A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel

[yaron]

A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel

Before reading this just know that I am proud of the FRC community in Israel, and I think we could have the best regional in the world.

• Each team needs to pay $11,500 for participating in the program this includes the regular registration that goes to USFIRST and the rest devoted to subsidize FIRST Israel budget.
• As a result of 2009 year, a meeting among senior mentors, inspectors & judges with FIRST Israel management was held. Many aspects of improving Israel regional were discussed. No summary of this meeting was spread to the FRC community and nothing from the suggestions which were raised in that meeting was implemented in the 2010 year. Actually this paper will reveal that the management of FIRST Israel only led the regional to a greater disaster.
• As a non profit organization FIRST Israel should present to its community an annual report on the organization. No such report was published or at least no report became available, to the best of my knowledge, at least to the senior mentors.

Pit area

• The practice field inside the pit area is not legal. In 2009 it was identical to the surface that FIRST Israel declared to be 95% close to the official Lunacy surface. In 2010 the tower was constructed from wooden square beams and not 1.5 inches pipes. In addition not even one gate and target were available. The carpet that was brought by one of the team was two small to even practice with one robot.
• There was no list for practice schedule inside the pit practice field and no one supervises which team is practicing or for how long the team practice.
• Inspection process was held by inspectors who were not familiar with the Robot's rules or any other rules. This was one of the suggestions to improve the Israeli regional that I and other senior mentors suggested at the end of the 2009.
• As a result from this, many robots were illegal including robots which used motors not from the KOP.

Practice games

• Even in 2009 with less communication problem not all practice games were held in the first day, but at least every team was able to test the robot inside the official arena. In 2010 many teams were not allowed to test their robots on the official arena because of the communication problem. They simply did not manage to insert all teams by 10pm on the first day. Although they promised they will give practice time on the second day before the opening of the qualification matches many teams did not tried their robot inside the stadium.
• The management requested from six teams to leave their robot inside the stadium in order to examine the communication problem and fixed it. It seems a very good idea if all the teams were able later to test their robots and verify that they are working with the field system.
• I know that at least one team was able to test their robot from each of the six stations doing so for 2 minutes from each station.

The official arena

• This year although FIRST Israel declared that the arena will be brought from the US (This is one of the reasons the registration fee is so high), we know that it was constructed by a local constructer who ignored or did not understand the technical drawings.
• The actual official Israeli arena did not match the design according to it many teams designed their robots. The bumps were not according to the dimensions and there was a significant difference between the blue and the red bumps giving an advantage to the blue alliance.
• Beneath the bumps there were two wooden surfaces that actually changed the structure of the bumps. This impacted severely the autonomous section of the game. These surfaces do not exist in the arena drawings.
• When I (FRC senior mentor) asked two hours after the opening of the stadium to measure the diameter of the pipes I was rejected. Our team coach took with him a caliber to measure it during the drivers meeting. Only then we discovered that the pipe's diameter is 42 mm.
• FIRST Israel claimed that 42 diameter is with the tolerance of 4 mm that is mentioned in the drawing. This is very serious mislead because the tolerance for pipe's diameter is only 0.2 mm. The 4 mm tolerance is for dimensions of the length if the pipes not the diameter. A 1.5 inches pipe is a fixed diameter and is not negotiable.
• The height of the ramps beneath the tower was not identical in the blue and the red ramps. Teams who designed their robots according to the declared height were surprised to discover that their robot is not able to drive via the tunnel beneath the tower. My team did not have this surprise because we did not plan to drive our robots via the tunnel. Anyway, we were not able to test our robot prior to the qualification matches.
• Different dimensions of the ramps cause robots to fail in climbing the ramp or using it to hang on the tower. Again my team was not impacted by this. This could also impact the scoring decision of the judges while trying to determine the eligibility of the bonus on hanging.
• In the front of the ramp was existed an additional part that is outside the dimensions. This might be the cause that robots failed to hang on the tower. Although were able to do so in their self-design, self constructed & legal arenas at home.

Communication network

• FIRST Israel failed to use the (Access point) AP system that was sent by FIRST to Israel. According to the management it was not working at all and they knew of this problem three days before the practice day.
• No site's survey was done prior to installing a wireless network inside the stadium. They could discover many wireless networks that cause communication interferes.
• When they discover the communication problems they did not invited ant experts to check it or suggest alternative solutions. Although they keep telling the teams that the best expert from Israel and online from the US working on it.
• Instead of a six AP (for each robot a cell with 300MB width) they used a single N AP meaning for all six robots the width was 150MB instead of 1.8GB.
• When eventually activate the system with one AP no security mechanism, were implemented. Any wireless phone or computer could access the network and caused the available width to be reduced.
• Ideas we offered to the management to use three regular AP and connect each one of the three to two access point bridge and creating three different cells with the assistance of security WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) & Pre-shared key mode (PSK, also known as Personal mode) were not implemented.
• Network experts that were presented as guests offered there assistance and were rejected.

Disqualifying a team without checking what really happened

• First, does equal chance to play is an idea that is against FIRST spirit? Instead of taking advantage a situation when one (and many times) three robots were not active because of the failure of the arena communication system. The coaches (all in Israel are team students) decided that when this situation will happen the teams without communication problem stop the activation of their robots until the communication will be available equally to all playing robots. Isn’t this exactly FIRST spirit? We do not want to beat an alliance or even a robot that can not communicate with the arena network as a result of the poor system we have discovered that was installed in the arena.
• Before our team was disgraced by FIRST Israel general manger no inquires were made to reveal if the idea of what they called it "MisCar Rebellion" was really our team captain idea or maybe a decision of many captains after they had a meeting and suggesting that this is their way to show FIRST that the regional is unfair.
• If the general manger wants to blame the team for this, why no mentor was informed that this decision is going to be declared in the award ceremony of the second day.
• What right does the general manger have to threaten a student and try to force him apologizing and telling him not to tell anyone especially team mentors. Is this a proper behavior of a general manger of an organization which hosts an educational competition with high respected educational values?
• If this entire picture is not enough how the general manger could tell this team captain that his mentors are the worst in the country (Two of them are Woodie flowers award regional, and two others are FRC senior mentors).

In the stadium
1. According to FIRST spirit no sirens are permitted in the stadium or megaphones. The noise some teams created uses these instruments could impact the hearing quality of people.
2. In the first day only one entrance to the stadium was opened. Only after we asked they opened in the third day a second entrance (This was again one of the requested I mentioned in the meeting from 2009 to improve the regional).

[gvarndell]

This is not a rhetorical question, and it's not necessarily directed only to the OP.
Is there anything anyone outside Israel can do to help fix the systemic failures described here?

[Racer26]

Excellent post. Not being there, I can't be entirely sure of what was done and what wasnt done, but with more and more people posting their take on it, the rest of the FIRST community can get a better idea of what really went on.

It seems to me FIRST Israel has some major issues that need to be worked out, and I think it is probably prudent for FIRST HQ to get involved.

[DavidGitz]

Originally Posted by 1075guy

Excellent post. Not being there, I can't be entirely sure of what was done and what wasnt done, but with more and more people posting their take on it, the rest of the FIRST community can get a better idea of what really went on.

It seems to me FIRST Israel has some major issues that need to be worked out, and I think it is probably prudent for FIRST HQ to get involved.

Who wants to volunteer at FIRST Israel next Year? I Do

[sparrowkc]

Originally Posted by yaron

Beneath the bumps there were two wooden surfaces that actually changed the structure of the bumps. This impacted severely the autonomous section of the game. These surfaces do not exist in the arena drawings.

I'm not sure if this is what you're describing, but I think its worth mentioning that there is supposed to be a plate under the carpet near the bumps.

From THE FIELD, section 6.2.3:

The BUMPS are fixed to base plates that are secured to the carpet of the FIELD to keep them from moving. The base plates are covered with the same carpet as the FIELD. Note that this forms a small (approximately ½-inch tall) transition from the FIELD surface onto the base plates.

[gvarndell]

Originally Posted by DavidGitz

Who wants to volunteer at FIRST Israel next Year? I Do

Personally I'm waiting for an SOS from FIRST Bermuda -- if there is such a thing...

[Jon236]

Originally Posted by DavidGitz

Who wants to volunteer at FIRST Israel next Year? I Do

David, we look forward to seeing you there! The volunteers that put on the Israel Regional are promised a lot of hard work, no sleep, but lots of hummus!

It was obvious to me, as Judge Advisor, that for the most part, as in the US and elsewhere, that FIRST Teams in Israel 'get it'. Their contributions to their school, their community and to the principles of FIRST are truly outstanding. We were able to recognize many of these teams with awards; but many other teams also deserve recognition for maintaining their spirit and demonstrating GP, despite the difficult circumstances.

The fact that the vast majority of Israeli teams understand the principles of FIRST is due in no small part to the dedication of Alisha MacIntyre and Yaarit Levy. They work basically 24/7 during Build Season. During the competition, we stayed at the field to work out the technical problems. It also says a lot about the importance of FIRST in Israel to understand that FIRST Israel has 2 full-time Regional Directors.

There will always be challenges to overcome in FIRST, especially as we try to stay on the cutting edge of technology. Obviously we had no idea that the communications system, which worked last year in Israel, would have as much difficulty as it did. But it is also apparent that the Israeli Regional is not alone in experiencing technical difficulties. Suffice to say, these issues will be addressed before next year.

I am proud to be part of FIRST Israel.....I have seen so many of the kids who graduate from high school continue their FIRST activities as mentors and volunteers, like Leav, despite their military obligations. There seems to be a strange 'illness' that infects the IDF during March as the Regional approaches........

Once a Tick....always a Tick!

[RandomStyuff]

As the programming lead of an Israeli FRC team, and someone who was involved in fixing many of the communication problem (I stayed all night to help fix it, having found myself with my shoes not having left my feet for 40-ish hours) I feel I'm somewhat qualified to represent the other side of things in many of the subjects from the post above (-not all; things relating to the cost of things and the exact dimensions of the field are not what I worked on)

I will skip the first list of complaints as they talk about organisational complaints and I would not be a reliable source for facts on them.

Pit area

• Inspection process was held by inspectors who were not familiar with the Robot's rules or any other rules. This was one of the suggestions to improve the Israeli regional that I and other senior mentors suggested at the end of the 2009.
• As a result from this, many robots were illegal including robots which used motors not from the KOP.

My team did not use the practice field so I can't say anything about that. It seemed like it was enough carpet though, but I never really had time to go look. As for the inspectors, they seemed very professional and the inspector that handled my team seemed to know his FRCs and the rules, but I didn't have experience with all inspectors, nor illegal parts in an inspection, so it is possible.

Practice games

• Even in 2009 with less communication problem not all practice games were held in the first day, but at least every team was able to test the robot inside the official arena. In 2010 many teams were not allowed to test their robots on the official arena because of the communication problem. They simply did not manage to insert all teams by 10pm on the first day. Although they promised they will give practice time on the second day before the opening of the qualification matches many teams did not tried their robot inside the stadium.

The communications problems, which I will detail more about bellow, were the cause of this. There isn't much FIRST could do about it -teams barely got to play 3 games as it is!

• The management requested from six teams to leave their robot inside the stadium in order to examine the communication problem and fixed it. It seems a very good idea if all the teams were able later to test their robots and verify that they are working with the field system.

I was the one who went to request it from the teams. We used the robots to try the system under load and to simulate a game for testing the FMS (Field Management System). The fixes that we found were then implemented on ALL routers, one by one, and there was no advantage to having left your robot on the field. The only thing we did with the robots was test our fix! After that we went router by router and reconfigured them one-by-one!
I repeat: There was no inherent advantage to having left your robot on the field as part of the 6!

• I know that at least one team was able to test their robot from each of the six stations doing so for 2 minutes from each station.

While I don't know if this did happen (at 7 or so when teams came to get their robots from the field I went on my search for something with caffeine) it still doesn't give any teams and inherent advantage. Each station is pretty much the same when alone, and therefore they were just waisting their time!

The official arena

• Beneath the bumps there were two wooden surfaces that actually changed the structure of the bumps. This impacted severely the autonomous section of the game. These surfaces do not exist in the arena drawings.

While I am not an expert on the Breakaway Arena, I'm pretty sure that the wooden platforms near the field were perfectly legal and in fact part of the official spec. I recall an update having been made early on in the season which stressed the fact.
(On the rest I am not knowledgeable enough to answer)

Communication network

• FIRST Israel failed to use the (Access point) AP system that was sent by FIRST to Israel. According to the management it was not working at all and they knew of this problem three days before the practice day.

The AP supplied by FIRST this year were worse than those from the years before. We tried them during the night in many different combinations and settings. From what I understood, work on getting the FMS (Field Management System) to work started the moment it arrived. The APs supplied by FIRST this year were chosen because they were cheaper, not because they were better, at least according to our FTA from the USA. We saw no increase in performance using them.

• No site's survey was done prior to installing a wireless network inside the stadium. They could discover many wireless networks that cause communication interferes.
  

The Yad Elyuah stadium has free WiFi - That WiFi was disabled. The correct tools for wireless surveying are slightly grey-line on legality in Israel due to military purposes, yet we still checked for interference and found that while it did exist, it alone was not enough to cause the problems.
The stadium is not far away from the "Kiriah" - The top Israeli Military center- a Pentagon of sorts (and to all Israelis who are jumping up to say that it's not 100% accurate, it's close enough for the Americans to understand) which obviously also has sophisticated radio equipment. There is no real solution to this problem. You can't ask all of Tel-Aviv and the entire Israeli Military to stop working for three days or stop using their equipment just for a 'bunch of high schoolers with some robots'. Everything that could have been disabled, was disabled, and overall, interference was not the problem.

• When they discover the communication problems they did not invited ant experts to check it or suggest alternative solutions. Although they keep telling the teams that the best expert from Israel and online from the US working on it.
  

Now let me be a little bit more vocal on facts:
1) FIRST Israel invited a company with experts in the field of wireless networking to come help us. They came, and they tried fixing it. They didn't manage because the problem wasn't with the wireless!
2) At this stage, FIRST Israel invited an expert from the top Israeli Millitary's Intelligence group's (8200) Networking team. The guy is part of a team that has been credited as one of the best computer intelligence teams in the world, and is one of their elite networking experts. I think that would qualify as an expert from outside. The expert stayed with us all night long, and although he went to work or rest (not sure) for some period, he was back in the arena in time for the finals to make sure that everything was running properly.
I doubt he is reading this or will get this in any way, but he is:
It was truely a mindblowing experience working with you; I consider myself somewhat of an experienced networker and my understanding of networking nearly doubled over that one night. Thank you!
3) Throughout the whole time, we had experts from the USA, including the designer of the system himself with us on Skype. While they tried to be helpful, we always seemed to be a couple of steps ahead of them and they weren't much use in the end.

• Instead of a six AP (for each robot a cell with 300MB width) they used a single N AP meaning for all six robots the width was 150MB instead of 1.8GB.
• When eventually activate the system with one AP no security mechanism, were implemented. Any wireless phone or computer could access the network and caused the available width to be reduced.
• Ideas we offered to the management to use three regular AP and connect each one of the three to two access point bridge and creating three different cells with the assistance of security WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) & Pre-shared key mode (PSK, also known as Personal mode) were not implemented.

The problem was not with the WiFi; bandwidth wise, there was no problem at all! Follow me with the math:
Assuming absolutely no compression, and maximum resolution (640*480), a single frame from the camera is 900kb: The maximum FPS if I remember correctly is 15FPS. That means 13.5 MB/s MAXIMUM per robot on camera info. All other info is at worst half a MB per second (and I'm exaggerating here). That means 14MB/s/robot*6 robots (again, assuming all robots are using their camera at full resolution, with no compression and full FPS)=84MB/s - Well bellow the spec of 802.11n! This is also assuming all robots on the field have cameras at that full bandwidth, which was clearly not the problem at the Israeli Regional this year.
Now, even if we did decide that we wanted to go with a direct method- It is IMPOSSIBLE: The FMS is not build for that - it is built for a single router that communicates with the robots, and if anyone believes that they can write a new FMS during a regional, and test it to a level where teams won't try to crucify you like this mentor for example, then you are clearly either on something, or inexperienced in software engineering. Actually, you'd have to rewrite part of the FMS protocols for this to work which would mean changing the code for each driver-station and rewriting the dashboards.

WEP was not necessary after the steps we took which I will explain bellow- a laptop or cellphone COULD have connected, but because we disabled the DHCP server they would have to have defined a static IP which was in our subnet, something which I doubt anyone would do on purpose, and I doubt even more that it could happen by accident.

• Network experts that were presented as guests offered there assistance and were rejected.

We had an expert from the IDF (Israeli Defence Force), any more expertise and it would have just become disturbing and overlapping. It would have made us inefficiently redundant.
--
Now to explain some of the problems we fixed: (not all)
- The DHCP server was on at first, and the WiFi did start off as unprotected, although it was protected before the first robots tried entering the field. The problem this caused is that the DHCP tables filled up and the leases of IP addresses were far from expiring, which means that the router did not have the resources to manage the new IP addresses connecting to it. Disabling the DHCP server and cleaning the tables, moving everything to static IPs fixed part of the problem (this is the 1AM part)
- After that was fixed, we discovered that the FMS router and the robot APs were not on the same subnet class. The robots were correctly configured on subnet class A, but the FMS was somehow locked on class C. We tried to unlock the FMS's router to work on class A, but nothing seemed to work. At this point the expert from the IDF went home and returned with his router from home, and we used it for the rest of the testing and the competition. (This was approximately 4 AM, when my dad woke up having fallen asleep in the car, after I told him to wait for me because I'll "be there in a minute"...)
- Although I was so tired I was nearly out of it by then, I think that we also limited the bandwidth per connection to make sure that it wasn't that problem. No robots reached their maximum bandwidth.


Although this hasn't come up in this thread, but in others before it: some people claimed that bad programming was to blame. I disagree. I saw the code of many robots, my robot also can communication problems and I had 6 programmers go over the code line by line, of which one is a software engineer and one is a former software engineer which now teaches computer science. If something like bad code on one robot can crash the whole system, then something is inherently wrong with the FMS.

I will not respond to the whole MisCar disqualification story, I don't know what happened there with enough certainty, nor do I wish to get involved. As for the stadium, that is logistics and organisation, of which I had no involvement either.

I hope this post brings new information to light and explains part of what happened. I would actually take the opposite stance and praise FIRST Israel for doing everything within their powers to get things working, even when it cost them more than they could usually afford. (Thanks Alysha for offering me a hotel room, even though we never actually got to the going to sleep part of the night )

[Yoel2630]

Dear RandomStyuff,
I haven't read the whole post but from what I got to I see that you are mixing things.
Yaron pointed out things from his point of view, so don't judge him too harshly. Inspections were horrible, you may have not experienced it because you didn't pass through pits or that you don't know the rules. The practice field was small, and the fact that it wasn't real is even more frustrating.
I am sure Yaron is aware of the fact that you guys stayed up all night (I helped the first night). And he is not blaming you for helping, but blaming FIRST for not getting proper help. Or being stubborn in using the same methods again and again with slight adjustments.
And before you say they did bring experts let me say, it was too late.
The problem should have been found and fixed by the first day. And any other problems by noon the next day.
Yaron is right in my opinion when he said that every robot should be checked because you yourself didn't know what the specific problem was, as I understand these comm problems can come from bad code to bad routers to magnetic disorders, which some robots might have due to bad inspections(I know ours was checked for grounding, but that was ours) and problems such as bandwidth load. So by not eliminating the problems one by one, we can only guess what the bigger problem was. I know there wasn't time, but tough and wise decisions should be made, and not rash and unfair ones.
I am sure that with so many people activated the right way we could have achieved much better results.

[yarb65]

I am glad we came to the Israeli Regional and have refrained from weighing in. But, I must clarify the above comments of the professional inspectors. Our inspector was not going to pass our robot because he could not find a volt meter on it. He had no clue about FRC rules.There were indeed robots with illegal nonKOP motors. I and my students saw them and could not believe it. Agian, this is not to bad mouth anyone or the competition but just making sure that the facts are true.

[Ed Sparks]

Originally Posted by yarb65

... There were indeed robots with illegal nonKOP motors. I and my students saw them and could not believe it. ...

As a Lead Inspector at the Championship, this makes me very nervous. I had similar issues last year at the Championship and it was stressfull on the team, the Israel Regional Director, the inspector, and me.

Let's hope these issues are identified and worked out before the championship........please ........ (I'm bringing my Tylenol).

[Gary Dillard]

Originally Posted by yaron

The practice field inside the pit area is not legal. In 2009 it was identical to the surface that FIRST Israel declared to be 95% close to the official Lunacy surface. In 2010 the tower was constructed from wooden square beams and not 1.5 inches pipes. In addition not even one gate and target were available. The carpet that was brought by one of the team was two small to even practice with one robot.

Just so you are aware, FIRST does not supply a separate practice field for the regionals. From The Competition Manual:

3.9.6 Practice Field
Many events will have practice fields on which teams can share practice time. Adhere to the system in place, work with the schedule and make every effort to keep the area safe, both in and around the perimeter.

The practice fields are generally supplied by one or more of the local teams; the regional committee coordinates to see what teams have available. The 4 x 4 posts that you saw on the tower are from the specification for the low-cost version of the field found on the FIRST website; as you are aware, they are not very representative of the actual field elements but would be sufficient for some testing if you don't grab the bar. As an example, our team wasn't going to go through the tunnel so we didn't build it, but we were grabbing the vertical bars so we had to make a tower that was more representative of the field than the low cost version.

In the future, I recommend you coordinate with your regional committee and the other teams to see what field components can be made available.

I appreciate your taking the time to detail all of your frustrations. We are listening. We are extremely proud of the efforts you are making and I look forward to seeing some of your teams at the Championship.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Gary Dillard

Just so you are aware, FIRST does not supply a separate practice field for the regionals. From The Competition Manual:

Gary, each FRC field comes equipped with a selection of low-cost field elements and a piece of practice carpet. At least, for the fields here in the U.S., if there's space, those are pulled out and setup, unless a team brings one. The official contents of the practice field this year: 1 goal (with target, and chains that doubled as spares for the official field), 1 tower with platform, and 1 bump section, plus carpet. Not sure if the bump and ramp had carpet on them.

Israel is another story. It's pretty expensive to ship an FRC field over there, so they have to build it there. Then the practice field may or may not be built. If it is built, you can expect it to be the low-cost one, or brought in by teams. The official field, though, should not be.

If, for some reason, the official field is not built to official specs, or is built highly unevenly, then I think that FRC HQ, here in the U.S., needs to know. Whoever is responsible for building the field according to the drawings needs to know how to read them. If you can't read the drawings, you probably shouldn't be building the field.

[Molten]

Originally Posted by Yoel2630

I haven't read the whole post but from what I got to I see that you are mixing things.

If you are going to complain about something, at least read the other side of the story if your blessed enough to receive it. To claim someone wrong without hearing them out is to show a disregard for the discussion itself.

PS: Thanks to Random for presenting the other side of the coin. It just makes the picture a bit more clear.

[Jon236]

Several allegations have been made that the field in Israel was not to FIRST standards. That was not the case.

From "The Arena" Section 6.1

"The competition ARENAS are modular constructions that are assembled, used, disassembled, and shipped many times during the competition season. They may undergo a significant amount of wear and tear. The ARENA is designed to withstand rigorous play and frequent shipping, and every effort is made to ensure that the ARENAS are as identical from event to event as possible. However, as the ARENAS are assembled in different venues by different event staff, some small variations do occur. Fit and tolerance on large assemblies (e.g. the TOWER) are ensured only to within ¼ inch. Overall gross dimensions of the entire field may vary up to 4 inches. Successful teams will design ROBOTS that are insensitive to these variations."

The field in Israel was built with metric components to the specified tolerances. Our Head Referee, Stuart Bloom, measured the contested field elements and declared that they met 6.1 requirements.