San Diego: Tech Foul in Finals

[JB987]

Let this outcome stand as a precautionary tale...it appears if your inbounders attempt to add any force to propell the ball outward toward their receiving robot anywhere away from the low goal they may incur a g32 call or even g31 should it make contact with an opposing ball or robot. Results from yesterday may continue to reinforce typical soft short toss into inbounders bots as a prevailing strategy. Unfortunately this means defenders jobs become easier as they know balls will almost always be inbounded next to the low goal. Are you willing to risk giving 50 pts to your opponent every time you in bound to a robot away from the low goal?

Keep in mind even one errant or intercepted inbound may apparently be percieved as a "strategy"...

Having said this I want to convey my congrats to our opponents. Unbelievably tough defense, great shooting and driving. Hats off to the whole alliance.

[griggsy]

I just wanted to drop my two cents in and hopefully provide some clarifying insights.

First, congratulations to the winning alliance, 330, 1266, 4583 and 4486. No matter what I (or anyone else, IMHO) may think of the final call, it can not be denied that the winning alliance earned their win. They had a remarkable and impressive rise through the eliminations. I deeply respect all the teams involved, and 1266, just FYI, you guys have a special place in my heart too. Our team would likely not even exist if not for the support provided by your team and 1538.

Lest I seem remiss, I want to thank our alliance members 987 and 3250 too for competing along side us and being so gracious even in defeat. It was an honor and a pleasure.

Following that, I want to thank the refs. They have a very hard job, and they are good people that strive to make these competitions fair and outstanding. While I may disagree with a call at times, I fully respect their calls and even often understand how in different shoes, an event can seem contrary to how I interpreted it.

I know my drive team well, and I can assure you all, that no matter how it may look in the video, it was certainly not the intent of our human player to disrupt 330 with the toss in. In fact, I think that was the first foul he has caused for the entire season. Furthermore, we always discourage our drive team from employing any kind of what we call "sweep the leg tactics" (for those of you that have not seen Karate Kid, I mean malicious or questionable intent tactics). Even so, I understand how in the heat of competition this event could have been perceived that way by the refs, and respect their ruling. Their job is exceedingly difficult this year. IMHO, in this year's game, they have been tasked with too much to do, and even so they are striving to make it all work. Truly commendable.

Finally, I have to say our team had a ton of fun at the San Diego Regional and was very fortunate at the competition. Thanks to all involved, especially all the volunteer staff and all the teams that helped make the event memorable. I look forward to seeing many of those same teams, and some I missed seeing at our regional this year, in Vegas.

[Hjelstrom]

Originally Posted by griggsy

I know my drive team well, and I can assure you all, that no matter how it may look in the video, it was certainly not the intent of our human player to disrupt 330 with the toss in. In fact, I think that was the first foul he has caused for the entire season.

I remember watching one of 2485's last qualifying matches and saw their human player use the same type of pass (long pass with some backspin) when their robot was across the field from him. At the time another mentor and I even commented to each other on how good of a human player he was (very careful on the truss catches too).

The match was almost over, our robots couldn't reach the loading spot, and he was trying to quickly get the ball back in play. He shouldn't feel bad about this play in any way.

[ToddF]

There seem to be two questions being debated.
1) Was the foul called correctly? I'll pass on that question.
2) Is 50 points an excessive penalty for this penalty? No, it's not. Every year very smart people analyze the game looking for strategies of play that provide a net benefit. There are CD threads created where people debate whether the benefit of intentionally committing a foul outweigh the cost of the penalty points. If a ball has three assists on it, and a robot attempts a high goal score with that ball, it is potentially worth 40 points. If a human player throws a 2nd ball that interferes with the first, and prevents those 40 points from being scored, that's a benefit of 40 points. To dissuade this behavior, the associated penalty MUST be greater. Otherwise, the cost/benefit analysis shows that it is actually beneficial to throw balls at certain high goal shots to prevent them from being scored. Yes, there is a whole question of whether this behavior is GP. But, it has been persuasively argued by Chairman's award winning teams (the ones we are supposed to look up to) that game play other than what the game committee intended (scoring into opposite alliance's goals, for example) is smart rather than non-GP.

Add in the fact that referees are overworked and miss penalty calls all the time, and you have teams which may decide that committing this sort of foul is worth it EVEN IF the penalty is 50 points. It was against the rules in logomotion for human players to throw tubes to prevent robots from hanging. But there were teams that did it. Teams calculated that for certain situations, the risk of getting called for the foul was low enough and the benefit in points denied vs the cost in penalty points made committing the foul a beneficial strategy. Note that people in this thread are arguing that an action has to be performed TWICE before it becomes a "strategy". The flip side implication is that the first foul is "free". To discourage this type of game play, penalty point values MUST be high enough so it's just not worth it.

Just want to add my 0.014490 euros to the discussion of the call itself. Let it be known that I wasn't a ref there, or know any of the teams involved.

If this same exact thing occurred at my regional, I can honestly say I would have called the foul almost the same way. I would have called a G31 instead of a G32, that's my only change.

Watching the replay, it looks to me like the red robot is playing defense while the human player is trying to inbound the ball. Couple that with the very hard throw from the HP, and it looks even more like a strategy to inhibit the robot.

Keep in mind that referees see the actions of the robots, and don't know what the drivers' intents are. So while you may not be doing something to commit a foul on purpose, if it looks like you are, then a penalty will be called.

[mkausas]

What is hardest for me is that many other obvious fouls occurred and were not called or even considered after the match had ended.

Within the first 30 seconds of the match our belt, which drives our intake rollers, was snapped off due to 330's intake being extended. This was obviously unintentional yet it caused us to not be able to pick up off of the ground for the rest of the match. No foul was called.

Image of when 330's intake snapped our belt:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1LW...9FN3I0NXc/edit

Image of our belt dragging on the ground:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1L...it?usp=sharing

Later in the match 1266 was heavy defense on 987; however, they drove up onto 987 for a solid 4-5 seconds making obvious contact inside their frame perimeter.

Image of 1266 on top of 987:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1L...it?usp=sharing

Both cases were protrusions into other robot's frame perimeters and one caused major damage to our robot causing us not be able to score for the rest of the match. When we went to the question box after the match with video evidence of what had happened we were told that the match score would not be reconsidered. It just confuses me how in such an important match the refs made such a controversial call yet didn't make any calls on two such obvious fouls...

I only post this in order to provide feedback to refs and any FIRST employees that may read this response. As my teammates have already said, congrats to the winning alliance.

[TheMadCADer]

Originally Posted by mkausas

Image of when 330's intake snapped our belt:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1LW...9FN3I0NXc/edit

Image of our belt dragging on the ground:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1L...it?usp=sharing

Image of 1266 on top of 987:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1L...it?usp=sharing

Just as a heads up, I couldn't get any of those images to load. Maybe try either uploading them to Chief as an attachment or hosting them on something like Imgur.

[Dave McLaughlin]

All of the images loaded find for me, perhaps you're behind a firewall or something?

[David8696]

They worked for me too.

[TheMadCADer]

Originally Posted by Dave McLaughlin

All of the images loaded find for me, perhaps you're behind a firewall or something?

No firewall, about as plain of a home connection as possible.

Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. are all notorious for doing exactly this. They're great for sharing larges files between a small group of people, but for public sharing let's please try to use something functional.

[Jacob Conway]

Originally Posted by mkausas

Image of when 330's intake snapped our belt:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1LW...9FN3I0NXc/edit

Image of our belt dragging on the ground:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1L...it?usp=sharing

Image of 1266 on top of 987:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1L...it?usp=sharing

They aren't loading for me either.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by mkausas

Image of when 330's intake snapped our belt:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1LW...9FN3I0NXc/edit

Image of our belt dragging on the ground:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1L...it?usp=sharing

Later in the match 1266 was heavy defense on 987; however, they drove up onto 987 for a solid 4-5 seconds making obvious contact inside their frame perimeter.

Image of 1266 on top of 987:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1L...it?usp=sharing

They loaded for me. My opinion of this is an unfortunate truth of the reffing process: if a ref doesn't actually see 330's intake in there and physically snapping the belt, then how can they be certain that that's why the belt broke? As I did earlier in this thread (or another thread, I don't remember...), I'm simply playing the necessary devil's advocate in this discussion and am making no accusations whatsoever. We had this come into question at Mt. Olive, and unfortunately, since the ref didn't actually see the damage occur, it can't be called. Obviously, I can't speak for the refs at San Diego, but I empathize with them in that frame perimeter damage is one of the toughest things to call.

[RallyJeff]

Originally Posted by mkausas

Both cases were protrusions into other robot's frame perimeters and one caused major damage to our robot causing us not be able to score for the rest of the match. When we went to the question box after the match with video evidence of what had happened we were told that the match score would not be reconsidered. It just confuses me how in such an important match the refs made such a controversial call yet didn't make any calls on two such obvious fouls...

Are they obvious? Not all protrusions into an opposing robot's frame perimeter are fouls.

With the March 4th game update, G28 changed: it now prohibits initiating deliberate or damaging contact inside the frame perimeter of an opposing robot. If "the actions of the damaged robot are the catalyst for the damage", there's no foul.

I wasn't at this match, so I can't say whether this is the case here. I'm just throwing it out as something to consider.

[sammas121]

We just got back from the Utah regional and the finals went about the same for us there as well. We were picked as a defensive robot on a strong alliance, (although we were seeded 5th we breezed through our quarter finals) and as such ran into a few difficulties. Right when our round was about to start our laptop had a blue screen of death, as we were walking out onto the field. We quickly rebooted the laptop (thats how we had fixed it earlier). When the laptop was rebooting they started announcing the teams and asked us if we were ready to compete so we yelled no! and made an "x" with our arms. The Technical Advisor then came and checked to see if we were almost ready and when he turned around one of the other refs on the sidelines told us we had to step behind the playing line so the match could start. Because the laptop couldnt finish rebooting we lost (because we were defense). We went and talked to the head ref and he said that we should have stayed in front of the line to distinctively demonstrate that we werent ready. (violating the other ref who told us we had to step behind the line) he also said that he had no recollection of us telling them that we werent ready, and when we pointed out that the Tech advisor had seen us and even come over he said that because we did step back he assumed we were ready for the match. During the next match of the semis another robot on our alliance got hit hard enough to crack the lexan ( inside of their frame so it should have been a technical which would have won it for us) when we went to the referee and showed him the lexan was cracked he looked at us and said "do you really want to do this" and then proceeded to say that because he had no recollection of the hit he couldnt call it a technical. When we then pointed out that it was cracked he said that he did not trust our honor system and that we may have just cracked the lexan earlier and were only showing it now. While I do appreciate the refs and their volunteer time, i wonder what we shouldve done in that situation. We have always been taught to follow the refs and so it was rather confusing when we were told we should have disobeyed the ref (by staying over the line, which couldve resulted in a technical). Also it was confusing to us when the lexan cracked because before when that problem happened they told us we had to leave the robot on the field and show the refs, so when we finally did this they did nothing. Your thoughts??

Originally Posted by sammas121

...Right when our round was about to start our laptop had a blue screen of death, as we were walking out onto the field. We quickly rebooted the laptop (thats how we had fixed it earlier). When the laptop was rebooting they started announcing the teams and asked us if we were ready to compete so we yelled no! and made an "x" with our arms. The Technical Advisor then came and checked to see if we were almost ready and when he turned around one of the other refs on the sidelines told us we had to step behind the playing line so the match could start. Because the laptop couldnt finish rebooting we lost (because we were defense).

It sounds to me like there was a major breakdown in communication between you, the FTA, the head ref, the scoring table, and the emcee. The FTA should have signaled to the scoring table not to start the match. The head ref should have seen the FTA at your driver station, and known not to start. You should have been pounding on the window to get the head ref and emcee's attention to not start. The head ref and FTA should have had a better channel to communicate with each other. And finally, the emcee should have been paying attention to the FTA, head ref, and scoring table to know when it's ok to start.

So there are quite a few problems here, but know that there were actions you could have taken to prevent the problems.

During the next match of the semis another robot on our alliance got hit hard enough to crack the lexan...when we went to the referee and showed him the lexan was cracked he looked at us and said...that because he had no recollection of the hit he couldnt call it a technical.

You didn't state whether the opponent was inside your frame perimeter causing the damage, or if it was just a really hard bumper-to-bumper hit. But no matter, if a referee didn't see it happen, they can't call it. Bringing a damaged part of your robot to the question box won't help you get a call. Like I said, if we didn't see it, we can't call it, and we have no way of knowing if that part you brought happened in the last match, or one that you keep on your cart for such situations. I know that's not what you wanted to hear, but the referee not calling it after the match was the correct thing to do.