Week 4: So how's that Field Working?

[mtaman02]

And for the NYC Regional:

Thanks to John Park the scoring system worked extremely well. John was very optimistic after all the work was done to insure everything worked properly, Now if only the other lil bugs got worked out, like that lil bug that wouldn't allow scores to be entered in for the elimination rounds, we went like 3 - 4 rounds w/o any scores.

And for the field, the only problems we had with that was the field border lexan panels kept coming off by the gates due to extreme robot driving, no matter how many zip ties we put on the panels they still kept coming off =). Thanks to Mike C. and the Repair team the panels were fixed during the matches so that the robots and balls wouldn't have an easy exit.

I must say the volunteers at this regional worked extremely hard this year =)


BTW I knew I forgot something last nite. John all the Field Electronics Cables were put into the Field Electronics Box along with all the DB15 Cables =)

[379Robocat]

OK maybe people are blowing my last post out of proportion. I never said that they WERE for sure cheating. I said no one is perfect and who's to say that they can't fudge a score. I said that I didn't feel that teams who had students working on the field should be allowed and students shouldn't be allowed. Most of the time the students were too busy paying attention to what was going on on the field especially if their team was up and who's to say that they just won't fudge a score because they missed what was going on because they were watching the field. That's where I was going with that Idea. Maybe it wasn't worded the best or something I dunno. I've been involved with FIRST for 6 years I know how stuff goes and this year just seems to be the worst year scoring wise. SORRY if I offended anyone that wasn't my intention I was just trying to make a statement.

[AndyB]

Wisconsin Regional was AWESOME!

the venue was perfect. the pits werent too cramped, and the team social was the best ive been too. the scoring however gave me a laugh (stupid wildstang )

i heard we have a bid for the US Cellular Arena for 3 years so plan on coming back! also, i heard that FIRST wants them to have 50 teams at wisconsin next year! just a rumor, dont get too crazy, but who wouldn't love to see a super-regional in wisconsin. someone start taking notes at toronto.

[Mark McLeod]

SBPLI had it's share of field and scoring problems, but somewhat unusual circumstances also complicated field setup and checkout.

Problems are a little more understandable when you know that at the very last minute the venue was suddenly unavailable the day before practice day. The setup crew did not have the normal day in advance to do field setup, checkout, and to work out bugs in the systems.

The entire arena had to be setup by an extremely dedicated crew who were there for 24+ straight hours, beginning the very early morning of practice day.

My thanks for the Herculean effort required to pull this event off !!!

[Btower]

Originally Posted by 379Robocat

OK maybe people are blowing my last post out of proportion. I never said that they WERE for sure cheating. I said no one is perfect and who's to say that they can't fudge a score. I said that I didn't feel that teams who had students working on the field should be allowed and students shouldn't be allowed. Most of the time the students were too busy paying attention to what was going on on the field especially if their team was up and who's to say that they just won't fudge a score because they missed what was going on because they were watching the field. That's where I was going with that Idea. Maybe it wasn't worded the best or something I dunno. I've been involved with FIRST for 6 years I know how stuff goes and this year just seems to be the worst year scoring wise. SORRY if I offended anyone that wasn't my intention I was just trying to make a statement.

Be professional, get your facts straight before making a statement.
1. The students in Detroit were not competing. Their robot was sitting in the warehouse. They, like most of us who volunteer are not part of the actual competition. The team in question was there from setup until we pushed the crates into the truck. The event could not have happened without them.

2. The game design, not the volunteers are the root of the scoring issues. So stop blaming them, pehaps you should volunteer your time to be a scorer at an event and deal with the various claims of cheating, napping, mis scoring etc.

[Btower]

Oh Yeah, I forgot, read the rules. Volunteers, suprisingly enough, can read.

<G05> In order for a ball to score, it must enter the goal and exit via the exit chute. A ball that bounces out of the
goal is not scored.

[bbguy5]

I think the most under-read rule is this:

<G07> Corner Goal - A ball scored in either of the corner goals is worth 1 point for the ALLIANCE whose driver's station is opposite the goal, when that ALLIANCE is designated as playing offense.

A lot of human players try to score the entire match on that corner goal.

[Tomasz Bania]

Originally Posted by 379Robocat

In the two regionals we have been to Cleveland and Detroit the scoring seemed to be horrible. More so in Detroit then Cleveland but it was still bad. The problem was that there were a lot of kids tending to the field instead of refs. So therefore if we had 10 balls at the start of the game and during auto mode we went to the side goal and dumped all the balls not one came out we only got credit for about 6 of them and ended up loosing auto mode because of this. Many balls were not counted like they should have been because the crew was to busy paying attention to other things. In cleveland it seemed that there were only a few ties at the end of the competition. 3 of them belonged to us and I think that's all there was. We were leading the match 47-16 and back to back matches they said that our matches ended up in a 17-17 tie. Is that possible to go from that lead to a tie not once but twice with the same score. There were no penalities in the match and if we correctly did the scoring in our heads then we should have won out matches my somewhat of a lead. The last match they said that we won and then about 3 matches later they said they made a mistake and that was a tie but there was no explaination. When asking the refs they really had nothing to say. It seemed that this year FIRST relied more on the youth then the adults and I don't feel that if you are on a FIRST team you should be allowed to work at a competition where your team is at. I know they want to help and that's what FIRST is about but if they are on a team who's to say they aren't fudging a score? It seemed that there were many field scorers that belonged on teams and I don't feel that is is right to do that. Correct me if I'm wrong but that's how I feel about it because not everyone involved in FIRST is a perfect person. I also didn't feel that it was right that if a ball went in the center goal and bounced out that it wasn't counted. It was scored into the goal and came out for reasons unknown. That happened MANY times in Detroit. Some of the balls were getting counted a few times because if the balls were jammed and they had to take the stick to poke it it triggered the camera a few times then need be. Did anyone else seem to have and of these problems? hopefully our last competition in Philly will be better.

Ok, 5 things...

1. The center goal is something a team should have adapted to.
2. Computer Scoring wasn't half-bad.
3. Human scoring wasn't that problematic.
4.Many Refs,Voluteers were Alumni of teams, but they (as far as I know) made a call to their advantage (unless rightfully so)
5. Field Glitches wern't even noticed during one of our matches. The autonomous never activated, everyone got mad, but we still won and didn't complain about it (expecially should have affected us as we are partial masters in autonomous)

Originally Posted by Btower

Be professional, get your facts straight before making a statement.
1. The students in Detroit were not competing. Their robot was sitting in the warehouse. They, like most of us who volunteer are not part of the actual competition. The team in question was there from setup until we pushed the crates into the truck. The event could not have happened without them.

2. The game design, not the volunteers are the root of the scoring issues. So stop blaming them, pehaps you should volunteer your time to be a scorer at an event and deal with the various claims of cheating, napping, mis scoring etc.

I totally agree with you!

Just My Opinions!

Tomasz Bania

[Brian C]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

Problems are a little more understandable when you know that at the very last minute the venue was suddenly unavailable the day before practice day. The setup crew did not have the normal day in advance to do field setup, checkout, and to work out bugs in the systems.

The entire arena had to be setup by an extremely dedicated crew who were there for 24+ straight hours, beginning the very early morning of practice day.

My thanks for the Herculean effort required to pull this event off !!!

Absolutely! Good point Mark and one that was overlooked by many (me too ) Thanks for reminding me.

The seeding program issue seems to be one that is haunting quite a few of the regionals though. Hopefully FIRST can resolve the problems with Hatch.

BTW Great job by your team and your alliance partners 271 and 870 in the finals at SBPLI. 358 is a class act all the way.

[Joe Johnson]

I have been away for almost 2 weeks. I am sorry that I did not get to posting this message. Thanks to Jack for starting the thread.

It is hard for me to get my arms around the issues.

Is it fair to say that there are still issues but that between the experience of the teams and the field crews, things are working well enough to muddle through the rest of the season?

Is the general sense that things are getting better week to week or staying the same? Again, it is hard to see the forest for all the trees.

Help catch me up.

Joe J.

[the_short1]

Team 1596 just went to waterloo, and this is my review..

pros: decent food, good price, courteous field crew, good announcers, great venue overall, only 2 field resets that i witnessed, lots of pits room, the queing area was very intuitive and loading the 10 balls there was a plus.

cons: loosing things under the bleachers (although the volunteers going under there and putting in lost and found every xx minutes was great), nothing else, this regional rocked

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

Is it fair to say that there are still issues but that between the experience of the teams and the field crews, things are working well enough to muddle through the rest of the season?

Is the general sense that things are getting better week to week or staying the same? Again, it is hard to see the forest for all the trees.

I may be biased since most of the field problems in Wisconsin seemed to happen when our team was on the field, but in my opinion the performance of the scoring system in Wisconsin was the worst one yet of the 4 regionals I've seen.

I think it is completely unacceptable that because the scoring system doesn't work right that the wrong alliance is frequently awarded the autonomous "win" putting them on defense first. Playing defense first is a big advantage in this game and when one alliance (say red) scores 10-15 balls in the center goal and the blue alliance scores 1 or 2 in the lower goal (or sometimes even none!) and blue ends up of defense first it is a huge screwup. Now, even though the 10 point bonus will be corrected at the end of the match, the red team is basically depleted of balls (since they shot them all) and is now immediately on offense.

Jack Jones put up some stats from Wisconsin showing that the scoring system incorrectly awarded the autonomous "win" about 22% (!) of the time. I don't think this is acceptable at all for the Championship. Since FIRST has already given up on the idea of using the automatic counters for the official scoring anyway, they shouldn't use it for autonomous either. The system needs to be reworked so that there is a pause after autonomous for the head ref to figure out which alliance won and then allow the scorekeeper to manually select which alliance is on defense first. My understanding is that right now there is no way to override the system to indicate the correct autonomous winner.

Oh, and the fact that the entire system locks up whenever a large number of balls is scored is ridiculous! We had a match where 2 robots each scored 10/10 (a big accomplishment in my opinion) and the field couldn't handle it. FIRST is putting big challenges in front of the teams to solve and we're doing it. How come they can't build a system capable of counting a few dozen Poof balls without locking up?

Week 4 and we still have a mess on our hands.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by 379Robocat

I said that I didn't feel that teams who had students working on the field should be allowed and students shouldn't be allowed.

Did you realize that the student team that was scoring at Detroit wasn't competing that week? Now maybe you were addressing Buckeye, I don't know.

The work I saw the students doing was done very well. Did they miscount one or two? Undoubtably - but I'm sure they were far more accurate than the auto-score. The head ref had several meetings with the field staff to reinforce the counting rules. Students were putting in a lot of hours doing pretty boring work, and doing very well at staying focused on it.