Do We have a trend here?

[Bob Steele]

I, too think I see a trend... and I am not sure if I like it...
We were on the winning side of the quarter final in St. Louis that had two ties.. it was tremendously exciting to be part of that...
We are just a second year team and I was very proud of the Alliance we had there... but on to the rest of the story...
I posted the following elsewhere here:
************

I do want to clarify something about the semi-final matches. This is where it became very physical... 1098 was again damaged and couldn't compete... and in the very final match after withstanding a pounding by Team 16 ...even our beloved Luci robot couldn't get the grippers to work because the contact had bent the rod on our pneumatic actuator. I guess this is a viable strategy as it wasn't flagged. We were on the verge of capping a small goal with 12 balls and couldn't open our grippers...so we didn't go on to the finals.

I just am sending out a warning to all teams who use grippers and collect balls and perform these tasks.... the big hangers will just pound you into submission... you may not be able to do what you are designed to do because of the physical damage you may have done to you. It is not just pushing around... it is IN YOUR FACE, hammering and slamming with whatever they have to do it with... reminiscent of battle bots rather than the FIRST competition we all enjoy.

My personal thoughts are that this is a dangerous trend... but it is within the rules and I cannot fault teams for using the strategy as long as it is legal.
More power to them...

All three of our alliance's robots were damaged in the semi at St. Louis.
I am sure many others were too...

I, for one, really don't want this competition to be about robots beating on each other.... FIRST has more to say than the "strongest robot" should dominate another...

Please don't think that I am complaining about any particular teams... everything done was within the rules and using those rules are part of the game... I only speak to the greater good of the competition as it matures...

It does seem to be a trend though... last year we had quite abit and now this year its even worse...... anyway that's my two cents

We will be busy in Cleveland on practice day repairing our robot and we will continue to try and accomplish the game using our strategy...

Our robot WAS pretty robust... until the last match, our robot had competed in 4 quarter final matches and 2 semi-finals with no more repairs than just changing the battery...

thanks for reading

Bob Steele

[KenWittlief]

setting out to damage another robot IS against the rules - clearly against the rules - I dont see why the judges should have any problem distinguishing between a team that is getting in your way, pushing you away from a goal, and simply ramming and bashing into your bot?

<G32> Strategies aimed solely at the destruction, damage, tipping over or
entanglement of robots are not in the spirit of the FIRST Robotics competition and are not allowed. Accidental tipping over of a robot is not considered damaging and may be allowed at the discretion of the referees. Intentional stabbing, cutting, etc., is illegal. If a breach of this rule occurs, the team will be disqualified for that match. Repeated offenses could result in a team being disqualified from the remainder of the regional competition and/or championship event.

notice that it does NOT say robots designed to cause damage to other robots - its says teams who's strategie it is to damage another teams robot

anyone who has been on a team this year should have a pretty good idea of home much a machine can take and what kinds of actions will cause damage - and it should be obvious to a ref if a machine is contending for a goal or position, or simply ramming the other bot.

I find this esp troublesome because our bot was designed to collect and deliver small balls and we were repeated given penalty points if the slightest bit of our bot broke the plane of the ball corral. Our bot was designed so that it cannot possibly go through the corral and put the HP in any sort of danger - which is the intent of the rule - to protect the HP from getting spleened

but a few times our bot tipped up slightly and the very bottom edge of the bot or castor broke the plane - we lost over 50 points during friday - and at no time was the HP in any danger

but robots were rammed and slammed so hard that pieces flew off the playing field, and no penalites or disqualifications were called - isnt the end result a clear indication? if you hit a bot so hard that piece go flying is there any question to what your strategy was?!

[Richard Wallace]

I had the same feeling re: penalties for 'breaking the plane' -- they were probably called more often than necessary, if the intent is really just to protect the HP.

Can someone who is a FIRST referee comment on procedures?

In St. Louis, it appeared (to people watching in the stands) that four referees were stationed beside the ball corrals for the entire match, looking for plane breaking and throwing the flag every time it occurred, while the Head Referee monitored the action at midfield. This makes sense if the intent is zero-tolerance on plane breaking, and that in turn makes sense as a way to keep the plane breaking calls fair by eliminating the referee's judgement of the relative risk to HPs from one incident to the next.

On the other hand, I agree that the bot-on-bot action this year is much more aggressive (and sometimes destructive, even if unintentionally so) compared with previous years. Clearly, penalties for bot-on-bot violations (pinning, entanglement, tipping, etc.) are much more subject to the referees' judgement, and this causes disagreement between competitors and among spectators about whether a referee's call is fair.

[Swan217]

Whatever the intent of the rules are, if you break them then you should be penalized. It doesn't matter if you're an inch into the goal or a foot, you're still violating the rules. It's like when you're driving, whether you're going 5 over or 20 over you're still breaking the law. The intent there is to stop unsafe fast driving, yet you can still get a ticket for only going 5 over. Thus, the call must be made.

You could see that the penalties had a positive effect on the drivers - during the Elims I only called one team for "breaking the plane." So if the drivers learn to drive safer, I believe I did a good thing calling the close ones earlier. Calling the close ones lowered the chances of having someone being hurt later on a big violation.

As for the damage rule, there is a VERY fine line between legal "blocking" and illegal entanglement, damage, destruction, etc. There were a few times when I wanted to call a robot for pinning another one, but since the other robot could still move, even if it couldn't go where it wanted to, it wasn't considered pinning.

I can't speak for referees at other regionals, but at the GLR where I was refereeing, we gave one warning to teams with unsafe features, and thankfully the teams took them into consideration. I didn't see any robots that damaged other robots on purpose, and for robots that had questionable intentions, I would have disabled if their actions resulted in actual damage.

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by SwaDan

Whatever the intent of the rules are, if you break them then you should be penalized. It doesn't matter if you're an inch into the goal or a foot, you're still violating the rules. It's like when you're driving, whether you're going 5 over or 20 over you're still breaking the law. The intent there is to stop unsafe fast driving, yet you can still get a ticket for only going 5 over. Thus, the call must be made.

...

Thanks for the explanation, SwaDan.

I completely support the way the plane breaking rule was enforced at STL, and it seems you were applying the same standard at GLR. Teams must consider the potential hazards to HPs, and the consequent standards that field officials must apply during competition, when designing their robots for the tasks required by a particular game tactic. The standard for protecting HPs must be higher than the standard for protecting robots.

[SF fans will recall that this policy is consistent with Asimov's 1st Law of Robotics.]