[moderated] You write <G34> and <G35>

[Joel Glidden]

Originally Posted by MrToast

That's not right at all!

Robot problems that might result in a dq result from other robots, not the carpeting of the arena.

Good try, though.

The point is that "vigorous interaction" is a part of the game environment. It's no secret that our robots should be designed to handle it.

[MikeDubreuil]

Originally Posted by JVN

Yet somehow your system is preemptive?

I'm missing your point.

The time based penalty is certainly not preemptive, but...

The point is that the yellow card is not a penalty. In order to get the yellow card you have or are coming close to violating the rules. Why don't we couple the yellow card with a 10 second penatly, there's a tangible penalty. It's not a slap on the wrist and it's not a DQ. It seems to me like it's the perfect balance.

[MrToast]

Originally Posted by Joel Glidden

The point is that "vigorous interaction" is a part of the game environment. It's no secret that our robots should be designed to handle it.

Perhaps a better example might have been one of your autonomous planes getting hit by another autonomous plane. That matches the idea of a robot hitting another robot better.

The birds and the air and the clouds were there before the plane was, just like the field and the carpet and the platforms were there before the robots were.

[MrToast]

Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil

The point is that the yellow card is not a penalty. In order to get the yellow card you have or are coming close to violating the rules. Why don't we couple the yellow card with a 10 second penatly, there's a tangible penalty. It's not a slap on the wrist and it's not a DQ. It seems to me like it's the perfect balance.

IMHO, that is an excellent compromise!

[ngreen]

Again I have to explain part of my reasoning behind the card system.

SIMPLICITY.

You know. KISS.

It is a lot easier to hold up a card than it is to have a system to disable the robot for a certain period when a foul occurs.

The yellow card doesn't incur a penalty but it put you close to a penalty and carries through to the next round so that discourage overly rough play. The call is also not overly harsh enough that ref will call it when needed and not worry that they may be making a huge mistake. So you get your penalty, easier to call, and are able to discourage teams from certain kinds of play.

I think a 10 second penalty along with the card might be close to too much. And it is way harder to implement. Simplicity.


edit: That's my only problem. I'm trying to make it easy to implement into the game.

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil

The time based penalty is certainly not preemptive, but...

The point is that the yellow card is not a penalty. In order to get the yellow card you have or are coming close to violating the rules. Why don't we couple the yellow card with a 10 second penatly, there's a tangible penalty. It's not a slap on the wrist and it's not a DQ. It seems to me like it's the perfect balance.

I think the time based penalty is great. There can be different times for different violations. I like this system because some resolution can be built into the system.

[Don Wright]

go look at this poll thread - 25% so far are people who watched matches where they thought things got out of hand and penalties should have been called, and they werent

yea...and 76% (at the time I write this) of the peopl think everything is fine. So, do we change the rules for the minority, or leave them the same for the majority?

10 seconds is an eternity in a 1 minute 45 second match...

[MikeDubreuil]

Originally Posted by ngreen

The yellow card doesn't incur a penalty but it put you close to a penalty and carries through to the next round so that discourage overly rough play. The call is also not overly harsh enough that ref will call it when needed and not worry that they may be making a huge mistake. So you get your penalty, easier to call, and are able to discourage teams from certain kinds of play.

I think a 10 second penalty along with the card might be close to too much. And it is way harder to implement. Simplicity.

You want to talk simplicity and want a system that carries over yellow penalty cards from match to match? I bet if we asked IFI if the 10 second penalty would be possible to implement they would tell us, "that's simple."

[Karthik]

A few of my thoughts on various things that have been said.

Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil

A very small minority were upset with the church of England, now we have the United States of America. It's also possible that some people are not coming out because they fear being the minority.

Yup, being persecuted for heresy and getting negative reputation are just about the same thing. For sure.

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

is this what we want? to be on ESPN?

This is exactly what we want. There is no better way to further the mission of FIRST than to get widespread exposure.

I'm not saying that FIRST needs to go the way of battlebots, but I am saying there needs to be vigorous robot interaction. When I hear about all sorts of pushing zones and penalties for any sort of tipping, it makes be very afraid that we'll end up back in 2001. Is this what we want?

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

If thats what everyone wants, I'll go along with it - but at least tell us at the kickoff meeting so we dont feel like idiots when we show up at our first regional and watch our 6 weeks of hard work get battered, smashed and toppled repeatedly.

FIRST was very clear at the beginning of this season, build robust robots. I'm normally a proponent of very strong defensive robots. This year my team decided to go a different route and we built a fast offensive bot. We knew we'd be a target, so we did everything we could to protect it. We designed outriggers (never used due to weight issues) to keep us upright, we put as little weight as possibile in our 2X manipulator to keep our center of gravity low. We knew teams would try and push and pin us, so we went with a strafing drive train.

Even when it came down to alliance selection, we tried to make sure that we had a defensive partner who could run some screens for us and help us stay in the clear. (See Teams 48 & 229)

You can't design a complicated offensive robot and not expect to be a target. That's just irresponsible. Designing a robot to withstand the rigors of defensive gameplay is part of the challenge we undertake every January.

Every year at this time, there is inevitably some one who feels their robot lost because of unfair defensive play, and bad referees. We then have to endure talk that if this keeps up FIRST is going to turn into battlebots. Isn't this getting old?

In 1999 teams 1, 45 and 68 controlled the puck with large defensive arms. People complained, say this was going so start a horrible new trend. Did it?

In 2002 after 180 torched Wildstang (Div Semifinals) and Beatty (even though the Beatty alliance pulled out the victory with some great play by 66 and 173) with their powerful drivetrain and wedge, people claimed that everyone and their mother's parrots would use wedges from now on. Did that happen? (Aside: Yes, many teams used wedges in 2003, but not in the attacking manner that people feared)

People see string defense show up in the elimination rounds every year. That doesn't mean world is going to end. In my opinion defense is still under appreciated in FIRST. I would never have my team build a solely defensive robot, because it's too risky. There's a huge chance that teams could ignore you, and you'll be spending Saturday afternoon at the funnel cake stand.

To sum up my long stream of consciousness, we should not try and eliminate fair defensive play. Robots intentionally trying to damage one and another is clearly wrong. Solid defense consisting of pushing, ramming and incidental tipping is fair game. I have a lot of faith in the referees that FIRST has. Let them be judge of what is intentionally destructive and what is just simply a sound strategic decision to play some hard nosed defense.

[ngreen]

Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil

You want to talk simplicity and want a system that carries over yellow penalty cards from match to match? I bet if we asked IFI if the 10 second penalty would be possible to implement they would tell us, "that's simple."

Simplicity in real time. You've got to have someone to push the button to start the penalty.

[JVN]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

the yellow card will look cool next to the agressive teams champion trophy, thats the point

If the yellow card team wins a champion trophy, wouldn't that imply that they didn't "cross the line" enough times to merit a DQ?

The only way this scenario would occur is if a team received a yellow card in the final match. And that would only occur if they hadn't received a yellow card in any other matches.

The yellow card is the warning, a quantitative, solid warning. The red card is the penalty itself. If a team doesn't progress past the yellow card, they simply don't merit a penalty.

You're reaching Ken.

John

[MrToast]

Here's a question:

If you get a yellow card in one match, would that card carry over to the other matches?

Example, a team gets a yellow card in qual # 42, and then gets another in qual # 69. Would they be disqualified? Or would they need to get two yellow cards in one match?

Maybe an alternative would be something like:
2 yellow cards in one match is an automatic DQ
----or----
a total of 3 yellow cards, over all the matches, is a DQ

MrToast

[KenWittlief]

several people have plea'd 'build a robust bot' as the defense for leaving the rules alone the way they stand. Build a bot that can take it, and there is no reason for refs to DQ anyone

ok, time to inflict some physics on this thread. Its day after kickoff. I have to quantify 'robust' for my team. How good is good enough

what can we expect to happen if anything goes on the field?

given all the threads about multispeed transmissions at the beginning of the season, Ill take the worse case possible top speed, 15 mph

and the worse case robot weight, 130 pounds

for a bot to reach 15mph (22 ft/S) when dropped, it would have to fall from a height of 7.5625 feet - thats how much kinetic energy it will have when travelling 22ft/sec (all potential energy converted to kinetic energy) how much? 7.5625 * 130 = 983 foot-pounds


that doesnt sound so bad - so a bot come flying across the field at that speed and the corner of the frame hits my bot - I have to absorb all that energy -
if they catch us with the corner of their frame, the contact area might be 3 or 4 sq inches, about the size of the face of a 5 lb sledge hammer

so how far would you have to drop a 5 lb sledge hammer to give it 983 ft-lbs of kinetic energy? thats easy 983/5 = 196 feet

how fast will it be going? it comes out to 112 ft/second, or 76mph

hey, that wasnt so bad - all I have to do is design my bot so that someone can take a 5 lb sledge hammer and bash away at it for 2 minutes with an impact velocity of 76mph, hitting it anwhere, the wheels, the sides, the arms, the ball collectors, over and over

and if my bot fails then it just wasnt robust enough

in fact, we could have the inspectors do this to each bot in the pits, smack the bot for 2 minutes with a sledge hammer - if the bot breaks, it fails inspection

sounds like a good approach. Who needs rules of engagement? we can solve all our problems with thorough impact testing during inspection.

I have a sledge hammer in my garage. Anyone wanna take the robustness test with your bot?

[MikeDubreuil]

You're a hockey player. Your position is defense and the puck is in your opponents zone. Out of nowhere the puck gets passed to a hanger. There's no way you can legally stop your opponent from having a 1 on 1 with your goalie. What do you do? Without question, you would hook your stick around the guys ankle and trip him. You would receieve a 2 minute penatly for your actions. A really good player would try to hook the puck, but would settle for taking out the guy and getting a penalty.

There's situations in sports where you have to commit the penalty for the benifet of the team. In FIRST, I think if your intent was to push another robot and they happen to fall over, you should recieve a time based penalty. You needed to take the robot out in order to save the game.

As far as the cards go...
Yellow - let's make it purely a warning.
Red - You get a 10 second penalty.
The ref also has the option to DQ you.

BTW: I have been saying 10 second penalty. This is purely for conversational purposes and the actual value could be decided on later.

[JVN]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

hey, that wasnt so bad - all I have to do is design my bot so that someone can take a 5 lb sledge hammer and bash away at it for 2 minutes with an impact velocity of 76mph, hitting it anwhere, the wheels, the sides, the arms, the ball collectors, over and over

Or...
You could design your robot to deflect away some of that force.
You could design your drive to outrun/out manuever your aggressor.
You could train your drivers well enough that you don't take a beating for 2 minutes.

We do all of the above. 3 competitions later, the drivetrain seems fine.

I imagine the definition of robust is not:
PVC tri-wheels left exposed to the world.