2006 Penalties

[Cody Carey]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

Also, the fact that you measured the front of your robot and its only 2.5" long doesnt mean that for every possible angle and condition it will not exceed 2.5". For example, if your bot lifts up its front wheels it may be able to extend further into the goal.

Bottom line is, if your bot triggers the ball counter you should expect a penalty.

I agree with you, but we didn't go past the black line and into the scoring panel... there was no mess up with the scoring. The team on the opposing alliance that was stationed beside the goal even said that we didn't go in...
and we made sure that from pretty much every angle we couldn't go in.
I really appreciate the refs and what they do for us, but I am just trying to point out that all of the calls they made were not perfect, and some were downright unfair. I also want to point out that the rule was 3", and we were a full half of an inch under that... If you want me not to be snippity about a half of an inch, then somebody talk to the refs about giving a penalty to a team because the driver had their toe over the line during autonomous...
The thread is about weather or not all of the calls were fair, and I am just out to prove that they weren't.

[Adam Shapiro]

Originally Posted by Cody C

I agree with you, but we didn't go past the black line and into the scoring panel... there was no mess up with the scoring. The team on the opposing alliance that was stationed beside the goal even said that we didn't go in...

You need to keep in mind that the opposing alliance, though well-meaning, was most likely very much occupied with their own robots at the time. That is the reason for the refs/volunteers in the first place. The penalty was called by a ref standing at the goal, and reinforced by Pika1579 who was the manual counter at that position and whose job it was to keep a constant watch on what went into and out of that specific goal. It is a hard call to make, and harsh penalty, but you must consider the possibility that they weren't wrong in the call.

[Cody Carey]

Okay, I concede... there is about a 2% chance that the STEEL was bent out of place by a half of an inch, and then bent back into place, perfectly as it was in the beginning of the match, before the match was over.

P.S. I did not intend any of my posts to bash the refs, I am simply stating (as this is what the thread is about) that no, they do not make 100% accurate calls... nobody could. We are only human

[Liz Smith]

Originally Posted by Cody C

Okay, I concede... there is about a 2% chance that the STEEL was bent out of place by a half of an inch, and then bent back into place, perfectly as it was in the beginning of the match, before the match was over.

Specific to your robot, there was also a cable tie that was sticking off your robot into the goal... The refs aren't out looking to make alliances lose points they're looking to make sure that the games are fair...

[Volcomdude412x]

We kinda got screwed eac time we attempted to score, each time someone came up and rammed us causing our corner of our robot to enter the side goal, i think it should be changed so that this problem can be fixed

[KTorak]

The corner goal DQ is pretty annoying. The whole "approximately 3 inches" is so judgemental at the time it occurs that you can get penalized when it didnt do any harm. It's also annoying that the robot that is pushed in is DQ'd, there should be no reason to DQ them for something they can't control, but atleast the one who pushed you in gets DQ'd.

As for ramming, I don't really mind that penalty...if you're trying to ram another robot to disable it, you deserve a penalty. However the Autonomous mode ramming is a tough subject to deal with. A team angled towards our bot and rammed us preventing us from scoring in the corner goal during autonomous and got a 5 point penalty. It should be more during a regular match since you have more control over it.

As for the offsides penalty, that really upset me. A call was made that one of our alliance partners crossed the line 3 times, but we have 3 videos showing they were 10 feet behind it. The Ref must have been confused about it or something. The one thing that upset me the most was that he didn't even know who he called it against, when we questioned it, all he said was "You should have discussed it better before the match, and you're lucky i only threw three flags becuase it should have been more." The other annoying part was that the only way for the score to be over turned was for all 6 teams to agree to have it changed....sure FIRST is about GP, but the teams that are in it "just to win" won't even think about giving up a win.

[abeD]

I have a question about the exact definition of ramming.

If redabot A and bluabot B are both going at high speeds and collide is that a ram? and if yes who is it on? This is basically what people are talking about in autonomous, when one robot drives to the center to shoot to the goal and the other one drives and they have a high speed collision, I don't think any penalties should be called in this case, auto or regular mode. Now if a team is sitting there and someone comes flying across the field that is a different story.

[KenWittlief]

I saw so many offsides penalties at the FLR last weekend it made me think that many teams dont understand what the offsides foul IS.

the whole nearBot/BackBot/FarBot confusion.

I dont think all these teams were deliberately playing offsides - I think it was a mistake or confusion on the part of the driver.

So you really got to stop and ask yourself: if the ref called your team offsides are you SURE he was wrong?

[Greg Perkins]

I think the rules are very fair. It's those who try to bend the rules as far as physically possible that are having issues. Here's a thought, build a robot that doesn't break any rules from ship? Because then guess what...NO PENALTIES!

Sorry to sound so brash, but I've been a ref since 2003...and it never stops. Before you say that the refs are all on an ego and power trip, why don't you try it and then once you've experienced how DIFFICULT being a ref is, make your judgment. Have I screwed up...yes, and I am sincerely appologetic for those who the screw up affected. We are all human, and being a ref can be so demanding...you have to constantly watch each robot, the field, interaction between bots, offsides, 5', and pinning countdowns. There just simply is way to much to focus on and call everything 100% correctly, I would probably say all refs do about a 98% accurate job of calling the game. If you have any problems with your outcome TALK TO THE HEAD REFEREE!!!

So my moral? Put yourself in our shoes before you run the marathon...you'd be suprised in what you may learn.

PS. STOP BASHING REF's...email FIRST and your issues will be promptly reviewd and during the head ref meetings will be discussed.

[StephLee]

I believe we were called once or twice for being off-sides when I hadn't thought we were, but then I really wouldn't bet my life (or my robot) on it. Once, we were supposed to play backbot and our driver moved towards our alliance station before moving to the back side of the field...that was a rightful penalty, we needed to have been moving back by then. Miscommunication between myself and the driver caused that.

Since none of the penalties cost us a match, though, I really can't speak for how I'd feel then about a call I wasn't sure was warranted. I do know, though, how I felt when we "lost" a match we knew we won. Something was wrong with the scoring system; I honestly don't know what it was. If anyone knows what the problem was during match 5 of Friday at Pittsburgh, please post it. We simply couldn't let that match go. It was a 2-on-2 match, us and 1727 versus 1370 and 365. We played extremely hard and stuck to our strategy; we knew that was the only way we'd beat those two awesome teams. We knew we'd won, but the results said we didn't. Our driver went and talked to the refs, and they reviewed the scores. I'm not sure where it was eventually decided the error was, but they found one and actually corrected the scores - and we had won.

Edit:

ORIGINAL: Greg Perkins

If you have any problems with your outcome TALK TO THE HEAD REFEREE!!!

(snip)

PS. STOP BASHING REF's...email FIRST and your issues will be promptly reviewd and during the head ref meetings will be discussed.

You posted while I was typing mine...you're completely right. We were very content with how the head ref handled our concerns; we asked if they were sure the scores were correct, and they checked them for us. The refs want the games to be fair, otherwise they wouldn't be refs. Ask them about any potential discrepancies, but remember to bring your GP when you do.

[George A.]

I really don't think the penalties are all that unfair. I mean they're simple enough to follow. Either have one of your robots behind the line when it's supposed to or get penalized. Don't go in farther than 3" or get penalized.

One easy way of avoiding the Incursion DQ? Make it so your ball deployment system CAN'T fit in the corral. If the deployment system is so ridiculously huge that it can't fit in then there's no way to get penalized. IMO if your deployment system has the risk that it could get pushed in at a certain angle then you're playing with fire and you're going to get burned.

It's foolish for anyone to think that their opponents will just sit idly by and let their opponents score. They're going to play defense, and as such they might end up pushing their opponent into the corner corral. The action is at the opposite end of the field from the drivers so they can't tell.

And here's a sob story for you...

MY team (11) were in the final match in the 2001 Championships on Galileo field before allaince pairing. We were in 6th place and barring any catastrophe's it looked like we were going to elims. The first robot went over the teeter-totter bridge...and the bridge popped off the fulcum making it immovable, as such we couldn't score, so we shut the clock and took the points we could. The end result we get a horrible score, our rank gets dropped from 6th to ninth. We miss 8th place by .5 points, and we don't get picked. When we talked to the ref about a redo since the field broke, they said that it wasn't their fault as it was an "Act of God' . Granted, we didn't like the ruling but we lived with it, and next year we made sure that our robot would be able to adapt to field conditions.

Sorry for the ramble, but the rules are the rules, if your risking coming close to incursion...find another way to score or live with the penalities that you might acrue.

[hillale]

Originally Posted by cmaccoy

My concerns are as follows:
-There are no "instant replays" so we can't have the refs look at the incident a few times to confirm.
-If you interrupt the sensor system (go further then 3 inches in the side goal) your entire alliance is disqualified.
The rules aren't that bad this year but still they could be edited.

I definitely agree that there needs to be a camera in place where these types of penalties may occur. I also believe that there needs to be a vertical view of the field recorded during the entire match to be reviewed in the case of high goal scoring issues. It turns out that the goal of making a ball in the high goal is to trip the sensor at the top of the tube, not to make a ball through the bit red/blue circle. Our team made 3 balls in autonomous mode, but only 2 were counted because 1 got caught in the goal and didn't roll down to the tube. Because of this, we lost autonomous and ended up losing the match. Had the match been scored correctly we would have won. When our team approached the judges with video of this, they wouldn't look at it.

[KenWittlief]

Its been in the manual since day 1.

Refs will NOT looks at any videos after a match, from any source.

[Greg Perkins]

Originally Posted by cmaccoy

My concerns are as follows:
-There are no "instant replays" so we can't have the refs look at the incident a few times to confirm.
-If you interrupt the sensor system (go further then 3 inches in the side goal) your entire alliance is disqualified.
The rules aren't that bad this year but still they could be edited.

Replays...are you serious????
This topic has been discussed to death. FIRST has always had a problem with time, there never is enough of it...adding 1 extra minute to every qualification match to look at video is inconcieveable. I was once a supporter of this, until I understood that if it was used, it would be used so much for EVERY penalty that we would need an extra day of competition (or deliberation as the case would be). I assure you, when the ref's meet up in the center of the field to discuss a penalty, I can attest we are not talking about what's for lunch. So please....lets drop the whole NFL way of the game, and let's just start playing by the rules; because then who knows, penalties might never show up.

[Cody Carey]

A cable tie... You mind pointing out where a cable tie was placed on our robot so that it could possibly go into the goal? Because I don't see any.