Need for Inspections Rules Changes

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Don Wright

I don't think this is a valid point since you didn't have to be inspected by 2 or 3pm, so there was no drive for everyone to do so.

I would love to see some statistics on how many teams weren't inspected by their first match Friday in both the traditional Regionals and at Michigan districts last year. We are already almost there in MI with only Friday morning for practice and start Quals right after. What was the failure to pass inspection rate in MI compared to the rest of the regions last year? Do we even have this info?

Well, if you wanted extra practice you had to be inspected by noon...

At L.A., I can only think of 2-3 teams that didn't make their first match, not including one that was initially turned back by queuing because they didn't have the sticker saying they had a full inspection, which was on its way. Those teams were either doing a full rebuild or were having trouble building. Only one of those missed more than one, IIRC.

Now, if we're talking didn't pass by about 4 PM on Thursday, then you're talking about half of the regional; about third of the teams had BOM issues that had them waiting until Friday to finish. A number of other teams had relatively minor issues that took them 15 minutes to fix.

[RoboMom]

Maybe my experience is unusual, but with the handful of Regionals I've assisted with, on Thursday there is a whole lot of helping going on in the pits illustrating Woodie's mantra of “the robot is the campfire we all sit around.”

And it's not just the rookie teams. There are numerous teams who are "reinvented" each year. New mentors. New students. New learning curve.

I think the goal should always be to have a working robot go in the crate. But the reality is stuff happens. Sometimes big stuff happens. Getting good mentors is still a goal, but not a reality for some teams. With a Regional of 50+ teams (Boston, Chesapeake, DC) my experience has been there will be at least 10 teams with big challenges. And these challenges will usually take up a big part of Thursday to fix, even with the help of many teams.

There is an entire PR campaign that needs to take place to convince the teams to start with inspections, and they are “out of time,” and they will penalize their alliance partners if they don’t accept help from others and pass inspection. Soon.

But this aspect of the competition is also what "sells" FIRST. In fact, this part of the competition sold FIRST to the Dept. of Educ. in Maryland. Sure those spiffy robots looked great and passed inspection earlier, but honestly, the superintendent was most interested in the stories of all the help the brave little toasters got from the teams around them. It was about the teamwork and problem-solving, not the robots. I escorted a big VIP in Boston in the pits a few years ago-same thing. And how many times have we told the story of the teams who built a robot for a team at Championship when their crate didn’t arrive. Good stuff.

I've also experienced trying to recruit enough qualified inspectors year after year. It's hard work. And last year was even more challenging as the volunteer dinner and training was eliminated on Wed. as a cost cutting move, leaving Thursday morning breakfast as the training.

I can’t quite get my head wrapped around what a compacted “Thursday” would look like, but am open to seeing how this could work.

One suggestion is better communication to the teams about how the process works on Thursday at your venue. I have tried to do a quick “greet/assess what help is needed/what help is available” with each team first thing on Thursday at the Regionals I’ve helped with. In the medical world where I’m from it’s called “triage.” With the rookies, there are an extra couple of minutes explaining how the day will unfold and how much time they have. This can be a joint effort between the inspectors & pit admin, but best if there is someone coordinating. I know this is done at most of the Regionals, but maybe the lessons learned could be more formalized across the board.

[Bob Steele]

I would like to re-direct this thread. Especially since I started it.

Remember this was not intended to be a thread that was discussing the merits of having more qualification matches.... it was a thread on developing a plan to achieve that eventuality.

If someone wants to start the other thread ...feel free.

I see that several members have proposed ideas.... Kevin's idea is a pretty good one IF we have to do this....

There are going to be issues with ANY idea...

Let's just keep working on solutions.... perhaps we won't find one.
Perhaps we won't need one.... we don't really know how this will flesh out.

I personally thought that Kevin's idea about extending the time on Thursday and Friday by 2 and 1 hours respectively was excellent.
This would allow for work to be done on Thursday...without a HUGE change in starting times for qualifications... it would allow for MOST of Thursday to get inspected and fixed...

Remember there has never been a rule that states a team cannot work on their robot after inspection. Most of us do work on them.... you just have to get reinspected if you made changes that might effect your weight or size or other rules...

I think if we encourage more teams to pass inspection with whatever robot they have done.... instead of waiting to finish them .... might also be something to think about.

I do like the pre-ship inspection idea but realistically it will be difficult for some teams to achieve this.... We have that issue in the Pac NW with our Idaho teams... growing but with few veteran teams... and many hours away from Seattle...

I think that it is imperative for veteran teams this year to develop an even more gracious mindset that allows more time for rookie and other teams that need help...

I never have liked the words "mandatory" or "required" These words tend to stifle creativity....but I think working together we can achieve a workable solution to this issue.

GO FIRST

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

But what FIRST is dealing with is, we all would like more qualification matches. They are increasing it by having 2 rounds on Thursday. They are trying to get teams to finish/ just need a few fine tuning/adjustments to do on Thursday.

I have seen no documentation that First is making this ruling. Are you aware of something? Rules are not available for the upcoming season.

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

I have seen no documentation that First is making this ruling. Are you aware of something? Rules are not available for the upcoming season.

http://frcdirector.blogspot.com/2009...days-post.html

I believe that this is what Brendan was referring to. From the wording of Bill's post, however, it sounds like this is far from being set in stone.

Originally Posted by Bill Miller

FIRST is striving to ensure all FRC Regional Events have a minimum of 10 qualification rounds. Traditional FRC Regional Events may only have a half-day of practice rounds on Thursday before qualification rounds begin...Our goal is to increase the number of qualification matches for each team while reducing the amount of time students miss school and volunteers must take off from work.

[Jon236]

Keeping on thread here, I think Jenny has a terrific idea with the concept of 'triage'. In handling MCI's, or Multiple-Casualty Incidents (which is a fair description of many Regionals), triage is used to provide the most efficient use of medical care to ensure that those with the best chance of survival will survive. Red tags indicate need for immediate care; yellow- urgent, green - basically ok, black - expectant (death imminent).

In the case of FIRST Competitions, triage can be applied to assure rapid completions of inspections with the most efficient use of resources (inspectors and inspection stations).

During un-crating, inspectors will give a brief assessment of a team's robot and assign it to a category (please note, in robot, as in human triage, that triage classes are never static and can and do change through time).

Those given Green stickers are ready to be inspected and are encouraged to do so right away, even though the team wants to do some minor tweaking. If the 'tweaking' adds weight, a later re-weigh is not a time consuming event. That way, the Green teams can get onto the practice field right away, or tweak as their hearts desire.

Yellow stickers go to the robots with possible issues which will require an inspector's review to resolve. On giving the Yellow sticker, the inspector should point out to the team the problem(s) which need to be addressed. She (he) should note the problems and return to the team to see how they are progressing.

Red stickers go to robots with obvious problems, or are uncompleted. This is an indication for immediate application of GP by surrounding teams. Robots (and their teams) in this condition are often unable to appreciate the severity of their condition, let alone know who to call for help. The Red sticker should serve as a magnet for helpful FIRSTers.

We won't use Black stickers....because we never give up in FIRST!

[EricH]

I was thinking that a lot of teams like to weigh in early Thursday, just to see where they are at with weight. What if...

...There was an inspector there so that they could immediately get a "partial"? Show up, weigh in, and anything you're ready to have inspected is inspected on the spot. Then, when you get towards noon, you have a stack of partials (and a completion or three), and have a pretty good idea of which teams need help. A list can be maintained at inspection so that teams know who needs the help the most.

If you're feeling bold, have a flag that is given out to teams. If they need help, they put the flag up in their pit. Any team with people to spare that is feeling helpful then knows who needs the help. If you're really bold, have another for inspectors--put it up if you would like an inspector to call.

[RoboMom]

This was mentioned by others earlier in the thread, but my experience has been that the teams often don't recognize they need help.

At Chesapeake, DC and Boston over the years there were usually more teams offering to help than teams asking for help.

Having someone coordinate can work. Sometimes the offers of help aren't quite the right kind at the right time (I'm remembering a certain well- intentioned building a bumper effort last year that actually took way too long of trial and error. And I had to step in and gently ask the helpers to please include the team, rather than pushing them out. Again, well intentioned, but needed a little tweaking.)

But often there are teams and mentors willing and able early on to help. It's the team that needs convincing. Last year I remember saying to quite a few teams, "you're out of time. We shut the pits at 8pm. The wait time to get inspected is at least 20 minutes. You need to get in line right now, for a partial inspection."

Partial is a magical word. It took the pressure off a bit, and still left open that chance that they could really finish that idea about some thingy they had their heart set on. (can you tell I'm not the engineering brains in the room?)

To me, the key is to get all this moving earlier, in a coordinated fashion, and is communicated to all the teams.
Triage.

[IndySam]

And Jenny sometimes teams won't take your help.

Last year I saw a team who's bumper setup was illegal. I told them it wouldn't pass inspection and the mentor told me I was wrong. Normally I would leave it at that but when the match list came out they were our partner in the first match. Once again I approached them and once again I was rebuked.

Long story short, Friday morning we were making bumpers for them and shepherding them through inspection. They got their sticker 5 minuets before the match with members from several teams helping them make it.

Never did get a thank you.

[GaryVoshol]

Regarding MI district experience, I don't have facts but do have anecdotes. There were several matches on Friday morning that were missing more than 1 robot. The official scorers had to decide amongst themselves which empty trailer was assigned to Missing Team X and which to Missing Team Y (both on the same alliance). As I recall, most teams that did miss matches only missed one or two. And not all teams took advantage of Thursday load-in and early inspection, which could have added to the problems with late inspections on Friday.

However I can only remember a few catastrophic problems. One team had misread the bumper rules, and the only way to fix it was to redesign and rebuild their basic frame shape. Another team chose to not come to the field all day in order to rebuild their primary cell-handling mechanism in anticipation of competing at their next event.

Remember, an unaccompanied trailer was a huge detriment in this year's game. Other games were much more forgiving when your alliance was down a robot. Not that we shouldn't strive for playing every game with every robot.

[Fe_Will]

Originally Posted by johnr

How about next year all rookie teams need to have a sponsoring 3 year veteran team before they can register. Atleast we will know someone is helping them, even if it is just by phone for those teams that are really out in the sticks. I never thought our team would have the time or manpower to help another team, but what a great feeling seeing that team out on the field.

The biggest problem that Washington in particular has is that they have a 3:1 rookie to veteran ratio. There are some places that don't have a big enough group of veterans to support some of these ideas. At the Seattle Regional last year 1/8 of the teams were sub-1000.

For the last two years in Washington and this past year in Oregon we have had something called SWAT. It's alumni who are volunteering at the regionals helping teams fix problems and pass inspection. We have also been filling in around the event as needed (i.e. crowed control is needed for a few hours here or spare parts is swamped and needs help). Having people who know robots and how regionals operate available at a moments notice to fill in and make things go smoother really has helped up here in the PNW.

[Jeff Pahl]

Originally Posted by Fe_Will

The biggest problem that Washington in particular has is that they have a 3:1 rookie to veteran ratio. There are some places that don't have a big enough group of veterans to support some of these ideas. At the Seattle Regional last year 1/8 of the teams were sub-1000.

At 10,000 Lakes in MN last year, there were 51 teams.

There was one team with a number below 1000.

There were a total of 3 teams with numbers below 2000. None of these three teams were from Minnesota.

There were 19 rookies.

There were another 22 teams that were second year teams.

The list of teams is available here if you want to check my math.

There was another regional literally across the street the same weekend. The numbers there were similar.

------------

I have taken a deep breath several times and resisted replying to this thread until I could get my thoughts in order. They may still not be in order, and this may get somewhat long-winded and rambling. Please forgive me in advance.

I am deeply concerned about any significant compression of the schedule on Thursday. With the tremendous growth that we have had in MN in the last 3 years, going from < 10 teams to > 80 teams, we have a significant lack of experience. These 80+ teams are spread over a large geographical area (there are only 7 teams within an hour drive of my house, there are teams that are at least 6 hours away). The great majority of these teams do not have any mentors that are qualified to be doing inspections of other teams robots, as has been suggested by others. In fact, most of my inspectors either come from out of state or are local but are not actively associated with a team. With the number of young teams that we have here in MN, it is a challenge to get everyone's problems resolved and thru inspection by the end of the day on Thursday as it is. To compound matters, our volunteer pool is spread across both events, and at the moment it looks like we will have a rookie Lead Inspector at one of the regionals this year. Inspector training takes place on Thursday morning due to the distance that most of the inspectors and myself travel to get to the event. This takes a couple of hours, so we really can't start inspecting until 10:00-10:30. To try and inpect 50+ robots between then and 3 PM would be "Lunacy".

Due to the sheer number of teams and the wide geographic distribution, there is not a "pre-ship" event here in MN that everyone attends, as there is in a lot of other places. Therefore, trying to impose some sort of "pre-inspection" at that event is not an option for us.

I'm also concerned about requiring teams to be "done" at a pre-ship event. Teams that do attend pre-ship events often learn that they have major issues to be addressed before Tuesday. A big one, especially for young teams, is finding out that the robot does not drive the same on the field carpet as it did on whatever floor they used at the shop for testing. I think every year I was involved with a team in GA we rushed back home from the pre-ship event with a list of necessary design changes, some of which were significant. We always thought we were "done", but always learned otherwise. My feeling is that a lot of other teams are in the same category, especially ones that do not have the resources to have their own practice field.

I am all in favor of more rounds for each team. However, I am not in favor of forcing more rounds into the match schedule at the expense of being able to have every team thru inspection with a robot that is capable of competing. If teams, especially rookies, miss their first match or two because they didn't understand something in the rules and they only have half a day on Thursday to make a major correction, they are not going to be inspired by FIRST. They are more likely to give up, and to become yet another team that goes and finds some other (cheaper) activity to participate in next year.

Last year at 10,000 Lakes, with the 51 teams, we ran 9 matches per team without any major time overrun. By shortening up the opening ceremonies each day, taking some time out of lunch, and maybe going a little later on Friday, we should be able to go to 10 matches per team without having to start on Thursday. To make this happen, it is critical that the FTA, the Field Supervisor, and the Field Reset Crew do an outstanding job, but it is not impossible (as long as the field control system cooperates). If we go much above 50 teams this year, then it gets harder. I feel for the 60 team regionals, who will have some problems, but the smaller events should be able to pull this off without having to give up half of Thursday.

That's my opinion. It's probably not worth $0.02.

-Jeff Pahl
Lead Inspector, Minnesota 10000 Lakes Regional
Lead Inspector, Newton Division, 2009 World Championship

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[Jeff Pahl]

Originally Posted by Don Wright

I would love to see some statistics on how many teams weren't inspected by their first match Friday in both the traditional Regionals and at Michigan districts last year. We are already almost there in MI with only Friday morning for practice and start Quals right after. What was the failure to pass inspection rate in MI compared to the rest of the regions last year? Do we even have this info?

I don't know if anyone ever compiled it from the after-event reports that the Lead Inspectors sent to Russ Beavis. It was discussed every week in the LRI conference call. My recollection is that several regionals had a handful.

I do know that at Wisconsin and at both MN regionals (North Star and 10,000 Lakes), every team had a sticker before their first match.

[Vikesrock]

Jeff,

I was also very concerned with the implications of this potential move to 10 matches for the MN Regionals and the difficulty of implementing many or all of the suggestions here.

The idea of a mandatory pre-ship inspection seems like it would be extremely difficult to implement here. As you mentioned some of the out-state teams that cannot attend a pre-ship event are the very same teams that do not have mentors that would be qualified to perform an inspection.

Attempting to get all teams inspected by 2pm, 3pm, or even 5pm on Thursday will likely be extremely difficult without some type of major effort to address the large number of younger teams who will show up with robots in need of significant work.

10,000 Lakes may have completed 9 matches per team, but across the street Northstar only scheduled 7 (although if I remember right we did end significantly ahead of schedule on Friday). Also with the scheduling of the Midwest area regionals and the continued increase of MN teams I would not be surprised if both MN events reached 60 teams.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Here are a few 'statistics' that seem to be normal for all regionals and even the Champs...
If you see a team before 10 o'clock in the inspection area, they have never weighed or sized the robot or they don't know where the practice cue is.
Some teams will start to inspect after their second practice and either just before or just after lunch, starting about 11.
Business picks up by 3PM and hits a peak by 4-5 o'clock.
LRIs start visiting teams in the pit by 4 if they are following the recommended practice.
By 6 o'clock, LRIs are instructed to start visiting the teams with a "mad mom face" and most of the stragglers will start to come in.
It is way out of the ordinary for a team to not inspect on Thursday except for those that choose to go home early or come in late.
By Friday morning, the majority of teams without a sticker are bringing in the BOM or signing the inspection sheet.
An LRI takes it personally if all teams do not have a sticker by opening ceremonies.
There is always at least one veteran team who waits until the last minute to inspect.
There is always several teams who will completely tear down their robot on Thursday for any of a variety of reasons especially if it is their first regional.
Rookies are not the only late comers nor are they always the greater number of the problem teams.
There are some regionals each year that will report that a number of teams are not inspected or even started by Friday morning. (Not always the same regional)
Inspections are complicated by changes in the KOP particularly the control system, issues arising from field control, and volunteers doing double duty, i.e. judges and refs inspecting on Thursday.
Average inspection times run 20 minutes or less. Consistent 45 minute or longer inspections indicate an issue with the inspection team.
Partial inspections take longer overall than a full, one visit, inspection. A request for a partial indicates the team is not ready to be inspected.
The rule that allowed more practice matches for teams already inspected brought experienced teams in earlier for inspection, at some regionals.
There are some teams that refuse help no matter how much you try. It takes a strong and forceful LRI to take matters in hand and layout a step by step approach to compliance.
Teams will continue to modify and build throughout the weekend and won't think about reinspection. Inspection areas near the cue make things easier to see by those manning the inspection area on Friday and Saturday.