Concerns regarding the green paneling/green shirts

[shotgunking777]

Originally Posted by shotgunking777

hey what if you made a robot to throw out like a green flag into the field
ha think about that but don't steal it.....

well okay and if they doesn't work just make like a flag or somthing that will fly up but still a part of your robot.

[Swan217]

Originally Posted by shotgunking777

well okay and if they doesn't work just make like a flag or somthing that will fly up but still a part of your robot.

Look, guys - It comes down to one thing: Gracious Professionalism and INTENT of the rules. (OK, that's two things)

The INTENT is that your team should not INTENTIONALLY screw around with other teams' vision sensors. Having a flag or something the exact same color as the vision tetras to INTENTIONALLY distract another robot may or may not be against the rules, but it is probably not GP.

On the other hand, having your robot being your team colors would definitely not be against the rules, and may or may not be GP, depending on what your motivation is. But like Dave said, it's probably not a smart thing to do if your alliance relies on getting the vision tetras and goes after your robot instead.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Dan Swando

Look, guys - It comes down to one thing: Gracious Professionalism and INTENT of the rules. (OK, that's two things)

The INTENT is that your team should not INTENTIONALLY screw around with other teams' vision sensors. Having a flag or something the exact same color as the vision tetras to INTENTIONALLY distract another robot may or may not be against the rules, but it is DEFINITELY not GP.

On the other hand, having your robot being your team colors would definitely not be against the rules, and may or may not be GP, depending on what your motivation is. But like Dave said, it's probably not a smart thing to do if your alliance relies on getting the vision tetras and goes after your robot instead.

GP can mean a lot of things. I'm reading the rule as not overloading the other team's camera with changing colors etc. So much so that it can no longer operate effectively. A Green decoy panel is just giving the camera something else to look at. The primary difference being that a decoy panel could potentially be programmed around. A jammed overloaded camera can't be programmed around.

As far as GP... there's lots of things that would be not GP if interfering with another team's autonomous mode is unGP. You couldn't bump them or get in their way or anything. The teams last year that tore out of the starting gate to put a goal in the way of the other robot were being unGP as well then.

[techtiger1]

Does anyone know the range of the cmu2cam. How far can it see ? any answers would be greatly appricated thanks.

[ChrisH]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

As far as GP... there's lots of things that would be not GP if interfering with another team's autonomous mode is unGP. You couldn't bump them or get in their way or anything. The teams last year that tore out of the starting gate to put a goal in the way of the other robot were being unGP as well then.

Bumping somebody's robot, while it might interfere with a robot's autonomous program, is part of the game. It is possible to anticipate this and if you are really good, work around it using sensors. If you are indeed using guidance, rather than dead reckoning (gee I wonder why they call it that? ) then a bump will be no more than an inconvienience.

But doing something deliberate to cause another's robot to see something that isn't there, is an entirely different matter. The nice term is "spoofing". It means making a something appear that isn't really there. The not so nice term is "lying". When you do this you are deliberately causing the sensor to tell the robot's RC an untruth. Lying is never GP.

If the rules specifically allowed this sort of thing and we were expected to cope, then that would be a different thing.

ChrisH

[PCA]

Rust-Oleum Fluorescent Green is the color being used on the plywood sides of the green vision tetras. There is a built in function in the camera that automatically attempts to adjust contrast and brightness until it has roughly equalized it (meaning about 50% of the pixels the camera is reading fall on one side of the spectrum, and 50% fall on the other). The good thing about this is that it permits colors to be recognized more accurately and consistently overall but the bad thing is that there aren't too many shades of brightness and contrast between MOE Green and the Rust-Oleum Fluorescent Green. Fortunately I think the RGB is different enough to maybe differentiate us from it, not that I particularly think the RGB has to be different at all, as I will explain later.

Here is the Rust-Oleum green indicated:
http://www.rustoleum.com/Product.asp...ct_id=37&SBL=1
Here is MOE Green: (Just check out the text/pictures)
http://www.moe365.org/

As Dave commented, there are many ways to avoid having your robot track another robot in autonomous. The camera draws the smallest possible square around any patch of the color it's looking for. It then reports the 4 coordinates to you. If you find the area of the square (not hard) you will be able to tell the relative size of the object you're looking at. Because it reports the coordinates instead of just the size of the picture it is also possible to tell the height of the object you're looking at, depending on how you mount your camera. The third way would be to limit the movement of your robot to your half of the field or to the vision tetra positions (harder to implement than to say, but possible). For something else to be the same size, height, color, and in about the same place as the tetra's panel it pretty much has to be intentional, even for we teams who are natural greens.

In regards to strategically painting your robot green. I do not foresee any physical damage coming to your robot from this because no one will be moving that fast if they're using the camera alone to guide them. Do not take this to mean that you can go on an intentionally distracting path in autonomous mode and expect to come out fine. I suspect that many people will not be using this camera at all and will, instead, be running their side of the field around at relatively high speeds in autonomous modes. If you got close enough to a side that your robot was relatively the size of a vision Tetra to an opponent looking with the camera then you'd probably be in the path of someone running around. There would be a big boom and you would feel silly because not only your distraction didn't work, but also your robot got broken before driver mode even started.

So few people are going to end up using the camera, which will required a phenomenal amount of debugging, that building a robot with the intent of distracting the tetra-tracking robots would be an ultimately unsuccessful strategy. If you did not build a robot specifically designed to distract other robots then it would probably be unable to take the abuse of the circuit riders.

Not to mention that intentionally distracting the camera is illegal via R26 and completely against the spirit of gracious professionalism.

PS. All of the information that I posted in this post is included and easily accessible in your Camera manual pdfs. If you want to know more go look it up. They do not list a specific focal length in any of the documentation I've read so far, so it will probably be up to testing. The range probably is dependant on the focus of your camera and the resolution of the camera's image.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by ChrisH

Bumping somebody's robot, while it might interfere with a robot's autonomous program, is part of the game. It is possible to anticipate this and if you are really good, work around it using sensors. If you are indeed using guidance, rather than dead reckoning (gee I wonder why they call it that? ) then a bump will be no more than an inconvienience.

But doing something deliberate to cause another's robot to see something that isn't there, is an entirely different matter. The nice term is "spoofing". It means making a something appear that isn't really there. The not so nice term is "lying". When you do this you are deliberately causing the sensor to tell the robot's RC an untruth. Lying is never GP.

If the rules specifically allowed this sort of thing and we were expected to cope, then that would be a different thing.

ChrisH

I'll just say that I don't agree with this interpretation of GP. I'm of the opinion that it is futile and silly to try to apply GP to the entire game. If my plan was lying to a robot, then removing tetras from under a goal is stealing. Pushing another robot is assault. Actually breaking another robot is commiting grievous bodily harm, even if accidental. I could go on, but I think my point is clear. The game is the game, and robots are robots. Anthropomorphizing the robots and their actions is just silly and leads to some very odd conclusions.

I've been in the position of having a robot blocked and effectively immobilized so that we could do nothing against our opponent to win the match. I never once thought that they weren't playing fair or were being unGP by preventing us from doing anything. I was highly frustrated, but accepted the fact that they'd out-thought us and had a better designed robot. Or used their robot more effectively.

[russell]

Ok no one can possible argue with this:

<R93> Decorations must not affect the outcome of the match, and must be in the spirit of “Gracious
Professionalism.”

Whether or not your distracting the other teams robot is GP doesnt matter, because you "must not affect the outcome of the match". If you cannot affect the outcome of the match you would be better off just avoiding putting green on your robot, because a) you would be more likely to screw with your own alliances robots than those of the other alliance and b) when you did screw with your alliances robots, and you tried to protest the match on the grounds that your decorations had affected the outcome (by making your team loose), the judges would probly just reply with some equivalent of "that sucks for you"

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by russell

Ok no one can possible argue with this:

<R93> Decorations must not affect the outcome of the match, and must be in the spirit of “Gracious
Professionalism.”

Whether or not your distracting the other teams robot is GP doesnt matter, because you "must not affect the outcome of the match". If you cannot affect the outcome of the match you would be better off just avoiding putting green on your robot, because a) you would be more likely to screw with your own alliances robots than those of the other alliance and b) when you did screw with your alliances robots, and you tried to protest the match on the grounds that your decorations had affected the outcome (by making your team loose), the judges would probly just reply with some equivalent of "that sucks for you"

R93 concerns non-functional decorations that don't have to meet any electrical/material/cost requirements on the robot. The non-functional decoration rules are intended to prevent teams from using other camera systems to see what the robot sees, etc. I think a green panel on the robot would be legal if you account for the materials and such and your green panel conforms to all other robot rules. If all painting of the robot and decorations had to abide the "can't affect the outcome of the match", then arguably you couldn't customize your paint job to make it easy to see your robot across the field and quickly tell its orientation by what colors you can see on it.

Also, I'm not particularly talking about painting the whole robot green because the definitely would confuse my alliance partners. I was more thinking of just a green panel on the front that only my opponents could see.

[Max Lobovsky]

I think we need some clarification from FIRST. Removable green panels or no? (Incidentally, one of our team colors is green.)

[Rich Kressly]

Kevin,

Your point of view is well outlined here. Please have your team's main contact post the question to FIRST in the official Q&A if you really feel your strategy would be a legal one. Thanks.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Rich Kressly

Kevin,

Your point of view is well outlined here. Please have your team's main contact post the question to FIRST in the official Q&A if you really feel your strategy would be a legal one. Thanks.

Already done. We asked two days ago and are simply waiting for a reply, I'm just explaining my position here and such. I don't think my question could be most definitive:

Originally Posted by Q.1125

Clarifying Q. 982: This means that teams are allowed to paint their robots the exact same color as the vision tetra, loading zone, or gold triangle to intentionally distract other team's cameras?

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Already done. We asked two days ago and are simply waiting for a reply, I'm just explaining my position here and such. I don't think my question could be most definitive:

<R26> No devices or decorations are permitted on the robot that are intended to jam or interfere with the operation of the vision system (i.e. changing robot color to confuse opponent’s vision system).

It is becomming very frustrating to watch this thread grow and see the obvious efforts that certain people are taking to find a way to circumvent the rules. Rule <R26> is about as simple as it can be. The intent of this rule is obvious, even to my third-grade daughter. YOU CANNOT DO ANYTHING TO INTENTIONALLY INTERFERE WITH THE VISION SYSTEM OF THE OPPOSING ALLIANCE.

If you intentionally paint your robot a color intended to confuse the opponents vision system, then you are violating the rule.

If you design a removable placard to put on the front of your robot that has the specific purpose of confusing the opponents vision system, then you are violating the rule.

If you are stupid about this and violate the rules, and thereby cause your alliance to lose a match, then your alliance partners will gang up on you and violate your robot.

Can it be any more clear? What is so hard to understand about this?

-dave

[dhitchco]

Being from New York, we are dressing our team in black since it's a cool fashion statement.

We're also painting our robot in dark-gray radar reflective stealth paint such that the robot will be INVISIBLE to the others and we can then freely slip into the enemy camp, knock off the tetras and everyone will think it is a ghost

Come on, I'd like to see some threads about POSITIVE things to do with the vision system. For example, I have NOT heard anyone talk about a vision system that ONLY looks down at the field floor and finds the shapes there (that happen to be UNDER every goal, loading station, etc.) Now that's a neat trick.........

[Mike Betts]

Originally Posted by dlavery

...If you are stupid about this and violate the rules, and thereby cause your alliance to lose a match, then your alliance partners will gang up on you and violate your robot.

Can it be any more clear? What is so hard to understand about this?...

[SOAPBOX]

I have ignored this thread for a while and am just appalled at the direction this thread had taken.

I agree completely with Dave. Teams will have enough problems with variations in ambient lighting and intended target coloring without confusing the issue. In fact, many teams will arrive at their competitions without having solved these issues. They will need our help.

It goes beyond rules, Gracious Professionalism or common sense...

Let me be clear on this. In my opinion, it would be rude, ignorant and vulgar for any team to intentionally or unintentionally color any component of their robot or driver/HP uniforms which even come close to interfering with the vision systems.

In the case of intentional interference at a competition, I promise that I will personally take that team's leadership aside and have a discussion about the values and goals of technical education, FIRST, good sportsmanship, morality and a few subjects I haven't thought of yet.

Please ask yourself "Why am I doing this?".

I hope that I have made my point.

[/SOAPBOX]