AZ Regionals: Incorrect Scoring?

Competition Regional Competitions
1

PLEASE NOTE:

We know it’s too late to change anything; regionals ended yesterday, but we want to bring it to your attention that we don’t think FIRST’s scoring software is working correctly. Here’s why:

**

As of Friday evening (the second day of the AZ Regional event), the FIRST Robotics scoring software was down, due to a program malfunction. The score board was back up on Saturday morning, and all was fine…or so we thought. Throughout the course of the day, our scores were messed up, including at one point on Friday as well. It was brought to our attention by one of our mentors that they had messed up on the win-loss-tie portion of our score, which subsequently misplaced us in the ranking. We spoke to the judges and the error was corrected, no problem. We had a running tally of our points and ranking on a huge white board at our pit, so we knew where we stood in the game at all times. On Saturday afternoon before it was time to choose alliances, we noticed that again, our score was messed up. We were posted as having won 6 matches, lost 6 matches. Instead, it should have said that we won 7 matches, and lost 5. So, a friend and I from the team went up and spoke with a judge, and we were told that due to software malfunctions, the scoring that was currently up was incorrect and considered void, and not to worry because it was going to be corrected.

Well, it came time to pick alliances, and in the whirl-wind of it all, I was chosen to represent my team on the field and we were, in turn, picked by Chandler High to be in alliance with them for the finals. I was under the impression that we were in 11th place at the time, because that was how we we were told that we finished…but during alliance picking, the top 8 teams became consolidated, and so #9 and #10 were called in to be alliance captains. I expected us to be #11, and when it came time to call in an 11th captain, there was a debate…the FIRST officials pulled off to the side and had a discussion for a few minutes as to who was to move up in the ranking list…and we weren’t called. It struck me as odd, but I let it go. I guess my gut was right and I should have asked a judge what was going on. Thanks again to Chandler High though, we were picked and made it to finals, even though we didn’t win.

Here’s the catch: the final scored posted for the AZ regionals put us in 15th place, with 6 wins and 6 losses. Unless the judges changed something without my team’s knowledge, we are all still under the impression that we won 7 matches and lost 5. If you check out this site of the final scoring positions: http://www2.usfirst.org/2005comp/Events/AZ/rankings.html , you will see that we should have come in 9th place, or even tied for 8th. That means that with the way alliance were chosen, we would have been team #8 or #9, making me, (as representative for my team #698), an alliance captain.

I’ve spoken to my mentor. He told me I could take this to FIRST (and I am) to at least find out why the scores are incorrect, or if they changed it for a valid reason. I know it’s probably to late for any hope of nationals (we lost the final matches), but at least maybe this will be an effective word of warning to other teams about the scoring.

IF YOUR SCORES COME UP INCORRECT, FIX IT IMMEDIATLY! YOU MIGHT EVEN CONSIDER TALKING TO AT LEAST TWO JUDGES TO BE SURE OF YOUR POSITION.

Best of luck to all teams that are preparing to compete, and watch out for that scoring software!!!

2

Oh wow, that is quite a mistake they made. You would think with FIRST they would have a programming error fixed immediately. It sounds like a simple program that can easily be fixed. I wonder what happened and why? Are you suggesting that FIRST find a better way to score and have a back up system in place? If so, I agree with you!

When it comes to scores and rankings, believe me, I don’t want any mistakes to happen. 1 position is crucial to whom you may be allied with or competing against. I guess this is very valuable lesson for programmers at FIRST and hopefully the same mistakes won’t happen next weekend at other Regionals.

3

I do not know if the actual rankings at the end of regionals were off, but I do know the scores and rankings on FIRST right now are off, and that they were screwed up during the playoffs on Saturday (they looked correct at the end of qualifiers on Saturday, but for some reason changed during the playoffs despite the fact no new qualifying matches were played). At the end of competition, there were 5 teams that finished 9-3 and held rankings 1-5. Last check on the site (and on Sat.), 2 of the teams were listed as 10-2, two of them were listed as 9-3, and one was listed as 8-4.

We wrote our own program for our scouting team to keep track of records (as well as stats like caps, total points, autonomous caps, etc.), and relied on that the later part of Friday to determine the rankings as closely as we could. We do not have the qualifying points section set up in our program, but I might be able to check it and see how the records of your team as well as the team that moved up to #8 (team 64) compared.

4

We agree that the scoring should have been fixed immediately!! That is unexceptable for a first event. We think the score is wrong too. Team 842 Falcon Robotics, we thought “they” knew something we didn’t.

5

FIRST always knows something we don’t lol!

But I will agree with you, scoring errors due to programming is very unexceptable. Yes these things happen but they have to be fixed immediately.

6

I hope that FIRST gets a handle on this stuff before the rest of the season. That’s terrible that we’ve all struggled to make our robots and teams ready to compete only to be stymied by blunders like these.
We pointed out an issue with the ranking system early Friday morning. The errors were in our (991’s) favor. FIRST thanked us for our gracious professionalism and informed us that when scores/rankings are posted they are final.
There were apparently also issues with the competition control system that we all plug in to. The buzzer to end a match came on about 5 seconds into RC mode in one of our matches and that, oddly, coincided with disablement of our robot. The IFI rep told us that our backup battery hit the controller reset button. We jiggled it around and it didn’t look to us like that was possible, but like all FIRST judgements, that was final (it is what it is).
Regardless of the problems with the sanctioning body, The AZ Regional Planning Committee put on a wonderful show and we all had a blast playing the game!

7

Ranking errors are definitely unacceptable. I was under the impression that the current issues were only with the web results and occasional oddness during matches the we experienced at GLR. I can deal with bad web results and MCs having to tell teams to ignore the extraneous buzzers and gongs. If it appears that the actual rankings are off, then the issue is either isolated to some incorrect entries by scorekeepers or it’s a much deeper issue with the software possibly improperly updating records or some such. I’ve made scoring errors in the rush of a regional, but I’ve always had the matches on paper and a heck of a Head Ref at Lone Star that’d figure the scores himself and let me know if there was a discrepency. If there’s no paper backup this year or the game is too complicated for refs to score themselves, then this could be a factor.

Also, to repeat what I’ve said in a few other threads…

From what I’ve seen of all the scoring displays, etc., it looks like FIRST has gone with a completely new scoring system this year and they’re still working all the bugs out. Last year’s system was mostly brand new as well. (I think the software was based on some team’s prior efforts) Last year there were lots of glitches and oddness in the first couple of weeks, and even all the way till Lone Star when I was running it. By Atlanta, last year’s scoring system was working very well, so one can hope that they’ll get all the bugs out of this year’s new system by then as well.

8

At Sacramento, we won one of our early qualifying matches. There were no penalties, and it looked from the stands like we had been beaten, so I was surprised. Later in the day, the win disappeared from our record, and our ranking dropped significantly. When we talked to the officials, we were told that there had been a mistake. I don’t know where the mistake occurred, or if it is at all related to the problem at hand. However, I know that the officials were far too busy to be double-checking everything, so the way that the mistake came to light was probably by someone pointing it out. I don’t know how many other problems like this were missed. It’s hard to be critical of FIRST, but I hope they get this all straightened out soon. It’s a real bummer to do everything you need to do with your robot and your alliance, only to have it fouled up by the computers.

9

The link you point to here is also wrong, we were 9-3 not 10-2 neither was 555, we were all tied for 1st place and we got it because of 15 qualifing points against 12, I am sure they will fix it before it gets posted on the FIRST page.
Hey but how about the good things ? For the smallest Regional this year In think that the highest score in the nation must be when 498,1492 and 1290 managed to score 112 points!!
We really enjoyed the week-end , the game is exciting and we will keep working on that elusive vision tetra.
see you all in SVR.

10

We had many similar problems for our team at the Pacific Northwest Regional.

Friday morning we first competed in round 3, which was announced as a win for us (17-6). We were 4-0-0 at lunch when the placement screen suddenly changed and put us as 3-1-0 without us ever hearing any reasoning. After talking to the pit administration and field officials, we were told sometime in the afternoon that this was because round 3 had been miss-scored and was really supposed to be a loss for us with a score outcome of 4-6. We questioned the scoring having been changed hours after the match but were disregarded and told that the judges call was final. This disagrees with the regulation that scoring disputes must be settled within minutes of the round conclusion - especially considering that there were no questions raised from either side about the outcome. This severely impacted our ranking at the time, dropping us from 2nd to below 10th.

After Friday’s matches concluded the ranking for teams was also unavailable, leaving many teams including us unsure about our placement and unable to do our needed scouting research for the Saturday afternoon alliance selections. Friday night we found we were able to pull up the placement sheet online, but we were again shocked to see our record saying we were 6-3-0 when we had only run 8 matches during Friday’s rounds. Further research of the lists available online showed that we had lost a match that we hadn’t even played yet with a score of 0-3. This also affected our ranking, which would have screwed up any other teams that were resourceful enough to check online while doing their scouting research. Saturday morning’s match ended up being a win for us (25-23) after re-running the match due to field equipment malfunction and one of our allies unable to control their robot.

Our greatest concern was with the errors made during the alliance selection process. We were ranked 7th before alliance selection began, but as teams shifted during the first two alliance selections, we disappeared off the list rather than moving up. One of our team leaders immediately brought this to the attention of the nearest referee and a judge on the field without much response and after persistence the ref finally went to talk with someone about it as alliance selections continued. At the same time, our student coach who was in the pits watching the screen noticed and went directly to the pit administration desk where he was told that they would look into it. Somehow we reappeared on the screen when it came to calling the 5th seed alliance captain and we were called up, as we should have been. The problem with these multiple errors and not stopping the process was that we were not visible to representatives on the higher alliances who may have otherwise chosen us. Other team’s representatives were questioning where our team was on the screen and claimed it impacted their selection. Our team leaders went to speak with the head computer person as soon as possible. No one could figure out how the error had occurred. At the same time, another team also came to report that they too had been dropped from the seed team lists at the same time. We were told that the alliances have been selected and they didn’t think there was anything that could be done but would discuss it. When we checked later during lunch, we were told that nothing could be done and that our team would receive a personal apology for graciously accepting the circumstance. Paul Shay apologized to the driving team while they were waiting for their first quarterfinals game.

11

I don’t know all the details of the situations and I do know FIRST is trying very hard at the job they have to do, but from what I read here this is just plain unacceptable. I’m terribly sorry for anyone that had to go through this. One can only hope that the future brings success.

12

Oh boy, you have NO IDEA how much I would appreciate it if you could check your records. If you can’t, I’m totally fine with it, but it you have that availability, I would be so happy if you could. If you’d rather, you can email me personally at [email protected].

Just to let you know…I am still going to contact FIRST personally and see if I can get any more information out of this dispute. I know our chances of nationals are over, but I would rest easier if I knew the judges made a scoring error or something and had legitimate reasons for changing our wins/losses tally.

Keep an eye out for any errors! :ahh: We are obviously not the first teams here to have experienced problems!! Thank you all for your gracious support in these mess-ups, and best of luck to each and every team.

13

We had ranking problems at the Pittsburg Regional. It wasn’t a problem with wins and losses, but rather a problem with the rankings in the alliance selection program. During the first round of alliance selection, teams picked among the top eight seeded teams. The selection program needed to fill the voids with new alliance captains. Unfortunately, the program did not pick the next highest seeded teams to fill the voids as it should have. They went through both rounds of the selection process without noticing this.

During lunch, they had to hold a second draft, starting with the new alliance captains in the seventh and eighth spots. Everything worked out ok, and I commend the FIRST officials for holding a second draft to fix the problem.

FIRST still has to iron out the bugs in its new software (which runs on Windows :rolleyes: ). If you are in a potential picking position (ranks 9-15) make sure you know your ranking and the rankings of other potential pickers so you will notice a problem as it arises.

14

At the UTC semifinals, we lost our first match, but then in our second match, we won by two points. However, the judges didn’t count one of the tetras, and even though we had the entire field on video, they didn’t want to watch the video - we ended up losing by one point and falling out of the finals. We told them right after they put the score up! I guess that I can see where the judges are coming from in that they don’t want to waste time reviewing every single play, but perhaps there should be some contingency for ties or 1 point differences in scores?

Then again, we were blue, so perhaps it was part of the communist scheme? :stuck_out_tongue:

15

If I recall correctly, the process at Lone Star Regional usually involves the Head Ref checking the score with the teams before it goes in, so we’ll hopefully avoid most of these problems in Houston…

16

There are some problems with that system. The major one we noticed at UTC is that we were up against ourselves a few times… They would display the scores, and the red and blue alliances would be the same. They should fix the buzzers sounding in the middle of the match… I can’t see any reason why they should.

17

I’m not 100% sure on this (but lets just say 99.9%) but FIRST isnt using TacOPs this year (as they have in previous years) …

The sounds of Windows XP playing throughout the arena (TacOPs ran on freebsd), and the numberous problems they’ve had (Sac had trouble with finals selection also). When I was watching the FL regional, they also had a problem with the arena computer (kinda funny, caused like a 10 minute delay). Lets not forget the real time scoring. The only time I saw real time scoring was in the FL webcast, and it was only there for about 2 matches.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is, we shold be respectful to FIRST, and allow them to deal with the scoring problems … keeping in mind FIRST isnt just about robots. Getting mad at the officals for scoring problems probally wont help. If you’re worried about your rank for the alliance selections, I wouldnt. The best robots will be picked for the final matches (1038 and 175 - 4th ranked alliance on Curie in the 04 CMP, picked us … ranked 52 out of 73, and we went on to win the division) Pure evidence that ranks done matter.

With that said, I think it would be wise for FIRST to have the scoring system/arena computer fixed … since they probally payed a pretty penny (and we dont see “Hatch Technologies” as a sponser) for that custom system, it might as well work right :rolleyes:

18

You are right, and I have the highest respect for FIRST and all that they do. FIRST isn’t just about robots, but I still cannot just bypass all of this without just the slightest hint of dissappointment. I know we lost, and I am perfectly fine with that, but I do want to just express that my original post was more a word of advice to other teams to be careful and keep an eye on scores…as replying posts have proved, we aren’t the only team experiencing scoring issues. Please, please don’t misunderstand me. Without FIRST, we wouldn’t have any of this…without FIRST, we wouldn’t have these forums to post in, we wouldn’t have that availability to build robots, and we wouldn’t be able to compete. FIRST is the #1 best thing that has ever happened to me to help me advance my future and career, but I just want other teams to know that the scoring isn’t perfect, so players beware. Please, enjoy your regional competitions, enjoy the nationals, and if you are involved in FIRST robotics, pat yourself on the back! You are one of a select group of us that have these opportunities, and we are the future of engineering. :slight_smile: It makes me proud to stand beside each of you out there, knowing that my ideas count for something greater, and a better future for all of us. So, thanks is in order to FIRST, and we will continue to do our best to catch mistakes and errors, just as they have for us, whether it be in robot inspection, in competition, or just in working throughout build season.

Thank you to all the teams out there that have helped in any way, your support has already fixed so many issues!!

19

Ranks most certainly do matter. If a team should be ranked #1 and they end up ranked #4 or something, then it’s not a good thing. They even matter if you’re not in the top ranks. When #14 or #15 ranked teams end up picking alliances, they often have poor scouting and end up picking the higher ranked team they can find. When it comes down to it, though, teams and their sponsors are also investing a pretty penny in this program. They deserve a well run event without all these glitches and problems.

20

Not sure if this is the same issue or not, but GLR had problems with the end match buzzer as well. The sound effect wouldn’t play, leaving the announcers to make their own “bzzzt!” noise or to wait for it to trigger.

This might have been related to the timer, though; the match timer was about five seconds fast for most of the competition.

We’re going to have to keep an eye on this one next week. If anything weird happens at Detroit, it should be noticed by someone - lots of established teams there, and Paul and Dave emceeing if memory serves - but being a bit paranoid about it can’t hurt.