Penalty for raising tetra higher than player station?

[Meandmyself]

In the quarterfinals at BAE 1276 was rammed and it caused a tetra to fling wildly over our driver and operator. The ref had his hand right over 1276's E-stop. Luckily we managed to move away from the wall. Why would they shut us down if we weren't the cause of the tetra overhead?

Even if 1276 was not the cause of the unsafe play, shutting down 1276 was a possible solution to the unsafe situation. The ref is trying to stop unsafe play the quickest way possible, not to penalize a team for creating an unsafe condition. That comes later, once people are out of danger.

[devicenull]

I think, after reading this thread I'm going out and buying a hard hat. The $6 cost from home depot is worth me not getting injured by a tetra. I wouldn't want to see a robot disabled if its over the wall though, its very likely it would drop the tetra. I'm not sure if a penalty is the right way to go. The field should actually have an overhang though, its very dangerous without one.

[Jillian B.]

Well, they weren't applying that rule at BAE. Several times tetras swung over the driver station. I really wish they'd put some type of covering over the drive station. Maybe like last year's ball release.

I find it ironic how safety has become a primary focus of FIRST this year, yet we have tetras leaving the field. If the robot is disabled, doesn't that mean the tetra can still fall on the drivers...?

Another rule I'd like to see applied is that ANY shoving in loading stations, including that by the same alliance be penalized. Can't say we had that happen to us, but I know it happened to other teams. Any way you look at it, it's a safety hazard.

~ Jill

[bombadier337]

I really don't like the way this rule was implemented. In our finals alliance, the oppsing team dropped a tetra directly on one of our alliance members. He wasn't disabled before the time ran out, and made it behind the line before 10 seconds was up. We told the refs that according to the rules he was supposed to have been already disabled, but they still gave them the 10 points, and we lost the match because of it.

[Salik Syed]

I do not believe there is any penalty rule, during the elimination matches we were capping our home row and had our arm fully telescoped, 114 pushed us forward and the tetra was dangling right over my head LOL, it actually game down close enough that me and the mentor pushed it back over the plexiglass with our hands... (just a natural reaction of not wanting to get bashed in the head)...he was screaming pull the arm back... mean while i was just protecting my head.. we just got a warning we would be disabled if that happened again for simple safety reasons NO PENALTY!

[Stu Bloom]

from here

Originally Posted by T. Hoffman

Seriously, it would have been nice for all team members and the crowd in attendance to know that. You can't honestly expect those drive team kids to communicate that info to everyone on their team - they're already under enough pressure to focus on the game at hand as it is. We talk about wasting bandwidth and posting needless stuff on these forums - all such debate on this topic is needless stuff and would have been eliminated if one simple 30-second announcement was made to everyone in attendance at Boilermaker.

In my opinion, the safety and game-transforming factors involved with robot arms swinging or falling outside the sidelines and tetras dangling over the player station make these issues far too important to leave the associated scoring and penalty decisions in the hands of the individual referee crews. FIRST has taken the initiative to place an even greater emphasis on safety this year, and it seems counter to that initiative if they leave this major safety decision up to each of the regional volunteer staffs. I've got to hope and assume FIRST understands this and is working on a standardized ruling that will be applied across the board and communicated to everyone. But since they have yet to release such a ruling, the severity of the penalties for robots who get a little crazy with their arms can still be debated....

I think a simple warning for placing someone's health and safety at risk is a little too lenient. If I remember correctly, a 10-point penalty was levied against any team last year that dangled a cushy air-filled ball even a little bit over the protective lexan of the player's station. So completely violating that space with a very hard object and striking other players nets only a warning? Oy.

The simplest, safest, and most logical solution to all of this would be to add more protective guarding above the player stations, as Kyle from 365 suggested in another thread. However, the $$$$ and logistics involved with that are probably too great an obstacle to overcome at this point in the season, so.....

A standard set of penalties should be put in place, but FIRST will still have to rely on the fair judgment of the referees to call the penalties when they are warranted. A proposal:

1. The "WARNING" will not come during a match; instead, it will come at the beginning of every competition day when the head ref communicates this rule to everyone in attendance and tells drivers NOT TO DO IT. EVER. Wouldn't that be simple? The refs then would not have to ever keep track of which teams had been warned and which hadn't, making their jobs easier. You're welcome.

2. Much like last year, a 10-point penalty will be levied each time a robot's arm OBVIOUSLY breaks the vertical plane of the operator's station with a tetra. Keep the arms low around the home goals. If the stacks are high there (and they tend not to be), be extra careful. The refs in each player station area should be shouting out each infraction to drive teams as they occur.

3. Any time a robot arm holding a tetra (or tetras) violates the space above a player station to the point where there is an obvious and sustained risk of tetras falling and causing injury to humans or damage to team controls for at least two seconds or more, and the robot operator refuses to comply with referee instructions to back off, in addition to receiving a 10-point penalty, that team will be ordered to back off, out of the opponent's home zone, if applicable, and remove the safety hazard, at which point, it will be disabled for the rest of the match. Failure to comply with this command in a standard amount of time (10 seconds) will result in a DQ. The defensive bots in the area will be instructed by the refs that the offensive team will be disabled, and they should not impede the removal of the offensive team's arm from the area above the player's station.

4. Teams playing defense in the areas around the player stations will be cautioned not to create the dangerous situation described above by actively using their arms to push the offensive robot's arm or tetra(s) into a dangerous position. Failure to comply will result in the defensive team receiving the penalties for whatever infractions were committed by the offensive team's arm. It should be blatantly obvious that the defensive team is ACTIVELY pushing high here - teams who raise their arms vertically to PASSIVELY block an offensive advance should not be penalized - in this case, the offensive team should then recieve the penalties for any infractions that occur.

5. If a defensive robot is playing legal defense by pushing low AND not getting underneath an offensive robot, they will NOT be penalized for the offensive robot's inability to control its arm during this contact. The offensive team must either retract its arm or risk receiving the penalties described above.

6. Robot disablement for safety infractions which occur along the sidelines will proceed as currently called. There will be no point penalties for dangerous situations, but the refs have the power to disable a bot at their discretion. I think falling onto the scorer's table falls into this category. If a defensive bot pushing high causes such a dangerous situation to occur along the sidelines, they will be disabled too. Legal, low pushing will not result in disablement of the defensive robot, if it is obvious they aren't continuing to drive their robot under the CG-challenged offensive bot if it begins to destablilize and tip over. Watch out, wedges and low riders. Do not exacerbate an unsafe situation.

7. If a robot's arm or a tetra the robot is carrying ever strikes an operator, human player, coach, ref, field volunteer, or Grandma Baker sitting in the stands, a DQ will immediately be levied against the team whose robot was at fault, based upon the rules outlined above. This is simply unexcusable and must be discouraged with the most severe penalty possible.

It is obvious that at some regionals, robot drivers with tall arms did not feel they needed to exercise the restraint, caution, and control required when entering an area where human safety is an issue, primarily because the penalties weren't severe or as swift enough to worry about. FIRST must be clear, firm, and concise (much more concise that I was, anyway) in communicating and enforcing the penalties related to this issue.


One final thing - a way to eliminate half the potential for penalties is to simply not call any penalties on drivers and teams who are foolish enough to dangle tetras over their own player stations when trying to cap, since their safety is already placed directly in their hands. I don't know how much their alliance partners would like for them to dangle/drop tetras over/onto them during a match, but I'm sure GP would prevail and a lot of interesting discussion would settle any differences following the conclusion of the match....

Very good Travis, I like your proposal.

I was a referee at the Great Lakes Regional in Ypsilanti. Our FANTASTIC Head Referee (Ron Webb) was very clear to the teams during each drivers' meeting the mornings before play began. Due to the reports of injuries from the first week of regionals Ron decided that we would be very pro-active in avoiding similar situations, so all teams were told that ANY Tetra breaking the plane above the player station end wall would result in the offending robot being disabled (per rule S01) at the earliest safe opportunity. His clear and consistent message to the teams allowed us to avoid that call throughout the entire competition.

Safety concerns at the field corners are much more difficult to address as there is approximately four feet of low field border (no high wall) along the field ends at each corner. Unfortunately I believe we did have one minor injury when a tetra left the playing field at a corner and struck a human player in the leg.

[Steve W]

Stu, Ron was also the head ref at Detroit. He called the same way. Was it good, NO. There is NO penalty in the rules that is given for "breaking the plane". I fully agree that IF there is a safety issue deal with it by clearing the area and shutting down the robot. Once the safety issue has been taken care of allow the teams to resume playing. To shut down a robot is a major "penalty" for which there is no rule. They were getting silly with some refs concentrating on the tetra and the line more than the pushing and ramming that was going on. If they were 1/4" some were being called. This in anyones mind is not a safety issue.

Enforce the rules as written. Don't have refs make their own interpretations. Again shutting down a robot is a big penalty. Not shutting down the team pushing is even worse. FIRST needs to address this situation before it gets worse.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Steve W

Stu, Ron was also the head ref at Detroit. He called the same way. Was it good, NO. There is NO penalty in the rules that is given for "breaking the plane". I fully agree that IF there is a safety issue deal with it by clearing the area and shutting down the robot. Once the safety issue has been taken care of allow the teams to resume playing. To shut down a robot is a major "penalty" for which there is no rule. They were getting silly with some refs concentrating on the tetra and the line more than the pushing and ramming that was going on. If they were 1/4" some were being called. This in anyones mind is not a safety issue.



Enforce the rules as written. Don't have refs make their own interpretations. Again shutting down a robot is a big penalty. Not shutting down the team pushing is even worse. FIRST needs to address this situation before it gets worse.

If we grant that the head referee is ultimately responsible for determining whether an action is safe or unsafe, then he is acting according to <S01> by defining the limit of safe actions. By categorically stating that any robot which crosses the plane of the field barrier is unsafe, he is providing a simple guideline by which that determination can be made, on the fly, by an official who doesn't necessarily know how the robot operates, and may not be in a position to rapidly estimate the eventual outcome of the robot's motion.

<S01> If at any time the ROBOT operation is deemed unsafe, by the determination of the referees, the ROBOT will be disabled for the remainder of the match.

The only deviation from the rules as printed is the additional stipulation that the disabling take place "at the earliest safe opportunity", which addresses the danger of a mechanism releasing a tetra or moving into an unanticipated position when power is cut. This is an absolutely necessary precaution.

Now, if the referee wants to be a little more lenient, and even a little more realistic, he might say that crossing the plane is grounds for disablement, but that each situation will be evaluated on its own merits, and that trivial incursions into that space may be ignored. But I don't see this as anything but a judgment call on the referee's part, given the nature of <S01>--he must make an interpretation in order to enforce the rule as written.

If the referees are strictly concentrating on this plane, rather than on the rest of the field, I don't think they're doing their jobs correctly (unless extra referees have been assigned to this task). Perhaps the referees have decided to be more lenient with regard to robot interaction, and are simply ignoring the pushing and shoving?

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Steve W

They were getting silly with some refs concentrating on the tetra and the line more than the pushing and ramming that was going on.

...

Not shutting down the team pushing is even worse.

Steve:

As far as pushing vs. ramming. What kind of "pushing" did you see? Pushing is very legal, as long as....

A.) it is down low
B.) it has an obvious purpose (i.e. keeping another robot from capping or preventing a robot from getting to a point on the playing field where it obviously wants to go)
and
C.) it doesn't involve getting underneath a robot and lifting them up.

Using your arm to push on a tetra held by another robot up high is also legal, but this type of defense is a much riskier proposition, as repeatedly striking another robot's arm directly up high is not permitted, nor is pushing on their arm directly causing them to tip over.

The rule is very clear in this matter. Maybe I should print out G25 on a banner the size of a freakin' Freightliner and bring it to each competition I attend? It really is a well written rule. Any ref who flags robots for engaging in the above legal activity has grossly misinterpreted that rule.

Now, back to the topic at hand....

To be fair, rules do exist in the rulebook which cover these breaking the plane situations generically, but they are far too vague and leave far too much up to the individual interpretation of each ref crew. The NFL manages all of its refereeing crews so that the rules don't change appreciably from one week to the next. Personal foul rules are well defined. Ripping the head off the QB isn't legal at one week and punishable by death the next. You may see a little variation in the way the penalty is called by different referees, and that is natural - we're all human, but the range of variation is minimal enough not to incite rebellion amongst the teams involved. All this wishy-washiness we're witnessing simply causes people like you, me, and everyone else who's chimed in on this topic to become frustrated by the inconsistency in interpretation from one ref crew to the other. FIRST needs to eliminate this inconsistency as soon as possible by defining SPECIFIC rules that ALL refs must call the same way, preferably before next week's regionals begin. Once and if that occurs, I expect everyone will be their usual GP self, accept whatever ruling FIRST makes, and both play the game AND call the game to the best of their abilities according to the rules we've been given.

[Jack Jones]

Based on referring at both GLR and Detroit, it's my opinion that the head referee should bear the lion's share in controlling the ramming and tipping. The reason is that six referees have the responsibility to follow their own robot, while the other two have the player station's and human players to watch. It was often the case where a robot will come charging from the other end (BLUE), slow down a little - sometimes - and initiate contact. The ref from that end may get delayed by (take your pick) the cameraman + wires, the human players, auto loader racks and/or humans, the Emcee, etc. and etc. So, even though the RED ref would be inclined to call something - it's not his robot - or maybe his robot isn't involved, but is in the loading station. He does not want to step on the other one's call. By the time the BLUE ref gets there, they both are thinking that the other one didn't think it was ramming - the borderline call ends up not being made.

It is also my opinion that those kinds of things get fixed by working out the mechanics. But it takes all the prep. time just to sort out the rules and the correct penalty for the infractions. It may be the price we pay for having a fresh game every year; how many years has baseball had?

I'd like to see us have a referee camp between ship date and the first competition. No camp - no ref. What we have now is to go with the veterans who volunteer and fill in with anyone who's brave, or dumb, enough to take on the challenge. No comments as to which category I belong, please!

Back on topic: (and for the last time)
I absolutely agree with Tristan. There is no way to precisely predict the consequence when a tetra is allowed to enter the player's area. Breaking the plane is THE RIGHT WAY TO DRAW THE LINE.

[Steve W]

Originally Posted by Tristan Lall

If we grant that the head referee is ultimately responsible for determining whether an action is safe or unsafe, then he is acting according to <S01> by defining the limit of safe actions. By categorically stating that any robot which crosses the plane of the field barrier is unsafe, he is providing a simple guideline by which that determination can be made, on the fly, by an official who doesn't necessarily know how the robot operates, and may not be in a position to rapidly estimate the eventual outcome of the robot's motion.

<S01> If at any time the ROBOT operation is deemed unsafe, by the determination of the referees, the ROBOT will be disabled for the remainder of the match.

The only deviation from the rules as printed is the additional stipulation that the disabling take place "at the earliest safe opportunity", which addresses the danger of a mechanism releasing a tetra or moving into an unanticipated position when power is cut. This is an absolutely necessary precaution.

To determine if something is safe or unsafe one must see what is happening. To predetermine that something is safe or unsafe is not what is stated in the rule. At no time did a ref shut down a robot that almost hit Refs, Field Attendants , Announcers or others if the tetras were not over the players station. Safety would warrant that wouldn't you agree. A robot that is turning slowly and the corner of the tetra "breaks the plane" is called for being unsafe. From regional to regional there are different calls. My issue is not the safety factor, the rules as written or any ref. My issue is that consistency and a uniform rule that spans FIRST is not in effect. Teams that were within the rules at one event are now outside of the rules at another event. Teams have built their robot based on the rules. Now teams that go high can be penalized by refs interpretation. If safety was such a big issue and concern, why is there not overhead protection built into the field.

Last year at the start there was a breaking the plane rule that was out from the beginning. It was published and called uniformly across the regionals. Like it or not it was a rule and it was enforced. I am in full support of it. This year the design/rules team did not deem it necessary to deal with this issue and as of now have also remained quiet. WHY? They changed other rules this year why not this one?

Unless asked, I will not post on this subject here again. My voice has been heard and I have received many positive and a few negative PM's on the issue. I will respond to PM's or if asked a direct question in this thread. Thanks for listening to the ranting.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Safety should come before gameplay, no questions asked. If a robot breaks the plane and poses an immediate threat to the operators, that robot needs to be shut down immediately. If a robot is pushing that robot to cause the situation, both robots need to be shut down. A warning isn't harsh enough - sure you could issue a warning, but someone might be seriously hurt by then. If this isn't changed by some of the upcoming regionals and the national competition, I just have a really bad feeling that someone is going to get seriously hurt all because the robot was not shut down when it broke the plane of the player station.

[Kit Gerhart]

Originally Posted by Ryan Dognaux

Safety should come before gameplay, no questions asked. If a robot breaks the plane and poses an immediate threat to the operators, that robot needs to be shut down immediately. If a robot is pushing that robot to cause the situation, both robots need to be shut down. A warning isn't harsh enough - sure you could issue a warning, but someone might be seriously hurt by then. If this isn't changed by some of the upcoming regionals and the national competition, I just have a really bad feeling that someone is going to get seriously hurt all because the robot was not shut down when it broke the plane of the player station.

Unfortunately, there is not an easy fix for this problem. The real fix would be for the Lexan player station windows to be about 4 feet taller, but I suspect it is too late, and would be too expensive to make that change at this point.

Shutting down robots with arms dangling tetras over player stations would, in many or most cases, be more dangerous than letting them continue to try to get back over on the playing field side. Most robot arms will back drive and fall if disabled, and some "active grabbers" would drop, rather than hold tetras.

It seems to me that a consistently applied point penalty would be the best solution. The 30 point loading zone penalty makes drivers very careful to avoid opponents' robots in their loading zone. A major point penalty for going over the player stations would have a similar effect IMHO.

[Kyle]

Originally Posted by Kit Gerhart

It seems to me that a consistently applied point penalty would be the best solution. The 30 point loading zone penalty makes drivers very careful to avoid opponents' robots in their loading zone. A major point penalty for going over the player stations would have a similar effect IMHO.

I think it should be a 20 point penalty, that way we can have the 10, 20 and 30.

[Mr.G]

In our first regional FLR the Martians hit us while capping a goal. The 3 tetra's came off our arm and fell over the payers station wall. I caught them and threw to the side of the field.

At our next regional GLR this penalty was announced by the head ref. and I asked what team would be disabled if a team holding tetras was pushed by another team and broke the plane of the players field. He said that the robot holding the tetras would be disabled. I disagree with his answer, when you are being pushed by another robot you have little control of your robot. I believe the team doing the pushing is the cause and if anyone is to be disabled it should be them.