Practice Fields in St. Louis

[Craig Roys]

I was wondering if anyone else had a problem with the way the practice fields were run at the Championship. It was extremely inefficient in my veiw and made it almost impossible for a team to try to make any actual adjustments. Initially they were only giving you 10 minutes (later increased to 15) which, for those of you using labview know, is not enough time if you need to make any adjustments. Plus, there were many times that a team wanted to test one quick thing and then leave - that spot would stay empty on the field for the remainder of the time until the time slot was up; at least, that's the way it was on our field. They would not let another team just jump into that spot. Also, there was a good hour before opening ceremonies on Friday morning that the field sat empty (what a major waste) because FIRST was concerned that they wouldn't get them cleared for opening ceremonies. I understand that there were approx. 176 teams for each practice field, but many of those teams either didn't use the field or only needed it for a very short time. The rest of the teams who could have benefitted from some extra time on the practice field got shortchanged.

I offer up two possible solutions (and I understand I may be living in a dream world here):

1. Let teams police themselves on use of the practice field and just keep a volunteer or two there to make sure people are being safe and that no one is completely monopolizing things. The majority of FIRST teams, I've found, are very willing to work with each other and accomodate each other when it comes to things like practice fields.
   
2. Create a filler line (or even a sign-up list that teams would have to continue to keep and eye on) and, once one team leaves a spot on the field, the next team in line (or on the list) jumps in to that spot. Again a volunteer or two would be needed to keep things moving and make sure that no one team monopolizes the field for too long.

As I stated earlier, I may be living in a dream world, but I have to believe that the practice fields could have been run much better (and more efficiently) than they were. Lastly, sort of a moot point since this year's game is over, but it was also sort of a pain to have human players practicing their throwing techniques on the practice field while teams were out there trying to test their autonomous programs...seems like there could have been another area for that.

Just my $0.02. I'm interested in hear other's thoughts/opinions about this.

[bduddy]

I was one of the practice field volunteers (at the one closer to the dome), so hopefully I can help out a little bit...

Originally Posted by Craig Roys

I was wondering if anyone else had a problem with the way the practice fields were run at the Championship. It was extremely inefficient in my veiw and made it almost impossible for a team to try to make any actual adjustments. Initially they were only giving you 10 minutes (later increased to 15) which, for those of you using labview know, is not enough time if you need to make any adjustments.

We didn't really have enough time to get all of the teams on the field that wanted to as it is. If you need more than 15 minutes to make adjustments, you should probably be doing it in your pit.

Plus, there were many times that a team wanted to test one quick thing and then leave - that spot would stay empty on the field for the remainder of the time until the time slot was up; at least, that's the way it was on our field. They would not let another team just jump into that spot.

At some point on Saturday we started doing this, but it probably would have been a good idea to start doing it earlier.

Also, there was a good hour before opening ceremonies on Friday morning that the field sat empty (what a major waste) because FIRST was concerned that they wouldn't get them cleared for opening ceremonies.

That came down from FIRST... I understand what you're saying, and you should probably contact someone now, and shortly ahead of the next championships, to make sure they understand.

I understand that there were approx. 176 teams for each practice field, but many of those teams either didn't use the field or only needed it for a very short time. The rest of the teams who could have benefitted from some extra time on the practice field got shortchanged.

At my field, it seemed like most teams that needed time eventually got it.

Let teams police themselves on use of the practice field and just keep a volunteer or two there to make sure people are being safe and that no one is completely monopolizing things. The majority of FIRST teams, I've found, are very willing to work with each other and accomodate each other when it comes to things like practice fields.

One would hope... although many teams were less-than-eager to leave the practice field when their time was up, and if teams like yours are going to be taking significantly more than 15 minutes, the fields might start to move very slowly. There's also a safety issue, and I'm sure an insurance issue, in letting teams run their robots unsupervised... I noticed several instances of unsafe behavior at our field.

Create a filler line (or even a sign-up list that teams would have to continue to keep and eye on) and, once one team leaves a spot on the field, the next team in line (or on the list) jumps in to that spot. Again a volunteer or two would be needed to keep things moving and make sure that no one team monopolizes the field for too long.

We did have a filler line to fill for the (many) teams that signed up but did not come to at their designated times, and as I said, at some point we let them fill in in the middle, with the understanding that they would not get a full 15 minutes.

As I stated earlier, I may be living in a dream world, but I have to believe that the practice fields could have been run much better (and more efficiently) than they were. Lastly, sort of a moot point since this year's game is over, but it was also sort of a pain to have human players practicing their throwing techniques on the practice field while teams were out there trying to test their autonomous programs...seems like there could have been another area for that.

We were trying to discourage that... I agree that there should be an area for human player practice when it is as important as it was this year.

[Chris Hibner]

While it wasn't perfect, I like the way it was done at the Championship WAAAAYY better than at Kettering or MSC (i.e. total chaos).

I've learned that the practice fields need a volunteer to be sure teams get off the field when they're making an adjustment or otherwise not fully utilizing the practice space. I was helping a team at the Livonia District and the practice field there was great. There was a volunteer making sure things kept moving along and teams weren't hogging the field or wasting the space.

I would kind of like to see something like the following:

- The fill in line is planned to get 50% of the spots (say, blue is always the fill in line).
- The other 50% of the spots (say red) are sign-up slots.
- The fill in line can play on the red side if a team doesn't show up.
- All fill-ins get at fixed time, such as 5 minutes from when they get on the field. Give them a restaurant pager or something. When it buzzes, you're done (and the field volunteer will know when your pager is buzzing).
- When you finish or need to make an adjustment that takes more than a minute, go back to the end of the line.

My reasoning for the above system is this:

The fill in line was rarely extremely long in terms of number of robots, but it often took a long time since: a) the slots were 15 minutes long, and b) you had to wait for someone with a slot to not show up.

With 5 minute slots and at least 50% of the slots going to the fill-in line, even the worst case wait in line would be about 25 minutes (10 robots in line was the most I saw in St. Louis). Typically there were about 4-5 robots which would mean you should get on the field in 10 minutes. If you need to adjust auton, get off the field and back in line. By the time you make your adjustment and deploy your code, you should be on the field again in 5 minutes or less.

The Livonia field ran similarly to the above, without the max time limit or the sign-up slots. It was really the best practice field experience I've had. I think the sign-up slots are necessary so you can try and get something between matches.

[Jon Stratis]

There is always the option of doing it the way airlines sometimes do... overbook the field according to a statistical model of how many teams miss their time slot and how many teams need less than their full time slot. Of course, you'd have to gather a ton of data before you could even think about that.

[Craig Roys]

I do understand that a lot of this came down from FIRST and I apologize to any volunteers if we were less than pleasant with our reactions about some of the processes - I usually try (not always successfully) to not take out frustrations on the volunteers who are just doing what they've been instructed to do. Thank you to all the volunteers who put up with that - without your help, there would be no practice field available at all.

I kind of like the idea of splitting the field between a sign-up process and filler line where the filler line gets just enough time for running a quick test or two, and the sign-up line gets a little longer if they are trying to work out some changes to their programming.

I think one of our frustrations about the sign-up list was that initially it was unclear that there was supposed to be a sign-up at all, and by the time we found out about it, it was mostly filled. Then, after signing up for a spot or two, at some point during the day the remainder of the list was crossed out and a new list was started (or at least that's what I was told - I did not witness this firsthand). It just seemed like if you happened to be lucky enough to be in the area when the sign-up started, you got a spot on the list - if you weren't, you were banished to wait in the filler line for the remainder of the day. Perhaps none of this is reality, and we just weren't paying enough attention to hear when the sign-ups were. In the end, we survived, it was just a little frustrating at times - maybe that's to be expected with so many teams. It seems that last year was not as difficult to make it onto the practice field. I wonder if the pit fields were moved back to the dome, if there would be room for a practice field for each division.

[bduddy]

It sounds like you may have been at the other field; I don't think I was at the one that handled Archimedes. We did hear some reports of problems over there... Signups were at the beginning of the day, for each day, and we only crossed out teams if we realized they had signed up for too many slots. There probably should have been a better process - maybe signing up the previous evening? Some sort of lottery perhaps? I also think the half signup/half fill idea is an interesting one that deserves further study...