Curie Semifinal 1 - 3, what happened?

[Po-ser]

I was watching the Curie matches. I think that it's horrible what happened to 1114. My team built a similar robot (well, similar in the sense that we tried to integrate ramps and an arm). To save weight and ramp space we made a "clock arm". Here's my story and my perspective on this:

http://rassi.ath.cx/stuypulse/view_p...eek-1&id=Tom10

We had a tower on our chassis and a light aluminum tube cantilevered out on a single shaft. Now, we thought this was the coolest thing ever. It ramped, it picked up tubes, it scored... but we got to our first regional at Trenton and two things happened: 1. we had a practice match against a robot with no arm which was purely defensive and they pushed us into the rack and continued pushing even when it was clear that our arm was entangled. 2. when we got our match lists we realized that due to the algorithm, we were going to face that same team every single match. When we talked to them about being aggressive, they told us that their only strategy was defense. And it's true. What could they do but block and push? You can't do it perfectly your first match, and so they continued playing D on us, but improved match after match, keeping away from illegal moves.

So here's my analysis: you can't blame defense bots. That was a viable strategy this year for those that couldn't design in an arm. There's clearly a reason that bumpers have been written into the guidelines. After our arm snapped off and we disassembled it, all we could do during matches was play defense ourselves, and if anyone's ever driven, you know how hard it can be to push someone out of the way but not too hard. Sometimes you can't back out, sometimes you're stuck. Sometimes it's true, you get caught up in the moment--especially when the heat is on like it is at the championship. Can you imagine the pressure to look good?

The bottom line is: nobody comes to a regional intending to completely wreck someone else's six weeks of hard work. Nobody. Whatever the refs say is up to them, and being sore about it now is useless. 48 had a strategy and did what they had to do. They seem to have felt really bad about it and still do. 1114 worked really hard, but you know what? Everybody knows how great their robot is, and they'll get plenty more shots at Einstein in the future. It appears to be bad luck to me, for both teams, but it's not the end of the world and I don't think it's worth hating anyone for.

[Sagar Vyas]

I can confirm Karthik's facts as I was 5.5ft away from the field.

This thread should be moved to the Moderated section...

[Travis Hoffman]

I think this just might be the saddest day of my life since I joined FIRST.

Karthik, I'm not going to respond to anything stated above, as no one would believe me anyway.

Everyone, we have all made regrettable mistakes since last Saturday, on both 48 and 1114, and perhaps beyond, and I hope one day we can all look back at this, still as friends, and wonder how we all allowed ourselves to get to this point.

I'm sorry for not being perfect.

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Perhaps for the sake of progress, for now we could focus on discussing the execution of the match administration by the referees and the subsequent conversations between them and all upset parties? It seems some things were said/done that really hurt the feelings of people when it really wasn't necessary. I really do not like picking on these volunteers, who are under a great deal of pressure (and it seems NO ONE wants to ever believe me when I say that), but it seems like there was enough inconsistency in applying the rules from field to field to warrant further discussion regarding what went down in the Curie elims. Hopefully, this will help 1114 get some of the answers they deserve to hear. I will save further Team 48-centric comments for when I feel it is more appropriate...i.e. any time that isn't right now, once I've examined the events in more detail. There are just too many unknowns for me to make a statement one way or the other.
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[xzvrw2]

ok i saywe getoffof that topic of what happened between 48 and 1114 and geton the topic of why the tube wasnt counted.

[Lisa Perez]

The fact of the matter is that no one is perfect, so none of us should be playing the blame game in here. Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone, if they have the will to, learns from those mistakes.

I understand why people are upset. And they have every single right to be upset. But really, at the end of the day, it's just a competition. There's a lot more to take away from FIRST than the wins.

[cire]

This is a unhappy situation for everyone involved. Most people here havnt broken another teams robot by playing defense on them, but let me tell you it is one of the worst feelings you can get in FIRST.

Last year at GLR I was our teams driver for a mostly defensive robot. Our shooter shot too far and we werent allowed to use it, so we played defense instead. We made it to the quater finals and faced team 1114, 1503? and another good bot. The first round I broke both 1114 and 1503's tank treads off their robots by pushing them sideways. I didnt mean to and I didnt think it would happen, and I definitly felt bad afterwards. I figured they blamed me for doing it on purpose and that I wasnt being GP. I wish i said sorry afterwards but I didnt because it was too hectic, (I am sorry 1114 and 1503).

But anyways, My point is that I feel just as sorry for the driver of team 48 as I do for team 1114.

[shawger]

Originally Posted by Adam McLeod

Note that there was a ten point penalty in this match for pinning, and no penalty at all for anything else.

That's because 48 was pushing on 1114's bumpers. They were pinning, but there's no rule that says if something breaks an extra penalty must be assigned. If 48 had been directly smashing the 1114's arm it probably would have been a different matter.

I was watching the match from the floor as I was on the pit crew, and it was pretty hard to see what was going on considering the mess of robots and the fact it occurred on the opposite side of the rack from the red alliance drivers.

[Frenchie]

This match unfortunately highlights only one of the several bad call made at curie. Semi Finals and finals are the most blatant examples of such claim.

Semi Finals 1 match 3. The match start with an iffy autonomous mode: 1114 releases the tube, but does not back up far enough and is still in contact with it. Although the stinger is cleared and the bar supporting the keeper, the referee takes it off. Now, this decision would have been reasonable, had it been consistent with other matches. During finals - 2, Foley Freeze goes for autonomous, clears the stinger, brings the keeper down on the spider leg and... does not have enough time to even open their gripper. Mrs. Referee comes, looks at it, and says it is scored.

But let's go on with the semi-finals. Although 48 often paid attention to always pin for less than 10 seconds, they did pin for a long time on many occasions. I was disappointed to realize the referees were paying so much attention to 1114 that they did not even count down for any pinning done on 469. Furthermore, a robot is supposed to back up 3 feet after each time it pins another robot, which pretty much means pinning, backing up a second, pinning, backing up a second is not acceptable. Finally, when a team is entangled in the rack and its arm begins to bend horribly, pushing further to break it should have been illegal, one way or another.

But I digress, let's go onto one last problem with this match: descoring. 469 scored a ringer on spider leg #6 I believe (did not have time to watch the video again), released it (passed the stinger and supported by leg) but was then pushed back by 48. The ringer was caught by the friction material riveted on the side of the robot's gripper and while swinging around, 469 took the already scored ringer with them. Unfortunately, this situation occurred rarely and referees counted on the end game only to record the score. I'd also like to point out that the ringer to which 1114's arm was attached after it was ripped off did not count, although the rules state that any part that is detached from the robot is not part of the robot anymore.

Conclusion on this match? I'll take the word of the referee herself for it: "defense was not unreasonable" (there was, originally, no penalty given) and 1114's arm riping off was just "one more design flaw". Now, "I'd love to talk to you, but I have another match to ref"

I feel bad, however, for bashing 1732, 67 and 48, because what happened to them during the finals is way worse than anything else I've seen.

During Finals match 2, and I mean, the REAL finals match #2, the #1 alliance outscored the #2 alliance by as much as 30 points I believe. I was however disappointed that the referees had forgotten to count 1 ringer for the 2nd seed alliance, which would have bumped up their score by 4 points. Although it would not have changed the outcome of the match, it was clearly one more mistake made on this field. The 2nd seed alliance naturally complained about that. Without any other explanation than "a field fault was made", the match was canceled and replayed. the #1 alliance lost the second match of finals because 4 points were forgotten...

P.S. Sorry to those who tried to dissuade me from posting. I tried to make it as tame as possible :$

[Nawaid Ladak]

does anybody have names of the refs and what regionals they reffed at.

if these guys have never worked together this season, then i think it is fair to say that a whole team of refs should be put onto a field, not ref x from y regional and ref w from z regional...

That could solve alot of these problems for next year.

I was uncival about this in another thread, therefore there is no need for me to restate my opinion.

[IndySam]

Originally Posted by Adam McLeod

For those of you who are curious, and I know many of you are, here's a link to footage of Curie Semifinal 1 - 3, in which 1114, 469 and 1523 are eliminated.

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?doc...23692796016767

Notice that 1114 is pinned for about 30 seconds, then driven into (hard) while their arm is tangled in the rack by team 48. Of course, the arm snaps in half, which is to be expected from what seems to me to be an intentional decision to do just that.

Note that there was a ten point penalty in this match for pinning, and no penalty at all for anything else.

I'm going to disagree with you here. I seriously doubt that they could see through the rack from the other side of the field that the arm was about to break and that hit wasn’t hard at all. They were just pushed while the arm was in a bad position and it broke.

Hard defense yes, intentional destruction and disqualification, no way.

Just my humble opinion.

[Steve W]

I have re opened by request. Please remember that we are here to discuss facts, not to slam teams or refs. They are volunteers.

[waialua359]

as emotions settle down, lets remember why we do this?? A great learning opportunity for schools, communities and most of all, the students.
There were a lot of other issues that teams can complain about, like scheduling of matches. Why offer a rookie all star award or highest seeding when many of them got a "free" ride with veteran teams? Why is it that I can never be partners with the teams right next to us in the pit? Shouldn't it be purely random? I can speak from an experience where a robot that couldn't do anything really can move its way up to a highly competitive regional as a #2 seed???
The design of the game where all the robots fought to get to one area in the middle to score lent itself to this situation with defense. Perhaps, like Dave Lavery mentioned to us about the 2005 tetra game, we need to have more different areas of scoring and loading locations than robots to help prevent a clog of robots fighting for scoring/positioning so that this sort of thing cant happen. That was their intent that year in creating an offensive, scoring game.

I know that this wont make the emotions change, but Im sure many have expressed their support in saying that it was an unfortunate accident and no one purposely wished anyone harm, including our team.

[Steve W]

Please refrain from placing blame. Your grandmothers are watching ( I am almost that old). Facts only please or I will commence shutdown sequence.

[MasterChief1732]

Originally Posted by Adam McLeod

For those of you who are curious, and I know many of you are, here's a link to footage of Curie Semifinal 1 - 3, in which 1114, 469 and 1523 are eliminated.

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?doc...23692796016767

Notice that 1114 is pinned for about 30 seconds, then driven into (hard) while their arm is tangled in the rack by team 48. Of course, the arm snaps in half, which is to be expected from what seems to me to be an intentional decision to do just that.

Note that there was a ten point penalty in this match for pinning, and no penalty at all for anything else.

If you watch the robots carefully, 1114 was never pinned against the rack for 30 seconds. Team 48 backed off every once in a while and towards the end 1114 was sideways against the rack and could have driven away. It is unfortunate that thier arm came off and there was a scoring problem, but what happened cannot be changed.

Just somthing i saw: I noticed that after the match a student from team 1114 was going confront team 48 in an aggressive manner. The student was restrained by what looked like a bystander or another member of 1114. The result of this match should not end in ill feelings towards other teams since we all know this is just a game and there is always next year.

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by MasterChief1732

If you watch the robots carefully, 1114 was never pinned against the rack for 30 seconds. Team 48 backed off every once in a while and towards the end 1114 was sideways against the rack and could have driven away.

Team 48 never backed off by 3 feet for 3 seconds, as specified in the rule. As such, the count should not have been broken. Unfortunately, the count did no begin for at least 15 seconds, and was stopped after a short backup.

I am not sure what to think about this incident yet. If the observations about pre-meditation and celebration in post #36 are accurate, disciplinary action of some sort vs team 48 seems to be in order. At what point, if any, did Team 48 apologize for "accidently" breaking 1114's arm? I haven't seen anything about this

A few members apologized, but none took responsibility for the incident. A few suggested that we "build a tougher arm next year."

The incident is over and done with, and by no means are we expecting or looking for any sort of formal apology.