Lesson Learned: The Negative

[Koko Ed]

What did FIRST do this season that could stand improvement or should not be done again?

[CarterM]

Providing teams with IR Board for this new "robocoach" thing and have a lap counter that has to be put on the robot. I think it was very discouraging to have a fully functioning autonomous mode at home, but on the field your robot just sits there... We should've been more aware of this lap counter deal.

[Logan Byers]

Originally Posted by CarterM

Providing teams with IR Board for this new "robocoach" thing and have a lap counter that has to be put on the robot. I think it was very discouraging to have a fully functioning autonomous mode at home, but on the field your robot just sits there... We should've been more aware of this lap counter deal.

Not to mention that the IR lap counting system never really panned out.
It probably should have been removed from every field after week 1 or 2 or when ever it appeared that it was not going to be a functional system.

[OScubed]

FIRST rather than saying The Negative, I'd label this thread as room for improvement

My comment applies to the World competition in Atlanta to a large extent, but also to regional events as a whole.

I would suggest that you create a more robust seminar program - targeted more at kids - that is not "for pay" above and beyond the entry fee, though you could limit the number attending from each team.

Have the seminars be put on BY KIDS not by mentors, and have it concentrate on the various aspects of engineering a robot. Give the kids a chance to shine and show their engineering brilliance, while teaching others how they succeeded - without it having to go on in the pit.

While there is a lot to do in the pits and for the drive team, many schools bring ALL their kids, and - beyond scouting and fetch and carry - it would be great if each FIRST event featured something for the kids to learn or do who are NOT part of the direct pitcrew/drive team. We found things, but having some of the kids present and/or attend conferences on the topics mentioned above might well have been a great experience for them.

Most of the events that were educational were well attended when they applied to students (autodesk for instance).

Perhaps as part of next year's "mission" shared educational material might well be a part of next year's event. Each team can compete for a slot to do their presentation at regionals, and the top presentations are given at nationals with a prize attached.

Finally it might help if seminars were labeled as "FOR STUDENTS" or "FOR ADULTS" (not that you couldn't cross over if you were interested, just that it would be good to know who the target audience is before committing an hour to sit in on a seminar).

[Joe J.]

I would have to say the penalties for breaking the plane, I think the rule was a little excessive and a "your robot cannot fully cross the line in a clockwise direction" would been sufficient. Or maybe limit it to your robots main frame cannot fully cross the line in a clockwise direction, to take the appendage out of the equation.

That rule decided too many matches.

[Stuart]

the real problem I had with the "breaking the plane rule" was that it made alot of rookie teams( and other teams that didn't have a fairly controllable robot) less than worthless. in years past for the most part a robot on the field was better than no robot, the worst you could do is sit there and make a 0 for your alliance. but with this rule( and the penalty that it occurred) caused many teams to have a consistently negative effect on their alliance, where it would be better( point wise) to their alliance for them to just not show up at all . . and this is just wrong.

2007 was the year of the defense
2008 was the year of the penalty

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by Joe J.

I would have to say the penalties for breaking the plane, I think the rule was a little excessive and a "your robot cannot fully cross the line in a clockwise direction" would been sufficient. Or maybe limit it to your robots main frame cannot fully cross the line in a clockwise direction, to take the appendage out of the equation.

That rule decided too many matches.

To be fair, leaving out a consequence for crossing the plane would open you up to the ref's interpretation, which means many teams would be angry at inconsistency. At one regional they might hand out yellow cards, at another they might hand out only warnings. Maybe at a third regional they'd give your alliance -10 if someone on your team crossed the plane no matter how many times it happened. Since even now there are actions teams can (and do) take that break the plane legitimately and with positive benefit (placing a ball, freeing a partner from the overpass), what would the refs do in that situation? How would they ensure consistency? What would stop teams from going backwards to get that trackball "just this once"?
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That said, the amount and complexity of the penalty-based rules meant that you needed well trained and consistent refs available, which wasn't always the case at all regionals. Reducing the number of penalty-inducing rules would make for a more consistent game. Bumping to pass could probably have been removed without a massive change in the character of the game.
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An improved implementation of G22 might be to put an RFID tag under the robot, and have sensor strips under the carpet that detect how far forward it has gone. If it crossed 'too far back' from its furthest-forward line, then the field scoring software could automatically add a G22. This would allow for real-time penalty-giving, and would allow for more forgiving zones* that you couldn't cross (i.e. nudging backwards after moving to a new quadrant wouldn't be an instant G22).
*It would be difficult to implement more forgiving line-crossing with humans because of the logic required to track where a robot has been with 6 robots on field.

[dsm]

For the regional coordinators, sometimes the flow of information was less than effective, and less than timely.

I was in contact with a couple of teams this year, which attended a combined total of 5 different competitions including Atlanta, and there were striking differences in how and what information was conveyed.

Some regionals were great about some things, and awful about others. Some event websites were very informative, others were borderline useless. I realize the information itself is always going to be variable due to different venues, but the organizers should at least give teams that information in an effective and timely manner.

I'm talking about things like:
- parking info, particularly with regard to buses and trailers
- pit sizes allowed (I used to think 10x10 was standard, but clearly not)
- entrances, where/when to unload equipment/people
- food being allowed in or not (and if they frisk you like at VCU )
- machine shop availability and logistics
- practice field availability
- logistics of finals (some regionals trap you at the field, others have you go back to your pit)
- early notice and schedule of any seminars/classes offered
- other stuff that would just be very useful to know well in advance, so teams can plan their packing, vehicles, resources, etc

Maybe there ought to be a standard packet of info that all regionals distribute at least 3 weeks prior, or something like that?

Note: I'm not knocking the volunteers, they always do a great job and should be thanked for their time. I'm knocking the paid organizers who darn well ought to know better by now.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by Stuart

the real problem I had with the "breaking the plane rule" was that it made alot of rookie teams( and other teams that didn't have a fairly controllable robot) less than worthless. in years past for the most part a robot on the field was better than no robot, the worst you could do is sit there and make a 0 for your alliance. but with this rule( and the penalty that it occurred) caused many teams to have a consistently negative effect on their alliance, where it would be better( point wise) to their alliance for them to just not show up at all . . and this is just wrong.

2007 was the year of the defense
2008 was the year of the penalty

I won't argue <G22> here, I've posted enough on that.

I agree with Stuart here though. A team should NEVER be more valuble to an alliance by not showing up ... Thats just wrong. Minimum score for each team in an alliance should be 0.

JMHO

[sdcantrell56]

I don't know. It is really fairly simple to build the kit bot so that it could at least be controllable, thereby avoiding the dreaded G22. One thing that I always can;t quite understand is the seemingly large number of robots at championship that can do nothing more than drive around or some of which that can't even drive around effectively.

I did think that there was still a ton of defense including ramming. We were a very good shooter and at times we were being defended against by 2 robots at a time both of which were ramming us repeatedly without trying to keep the ball from us. One time in the match I'm talking about a team rammed us so hard that they compressed our ball enough that when it decompressed it flipped them leaving us still standing. The refs were also fairly inconsistent about calling interfering with a hurdle. I know there were a couple times when we were hit rather hardly while our shooter was raised in our home zone and we were driving toward the overpass to hurdle.

Overall though I loved this game. It was probably one of the most fun times I've ever had. I thought they did an awesome job at the Georgia Dome keeping everything under control especially considering the tornado damage.

[johnr]

How about next time they have a g22 type rule they just use one of those things you find at the end of parking ramps. You go the right way and it drops down. You go the wrong way and you get spikes in your tire. Well, maybe we could leave the spikes off.

[Qbranch]

I don't think there's much that has to be written here, but I do have a couple little things.

On this first one, I'll speak from personal experience to avoid getting details wrong with somebody else. Sometimes, Contact Inside of the Bumper Zone was called on our machine when it was being stuck against a wall by a defensive robot. I guess it looked like we were poking their robot because whenever their robot would move, ours would move... but we really couldn't go anywhere. Just seems like a hard rule to call/not call.

Also, FIRST said at Atlanta that they will not be incresing the weight limit on machines to allow for the new control system, which, by the way, weighs about five pounds. As many of you know from having morbidly obese robots and lightening them in the past, five pounds is a LOT of material to lose.

The control system's a whole nother story, but it will be interesting to see what part of the new control system programmers actually get to write software for. I'm really hoping that there are gates left over in the FPGA for teams to write crazy awesome software for (like, my personal favorite, an insanely fast quadrature encoder decoder to enable use of high count encoders).

-q

[AmoryG]

The only thing I can complain about were the penalties. Many of the penalties called during our matches I can't complain about, but some things I just thought were rediculous. Here's an example of one of these penalties I thought was just wrong...

I was heading around the track and right when I made it past my alliance's quadrant (the one our robots begin in) our robot and another robot got locked together. We were going at the same speed and turning at the same rate and somehow we turned at the same rate, also. So when we turned the corner somehow a robot infront of us got tangled into some sort of sandwich where an apponent's robot was inbetween mine and a robot from my alliance. Unfortunately not one of us could escape. Our alliance partner had something clinging to our arm which herded the trackballs around the field. The robot inbetween us couldn't move because they were stuck inbetween us with no way of moving backwards or forwards.

Anyways, the refs had never seen something like this and it took them like 10 minutes to discuess what had happend. I forgot what exactly were the calls, but I think one was for blocking and the other was for impeding the line. In this situation, a complete accident, where none of us can do anything, why should they call any penalties at all?

Also, I always had trouble seeing the quadrant diagnal from the quadrant where my team's controller was located. The lane divider reflected the robots and blocked my vision. It really was a pain in the butt when we got called for something I had no knowledge of doing.

[EricLeifermann]

I don't think it was the amount of penalties called it was how much the penalties were worth. 10 points in this game was huge. The penalties should have been 2 or 5 points at the most. You have to think about how much you can score and how fast you can score it, and then asses how much a penalty should be worth. Penalties should not decide the match, and this year they decided just about every match. This is the first year out of the 7 years I've been in first where just about every match had penalties in it, and 9 times out of 10 they decided who won. I know the GDC probably didn't expect as much pile-ups near the quadrant lines but, again you should try and expect the worst so you can plan around it.

But on a plus note it was a rather exciting game this year. Did not expect that!

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

I don't think it was the amount of penalties called it was how much the penalties were worth. 10 points in this game was huge. The penalties should have been 2 or 5 points at the most.

This is what the GDC got exactly right. If cheating costs five points, for example, and can give you a hurdle and line-crossing that is worth ten, then why not commit <G22> fouls all match long? The ten points was exactly the right amount.