2012 Lessons Learned:The Negative

[Koko Ed]

What could FIRST stand to improve on from this year?

[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

What could FIRST stand to improve on from this year?

Field management system.

Someone had to be the first to say it.

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by Peter Matteson

Field management system.

Someone had to be the first to say it.

Better Radios. Someone had to be the first to say it.

[jwfoss]

Until Einstein, it seemed to me that the control system problems were swept under the rug. While I'm not mad that there are problems (truthfully), technology will always have problems, I am unhappy with the way that FIRST did not listen to the fairly large number of teams presenting the issues throughout 6+ weeks of competition.

It was sad that it had to come to Einstein to make them really see it.

A major topic that I believe FIRST could improve on is the support of veteran teams, rather than what seems like an absolute push for rookies.

[Debbie]

Definitely get rid of the Field Management problems. We lost our first elimination match by only 2 points but had one dead robot. The next alliance had a dead robot (1717) in the exact same location in the following match.

Also, eliminate anything that allows one team to easily manipulate the ranking of another team. Though to some degree you can always do this, this year it was too easy to keep a team down in ranking by refusing to co-op with them. Though we would think Gracious Professionalism would prohibit this from happening, it did.

District trophies were just sad. I understand making them smaller than regional, but the selected trophies were not a good choice.

MSC and MAR teams qualify in week 7 for worlds, not leaving them many choices with STEELE Meetings and freezing them out of events like the ball game and Finale. Something needs to be done to ensure these teams have equal chances to participate in all championship activities.

100 teams is TOO many in a division. You never get to know the teams in your division. Break it down into more divisions of smaller numbers. Allow us more matches to allow for better ranking chances.

Give division trophies as well as Championship trophies. Those getting the championship one could be eliminated from receiving division ones so that more than 10 or so teams out of 400 get recognized at the world level. It would recognize the top 5 teams at worlds (4 division winners, 1 championship winner).

Just a few thoughts.

[Don Wright]

I know this is sort of Championship specific...

I agree with everything Debbie said above. Just a few to add:

Put screens showing the current matches being played on the field back in the pits. Our pit team barely got to see any matches.

The seating for Einstein was frustrating. As soon as matches were done on Newton, we moved to get seats on Einstein. As soon as we got their, the lower section was already very full so we went up a level and were told that FIRST didn't want anybody on those floors and we had to go back down. We ended up at this point almost all the way around to the side lined up with the curtain separating Einstein from the rest of the dome...i.e. we could barely see the field and had to rely on the screens. Then, we see that they were now letting people up on the second and third floors...it was quite annoying...

If you want teams to use camera tracking, please be considerate where you put LED signs up around in the arenas.

From my understanding, the people on the field queuing the teams were not the most polite or understanding...

[theun4gven]

Get rid of the black volunteer shirts. Volunteers should stand out, and the black shirts did nothing to help that. Even a white shirt would stand out more.

[LeelandS]

I'm going to forget the field issues right now, since EVERYONE knows that's something to be looked into.

First, I think the rule book needs to be more specific. Thare was a lot of ambiguity this year as far as rule interpretation, so I think next time the GDC shouldn't skimp on the rule book. Not saying it needs to be overly detailed, just enough so teams shouldn't need to turn to the Q&A for seemingly simple rule clarifications.

Also, if FIRST is going to use a more general rulebook, they need to be prepared to back it up WITH the Q&A. We all know what happened to 118 earlier this year, and though it pretty much turned out alright for them, I feel it was an unfair move by The GDC to refuse to answer their question when the rules on what and what was not grappling were so vague.

I also think FIRST should move away from that age-old rule that teams aren't allowed to check field measurements for themselves. I don't see what harm there is in letting a drive crew/coach onto the field prior to opening ceremonies/the driver meeting with a tape measure to take some measurements. Or for an FTA to do it themselves and publish the results to all the teams. FIRST seems to cringe at the thought that their volunteers built their own field wrong, but I don't really see the harm.

I also think FIRST needs to be more careful when it comes to Hybrid/Autonomous points. The GDC ruled that as long as a ball entered the net in Hybrid, it would count for the full Hybrid points. I saw several times where it did not. Either they need to make sure field personel know the deal with those, or they need to think about their sensor placement (i.e. a sensor on the hoop. I know that would be pretty difficult to implement, it's just an example).

I, personally, would like to see FIRST stray away from games where game piece deterioration isn't such a huge factor, but I know what pretty much impossible. But I can wish.

Those are pretty much my gripes. Nothing too extreme. Just some logistical stuff.

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by LeelandS

]
I also think FIRST should move away from that age-old rule that teams aren't allowed to check field measurements for themselves. I don't see what harm there is in letting a drive crew/coach onto the field prior to opening ceremonies/the driver meeting with a tape measure to take some measurements. Or for an FTA to do it themselves and publish the results to all the teams. FIRST seems to cringe at the thought that their volunteers built their own field wrong, but I don't really see the harm.

This issue happened to 1747 in 2010. The field used at BMR was off as the tunnel was IIRC 1/2" too low. The robot didn't have that amount of tolerance height wise (it was pretty crammed to say the least) and it caused the robot to be unable to to use the tunnel. This issue might have cost us the regional, as one reason why we lost in the SFs was due to being blocked from crossing bumps by the defense.

BTW, the same field appeared at our second regional (Buckeye) as well...

[Camren]

Originally Posted by LeelandS

I, personally, would like to see FIRST stray away from games where game piece deterioration isn't such a huge factor, but I know what pretty much impossible. But I can wish.

Those are pretty much my gripes. Nothing too extreme. Just some logistical stuff.

Funny thing about that suggestion. Team 3081 roboeagles seemed to be one of the few who considered that variable which is why we went with a catapult design.

[Joon Park]

Originally Posted by Camren

Funny thing about that suggestion. Team 3081 roboeagles seemed to be one of the few who considered that variable which is why we went with a catapult design.

Actually, from what I gathered at regionals/champs, quite a few teams considered the variable. It's just that very few teams actually built to account for it.

I know I was skeptical during week 1 about the ball deterioration being a huge factor, I was proven dead wrong during shooter testing. We then spent the rest of the season, right up until the championship, trying to build a ball compression tester that would account for that. We never got it to work.

[kmusa]

Originally Posted by Joon Park

Actually, from what I gathered at regionals/champs, quite a few teams considered the variable. It's just that very few teams actually built to account for it.

I know I was skeptical during week 1 about the ball deterioration being a huge factor, I was proven dead wrong during shooter testing. We then spent the rest of the season, right up until the championship, trying to build a ball compression tester that would account for that. We never got it to work.

[this probably belongs in 2012 Lessons Learned: The Rebuttle]

Sorry about digressing, but I need to offer some clarification. Our big problem was that our shooter's performance wasn't very repeatable - we need more research in the off-season.

The balls are cheap, foam basketballs. Early in the season, they were described as all from the same lot (Q&A, maybe?). From comments from Championships, sounds like there was a second lot. They vary in size, weight, and compressibility. From what we saw, as well as others (525 posted their ball data, 12.5% was the highest range of values for a single ball), each ball also varied in uniformity - orientation was significant. (And there was a hysteresis effect as well.)

And what did we ultimately see? Some teams shot well, some didn't, and 16 was in a class by itself.

I will echo earlier comments - whatever game peices the GDC selects, they need to be available quickly in reasonable quantities, and for a reasonable price. Companies deal with these issues all the time - sign the NDA, and get ready for a really strange purchasing cycle.

I am so glad we went to Championships, and I can't wait to get back there again.

[nitneylion452]

I think the issue with the extreme variability in the balls at CMP (though I was not there) is this:

In the beginning of the season, the GDC ordered what they though at the time were enough balls, one "batch," if you will. As the season progressed, they ran out or were running low on balls from that batch due to the high number of balls that were getting ripped to shreds (the no damage to game pieces rule was very difficult to enforce and very easy to commit). So for the CMP, rather than use old balls, FIRST ordered more from the manufacturer, but these were different. Thus different balls.

[IndySam]

Originally Posted by Camren

Funny thing about that suggestion. Team 3081 roboeagles seemed to be one of the few who considered that variable which is why we went with a catapult design.

Couldn't agree with you more. In our early testing we discovered the variability would be a huge problem. That's why we went with our fling-a-pult and it was never a problem for us.

[jblay]

The field sketches need to be more similar to the field with parts of the field that robots react off of, or at least include some optional sketches that are closer to the actual field. So many teams couldn't lower the bridge at the start of the season and had a shooter designed for the backboard in the sketches and then missed shots that went too hard off of the backboard on the actual field.