Wrong Field Measurements and Bad FMS

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by sarahg2543

Hello,
My team is competing at the Colorado Regional this year and they told me that the field measurements were wrong by an inch for the colored zones, which really affected our autonomous. We weren't the only ones who complained. Not to mention, the tape was diagonal, not straight. The field crew told us that it was the robot who needed to adjust their autonomous, but we just eye-balled positioning our robot by an inch. Did anybody else hear about this? I think it's pretty serious when it is affecting the autonomous of teams, especially since it can really make a difference in points. I also know that the practice field measurements were wrong.

Another issue that we encountered was that the FMS tended to malfunction, especially in the red alliance driver station. I saw a lot of robots lose their communication. The field crew said that it was due to the robot most of the time instead of replaying the match.

This is jut to point out that there are still some things that need to be fixed in fields for the next week of competition.

So sarahg2543, do you still think that the dimension difference of an inch is an issue? Or that the FMS is really faulty?

I don't want to get on yur case, but maybe this can be a good lesson is avoiding conclusions before the data is known. You came to some pretty condemning and strong conclusions up there. Do you think that your approach could have been different here?

[wireties]

FIRST Team 1296 was lucky enough to get the leftover carpet from the Dallas Regional. It is a real blessing to have the carpet but it stretches many inches in all directions as you try to lay it down and realign the field markings. The fields have to have good-sized tolerances.

[walruspunch]

Team 1977 was wondering about the FMS too....By our count, somewhere between 10 and 20 teams had issues during matches. Some of that is likely coincidence, but there was way too much interference to mark it all as something from a team. Our robot worked perfectly on the practice matches and in the pit while tethered, but for the first day of qualifiers, we could do nothing. No autonomous, no teleop, nothing. As soon as we put it on the field, we went dead, with no robots hitting us or interference. When we brought it back to the pit, it worked perfectly every time. We had several officials look it over and find no explanation. We also had several people check over the code and find no explanation. We finally made it work, albeit with lag, by disabling the autonomous feature and switching out the CRIO. However, other teams that had communication issues had been cleared up on their own, leading to the possibility that making these changes was coincidence. Our robot was the worst off, losing a full day of competition, but another team was only able to run for half of every match before losing connection. Several times, a team would be dead at the start of a match and gain connection about 10 seconds into teleop mode. Rebooting the CRIO helped for a time, but it takes a lot of time within each match and only seems to be a temporary fix. It seems too big of a deal involving too many teams to be marked down as an error on every team. (Unsure, but it may have happened to a team in the finals as well. Last 10 seconds they were not moving, but it could have been driver error.)