2010 Lesson Learned: The Negative

FIRST General Forum
21

The rules on minor protrusions were a bit much this year. Next year I believe that minor protrusions from the frame perimeter should be allowed both inside and outside of the bumper zone as long as they do not pose an entanglement hazard.

The automated system that handled dogma was a bit strange. On at least one occasion I saw an alliance get a dogma penalty while there were no balls in the goals or in the alliance station. Perhaps this was due to a careless human player, but regardless, this should not decide a match.

The classmates need a bit more work, and we need to find a supplier for both replacement classmates and batteries. The IO interface is glitchy at best, and the whole USB power issue shouldnā€™t have happened.

The Field Wifi system could use more refinement, though I will say it is at least 10 times better than it was last year.

Regional inspections should be a bit more harsh especially in earlier Regionals. We made it to the Championship with two bolt heads slightly outside of our frame perimeter that werenā€™t caught at either of our earlier Regionalsā€¦ Iā€™d move to make the rules a bit more lax, or have the inspectors go through the robots a bit more thoroughly.

(Iā€™ll probably come up with a few more)

22

The safety award.

I feel the original intent of the award has been lost, and now has just become a competition for who can yell ā€œROBOT!ā€ the loudest while walking through the pits.

23

Ok, Iā€™ll come out and say it. The biggest negative I have for 2010 isā€¦ The Control System.

Netbook boot times were slow but tolerable.

Issues with the PSOC boards not working were irritating but there were other options.

The single biggest cause of alarm for me involves the disable switch. They were flimsy, when someone is killing an out of control robot they should NOT have to worry about breaking the disable switch. Additionally, at one point in time we tried to disable the robotā€¦ I say tried because it never disabled. The netbook was so slow that it took longer to recognize the disable switch had been pressed than it took for someone to reach in and kill power to the robot. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. No, it isnā€™t a pet peeve. It isnā€™t a bother. It is a safety hazard. When I hit disable there is a reason I hit disable and it @#@#@#@# better kill that robot.

There are too many parts to this control system. You have a netbook, a router, a wireless bridge, a CRIO, a digital sidecar, a handful of breakout boards, a PD boardā€¦ when you canā€™t get a speed controller to work what is it? Is it your code? Is it that your comms are down? Is it that your joystick is busted? Is it a breakout board? Is everything getting enough power? Is it your wiring? Is it a bad ESC? Who do I call for support? My question mark key just stopped workingā€¦ I know FIRST really likes their suppliers, I appreciate everything they do, but we REALLY need to cut the number of points of failure down. Look at the IFI system, single vendor solution. If something broke I knew who to call. Simplifying would cut weight, costs, and energy requirements. Why is the system so complex?

Or waste the most paper putting up flyersā€¦ I always wonder, do the teams that put them up take them down too? Do they recycle them? Or waste the most of my time by explaining to me how to use MY safety equipmentā€¦ or where the fire exits areā€¦ I could go on with all the common sense things these teams insisted on wasting my time telling me. Instead of focusing on telling me how to be safe focus on making your team safe and let me worry about my team. Although, having the UL guys there is pretty freaking cool. I loved talking to them at Kettering.

24

Although I have listened to the explanations I still feel there were enormous opportunities lost by the last minute implementation of the Deanā€™s List. Lots of deserving students were left behind. A+ for intent. Failing grade for execution.
That said, congrats to all the students nominated and selected to be honored.

There should be a flood of nominations next year. What a good problem to have.

25

and hang safety poster anywhere and everywhereā€¦

When I think of the Safety Award I think of what team 250 did last year in the Philadelphia regional to win it. They actually took care of a potentially dangerous situation with a leaking battery that was so textbook they should have filmed it so other teams can see how itā€™s done just in case such a situation arises again.

26

I agree. In one of our CMP quarterfinals matches, the camera operator focused on the far zone, while we scored seven or eight balls in the near zone.
There was also issues with the field video screen, at least the one on Curie. It would occasionally turn off, or turn green, or have green bars all over. It was extremely annoying waiting for the screen to turn on so you could see whether youā€™d just won or lost the match.

Also, Iā€™d really like to see an award that recognizes scouting in some way, or recognizes an innovation in scouting. Scouting is a huge part of the competition, and it isnā€™t recognized at all.

27

Hi, Iā€™m the TI guy who was in the pits with 2865. We did swap out a bunch of jags, but in the end it was two CAN cables that were open circuit (that we eventually found with a multimeter). Iā€™ve got the old jags here and weā€™ll be taking a look at them to confirm - but Iā€™m pretty sure theyā€™re OK. Certainly moving the robot shouldnā€™t damage the Jaguars - we do some very demanding tests for that. Really sorry to hear though that it didnā€™t work out for 2865.

ā€“ Jon

28

+10 - this award is a pet peeve of mine.

Weā€™ve now placed 2nd for the safety award 3 times. At the Michigan State Championships, we collected over 50 safety tokens.

Nearly every single one of those were given to us because we:

#1 Had a corner pit at the biggest intersections in the venue
#2 Had it clean and organized

The safety award needs to be a judged award where they discuss aspects of YOUR robot that were unsafe and what youā€™ve done to protect yourself. Iā€™d wager weā€™d see major improvements in gear guarding, chain guarding, labeling, wiring, and many of the other ā€˜majorā€™ culprits. For instance, how many teams have a foot-actuated wheel lock to prevent the cart from being moved unintentionally? How about a safety token for each team that shows up with their main breaker and pneumatic valve already pre-labeled?

29

Finding the root cause is always a really good thing! Without it, there is always a bit of assumption and finger pointing that may or may not be substantiated. Itā€™s good to know it wasnā€™t the Jagā€™s.

Whenever you have a ā€œbussedā€ environment, a failure in the buss can have variety of symptoms, some obvious, some not so obvious.

This also re-enforces the need to have quality cable connections and well built cables. Oh, and BTW, having a decent cable continuity tester is invaluable, and cheap too!

30

Autonomous was huge this year. What do you mean by ā€œno bonusā€?

Things negative about this year:

Suspension probably should have been worth more points if the GDC wanted us to do it. The single extra point itā€™s worth convinces me that they wanted us to analyze and determine that suspension indeed wasnā€™t worth it. It would have been cool to see though.

There simply should not have been so many field connection issues. My team shouldnā€™t have to bring their unplugged router with them to a match in order to prove that the robot wasnā€™t trying to connect to it. (Apparently, despite the custom encryption, field crews at WPI claimed my teamā€™s robot was connected to our own router in the pits, which remained unplugged throughout the event) It seemed like every other match there was that one, two, or three robots that took several minutes to get to work, and the fact that more than one match was decided for my team by whether or not field personnel felt like spending the 10 minutes it takes to make a robot work or not is stupid. One match we didnā€™t move. Another match, our partner that we desperately needed to try and upset 1124 in CT quals didnā€™t move and they made them take the robot off the field (side note: i wish they let us move that robot in front of the opponentā€™s goal instead of walking it off). If youā€™re paying ~$500 a match, this kind of thing isnā€™t acceptable.

To drive home my pointā€¦ it happened on Einstein! 294ā€™s sync issues, while it made me hear more of Dave Verbuggeā€™s awesome speech, are something that just shouldnā€™t happen.

The Safety Award should be awarded to the safest teams, not the most obnoxious. Just imagine if the GP award was given out the way the Safety award isā€¦

Some method of ensuring judges give each team a minimum amount of time to talk to them would be nice. Say, 10 minutes per team Friday morning? Judges do go by every teamā€™s pit, but 90 seconds isnā€™t enough to decide whether or not a team should get an award. Not that Iā€™m bitterā€¦

31

The fact that we received 89 penalities in one match due to DOGMAR explains most of my complaints.

32

This post says it all!
And disagree with the so-called no bonus of autonomous. Starving an opposing alliance and scoring points was absolutely a difference maker in matches at CMP.

33

The Game: Having a week one regional with this game was horrific. Penalties coming out the ying-yang and many of them, after the next Team Update, never would have been called. A lot of week1 teams got hosed by bad calls and bad rules.

The Wireless Bridge: Throw the WET610N away. It is a piece of garbage. It is slow to connect, impossible to configure, and a horrible piece of hardware to use in a game where seconds count. Six minutes a match? You wait almost a minute for the darn thing to even connect. Solutions: www.ebay.com or www.amazon.com. Our WGA600N connects in about 6 seconds, every time, no matter what the order we plug stuff in.

The Safety Award: The mechanic is useless. The token system is ridiculous. You have UL safety judges, a whole gaggle of them. Make Safety Judging part of Robot Inspection.

34

In no particular order:

The ranking system. When a Championship contender decides itā€™s in its best interest from the seeding standpoint to take a 29-0 dive (no matter how spectacular it was to watch the scoreboard climb), what does that say?

Also, while the five-point win bonus made for a great improvement in the system after week 1, how will the GDC be able to calibrate that bonus in future years with wildly different scoring? Unless you throw those first-week events under the bus, it seems nearly impossible.

Make the coopertition score the first tiebreaker after WLT record, though, and Iā€™m fine.

The control system. My position has been clear on the reuse of control system components (Iā€™d rather not), but Iā€™ll grit my teeth and do it. All I ask is for this system to work reliably, especially on the field. I was partially relieved to hear of no new announcements in Atlanta for the control systemā€“now please, beat the hell out of it with the FMS this off-season!

Bumpers. I miss them being optional. I miss them being colored as we desire, if applicable. I miss being able to style our numbers where and as we desire, within the bounds of the applicable rules. I would not miss seeing a dozen or so teams at Bayou just outside the venue painting their bumpers to get their numbers on (and, generally, getting less-than-stellar results in the process).

Assuming that FIRST finds the 2010-spec bumper rules desirable, though, how about this: Give us 12" in the middle of each bumper to style as we see fit, provided that it includes the 4" numbers and that the background isnā€™t the other color (e.g. no blue backgrounds on the red bumpers). Doing so would allow much better opportunities to brand the robots with more familiar elements (sponsor logos, slogans, pigs on rockets) to aid recognition while doing little to diminish recognition of alliance color.

No game ball in the kit of parts. See above.

Deanā€™s List timing. See every other post about it. Wonderful intent, awful announcement timing. Weā€™ll give it a go in 2011.

Aside: I hope everyone posting in this thread will take the time to post in the Positives thread as well.

35

My primary suggestion for how things can be done better is the same every year: If something is illegal, and will garner a penalty, it should be penalized every time, consistently, and without even the tiniest regard to whether or not it will make the game 0-0ā€¦

From contact outside the bumper zone (which was almost never called during Overdrive, much to my chagrin given our robot design) to balls 3+" inside the frame perimeter (which was properly called week one, and then modified afterward for reasons I do not agree with), teams should have very clear expectations for how their robot should be designed so as to minimize penalties.

Defining situations that incur penalties and then not penalizing them (to the best of the refsā€™ abilities, of course) just simply should not be done. If itā€™s a penalty, then students should design their robots not to incur that penalty ā€“ and if they donā€™t, then they should learn a little something about game play and design constraints, just like every other aspect of the game.

36

+1

Itā€™s nice to see the kids run and grab the controls. But to focus on them for the next 10-15 seconds? If thatā€™s the primary target, what about the 5 other driver teams on the field?

And during the bonus period, how about ā€˜zooming outā€™ in order to see both alliances attempting to hang? I think I may have a caught a match or two where two robots were attempting to hang on the same tower, but the video feed concentrated on only one robot.

37

I already posted in this thread, but I dislike the next subject so much that Iā€™ll make another post.

BUMPERS.

Iā€™ve never really known a game in the Pre-Bumper Era except for triple play, and I feel that bumpers a good thing for FRC because they do lessen some impacts and the amount of damage taken by a robot due to defense. Any robot I build from this point forward will have bumpers whether they are mandatory or not.

BUT, I hated the mandatory bumper colors and marking restrictions this year. Also, I donā€™t think that bumpers should be mandatory, or at least the rules should be relaxed so they arenā€™t such a design restriction. I can understand what FIRST was trying to do with the red and blue bumpers this year, but many teams used bumpers in previous years to help in decorating their robot and to carry their team image through their machine.

Personally, I think that FIRST should find another way to differentiate one alliance from the other that isnā€™t bumper colors. IMO, Iā€™m a huge fan of the Giant Spinning light used in games pre-2005.

38

I assume you are talking about G46. My team, as well was saddened to heard that it was abolished, as we had built our robot to specifically not get balls under it, by having tank treads. It gave us a competitive advantage that other teams didnā€™t have when they rode over balls. In the entire FLR, we did not get a single ball penetration violation. However, if the same rule was in place at other regionals, then we may have seeded even higher than we did.

I do understand that it was the GDCā€™s intent, though, and it made it a more fun game to watch, without the MC constantly yelling BALL PENETRATION VIOLATION, like they did at FLR :stuck_out_tongue:

39

Our Overdrive robot extended outside our bumper zone a maximum of 4", and then only while acquiring the ball, so that we would not incur incidental contact penalties. Watching the games and counting actual incidental contact from various trackball manipulators, I think every single match would have been a 0-0 tie if they were calling it properlyā€¦

ā€¦which means that teams are so used to penalties not being called for certain rules that they donā€™t even worry about themā€¦ So why have them?

40

Iā€™m not going to take long here, so Iā€™ll just echo the points mentioned in this thread that I agree with:

Control System. Itā€™s awful. Iā€™m grateful that teams have the chance to work with some pretty cool equipment, but the Classmate should be all but scrapped, the FMS clearly hates mixing routers, and donā€™t get me started on the cRio reboot times.

Deanā€™s List. While my team never had the resources to focus on award-writing, I feel that the teams who do were slighted greatly by what can only be summed up as bad timing.

Inspections. That protruding bolt head deal caused us a match and about a half-hour of work over a half-inch of length. The sad part is, nothing would have gotten entangled anyway, since the bumpers extended much farther than the 1/4" each bolt added.

CMP cameras. I loved the overhead boom shots that they had. That doesnā€™t make up for missing a shot of two/three robots hanging on the same tower. And what are they focusing on during this time? The drivers, a robot thatā€™s failing at attempting to score a ball repeatedly, the crowd, the concrete floor, the bird on the ceilingā€¦

There are 5 weeks of regionals before Championships. I know theyā€™re a professional TV crew with busy schedules, but PLEASE make sure they attend one or two regionals as spectators to get a sense of whatā€™s important for that yearā€™s game. Itā€™s hard to explain to my boss or family why the crowd is going beserk while weā€™re watching a flipped robot for 20-seconds.

Bumpers. Ditto to everyone in the thread.

Sound system (Buckeye-specific). OK, we go from way too loud (as in pants were shaking) last year, to barely audible this year? Is this some kind of joke, or did they not know how low the levels were this year? The music, during dance breaks, was alright. But my main gripe was with the voices. The MC went so silent at times that you could hear a pin drop from the pits. The crowd didnā€™t seem to be as into the competition as previous years (though thatā€™s not entirely a sound problem, louder music can help).

Teams in queue lines were definitely grateful for not having 5-foot speakers/woofers next to them this season, though. I approve of that. :slight_smile: