[FRC Blog] Week 1 Review

[Hallry]

Posted on the FRC Blog, 3/5/14: http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...-Week-1-Review

Week 1 Review

Blog Date: Wednesday, March 5, 2014 - 14:30

Week 1 Review

Positives

I attended the Granite State District event in Nashua, NH, over the weekend. What a wonderful, high energy event! We were in a High School gym, and while it was smaller scale than we’ve been used to with our New England events, there’s something about having the stands full and the spectators ‘right there’, close to the field, that drove the energy. We also had a NH Senator, a NH Congresswoman, and Dean himself show up to speak, which made things even more special.

Once we got in the swing of things, with everyone having a better handle on the rules, the matches flowed pretty well – but not without some problems (see more below!). Some of the matches in the finals were among the most exciting I can remember seeing in FRC. Special shout-out to Team 1519, Mechanical Mayhem, for a sweet two-ball autonomous that worked nearly every time they employed it. It’s no wonder they ended up in the finals.

During his talk, Dean revealed that will.i.am is working on a theme song for FIRST. His ‘homework’ to the crowd was to tweet thank-yous for this and all Will does for FIRST, and including @iamwill in those tweets. Might not hurt to include the hashtag #omgrobots while you are at it! Dean said the intention is for the theme song to be based on ‘Hall of Fame’ by The Script featuring Will. Danny O’Donoghue, lead singer for The Script, when commenting on the lyrics for the song, said “We wanted to inspire people to stop trying to be famous for the sake of it." Sounds like it fits right in with FIRST.

Problems

As enjoyable as many events were, Week 1 did not go as smoothly as we had planned, and for that I apologize. We’ve taken some steps to make things better, some of which were covered in the rules update last night, but others are a little more behind the scenes.

Upper Goal Bounce-Outs

We knew some balls would go through the upper goal and bounce back to the field, not counting as a score, but we saw more of that last weekend than we expected. This seemed heavily dependent on robot design, so some teams were experiencing this regularly. This was frustrating for those teams and their alliance partners. While we want to keep FRC challenging, it’s possible to push ‘challenging’ too far over the line to ‘frustrating’. We’re adding sheets of polycarbonate to the upper goals to reduce the chance of bounce-outs happening. Changes will be made for all Week 2 events onward, though in some cases the sheets won’t be in place for practice day, they should be in place when quals start. Bounce-outs still may happen, and they still won’t count as a score, but the frequency should be reduced.

Fouls

We’re seeing lots of penalties being called. We’ve modified G40 and G28 to hopefully reduce the frequency of these particular fouls being called, which were the most prevalent. We did not adjust the points associated with these penalties. With all game-play related penalties, we don’t want an alliance to perceive a potential strategic advantage to intentionally ‘taking the foul’. This is carefully considered when assigning point values. Also, regarding G40, the penalty is high because this is a potential safety issue.

Refs

Refs have lots to do in this game, and in some cases are having trouble keeping up. We’re working to recruit more refs to get an extra set of eyes on the field. This additional ref will help watch for things the other refs may miss while they are entering information on their touchscreens or are otherwise occupied.

As with any High School sport, refs can’t call what they don’t see. Refs are being trained to give priority to watching for scores and assists over watching for fouls. There will always be more spectators watching each individual robot than we have refs on the field. Some fouls will be missed, but we are working to minimize this by reducing the need to call fouls in the first place – through the rules changes last night - and by adding those additional refs.

System Issues

We’ve fixed some bugs we found in the system from Week 1. For example, we found that in the corner case of zero balls being placed by teams in an alliance on the field before a match, the system was not transitioning properly to teleop after autonomous was over. We had a work-around for this, but the software has now been updated to fix this, eliminating the need for the work-around. Priority this week has been given to logic-related problems such as this one, but we will continue to work on other improvements, such as system responsiveness, as well.

Balls Being Returned to Field

When a ball leaves the field in such a way that it does not count as scored, being shot over the top of the high goal, for example, field reset works to get it back to a human player for that alliance. Occasionally, we’ve seen delays in getting the ball back to the field.

Wouldn’t it save time to just have the field reset person toss the ball back on the field? Yes, this would save some time, but in a game with only one ball per alliance, the strategic value of that ball is extraordinarily high. Where and how that field reset person decides to toss that ball back in could swing an entire match. The GDC discussed this at length, and decided it would be most appropriate to give that ball back to a human player for the alliance, who can then attempt to use their control of the ball to strategic advantage. It takes more time, but puts the alliance unquestionably in control of their own game piece. You will see that in yesterday’s update we clarified that a replacement for a damaged ball gets delivered to the alliance’s human players as well, for the same reason.

All this being said, the field reset folks do have an important role in this game when the ball leaves the field, and need to be trained for that. Our Volunteer Resources Department is contacting the Volunteer Coordinators for events to encourage field reset volunteers to be assigned, to the greatest extent possible, for the entire length of the event, rather than having new crews coming in daily. This should reduce recurring training needs, and help ensure more consistent performance.

All told, I believe the Week 2 events will go more smoothly. Good luck to all our teams competing this weekend!

Frank

[Rynocorn]

Looks awesome! Seems like they addressed most if not all of the major issues! A+ Frank

Also, Ryan how is it that you always post the blog posts before everyone else? Do you get a notification or something? Just curious

[tylerobot]

Thanks Hallry for coming through and posting the blog link to try to make everything better.

It's great they addressed the ball bounce-out and fouls. But there wasn't any mention at all in ball pedestal illumination delays or hot goal timing being off which are huge issues in my opinion.

[Madison]

It's too bad that Frank did not address the delay between finishing a cycle and starting the next that occurred so often. I am concerned by his remark, "but we will continue to work on other improvements, such as system responsiveness, as well," and worry that it means that we won't see substantial improvements to the flow of the game this weekend.

[dag0620]

+1 Frank. Thanks for addressing these in a timely manor!

Originally Posted by Madison

It's too bad that Frank did not address the delay between finishing a cycle and starting the next that occurred so often. I am concerned by his remark, "but we will continue to work on other improvements, such as system responsiveness, as well," and worry that it means that we won't see substantial improvements to the flow of the game this weekend.

I can assure you that efforts have been made to reduce this delay as much as possible. As of now, one of the main limiting factors is the tablet itself. But other issues were found and fixed, so that the delay between ending a cycle and lighting up the pedestal is much much lower.

[PayneTrain]

The update covers one big topic that was not explicitly mentioned for every point: every rule update and internal game administering update was made not to necessarily fix unforseen issues, but to align the GDC's intent of the game with its implementation.

The covering on the bar shows that the GDC meant the bar to primarily be the simplest preventative measure for protecting drivers and coaches from contact and not to make the shots more challenging.

G40 and G28 were adjusted in meaning but not in penalty value because in their opinion, penalty values are being applied as intended but the rules were not allowing for the penalty value to be implemented fairly and not without insignificant cost to referees officiating the other 8.3 million aspects of the game.

Ball return did not see a listed change because the GDC clearly intended to show that by shooting the ball out of bounds to a human player, you are taking a strategic risk of possibly losing time for ball return to maintain very precise control of the ball. You also are being implicitly reminded with human players you have to weight the pros and cons of putting human players in the islands vs behind the glass. Do drive coaches and alliance captains want their best human player available for a fast inbound or a great communicator and cathcer on an island? Will island human players be more or less susceptible to penalties?

It is on the burden of teams to determine their strategy, which I agree with. However, they did not intend for field reset to not go untrained when it came to ball return and they promise to clarify that with those volunteers (I would prefer it if field reset was given a clear diagram on where to return a ball in a certain situation). Maybe our human player will dress up in really bright and reflective clothing so field reset can identify him?

I think the only think you can be left not totally happy or understanding of is the FMS/GMS firmware upgrade, and that's something that we just have to wait to see if it's ready for primetime by Friday.*

*unless you're Brandon Liatys and you have a beef with ball inflation

[cmrnpizzo14]

Frank, as always thank you.

I love reading these blog posts because Frank and all of FIRST are usually very good about addressing the problems in a timely but not hurried manner. Here is my take on the issues.

Bounce-Outs: Glad they are fixed. I understand that this was in the official drawings and teams could have planned for this but Frank said it best when he said that FIRST was supposed to be challenging but not frustrating. This was a small piece on the field that no one should really have had to worry about. I think this will help improve the fluidity of the game too. It is already hard to score under heavy defense, no need to make it harder.

Fouls: Good call by making it a little more lenient but not making the penalty lighter. Judging from some teams, a little practice makes following these rules fairly easy. This update made it easier to follow the letter and spirit of the rule and also should help improve gameplay.

Refs: about the best they can do right now. Ref's have a hard job. Everyone just needs to remember that the ref's are trying their best, calls will be missed and that often things from your point of view may seem ok but a referee has been trained to objectively look from the side and probably can see more of the event better than you can.

Balls being returned to the field: I'm glad that the balls are still being returned to the human players, but I wish that there were balls on hand so that the volunteers did not have to run down a ball and waste time but could just grab a ball from next to them, pass it to the human player and then go get the other one.

Let's hope this leads to a better week 2 and a great season!

[Brandon_L]

Originally Posted by cmrnpizzo14

Balls being returned to the field: I'm glad that the balls are still being returned to the human players, but I wish that there were balls on hand so that the volunteers did not have to run down a ball and waste time but could just grab a ball from next to them, pass it to the human player and then go get the other one.

I was pro-"return at the point where it left the field" until I read that paragraph.

Frank, please make this a thing.

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

*unless you're Brandon Liatys and you have a beef with ball inflation

We just popped a purposely over inflated ball in our shop today trying to get it to work with our intake. My beef is more like a cow.

[Nathan Streeter]

Originally Posted by Brandon_L

I was pro-"return at the point where it left the field" until I read that paragraph.

Frank, please make this a thing.

I thought about this... in a lot of ways I think it would be a great solution... it would also need to be done carefully so that a HP knows the right moment to enter the ball. I think this might be a nice time-saving measure though.

[Brandon_L]

Originally Posted by Nathan Streeter

I thought about this... in a lot of ways I think it would be a great solution... it would also need to be done carefully so that a HP knows the right moment to enter the ball. I think this might be a nice time-saving measure though.

Im sure something along the lines of "on ref approval, a ball located next to the human player may be entered into play when a ball exits the field" can be enacted.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by Brandon_L

Im sure something along the lines of "on ref approval, a ball located next to the human player may be entered into play when a ball exits the field" can be enacted.

If they make this change I'll be okay with it but didn't other teams realize that the field reset crews would be slow at returning balls and how big of a time hit it was going to be to lose your ball out of bounds (also how much of a bounce it is to force the opposing alliance to lose their ball out of bounds). We have been talking about this since day 1.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

If they make this change I'll be okay with it but didn't other teams realize that the field reset crews would be slow at returning balls and how big of a time hit it was going to be to lose your ball out of bounds (also how much of a bounce it is to force the opposing alliance to lose their ball out of bounds). We have been talking about this since day 1.

Weird bounces and odd angle shots lead to more balls out of bounds than you might think. It's hard to plan for, especially for balls bouncing off robots after a truss shot.

Free advice to everyone, put a human player in every zone!

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by Gregor

Weird bounces and odd angle shots lead to more balls out of bounds than you might think. It's hard to plan for, especially for balls bouncing off robots after a truss shot.

We did infact plan for this, that's why we never planned to truss to the open field, or if we do we know we risk wasting time. I'm not saying that we have won't have mistakes but carelessly throwing the ball to no one is not the smartest move in this game and as everyone has now learned comes with risks.

Anytime the ball is not controlled by a member of your alliance, robot or human, you risk losing a lot of time.

[Abhishek R]

Originally Posted by Gregor

Free advice to everyone, put a human player in every zone!

Seconded.