What could have FIRST done better this year?
NO GAME OBJECT IN THE KIT OF PARTS!
FIRST never do this to us again! The surface finish on the balls was so specific at driving the design of ball handling mechanisms and you screwed it up again by chosing something we couldn’t get and not warning the manufacturer to stock up because a huge influx of orders would be coming.
Truthfully? As far the game goes, my only REAL complaint was the DOGMA system. Ok idea, bad implementation. Should have been 1 point penalty once per ball, not repeated penalties.
Peter and Tom just addressed #1 and #2 on my list.
I would like to see a stronger incentive for using the camera (and autonomous mode in general).
The Classmate is at best a work in progress. Between Windows startup times and power management woes, battery life, USB enumeration issues, powering the USB ports, cheapo Ethernet ports, and the tedium of “FMS Locked” and E-stop, I think we can do a lot better.
This wasn’t completely FIRST’s problem, but the discontinuation of the WGA bridges and their replacement with the WET bridges was a bit of a problem that could have been avoided by some more testing on FIRST’s part to make sure there weren’t any major problems with it (long connection times, disconnecting WGA bridges, etc.)
EDIT: agreement with most of the stuff with the classmate on the above post
Add in the impossibility of getting replacement parts like batteries for the classmate to that list.
Ok first of all i’m going to say i appreciate all the volunteers that helped out with FIRST FRC robotics this year and every year, but i think that FIRST needs to have a code of conduct for when it comes to inspecting a teams robot. For example having to ask to move your robot at ANY and EVERY time they wish to do so, ect. the reason i say that is because this year when we went to Atlanta we missed our very first match because during our teams inspection the inspector moved our robot while it was off while this doesn’t seem like a problem it is because our team decided to use CAN this year and when he moved our robot he sent reverse current into our jaguars thus completely ruining functionality of 3 of our jaguars it was to bad that the only thing the texas instruments guy could do for us was give us three new jaguars(after 30min. of trying to fix them. on top of the at least 1 hour inspection) and after that things just went down hill for our team.
I didn’t like the many field problems experienced at the competitions. Sometimes matches get delayed for 10-20 minutes because of these problems. The Kettering District competition lasted until 7:00PM because of the many field issues that needed to be worked on. I know the system had to be rebooted a few times, but each of those reboots took up to a half hour each! FIRST or National Instruments needs to find a way to make problems like these quicker to solve and fix to make things run smoother.
I also didn’t like how it is hard to figure whether or not it is a field or a robot problem when a robot doesn’t run during a match. There needs to be a system in place that determines functionality of both the field and the robot to better determine where the problem is coming from.
I didn’t like that we have to reuse control systems from a previous year. thinks about the pile of robot skeletons in the closet
I didn’t like the no-bonus autonomous.
I didn’t like the low scoring matches.
I didn’t like how the game wasn’t conducive to defense.
I dont like the seeding system. Although, next year, with a new game, I hope for a new seeding system more like elims.
EDIT: Suspension. With only about 5 total in the season, it was a completely failed game mechanic.
It looked to me like some robots at the championships had issues (weight, electrical, pneumatic) that needed to be fixed but passed inspection at the regionals. I don’t think they’re doing teams a favor by letting them through regionals this way. Maybe they can issue conditional inspection approvals to let teams compete but all issues need to be corrected before the eliminations. That way teams earning their way to Altanta would be confident they are good to go.
We’ve moved our robot with the power off many times without any damage to our Jaguars (and yes, we were using CAN). Now, it’s possible that there was some sort of electro-static discharge (ESD) event that propagated through the CAN bus that caused multiple Jaguar failures. I defer to Al Skierkiewicz (CMP Lead Robot Inspector, and VERY familiar with the robot control system electronics) as to whether back-EMF could induce such a problem.
As far as robot inspector code-of-conduct goes, the inspectors at CMP were presented with a huge challenge: get 340+ robots inspected in less time than what is allotted for most regional events. If your inspector seemed a bit rushed, it’s because we all were. If you felt uncomfortable moving your robot, you should have said so. I will only touch a robot when looking for sharp edges, tracing wires, or inspecting bumpers. If someone asks me to help support their robot, hold a component, or move a mechanism, I’ll do it because I trust the team will not ask me to do something that is unsafe. No inspector would ever want to damage a team’s robot. We all want to see everyone compete safely and within the rules.
A picture paints a thousand words. Here are two pictures that express my biggest negative this year.
There was a lot of this…
shortly followed by a whole lot more of this…
Hurry up and wait…and wait…and wait…
Maybe we can have custom built for FIRST WiFi next season.
Sort of a follow up to the DOGMA issue before. It was a real problem when a ball would fall off the ball-return track (before passing through the counter) and a reset-volunteer would pick it up and place it back in the mid field (A rare occasion, but I still saw this happen more than once). This obviously potentially would ruin a match for the alliance. So my suggestion would be better volunteer training for those special cases as described.
I completely agree with you. There were several inspection “faults” that should have been caught and corrected at the regionals. These problems were identified and corrected at CMP at the cost of considerable stress to the teams and the inspectors.
I also don’t think teams should be held off the field at regionals for minor discrepancies, but the teams should be forced to correct such problems before the elimination rounds. The pre-elimination round weight check should indeed include a check for any conditional “passes” and verification that the problem(s) are resolved.
Perhaps a DOGMA override switch would work. If there is obviously no hoarding of balls and the system has somehow messed up with scoring (electronic or mechanical) the refs should be able to cancel the DOGMA counter (or any equivalent for future years). It wouldn’t totally stop the penalties, but losing 2 or 3 points and then a manual cancelation of DOGMA is much better than a failed system “dogma’ing you to death”
Training for the camera operators for Championships. Watching the web casts was a pain because the field side camera men would zoom in on the drivers for 5-15 second periods during the match. They would do the same to individual robots during the match as well, so it was hard to have any idea of how the match was going besides watching the real-time scoring.
I understand the people sitting in the stands can see most everything, and the close ups can be nice for them, but for those watching at home, we rarely got to see our teams in action because of all the close ups.
I suggest that a majority of each match be a zoomed out view of the entire field, while a smaller percentage of time is dedicated to zooming in on a particular robot or drive team.
What about a Picture-in-Picture system for the scoreboard? Almost any decent video mixer should be able to do it (might require a 2nd board though since match video is green-screened onto the score display) The background shows an overview of the entire field, and close-ups are PIP’d into it.
I think this is only needed for Champs (and possibly MSC) since those get the most webcast views since there are so many people who want to go but can’t. A regular regional with it’s lower budget shouldn’t have to go for the extra equipment
I agree that a no bonus autonomous period was a big problem. Teams that work hard to write great autonomous code should get some benefit for it. I was upset to see so few autonomous codes being played this year, many robots would stand still then clear their zone.
better regional scheduling- usually we have a better turnout at BMR, but since midwest was the same week, it was a hard choice for many teams.
maybe they need a rule that says no two regionals __ miles away can be the same week (michigan districts are an exeption).
also, the bumpers were FAIL. they were too high, which caused many robots to tip way too easy. also, the colors took away from the personality of the robot. also, most robots had numbers not visible form far away, which made scouting a nightmare.