[FRC Blog] Orlando Incident

[PayneTrain]

Blog Date: Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - 11:26

At the Orlando Regional, the number one ranked alliance was retroactively disqualified for two matches because of a failure to be re-inspected after a modification had been made to one of their robots, the robot of Team 1902, Exploding Bacon. I received a phone call from the field on this incident before the disqualification was announced, and supported the recommendation of the disqualification based on the information I had available at the time.

I received detailed reports from volunteers at the event within a few days after the incident, reinforcing my understanding that the team had not been re-inspected after the modification. Recognizing this differed from the team’s account as reported on the forums, I decided to not address this issue publicly, over concerns of causing additional friction between the volunteers and the teams.

However, because of additional information I received and after more consideration, I decided to look more closely at this incident. I recently reached out to both the team and the volunteers for additional reports. Unlike the additional information I received in the recent Team 1323 incident, the additional information I received in this situation did not let me resolve the discrepancies in reports. I am not able to construct a coherent narrative based on the information I have, and I won’t be reversing the ruling that was made at the event. I don’t believe anyone supplying information is being disingenuous –human memories are imperfect, and it’s easy to misremember exact sequences of events or precisely who said what, especially days or even weeks after the event itself. FIRST is a Character driven organization, and my working assumption, unless unambiguously demonstrated otherwise, is that everyone who participates is reporting information accurately as they remember it.

From the recent information I received, however, I was able to get a better sense for the damage caused to the reputations of Team 1902 and their alliance partners, Teams 233, The Pink Team, and 624, CRyptonite. I understand now that a report of this issue even reached at least one of the local papers. Whatever the actual sequence of events was, I am absolutely convinced that neither 1902, nor their alliance partners, intended to skirt the rules in this situation or believed that anything they were doing was wrong.

I apologize to Teams 1902, 233, and 624 for any tarnish this has put on their reputations. I believe this is not deserved. I also apologize for my lack of immediate action on this issue.

Lastly, FIRST wants to improve from this experience, so we are putting guidelines in place with the Inspectors to ensure re-inspections required because of robot modifications are fully documented, to help prevent an issue like this from occurring again.

I apologize again to the teams and the community, for this incident.

Frank

Well, there you go.

[Ernst]

So this basically means that we'll be filling out a form every time we make a change to the robot? That isn't too big of a deal.

Now if only we could get our programmers to do that

[JohnFogarty]

This is what I expected to occur in this instance. Still unfortunate that it occured but i'm sure all the Orlando teams appreciate the transparency.

[Jared Russell]

Props to Frank for acknowledging situations like these head on and working to make sure they don't happen again.

[techtiger1]

What I don't understand here is why the officials on the field seemingly could not make a call that was final. I understand consulting with FIRST about the issue to get the call right but take responsibility for what was or wasn't done. Frank can give his opinion based on information he was given but don't come out and say the ruling from FRC headquarters is this and that's final. Say the refs consulted with FIRST regarding what they thought the rules said and the final call from the field is this.

I want to thank Frank and FIRST for public comment on the matter and I am glad provisions are being looked at to make the reinspection process better.

[Jon Stratis]

It will be interesting to see how we're going to be tracking reinspections. As I'm sure everyone can agree, teams make changes or repairs at competition all the time - the work seems to never stop, and just walking around the pits for 5 minutes shows me at least a dozen teams who are doing something that needs reinspection - and an hour later, it'll be a different dozen! This poses some interesting paperwork issues, in that we'll possibly be generating a lot of additional paper to keep track of it!

I know at my regionals, I have inspectors stationed at 3 spots Friday and Saturday - in the queueing line, at the field, and at the inspection station. This means teams can get reinspected when they ask, AND that every team gets a small reinspection before every match AND that every team that breaks on the field has an inspector following them back to their pit to ensure the repair or replacement is reinspected immediately (often because the inspector is helping the team do the repair or figure out what to do!). If we have to keep track of paperwork for all of these reinspections at a regional... yikes! I certainly hope that FIRST can come up with a wireless, computerized solution for us (something like the NI Parkway app so inspectors can document reinspections quickly right from their smartphone or tablet!).

[AllenGregoryIV]

Very glad to see Frank finally publicly address this issue. I have had the pleasure to work with both 624 and 233 closely and they are both world class organizations and I respect them both greatly. I haven't competed with 1902 since their rookie season but they are still my go to example of what FIRST imagery is all about and I have only ever heard great things about their program.

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by ZehP

So this basically means that we'll be filling out a form every time we make a change to the robot? That isn't too big of a deal.

Now if only we could get our programmers to do that

As it stands now, when teams are inspected, is there a timestamp that goes along with it? Perhaps on the display it could show exactly when an inspector last officially passed a team, and as long as it's before the match time, all is well.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

It will be interesting to see how we're going to be tracking reinspections. As I'm sure everyone can agree, teams make changes or repairs at competition all the time - the work seems to never stop, and just walking around the pits for 5 minutes shows me at least a dozen teams who are doing something that needs reinspection - and an hour later, it'll be a different dozen! This poses some interesting paperwork issues, in that we'll possibly be generating a lot of additional paper to keep track of it!

I know at my regionals, I have inspectors stationed at 3 spots Friday and Saturday - in the queueing line, at the field, and at the inspection station. This means teams can get reinspected when they ask, AND that every team gets a small reinspection before every match AND that every team that breaks on the field has an inspector following them back to their pit to ensure the repair or replacement is reinspected immediately (often because the inspector is helping the team do the repair or figure out what to do!). If we have to keep track of paperwork for all of these reinspections at a regional... yikes! I certainly hope that FIRST can come up with a wireless, computerized solution for us (something like the NI Parkway app so inspectors can document reinspections quickly right from their smartphone or tablet!).

I like this approach. I know at one of our events this year I had to wander around for 20 minutes trying to find an inspector to reinspect us after we added a GoPro to our bot (we had plenty of weight but given that the LRI at the event had ALREADY cursed at us for asking a question I wasn't taking chances). 30 minutes later one came by and okayed it.

So, I think I might push to have this practice implemented in NE. Thanks

[JeremyLansing]

I for one am definitely looking forward to an improvement in the reinspection process. Given the meticulous nature of initial inspections, it always seemed strange to me that reinspections could be a cursory once-over by an inspector. I would love a bit more thoroughness, even if it means reinspections take a little longer. Hopefully what happened at Orlando won't happen again.

[Ben Martin]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

I certainly hope that FIRST can come up with a wireless, computerized solution for us (something like the NI Parkway app so inspectors can document reinspections quickly right from their smartphone or tablet!).

Funny that you should mention this--the inspectors at Springside-Chestnut Hill and MAR Champs were using tablets with some sort of inspection app. We weren't given any forms to sign, just a sticker when we were done. There were a bunch of features, including a nice diagram of all the teams on a pit map and where they stood in the inspection process.

Maybe they were piloting something? Really not sure.

[Cory]

I'm glad Frank has cleared this up.

It still concerns me that there seems to be a precedent set here where a team can be retroactively DQ'ed for being in violation of a robot rule.

T6 seems to have been taken to the extreme and interpreted to mean that if a team is ever in a condition where they would not currently pass inspection (but were previously inspected), they can be DQ'ed from a match at any point in time thereafter.

My interpretation of the rule is that a team must have passed initial inspection in order to play and that any condition that puts them out of compliance with the rules must be remedied as soon as it is called to their attention, before they can go on the field again, per G4

Perhaps a Q&A is appropriate here.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Ben Martin

Funny that you should mention this--the inspectors at Springside-Chestnut Hill and MAR Champs were using tablets with some sort of inspection app. We weren't given any forms to sign, just a sticker when we were done. There were a bunch of features, including a nice diagram of all the teams on a pit map and where they stood in the inspection process.

Maybe they were piloting something? Really not sure.

I heard there was a pilot of a new event management app in MAR... you never know if pilots will be successful and adopted, or fail and be set aside though - I certainly hope it was successful!

[jvriezen]

I hope the paperwork burden is minimized or even eliminated. I think an decent solution would be a pad of change forms that all inspectors could keep in their back pocket. It would include a tear off portion that the team retains as proof of re-inspection and part that stays in the pad (and is filed at the inspection station). It would note the date/time of re-inspection, nature of changes, and new weight (if re-weighed). This would still allow for 'on the spot' re-inspections when a team doesn't have time to go to the inspection station before the next match or during elim fix-ups.

Maybe even simpler is for the team to whip out a video camera/phone/tablet and record a short video that includes the nature of the change and a statement from inspector that it has been inspected and a statement of date/time etc.

I actually had a team do exactly that when I re-inspected their bot after they added a frisbee blocker to defend against a tall FCS bot last year. It keeps the situation as now, but the team retains video evidence that an inspector has said "Team 9999 has officially passed re-inspection at 11:40AM on March 15th for the addition of a nuclear reactor to drive the Freon cooled hydraulically controlled flame throwing arm system." The video would include shots of the parts on the robot that have been added or changed. Only the team needs to retain the video to respond to any challenges about re-inspection.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

I heard there was a pilot of a new event management app in MAR... you never know if pilots will be successful and adopted, or fail and be set aside though - I certainly hope it was successful!

This is correct...I heard the overall response was pretty positive. It was used for everything from judging to inspecting to the game announcer reading off names.