[YMTC]: field of view

[Ross340]

Is it just me or is this not very FIRSTlike?

[Kevin Sevcik]

I've said this before elsewhere, but I'll repeat. The very first year FIRST had alliances, a highly similar question was asked in Q&As. Teams wanted to know if they could deploy a peacock tail and sit in front of the opposing alliance station to block their vision. The GDC declared this illegal as they ruled it was not within the spirit of competition. The proposed situation is slightly different in that the Redateam is presumably only blocking vision of the rack, and not sitting in front of the opposing station blocking the entire field. I also know that the previous ruling doesn't apply this year, and there aren't any rules that specifically apply to this, but I still think it's illegal. Here's my reasoning:

First, there is the rule against strategies aimed at damaging or destroy other robots. I feel the intent there is to prevent teams from disabling a robot and rendering it completely unable to function in a match. This is a bit of a stretch, but entirely blocking a team's vision prevents them from doing just about anything. Especially with any kind of safety.

Second and probably more pertinent, R46 prohibits many items. Including speakers and audio devices that are loud enough that they could cause a distraction or otherwise influence the outcome of a match. I think the implication here is that your robot is competing against the opposing robots. Your robot is not competing with the opposing drivers, and you should not be using it solely to impair and disadvantage those drivers. Impair the functioning and efficiency of their robot, as by using your ramps to guard spider legs, sure. But impairing the drivers by blinding them while not touching their robots... no. I'm pretty sure that's very clearly illegal.

[Zero-Bee]

It's clearly illegal. It is totally not in the spirit of competition, and a distrating stratagy is competing with the people, not the robots.

Plus, it's just not cool. The team should be disqualified from that match, and if it appens again, thrown out of the tournament.

[Justin M.]

In any type of FRC gameplay you are going to have to deal with robots blocking your field of view - this is one of the hardest and annoying things when driving. I'd say if it happens due to coincidence, then it would be fine.

BUT - refs will be noticing team's strategy and gameplay a bit more this year. If I seen that a certain team was blocking another team's F.O.V. intentionally and using it as a gameplay strategy, I'd give the team an aggressive flag, and if it's done again, pull them from the competition.

[Rick]

First off, you cant willy nilly pull teams from the competition. Period.

This is a gray area indeed, but I see nothing wrong with it. Whats the difference between one non-transparent machine blocking the rack, or 2 smaller ones blocking it? One answer is obviously one team blocks, the other 2 score. As long as the ramps arent blocking the drivers at the diamond plate, this is acceptable.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Ricksta,

The whole point is that as soon as you start playing with the intention of preventing the other drivers from seeing where they're going, you're playing the drivers, not the robots. There's a reason FIRST disallows things like sirens and blindingly bright headlights. Your robot is supposed to be playing against the other robots on the field, not the drivers. Nitpicking about location and number of robots is silly. Were I a ref, I'd DQ a team doing this anywhere on the field. Otherwise you're saying it's okay if they're 1 foot from the diamond plate. or maybe 2 feet. No wait, maybe it's only an inch. There's literally no way you could make that stance make sense.

Similarly, if I saw 2 alliance mates blocking the entire vision of the rack, I'd DQ both teams. In my book it's an illegal strategy no mater how you go about it. You're supposed to be playing the robots on the field, not taking advantage of the fact that FIRST has given you a row of sitting ducks on the opposite end of the field. Honestly, wouldn't you be terrified if FIRST made this legal? Do you know how easy it would be to make a robot that could effectively block vision of the entire field? My students could whip one up in 2 days. Once your robot was on the wrong side of the field, you'd be hard pressed to get it back in a safe manner to move the offending blinder-bot too.

I think it just comes down to fairness. Theoretically, a team can design a robot to counter just about anything your robot can do to it on the field. But with the lack of driver aids and the fact that drivers are stuck in one spot, there's virtually nothing a team can do about being blinded by this robot. It simply isn't fair to force a team to sit there and tell them there's absolutely nothing they can do about the giant annoying robot keeping them from even attempting to drive their own robot.

[Karthik]

With the lack of consensus on this topic, this question should probably be posed on the Q&A.

[Cody Carey]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Otherwise you're saying it's okay if they're 1 foot from the diamond plate. or maybe 2 feet. No wait, maybe it's only an inch. There's literally no way you could make that stance make sense.

Unless you say that the blocking robot has to be outside of the other alliance's home zone... or any other tangible measurement away from the opposing driver station. The aforementioned stance quite literally makes perfect sense, as long as you don't try to make it fail.

Also, I agree full-heartedly that you can't just pull a robot from the competition because you don't think their strategy is GP. If it isn't in the rulebook, then it shouldn't be applied to the field of play. Period. Until a change is made, this is perfectly legal by the rules of this year's game.

The same goes for handing out a yellow flag for this particular strategy.


Or we could just leave it to Q&A

[Kevin Sevcik]

So I asked for the record, my question was posed as follows:

Assuming a robot meets all Robot Rules for design, is it legal for a robot to deploy a large sail of material (presumably about 100" wide by 92" tall) for the sole purpose of preventing the opposing drivers from being about to see the (entire) Rack? Related questions would be if it is legal to use a ramp or other system for the same purpose, and if the distance of said robot from the opposing driver's station affects the legality of this action.

EDIT: Cody, my point was that saying you can't do it in front of the driver's station is just drawing a completely arbitrary line. There is very little functional difference in blocking vision directly in front of the driver's station versus 8' away from the driver's station. It's like saying you're allowed to ram other robots as long as you only started accelerating from less than 2 feet away versus saying you can't ram other robots to damage them. If the intent is that robots shouldn't ram other robots to damage them, the distance rule isn't strict enough. If the intent is to let robots ram other robots to damage them.. well specifying a distance is simply defining the amount of damage you find acceptable.

[Greg Needel]

Originally Posted by Cody Carey

Also, I agree full-heartedly that you can't just pull a robot from the competition because you don't think their strategy is GP. If it isn't in the rulebook, then it shouldn't be applied to the field of play. Period. Until a change is made, this is perfectly legal by the rules of this year's game.

what about....

<G50> Respect and professional demeanor - FIRST Competitions promote respect and professional demeanor. In the event that any TEAM members on the playing field are uncivil towards competition field personnel or other TEAMS, the TEAM may be disqualified from the match. This rule applies to TEAMS at all times while on the playing field (including before and after the match). TEAMS will not receive match penalties for actions off the field, however event personnel will hold them accountable for their off-field actions.

[dlavery]

Redateam gets hit with a 10-point penalty and is disabled for the remainder of the match. Following the match, the Head Referee approaches Redateam and states that they must remove their very large non-transparent ramps before they will be allowed back out on the field.

Redateam realizes without asking that they have been found guilty of violating Rule <S01>. By preventing Blueateam's drivers from being able to watch their robot, they have caused the Blueateam robot to be operated in an uncontrolled and unsafe manner on the field. Even though it was the Blue robot that was operated unsafely, Redateam was the originating cause for the situation and was therefore determined to be responsible. And since Redateam has demonstrated that they would use their non-transparent ramps to cause this situation and could do so again, the ramps must be removed before Redateam can rejoin the competition.

Lucein, er, ah, uhm, I mean Redateam's Head Engineer, pulls much of his remaining hair out as he struggles to come up with a way to remove the ramps in the next four minutes so they won't miss their spot in the queue, without actually resorting to the Sawzall he has stored in the back of his truck...


-dave

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by dlavery

Redateam gets hit with a 10-point penalty and is disabled for the remainder of the match. Following the match, the Head Referee approaches Redateam and states that they must remove their very large non-transparent ramps before they will be allowed back out on the field.

Redateam realizes without asking that they have been found guilty of violating Rule <S01>. By preventing Blueateam's drivers from being able to watch their robot, they have caused the Blueateam robot to be operated in an uncontrolled and unsafe manner on the field. Even though it was the Blue robot that was operated unsafely, Redateam was the originating cause for the situation and was therefore determined to be responsible. And since Redateam has demonstrated that they would use their non-transparent ramps to cause this situation and could do so again, the ramps must be removed before Redateam can rejoin the competition.

The blue team wasn't forced to operate their robot unsafely. They could have stopped it and waited for the hazard to pass, but instead chose to operate their robot despite not being able to see it. <S01> speaks of penalties for "uncontrolled motion that cannot be stopped by the drivers" as an example of unsafe operation; if the drivers could have stopped it, and it was under partial control (inputs were functioning, but drivers couldn't react to the robot's behaviour), it doesn't seem like a plausible extrapolation of the example.

While simply stopping and waiting might negatively impact the blue team's opportunity to play the game, <S01> is a safety rule, not a gameplay rule.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Tristan Lall

The blue team wasn't forced to operate their robot unsafely. They could have stopped it and waited for the hazard to pass, but instead chose to operate their robot despite not being able to see it. <S01> speaks of penalties for "uncontrolled motion that cannot be stopped by the drivers" as an example of unsafe operation; if the drivers could have stopped it, and it was under partial control (inputs were functioning, but drivers couldn't react to the robot's behaviour), it doesn't seem like a plausible extrapolation of the example.

While simply stopping and waiting might negatively impact the blue team's opportunity to play the game, <S01> is a safety rule, not a gameplay rule.

That's specious reasoning at best. That's like saying that a person driving down a 2 lane highway at night is perfectly within their right to leave their super extra blindness inducing high beams on when passing another car because, hey, the other car can always pull to the side of the road and stop driving. It's certainly true, but it misses the point entirely that the rude driver is causing the problem in the first place and shouldn't be depending on the other driver to make up for his lack of caution. Do you commonly weld in the middle of a busy shop and expect everyone else to notice this fact and avert their eyes, or do you put up weld screens in a corner of the shop and let everyone know what you're doing? Honestly, if you think safety is everyone's responsibility but your own.... well I wouldn't want to work around you.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

That's specious reasoning at best. That's like saying that a person driving down a 2 lane highway at night is perfectly within their right to leave their super extra blindness inducing high beams on when passing another car because, hey, the other car can always pull to the side of the road and stop driving. It's certainly true, but it misses the point entirely that the rude driver is causing the problem in the first place and shouldn't be depending on the other driver to make up for his lack of caution.

If you're faced with an oncoming car in your lane, while it might be the other driver's fault, it's very much your problem as well. Obliviously going about your merry way makes you as careless as the other driver is reckless.

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Honestly, if you think safety is everyone's responsibility but your own....

The point is exactly the converse of that: both teams are contributing (though not necessarily equally) to the purportedly unsafe situation, and both are able to act to prevent it. Paradoxically, the blue team's motion is only uncontrolled if the blue team chooses to operate their robot when they can't see it.

But maybe there's a better question: if operating a robot outside the driver's view is a priori unsafe, why were the 2002 and 2003 games designed to make this a common occurance? (Similar versions of <S01> existed then.) In 2002, robots frequently got lost behind one or more goals. In 2003, a robot passing under the bar was temporarily obscured by the ramp, from the point of view of a driver in the furthest alliance station—to say nothing of the 8 ft × 16 ft wall of opaque boxes in the centre of the field. What about the rack this year? How difficult is it to see through that thing, when it's almost full? If a robot is positioned with a full rack between it and its drivers, and they can't see the robot, did they just cause themselves to lose control, in violation of <S01>?

I don't doubt that this behaviour is a bit unsportsmanlike, but it doesn't seem fair to use the strongest safety rule to enforce a penalty that seems targeted at a gameplay event that is not necessarily, and not gravely unsafe.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Tristan Lall

If you're faced with an oncoming car in your lane, while it might be the other driver's fault, it's very much your problem as well. Obliviously going about your merry way makes you as careless as the other driver is reckless.

If you're saying driver on the proper side of the road is just at much at fault as the driver on the wrong side of the road, and, therefore, no tickets (penalties) should be given.... Well then I'll be sure to avoid Toronto. <S01> discusses robots creating unsafe situations. Not field elements. Teams are, presumably, planning on having their vision partially obstructed by the rack. Teams are not planning on having their sight completely and utterly blocked by another robot that can run around the field blocking vision anywhere it likes. The point is that field elements, etc, are a known quantity. Robots tossing in additional unsafe situations are an unknown and to be avoided.