|
|
|
| You've downloaded my heart. |
![]() |
|
|||||||
|
||||||||
| View Poll Results: You Make The Call | |||
| Redalliance wins the 2007 Magnolia Regional! |
|
57 | 53.77% |
| Blualliance wins the 2007 Magnolia Regional |
|
49 | 46.23% |
| Voters: 106. You may not vote on this poll | |||
![]() |
|
|
Thread Tools | Rate Thread | Display Modes |
|
|
|
#1
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
Re: YMTC: Redabot Scores 30 Bonus Points?
GDC Says:
Under Rule <G56> (as amended in Team Update #3), Robots that are supported by a Game Piece can not earn Bonus Points. Under Rule <G55>, inflated and deflated Game Pieces are evaluated in the same way when determining the match score. Therefore, a Robot supported by a deflated Game Piece would not be able to earn any bonus points. This is a transitive property, and would also be true for any Robot supported by a robot supported by a Game Piece. Is the robot lifting these robots supported by a game piece??? I say no...their ramp is...but their robot is not. Like people have said above me....COMMON SENSE PEOPLE...red lifted...red wins I would also not accept the trophy if i were the blue alliance. |
|
#2
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
Re: YMTC: Redabot Scores 30 Bonus Points?
Quote:
-dave |
|
#3
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
Re: YMTC: Redabot Scores 30 Bonus Points?
Why must everything be fact? I thought this was a place where one could state their opinion. I admit i misinterpreted this...but I did add "I say..." when I presented my opinion. The facts are the lift doesnt count...my opinion is the lift should count, as I DO NOT FEEL this was the intent of this rule, but thats just my opinion.
|
|
#4
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
Re: YMTC: Redabot Scores 30 Bonus Points?
Quote:
The elegance of the whole YMTC challenge is that it forces you to put yourself in the place of "the other guy" and try to understand how they view the world from their position. In this case, you have to try to understand the view of a game situation from the reference point of the referee. How you look at the game as a team member or a game player doesn't matter in this discussion. The only thing that does matter is how well you can understand the role of the referee, the job they have to do, and the type of decisions that they must make. Why is this important? Because the ability to truly understand how "the other guy" thinks, and how they see the world from their point of view is a massively important skill. I have the utmost respect for the job the referees have to do, and the difficulty of their position. Exercises like this help us understand even better just how tough their job is. In the rare cases where we do have a serious objection to a decision that a referee may make, being able to understand their view of the situation can very frequently help to address the concern. At the very least, it makes us better prepared to consider the opposing side of an argument, understand the counter-points, and have appropriate considerations ready. Learn to do that, and make it a regular skill that is consistently applied when trying to understand why a referee has made a particular call. And when you can do that, you will suddenly find that that skill is transferable to many, many other situations. That same skill is incredibly important when you are dealing with college professors, professional compatriots, business competitors, other organizations, other companies, and other countries. There is an unfortunately small percentage of people can really do this well. But those that can see the world from the other person's point of view are capable of making huge impacts on the world. As has been said so many times before, FIRST is not just about the robots. In fact, the robot have almost nothing to do with it. The lessons, practices and skills to be learned in FIRST are so much larger than just learning how to put a few pieces of metal together and making them moved (although that is a wonderfully cool side benefit ). YMTC has very little to do with just seeing who knows the rulebook better than the other guy. Just like the rest of FIRST, it is so much deeper than that… Quote:
-dave |
|
#5
|
|||
|
|||
|
Re: YMTC: Redabot Scores 30 Bonus Points?
Quote:
The statement that support is a transitive property is also not necessarily true, unless we take the GDC's words as automatic truth. It is true that if the entirety of the ramp robot was supported by a tube, then the raised robot would also be supported by that tube; however, it is not mentioned that the entire ramp robot is supported by the tube, nor can it be guaranteed if only part of the robot is supported. From a physical perspective, supported would seem to mean that the force on the tube remains the same or decreases in magnitude when the raised robot is placed on the ramp. In practice, if the raised robot's position remains the same when the tube is removed, it is apparently not significantly supported by the tube and probably not supported at all. By this common-sense definition of support in the original rule, the bonus points would be awarded. By the interpretation the GDC expressed, the bonus points are not awarded. It seems to me the original interpretation is more in accordance with the spirit of the game. If I am wrong, the rule should stay as Q&A clarified. Otherwise, the GDC ought to thoroughly define support and not rely on the transitivity of it. For a term that has such an impact on the outcome of games, the common-sense definition clearly does not suffice. Between the poor understanding of the rule as written (as demonstrated by this split poll) |
|
#6
|
||||
|
||||
|
Re: YMTC: Redabot Scores 30 Bonus Points?
Quote:
looks like the red alliance scored 44 points and the blue alliance scored 64. To add insult to injury the refs still give the red team a 10 point penalty for celebration. Final score red 34 - blue 64. Blue wins the regional & the kids all collect their medals with pride because they know they just won. edit** glad I waited to vote because I just broke the tie - blue team now wins the regional. |
|
#7
|
||||
|
||||
|
Re: YMTC: Redabot Scores 30 Bonus Points?
Cody has the right idea here: "supported" isn't a defined term in the manual (when referring to robots on top of each other). He quoted a standard layman's definition, which is a good starting point. But from a physics point of view, we need to ask ourselves whether supporting something means to withstand a normal force due to that thing, or if resistance to other forces (e.g. frictional forces) comes into play.
For the simple case where a robot is on top of another robot's ramp, and that ramp is on top of a toroid, the result is unambiguous: the top robot is obviously being (indirectly) borne upon the toroid. No points are scored. For the more complex case where the top robot is on one ramp, and another ramp, independently connected, is on top of a toroid, the definition of support becomes important, as a matter of principle. Of course, given that the Q&A says that "any Robot supported by a robot supported by a Game Piece" does not earn bonus points, it seems that as far as the rules are concerned, there's still no question. No points are scored. The real issue here is why the Q&A assumes that having Red 1, partially supported by a toroid and fully supporting Red 2 means that Red 2 is supported by that same toroid. Hypothetically, assume that Red 1's first ramp (supporting Red 2) is attached to the rest of the robot by a cable (too short to be an entanglement risk), and otherwise only supported on a series of legs, and its second ramp is mounted in some other fashion (let's say a hinge attached to the robot frame) and resting on top of a toroid. The only way that Red 2 is supported by the toroid is if the definition of supported also takes into account the internal forces within the cable. And because the cable could be slack, these aren't just tension forces; these could be the internal shear forces that resist the disintegration of the cable. That makes for a peculiar definition of support. I suspect that they just forgot to consider this case, but wrote the Q&A response in a way that inadvertently covers it. Alternatively, it could be written this way deliberately, to avoid the referees having to make a determination as to whether support exists—they just treat everything as supported. Another case is a statically indeterminate system: Red 1's ramp that supports Red 2 also lightly pinches a toroid between the alliance station wall and the ramp. A friction force between the toroid and the ramp resists the downward motion of the ramp, as does a normal force (through the floor). If you take the toroid away, and nothing else moves, can we truly say that the ramp was not being supported by its friction force? Or do we now have friction to worry about when determining support? In actual fact, the forces on the ramp changed appreciably, and the microscopic deflections due to that frictional shear force are replaced with deflections due to the compressive normal force. On a practical level, a method of checking for this is impossible to implement. But if we aren't careful with our definition of "support", we shouldn't be surprised when someone argues that the inability of the referees to measure the state of the ramp shouldn't be an impediment to the theoretical implications of that state being taken into account when the rules are applied. I should also note that there isn't a rule conflict here; as it stands, the rules and the Q&A are mutually consistent on this point. It's just that some of the more obscure consequences don't exactly follow from the justification provided. That doesn't make it a good ruling, but it does look like an enforceable one. As for the call, blue wins. Last edited by Tristan Lall : 15-03-2007 at 21:57. |
|
#8
|
|||
|
|||
|
Re: YMTC: Redabot Scores 30 Bonus Points?
Quote:
|
|
#9
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
Re: YMTC: Redabot Scores 30 Bonus Points?
Quote:
The GDC responded that any robot that is being supported by a gamepeice does not count for points. I would argue that none of the red robots are supported by a gamepeice. One part of the red bot is supported by the tube, that part is in no way connected with lifting the other robot. It is times like this when we may have to look at the spirit of the rule. The spirit, I believe, is that you cannot gain extra height from a lift by being on top of a tube... not that a tube touching the robot, which has absolutely no effect on another robot being lifted will null the score. If I were on the Blue alliance, I would most definately not accept any trophies that would be associated with winning this match on a small, stupid technicality. I would accept the fact that the red robot performed better at the given task, and not try to weasel my way into a win. Quote:
Quote:
|
|
#10
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
Re: YMTC: Redabot Scores 30 Bonus Points?
From Chapter 7 of the manual:
Quote:
There really is only one way that the rules can be applied in this case. And if you think it through, you will see why it has to be that way. Some people will not like the correct interpretation (actually, since the current voting is virtually 50-50, about half of them won't like it ). Lucien has done a great job of using an extreme case to motivate the discussion. But careful consideration of the moderate cases will reveal why the rule, the application of the rule, and the outcome of the example match, have to be the way they are.Lucien, this was an absolutely brilliant YMTC to post. I must admit, I am finding this whole discussion quite interesting. For the past two and a half months (actually, for the past several competition seasons) we have seen a significant percentage of the community all up in arms about referees that don't enforce the rules exactly as written, about how strict interpretations must be the only interpretations of the rules, hair-splitting over definitions of individual words used in the rules and their meanings, and overt "lawyering." Entire teams are saying they are going to go do VEX. Senior mentors are threatening to quit. Chicken Little is screaming about this being the beginning of the end for FIRST. And yet, when a very plausible situation is discussed, many of those very same people are the very first ones to start saying "well, the rules really don't mean that. And even if they do, let's redefine them on the fly so that they mean something different. After all, they shouldn't be enforced that way..." The honor of a team that might benefit from strict adherence to the rules is now being questioned. Phrased like "I would be embarrassed," "shameful," and " forfeit a hollow victory" are being thrown around. A reprise of Marlon Brando's 1973 refusal to accept an Oscar is being touted as the only appropriate action. The inconsistency in the positions being taken is fascinating to observe. -dave |
|
#11
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
Re: YMTC: Redabot Scores 30 Bonus Points?
Current Definition of G56:
ROBOTS in HOME ZONE - ROBOTS score bonus points at the end of the match if they are entirely in their HOME ZONE, not in contact with any element of the field (carpet, alliance station, goal, etc.), not supported by a GAME PIECE, and the lowest point of the ROBOT is higher than 4 inches and/or 12 inches above the carpeted field surface. The number of bonus points an ALLIANCE receives is based on the total number of ROBOTS satisfying these conditions. Each ALLIANCE ROBOT entirely in their HOME ZONE at the end of the match is eligible to receive the following bonus points: Each ROBOT between 0 and 3.9 inches above floor level - 0 bonus points Each ROBOT between 4.0 and 11.9 inches above floor level - 15 bonus points Each ROBOT 12.0 inches or more above floor level - 30 bonus points Quote:
Why must so many original game manual rules require more than a cursory two second analysis to determine without a doubt what the intent is? Why must there be so many Q&A clarifications for these rules in the first place? Why can't the original definition clearly communicate the intent? I believe Cody is correct - I cannot find the definition of "supported" anywhere within the Game Rules. Lacking any knowledge of the GDC's opinion of what "supported" means (do you think we should automatically know?), most people would tend to arrive at the same conclusion - that a ringer stuck under a rampbot's ramp all the way on the other side of the rampbot does nothing to support the lifted robot on the other side. Indeed, most people I've heard have independently arrived at the same opinion - that the rule simply said a robot on a lifting mechanism supported DIRECTLY by a game piece is not to receive the bonus points. If the GDC intended for the YMTC situation to nullify bonus points all along, then they shouldn't be publishing a Q&A clarification on the matter on 2/26; they should have instead incorporated it into the original release in early January. I think the 50/50 split in the voting is a result of a division between those who have read the Q&A "clarification" and those who haven't. I freely admit, I wasn't aware of the Q&A posting. I've read many - that one I missed among the myriad others that have been posted. Some believe reading the Q&A religiously should be a natural part of any team's daily routine. Others, like me, believe team members are already stretched to the limit in their efforts to keep a team functioning smoothly, and they would prefer if the rules were actually clear, concise, and easily interpreted as originally written. Quote:
"Interpret"....."Careful consideration".......these words imply the need to spend more than a few moments assembling the pieces of some nebulous puzzle. Rules shouldn't have to be interpreted - their intent should be obvious. The fact you believe we must "carefully consider" the meaning inherently suggests a problem with the rule in question. Why can't a rule be cut and dry? Just say what you mean from the beginning! Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
*This all presumes my team could actually win a regional in the first place. I suppose it is good someone is going the "cute" route to illustrate the current GDC intent of G56 via this YMTC, but it is truly sad that the 50% of poll respondents who didn't "get it right" weren't given the opportunity to quickly learn of the rule's intent when they first printed out their manuals in January....... Last edited by Travis Hoffman : 15-03-2007 at 22:43. |
|
#12
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
Re: YMTC: Redabot Scores 30 Bonus Points?
I've been waiting on this one, hoping sanity might prevail. As I see that it hasn't, I thought I'd comment real quick. As I read the Q&A, the only way it can be interpreted is that Red 2 is supported by Red 1 is supported by a ringer, thus no bonus. However, instead of reaching the conclusion that this is the exact interpretation the GDC intended here and is thus holy law writ in stone, I'm hoping someone will come to their senses and re-clarify this issue in a new Q&A. A headache and hair tearing example follows:
Our robot holds its ramps together with a piece of spectra cable attached to one ramp. Upon deployment, the cable often swings out past the ramp to lay on the floor. Thus, when both ramps are lifted, the cable might hang down from the end of the ramp. So according to this ruling, if our cable happens to end up hanging down from the end of the ramp, laying on the top of a ringer, then 2 robots 13" off the ground magically become 0 points. Because of a piece of string that is, in fact, completely and utterly physically incapable of supporting any load whatsoever in compression. A piece of string, people. Or broken chain, or a busted arm, or, you know, anything at all, really. Speaking of, here's a fun new strategy to employ based on this interpretation. If you have a poor ramp bot, grab a ringer and wait until your opponent lifts or has robots on top of him and is utterly incapable of defending himself. Shove the ringer under his ramp or, indeed, any available part of his robot. In fact, as long as it's in contact with any dorsal surface of his robot, you're good. Incur a 10 point penalty, maybe, but observe with malevolent glee that your opponent has now been robbed of a whopping 60 points. Repeat until you've waltzed your way through elims. Note: The above strategy is meant to show that this is silly. Okaying a strategy that completely nullifies most all ramp bots and can be implemented while they're utterly defenseless seems pretty darn silly to me. Last edited by Kevin Sevcik : 15-03-2007 at 23:11. |
|
#13
|
|||
|
|||
|
Re: YMTC: Redabot Scores 30 Bonus Points?
Quote:
Quote:
|
|
#14
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
Re: YMTC: Redabot Scores 30 Bonus Points?
What is the definition of supported?
|
|
#15
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
Re: YMTC: Redabot Scores 30 Bonus Points?
Quote:
Since there was no definition supplied in the manual, I can only go with the next best thing: Merriam-Webster. The only definition that applies to our focus is number four a, "to hold up or serve as a foundation or prop for". In this case, is the tube Holding up or serving as a foundation for anything? I don't believe so. If you remove the tube, The elevated robot stays where it is at... and the Elevating robot certainly won't tip over, or fall into the ground due to lack of ringer. |
![]() |
| Thread Tools | |
| Display Modes | Rate This Thread |
|
|
Similar Threads
|
||||
| Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
| YMTC: Redabot Disrupts Ringers | Natchez | You Make The Call | 13 | 16-01-2007 23:34 |
| Createing a platform for bonus points... | GMKlenklen | Technical Discussion | 12 | 12-01-2007 16:17 |
| pic: YMTC: 150 points or 100 points? | CD47-Bot | Extra Discussion | 4 | 25-03-2004 01:53 |
| Ventures Bonus Points | Brandon Martus | Announcements | 0 | 17-03-2003 10:37 |