended, some refs and teams alike had no idea because there was no sound to indicate. It was a full 10 seconds before we realized and stopped the match!

Historically, AV issues are not typically considered field faults, as they are not part of the FMS/Field system. This includes sounds and score/clock display on the screens (the official clock is on both alliance walls). A single instance of sounds not working can definitely cause confusion, but I have seen several consecutive matches played in years past without Auto or End Game sounds - at the time teams were alerted to watch the official field clock.

Originally Posted by BethMo

We had a fascinating one in the finals of this year's Pacific Northwest District Championship. Here's my best recollection of what happened:

The defenses were set up incorrectly, and the field "pre-start" was initiated before it was noticed. They fixed the defenses, restarted everything, and ran the match. Team 1425's robot was immobile for most of the match, then ran into the wall until it was e-stopped (looked like it might have been running autonomous routine).

After the match ended, no score was announced, as the head referee, FTA, and table staff conclaved for a very long time (I believe it included a call back to FIRST headquarters). Then they announced the field fault. They said that it was known previously that 1425's robot needed to be tethered and re-initialized after a "pre-start" before it would respond properly to another "pre-start", and that the team had not been given a chance to do that. That made this a field fault.

The match was replayed, and this time 1983 (Skunkworks, the alliance captain) disconnected for half the match, so the outcome was the same.

The field fault match and the explanation for the replay don't seem to have been included in the Youtube playlist, so I wasn't able to double-check my memory. If anyone has more details, please add them!

(The alliance had already lost the first match playing two-on-three with the third robot undergoing repairs. An astounding run of misfortune... but 1983 still ended the event in the #1 position for the district. Hopefully they've now used up all their bad luck quota and everything will be great at St. Louis!)

Your recollection matches pretty well with what I have heard as well. It was a very bizarre scenario that our robot woke up mid-match and ran into the sidewall until E-stopped. I had also heard that they thought autonomous was triggered, but we have no auto mode that would have produced that set of behaviors observed (all auto modes drive time-based for only a few seconds). In addition to the drive motors running continuously, the collector drove down against the hard-stop, and the climber release motor (typically only triggered for a second or so per match) stalled, smoked, and seized before E-stop was pressed, requiring replacement before the replay.

We don't need to tether between matches to re-connect, but frequently must reset the RoboRIO to get a stable connection with the field. It is something the FTA's are aware of, and an ongoing pre-match connectivity hiccup we are working to root-cause. It seems that redoing pre-start may have had an effect on our connectivity that was not noticed prior to the start of the match.

Throughout Finals, the opposing alliance captain from team 360 demonstrated superb gracious professionalism, both in offering up their timeout to make sure 2907 could make it to Finals 2, and by insisting on a replay of Finals 2 without hesitation after the field fault. Their entire alliance played well and are very deserving of the win. We look forward to seeing them all in St Louis.

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by Jeffrafa

Historically, AV issues are not typically considered field faults, as they are not part of the FMS/Field system. This includes sounds and score/clock display on the screens (the official clock is on both alliance walls). A single instance of sounds not working can definitely cause confusion, but I have seen several consecutive matches played in years past without Auto or End Game sounds - at the time teams were alerted to watch the official field clock.

That continues for this year, as well. Blue Box, T20:

Note that an ARENA FAULT that does not affect MATCH outcome in the judgement of the Head REFEREE does not lead to a MATCH replay. Examples include, but are not limited to:
A. a piece of FIELD plastic falls into the FIELD in the last 5 seconds of a MATCH, far away from any human or ROBOT activity, and in such a way that it does not affect MATCH outcome
B. delay in the playing of an ARENA sound
C. mismatch between the timer on the Audience Screen and the FIELD Timer

[Φ_Φ]

At FiM Traverse City we had a field fault when someone in the crowd yelled "3, 2, 1, Charge!" and they started the match before the teams were ready. Most of our team was confused as to why they had called the field fault (and this match had already been restarted once) until it was explained what happened.

At least two matches at that event had 2 field faults.

[Doug Frisk]

Originally Posted by Φ_Φ

At FiM Traverse City we had a field fault when someone in the crowd yelled "3, 2, 1, Charge!" and they started the match before the teams were ready. Most of our team was confused as to why they had called the field fault (and this match had already been restarted once) until it was explained what happened.

At least two matches at that event had 2 field faults.

I wonder if that's the incident that caused the rules for scorekeepers to be updated so that before pressing start the scorekeeper must be staring into the FTA's limpid pools of blue.

[cgmv123]

Originally Posted by DareDad

I wonder if that's the incident that caused the rules for scorekeepers to be updated so that before pressing start the scorekeeper must be staring into the FTA's limpid pools of blue.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't just that incident, because something similar happened at Wisconsin last year. (It was worse because there was still one team on the field setting up. No one got hurt.)

[scca229]

Originally Posted by DareDad

I wonder if that's the incident that caused the rules for scorekeepers to be updated so that before pressing start the scorekeeper must be staring into the FTA's limpid pools of blue.

My wife says that my Scorekeepers would have been out of luck as they needed to be staring into my chocolate browns to get the match started.

There were a few instances of matches starting at very inopportune times that prompted the new match start procedure. I can't for the life of me figure out where I got the links for the video to them though, but I remember being very alarmed at what I saw and made sure it wasn't going to happen at my events. A couple of times I had to rescind my thumb-up even though the MC fully counted down and my Scorekeeper did not start, so the procedure worked for us.