[moderated]: NASA/VCU field problems

[Stephen P]

After the first day of competition here at VCU, I am a bit dissapointed with the amount of problems that have plagued the scoring system and field system in general. For a while, the blue alliance station seemed to be malfuctioning. During one of our matches, our robot's autonomous was completely out of wack and our bot was uncontrollable during remote control. This same problem happened to (to my knowledge) at least two other teams on the blue alliance, and probably more. We, along with another team, tried to talk to the technical guy about the problem but they kind of just shrugged us off and blamed the problem on us. Shortly thereafter, they fixed the field and had no re-do's of the botched matches.
Throughout the day I believe the scoring sensors were not working properly in at least the center goals; on at least one of our matches, our alliance scored six in the center during autonomous and the system registered that we had won autonomous; however we still did not receive the ten point bonus, and in all our score was drastically undercalculated. Our alliance complained but was shrugged away in a similiar manner.
I believe the scoring problems swayed the game in favor of the red alliances; it seemed as though the large majority of the games were won by red (anyone have statistics?).
I know that this is a very complex game, but I really wish they had worked the bugs out of it before the competition.
Is anyone else experiencing similiar frustration?

edit: This should remain a seperate thread from the original VCU thread since it is specifically about the field problems.

[Kyle Love]

Please remember, FIRST can only test it in certain situations. Kind of like how car companies test cars, but they always have some problem that they didn't find before they were released. The week one regionals are prone to field problems due to the lack of real-time pressure that they are put through during the actual regional. Look for the fields to be amazing by a week 3 or 4 regional, and an AMAZING field by time The Championships come around!

[Kyle A]

Remember it is week one. And it is really the first test for the fields, and most everything that you test the first time has some kind of bug. And like Kyle said in time they will have everything up and working perfict. Just give it some time.

[sanddrag]

Sorry but I don't see it that way. I've said this before and I'll say it again.

We are customers of FIRST. We pay good money to play on a well functioning field. It should be a well functioning field. If I order dinner at a nice restaurant, and it comes out wrong, they fix it. Why, because I'm paying for it. If it comes out wrong again or if it is taking too long, it is free.

We spend six weeks building robots. There's no reason FIRST can't spend 6 weeks perfecting their field.

The fact that it is a first week regional is no excuse. Everyone who is there payed $6000 to be there. They should get the proper service they payed for.

Some of you may say we get more than $6000 value for our $6000 which is probably true. But that is the price they charge and that is ther price we pay. In any case, we are still customers, and customer satisfaction is key to keeping any business or organization alive.

So don't go easy on FIRST because you feel sorry for them. If you do, what incentive will they have to make it better next time if they know we always are so forgiving?

FIRST is a great organization. I'm not out to get them. But I don't expect any less of them than I do any other business/organization/person that I pay good money to.

EDIT: I forgot to note that FIRST is not entirelty to blame. There are also a couple 3rd party companies as I understand. But that just means that FIRST needs to get on them for not delivering a working product.

[Joe Matt]

Is this your first time to VCU? Because this has become a regular occurance for the first day usualy to debug the system. While I understand your frustration, it's impossible for FIRST to test this system out before implementing it. They are doing a much better job than the past two years.

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by Joe Matt

They are doing a much better job than the past two years.

So as long as each year we do a little better than last year it is okay? That's like saying little we are so proud of little Timmy because he got a D in math this quarter when he got an F last quarter. That's like saying we seeded 47th last year so our goal is to seed 46th this year. That's like getting served spoiled milk that has been sitting out only one day instead of two. Regarless of the improvement, it is still not acceptable.

FIRST (and the rest of us) should strive not just for improvement, but for perfection.

EDIT: I forgot to note that FIRST is not entirelty to blame. There are also a couple 3rd party companies as I understand. But that just means that FIRST needs to get on them for not delivering a working product.

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

So as long as each year we do a little better than last year it is okay? That's like saying little we are so proud of little Timmy because he got a D in math this quarter when he got an F last quarter. That's like saying we seeded 17th last year so our goal is to seed 16th this year. FIRST should strive not just for improvement, but for perfection.

Perfection would indeed be a good goal. And it would be awesome if FIRST could get a couple more fields out the weekend before ship for some shakedown scrimmages.

That said, does anyone keep track of field downtime across regionals and seasons? It would be interesting to see where the Aim High field falls in relation to the Triple Play or (perhaps more interesting still, given the different control setup that year) FIRST Frenzy field. Know what screws up on a field, and you learn either how to fix it in action or avoid it in the game design.

[Zach Purser]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

Sorry but I don't see it that way. I've said this before and I'll say it again.

We are customers of FIRST. We pay good money to play on a well functioning field. It should be a well functioning field. If I order dinner at a nice restaurant, and it comes out wrong, they fix it. Why, because I'm paying for it. If it comes out wrong again or if it is taking too long, it is free.

We spend six weeks building robots. There's no reason FIRST can't spend 6 weeks perfecting their field.

The fact that it is a first week regional is no excuse. Everyone who is there payed $6000 to be there. They should get the proper service they payed for.

Some of you may say we get more than $6000 value for our $6000 which is probably true. But that is the price they charge and that is ther price we pay. In any case, we are still customers, and customer satisfaction is key to keeping any business or organization alive.

So don't go easy on FIRST because you feel sorry for them. If you do, what incentive will they have to make it better next time if they know we always are so forgiving?

FIRST is a great organization. I'm not out to get them. But I don't expect any less of them than I do any other business/organization/person that I pay good money to.

Last year there was also a problem with scoring at VCU. The team that was seeded #1 was incorrectly seeded due to the fact that they played one more match than the rest of the field, and that match was included in their total wins. It is very frustrating, especially for teams like us that can only afford to go to one regional, and I agree that it shouldn't happen. At this point I am going to recommend to our team that we don't attend the first round of regionals.

[scitobor 617]

I agree that these field problems are unacceptable. It is one thing if you can afford to go to several regionals but for a team than can only afford one regional, like mine, things must work correctly the first time or it is over. Luckily the botched matches we had today were re-played but it is outrageous that there are other teams had incorrect scores used for seeding.

[Mike o.]

As a volunteer this year, and a student for the past four, i know that the scoring gets annoying when it doesn't work. I do have to say though, that this year, it has greatly improved. A few things that you need to remember are this: the scoring during autonomous stops after the green light goes out, now that computer does give a few seconds to let any balls in motion try to finish its motion and then figure out who scored the most. Granted it sucks that if your team scored and it wasn't able to count it, it sucks. this same leeway happens in between the two Off/Deff rounds. As for the ten point bonus, i means if it didn't get added, there is a reason, either being no one scored the most or no one scored at all. Working as a manual counter, I haven't really seen the scores skewed too much, except maybe for one or two matches. Everyone just needs to give them a break, there is only soo much FIRST can do to test the field and such before it gets used in its true environment. They can only simulate what they know would go wrong, or what they think would go wrong, using these fields is pretty much expanding their knowledge of what else would be capable of going wrong. We are all in this together and we are all learning together.

As far as red winning more matches, i dint think that one side is necessarily better than the other, Ive seen alot of teams win on blue.

[Covey41]

"Last year there was also a problem with scoring at VCU. The team that was seeded #1 was incorrectly seeded due to the fact that they played one more match than the rest of the field, and that match was included in their total wins."

The FIRST Rep. at last years event, pointed out to the announcer, Woody Flowers, Dave Lavery, Head Ref, and the event manager, that the rankings were wrong. The 1st ranked team should have been ranked 4th. They did not want to listen to him. The event was running 2 hours behind for lots of reasons, and they just wanted to get it done! (Frankly not caring, that it was wrong, Woody even made a mistake in how the selections were done, and when pointed out by the FIRST Rep that it was wrong, the comment was "Woody said to do it this way".)

As someone who has written a lot of software, I would like to know how many people have written a complicated piece of software (Such as the scoring system.) and had it work correctly the first time it is used. Just look at Windows and most versions of Linux. Everyone of these has had major bugs that were only fixed over time. As was said before, there is no way to test a system as complicated as this, without testing it at an event such as a regional. Scrimmages are good, but they just don't put the same load on a program as a regional.

When you think about it, most programs are tested by using beta versions, with 100's of people testing them. The scoring system working after a couple of weeks of testing is actually quite amazing, and says a lot about the people who wrote it!!

In the next couple of days, people will be putting down the scoring system. Just remember the GDC takes 6-8 months to develop the game, then expect someone to write and test a scoring system, that works 100% the first week. Maybe the solution is having the DC working a year ahead of time developing the game. That would give everyone, including FIRST a chance to have great fields, and an 100% scoring system!

Just my $.02, probably not even worth that much!
It was not my intention to upset anyone, just to point some things out.

[Conor Ryan]

There are always problems with the field, and FIRST always makes an effort to work on them, this year they offered some of the most in depth training to date. That being said, a very wise man summed all of this up for me on Thursday, and I agree completely.

"NASA, IFI, Hatch Technologies, and who ever else is involved out there continually produce a better field and scoring system, however FIRST keeps producing bigger idiots."

[Nuttyman54]

one of the main problems i have with this is the fairness. As a number of people brought up, some teams attend only this regional. If their scores were botched for 2 matches, that could potentially drop them completely out of the running for finals. Now, it's impossible to make week 1 regionals completely equal, due to the fact that the scoring system gets debugged, among other things, but I think all teams are entitled to get their claims thoroughly reviewed. There are numerous complaints that ramped robots were not scored. Seeing as they have real-time webcasting, I don't see why a ref couldn't look at the video and see if the robots were on the ramp at the end.

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by Covey41

As someone who has written a lot of software, I would like to know how many people have written a complicated piece of software (Such as the scoring system.) and had it work correctly the first time it is used. Just look at Windows and most versions of Linux. Everyone of these has had major bugs that were only fixed over time. As was said before, there is no way to test a system as complicated as this, without testing it at an event such as a regional. Scrimmages are good, but they just don't put the same load on a program as a regional.

I completely disagree. It is not the teams causing the problems. It is not the teams' controls causing the problems. It is not even the robots causing the problems. It is the field setup. Whether or not there are 60 teams in the company of the field should not have an impact on whether the field is testable or not.

Many people say, it is the first time they've run it; give them a break.

Well, there's your problem. The first week of regionals should not be the first use of the scoring software and field system. Those first-week teams deserve a good regional just like everyone else. FIRST should be testing the arena and scoring software several times well before hand so it runs well the first time it is needed.

If that means rasing the registration fee so FIRST can hire a couple more peope to test out the arena before the regionals, then so be it.

EDIT: I forgot to note that FIRST is not entirelty to blame. There are also a couple 3rd party companies as I understand. But that just means that FIRST needs to get on them for not delivering a working product.

[Joe Johnson]

I am almost always a big defender of FIRST, but I have to say that this doesn't look good for the folks in Manchester.

I know that they have a difficult job but after last year's issues with scoring system and the field computer, it seems almost impossible to believe that it was not addressed again this year.

This year's scoring system is a huge challenge, I am not discounting that, but it really does have to work and that includes Week 1.

I don't know any of the details or who is responsible, but I am disappointed.

Well, let's hope for improved performance tomorrow and certainly in the upcoming weeks.

Joe J.

P.S. If anyone knows what sort of help is required to make improvements, let us know, there are many many talented folks out here who can help if they're asked.