Ball Color Problem

[Greg Marra]

Originally Posted by thefro526

Here's a picture from The Blue Alliance of all the different balls for reference

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3112/...e48bc1.jpg?v=0

I used Picasa's "I'm Feeling Lucky" color correction feature on this photo. In the unmodified photo, it is slightly more difficult to distinguish between the Moon Rocks and Empty Fuel Cells.

[prman]

I had to double take at the picture, because upon first glance blue and purple seem the same.

[Swerting]

Originally Posted by DanDon

Having just bought empty cells and super cells at the local Wal*mart, this turns out to be a not so small issue, not only for people affected by colorblindness, but also for people with perfect vision. Being able to tell if you're carrying more than one empty cell during the heat of the moment, as opposed to one empty cell and one moon rock will be extremely difficult under tournament conditions (i.e. lighting, glare, robot traffic, etc.).

I agree. Imagine how hard it would be to see if that is a empty cell or a moon rock at the other end of the field through slightly scratched plexiglass, 6 out-of-control robots, and the fact that you have a stadium of people staring at you with lights above. Plus that great pulsing dance music!

This troubles me since my team apparently has quite a few color blind members.

[Alphabet OJ]

I completely agree that the balls; colors should be changed, but perhaps they should just take away the bicoloredness of the balls. If the balls were one different color each, they would be a lot easier to identify. Something tells me that this may be part of the challenge however...

[rjohnson]

I do agree that the ball color is a problem, but I don't think that there is much FIRST can do at this point. The balls are made commercially in only three color paterns, so they had to use what was available. Maybe they should not have used these balls in the first place, but that is a totally different issue. I guess we will just have to work around this because the game will not change at this point.

[Katy]

Originally Posted by Alphabet OJ

Something tells me that this may be part of the challenge however...

No, I'm pretty sure nobody in their right mind would decide to intentionally prevent a significant proportion of the population from participating in FIRST as a driver for a medical reason as "part of the challenge." The goal is to teach you to be engineers and change the world, not make you feel excluded because of the way you were born. Color blindness affects up to 10% of American males, and considering the overwhelming percentage that population holds of events, that's pretty significant.

Sometimes FIRST doesn't (no pun intended) see everything that can go wrong. That's fine, FIRST is composed of humans, it happens. Now that we have found a problem the professional thing for us to do is to figure out a solution for it.

If anybody has the game pieces handy and a can of spray paint would you be willing to test how well it adheres to the surface of the balls? Please permit the paint to dry and then pick up the pieces and abuse them a little...bang them on the table or something. Does the paint chip? Does the texture vary significantly between the painted and unpainted version? My experience says it shouldn't, but with something like this it is worth testing before we offer it as a valid solution.

If these tests prove to reasonably not alter the game pieces, may I recommend (dark) blue, (medium) red, and white to spray them? Frankly if you don't like those colors I do not care, they can always be changed, provided that the three are chosen to be significantly different shades/values/lightness (God knows every field that deals with it has a different name for the quality).

Once a solution is found a small, (and very polite), petition can be set up (possibly something even as unscientific as a poll here on CD) to express the level of concern this problem has brought about from FIRST members. Maybe the higher-ups will read it, maybe they won't, but the numbers will certainly prove useful for quoting if you want to call your local FIRST offices and the people managing the regionals asking them if they would kindly consider permitting you to tag the game pieces to make them more friendly for the color blind. This isn't something we can demand, regionals are notoriously understaffed (I mean, good volunteers do not grow on trees). However, if we are all willing to pitch in and make a change (yes, that probably means "doing it ourselves") the regionals are probably unlikely to get directly in our way.

That said, we can't request a change until we have a viable solution. Whatever it is it needs to be fast, easy, durable, and not significantly alter the playing pieces.

If nobody can get their hands on the materials to try spray paint well...I'll try to make a trip to the store myself as soon as I can. Keep us all posted with whatever you have. I'm pretty eager to work to resolve this.

[Tim Arnold]

Just throwing in that I too am red/green colorblind and cannot distinguish the ball colors. Picked up 6 orbit balls at Wal-Mart and I have no idea which type I got (with them in front of me to compare).

Perhaps an easy solution would be similar to the white spots on the tracballs last season... just some sort of white iron-on sticker would be perfect.

[lokkpet]

I too have a problem with the ball color. Being the tallest member of my team I would be the obvious choice for our human player because I can more easily negotiate the height of the wall. However, I'm blue-purple color blind and can not tell the difference between the moon rocks and the empty cells. I have not had a chance to read all of the comments to see if anyone has any ideas but I do hope that FIRST will find a solution to this problem before competion.

[ryanking09]

when I saw the three different balls originally i noticed how closely the empty and the moon balls appeared to be. If u were in the heat of the game, these two would be difficult to distinguish between especially if they are 50ft away.

Im sure the manufacturer only produces these three variants but maybe enough criticism about the colors and they may produce a new, very distinguishable ball.

If they however do not change we can only hope that good eyesight and lots of practice will help "comfort" this problem. It has already been mentioned that the manufacture of these "orbits" are made by blip toys, which never mention their orbit ball on the website.

[Athleticgirl389]

Like several of you, I am also colorblind and my first thought about the balls was, thank goodness i'm only a mentor lol. For those who are red/green and blue/purple (i happen to be both which sucks lol), I don't think changing the colors will help everyone. I mean, maybe if one ball was black and white, another blue and yellow, and another like red and white... then maybe. Like some have said, make petitions or something. Maybe even talk to your local regional director and see if any change can be made at that regional to help for those colorblind people out there. It's going to definately be more of a challenge to us colorblind folk, but we'll just have that much more fun and get a "better" color education out of this year's game As I said to my fiance one day, "I don't color, I shade" ... just think postively and PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE lol

[Branden Ghena]

Originally Posted by Athleticgirl389

I don't think changing the colors will help everyone.

Instead of changing the colors, FIRST could make one ball striped and one ball solid. It would be easy enough to wrap tape on the orbit balls to stripe them without changing the feel of the balls.

[martin417]

We have been able to purchase several Orbit Balls from Wal Mart. We have representatives of three different color combinations. They differ from the game animation in that the yellow color seen in the animation for the moon rocks / empty cells is more orange in our samples (including the one from the KOP).

My concern is the similarity between the moon rocks and the empty cell. (orange and purple vs. orange and blue) The purple is not very different from the blue. I submit that if these are representative of actual game pieces, you will not be able to tell the difference from any distance. In the heat of competition, I can see teams grabbing multiple empty cells, thinking they are moon rocks, and getting penalized, simply because they couldn't tell the difference. If a team member is color blind (a very common mutation among males) it will be impossible to tell the difference.

Has anyone else noticed this, or am I alone in my confusion? I can only hope that the actual game pieces will be obviously different from each other.

[jgannon]

Nope, you aren't alone.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=71049

[smurfgirl]

Yeah, a bunch of other people have pointed this out in other threads, and it appears that the actual game pieces have the same problem with color distinction. There will probably be some issues with distinguishing between colors, especially from all the way across the field, and I can definitely see penalties arising because of this. I wish they had done blue/orange, purple/green, and orange/green (instead of orange/purple) as the color combinations.

[martin417]

Perhaps they could swap the super cell and the empty cell colors. there is no penalty for carrying two super cells.