Ball Color Problem

[martin417]

We have been able to purchase several Orbit Balls from Wal Mart. We have representatives of three different color combinations. They differ from the game animation in that the yellow color seen in the animation for the moon rocks / empty cells is more orange in our samples (including the one from the KOP).

My concern is the similarity between the moon rocks and the empty cell. (orange and purple vs. orange and blue) The purple is not very different from the blue. I submit that if these are representative of actual game pieces, you will not be able to tell the difference from any distance. In the heat of competition, I can see teams grabbing multiple empty cells, thinking they are moon rocks, and getting penalized, simply because they couldn't tell the difference. If a team member is color blind (a very common mutation among males) it will be impossible to tell the difference.

Has anyone else noticed this, or am I alone in my confusion? I can only hope that the actual game pieces will be obviously different from each other.

[jgannon]

Nope, you aren't alone.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=71049

[martin417]

Originally Posted by jgannon

Nope, you aren't alone.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=71049

Thanks, don't know how I missed that thread when I diligently searched before I posted

Maybe a moderator can merge or delete this thread?

[smurfgirl]

Yeah, a bunch of other people have pointed this out in other threads, and it appears that the actual game pieces have the same problem with color distinction. There will probably be some issues with distinguishing between colors, especially from all the way across the field, and I can definitely see penalties arising because of this. I wish they had done blue/orange, purple/green, and orange/green (instead of orange/purple) as the color combinations.

[Darkcrosbone]

i think they made it the way they did to make it so that color tracker's on your robot would be hard to use

[martin417]

Originally Posted by Darkcrosbone

i think they made it the way they did to make it so that color tracker's on your robot would be hard to use

I don't think anyone plans to attempt to track balls with vision. The large tubular pink and green thing on top of the trailer mast is the vision target.

[Darkcrosbone]

they could have more than 1 targets...

[Nuttyman54]

I'm pretty sure the "reason" it's that way is because they appear to be the only 3 colors combinations the that the balls come in (though I have not actually gone out to try and find other colors).

I agree that the color selection is a poor choice, but I don't believe FIRST had a choice other than to use different game pieces (which wouldn't have been that bad of an idea either, given the supply shortage).

The tape stripe is a very good idea IMHO.

[XaulZan11]

Another problem is that of the spectators. Not to say that the drivers won't have problems, but spectators will probably have a huge problem distingusing the different balls from the stands (let alone those watching via webcasts). I fear that the suspense and excitiment of the end game and the 15 point Super Cells may be lost because the spectators won't be able to tell the difference between the balls. This seems to me a big step backwords from last year when the game was intended to be very spectator friendly.

[JeremyBoire]

Maybe FIRST can simply bleach one of the orange-blue or orange purple combos. That would eliminate the need to tape balls as some have suggested. They would be more difficult to see against the flooring but i think that's better than not being able to distinguish them from others.

[keen101]

hmm... unfortunate for some, but i don't think there is any chance of "fixing it" it's too late. You will just have to deal with it. Perhaps changing it for next year, but this year has already started.

But, i would like to point out that i don't see that much of a problem with distinguishing the blue (empty) cells from the moon rocks (purple), becuase if you watch the animation (for those who aren't colorblind), then you can clearly see that the empty cells are hung up near the middle players who have to sit in the seats. The seated players are surrounded by the moon rocks on the floor, but the empty cells are neatly hung up to help avoid confusion. I don't think there will be a large percentage of Blue/Purple being mixed a whole lot on the floor. And... as for the Super cells (green) they are tightly controlled by the staff, and therefore won't be very many until the last 20 seconds.

[daltore]

Show of hands, who's keeping track of whether your can of Red Bull is falling on your car floor when you hit a patch of black ice at rush hour? It'll be difficult for the driver(s) (who happen to be in control and not paying attention to where the coach is pointing) to know where the balls are coming from, and so the color confusion remains. I'm not colorblind, in fact I'm kind of the opposite with photographic memory and synesthesia, but looking at the picture of the balls, my brain kind of deletes the blue and purple unless I really focus BECAUSE of those conditions. Peoples' minds will inherently go directly to concentrating on the orange because it's brighter and stands out more, and will make the task of distinguishing blue and purple nearly impossible.

I like the idea of just swapping the super cells and empty cells. THAT would add to the challenge, because by the last 20 seconds, you're TRYING to follow the super cells, and it will be hard for everyone. Tagging the balls would also be good, but I'm a little worried about modifying the weight of the balls, as this will make them more inconsistent and inaccurate to use in multiple cases in a simulated environment (object iterations in the robot's program).

I think relying on the camera to do color differentiation would be a very fun challenge, but not fair to rookie teams who have no CS major mentors and can barely tell the robot to go forward, much less deal with calibrating vision algorithm thresholds on-the-fly. Not to mention unfair to teams with 5 people on them, as this limits the time you can spend on code. It would not be like the GDC to assume teams can use the camera to pinpoint the correct balls. An obvious differentiation or rearrangement of ball types is a very reasonable request.

[KarenH]

Originally Posted by keen101

... i don't see that much of a problem with distinguishing the blue (empty) cells from the moon rocks (purple), becuase ... the empty cells are hung up near the middle players who have to sit in the seats. The seated players are surrounded by the moon rocks on the floor, but the empty cells are neatly hung up to help avoid confusion.

True, but the staff (field reset crew, scorers, and refs) will also have problems doing their jobs, because they, too, will have trouble distinguishing the colors, especially after a few hours on the job when they're starting to get tired. I think the colors are going to be a nuisance for most participants.

I've been reading some of the suggestions for altering the colors of the balls. Dying synthetic fabrics is tricky; if the covers were cotton, it would be a cinch, but they're not cotton. Bleaching synthetic fabrics probably wouldn't work without damaging the fabric. Paint would get rubbed off (onto robots and playing field--yuck).

I believe that someone who was good with cutting tools could remove the blue fabric entirely from the empty cells. I'm guessing that the underlying strips are either black, white, or a similar neutral color. This would not involve a huge amount of work, but would probably change the appearance noticeably.

The drawback would be that the empty cells would weigh less--hey, that makes sense; shouldn't empty cells be really light weight? . Their handling characteristics would also change. Handling characteristics and weight would also be affected if tape or lights were added, as some have suggested, or if a different color fabric were stitched over existing balls.

If the manufacturer supplies just these three colors, then the only choice FIRST has is:

--Stay with the inherent vision difficulties, or
--Cause a different kind of frustration with "homemade" alterations that might profoundly affect the robots' abilities to handle the game pieces.

(I suspect FIRST will not change anything about the game pieces; they have too much to do already.)

If your team could vote between vision problems and handling problems, which would you choose?

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by keen101

But, i would like to point out that i don't see that much of a problem with distinguishing the blue (empty) cells from the moon rocks (purple), becuase if you watch the animation (for those who aren't colorblind), then you can clearly see that the empty cells are hung up near the middle players who have to sit in the seats. The seated players are surrounded by the moon rocks on the floor, but the empty cells are neatly hung up to help avoid confusion. I don't think there will be a large percentage of Blue/Purple being mixed a whole lot on the floor. And... as for the Super cells (green) they are tightly controlled by the staff, and therefore won't be very many until the last 20 seconds.

You think every Empty Cell will be loaded directly from the Outpost to a robot, delivered to the Airlock, and never hit the floor? I don't. There will be loose Empty Cells rolling around on the Crater. The Pilots and the referees will have to keep track of their use.

I'm also not sure about your comment about Super Cells being controlled by the staff. I didn't see anything about this in the rules; they are hung in the Fueling Port and can be exchanged for an Empty Cell by the Payload Specialist. Although the video showed a referee handing a Super Cell to a player, I don't think this is going to happen in the game.

[Jon Stratis]

Yes, this is potentially a problem. However, solutions for it introduce other problems. Many people here have suggested taping one type of ball - that tape poses two problems for robots: first, the ability to grip the ball changes, and second that tape could be pulled off the ball and into a teams mechanism. At this point, i think it's too late for them to change game pieces all together, and as they are the only 3 commercially available colors, they can't obtain other colors easily.

All that being said, an easy solution for this would be with a rule clarification from the GDC - rather than penalizing people for picking up multiple empty cells, they can penalize you for delivering more than 1 empty cell at a time to the fueling station. The intent of the rule is to prevent people from picking up all the empty cells from their outpost and delivering them to their fueling station at once - rather, you have to decide if the time trade off of running back and forth is worth it.

Lets face it - picking up multiple empty cells and dumping/shooting them into another robots trailer doesn't give a team any sort of advantage, especially if those empty cells were picked up accidentally amidst the hundred moon rocks on the field.