[FRC Blog] A Reminder and Some Good News

FIRST General Forum
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Posted on the FRC Blog, 10/25/2017: A Reminder and Some Good News | FIRST

A Reminder and Some Good News
*Written by Frank Merrick.
*

A Reminder

Remember our 2017 and 2018 Championship Assignment Maps showing which teams are being assigned to what FIRST Championship? This is just a quick reminder that, as we said in the information update about this topic, the states of Kansas and Missouri in the US will be transitioning to FIRST Championship Houston for 2018. So, while all other geographies that were assigned to FIRST Championship St Louis will be moved to Detroit, teams from Kansas and Missouri will be joining the party in Houston.

We recognize that for some teams in these states the trip to Houston will actually be longer than the trip to Detroit. We’re sorry for this, but we did want to keep states together in their Championship assignments, and moving these two states does bring better balance between the two Championship locations with respect to geographical team counts. We also expect to have better waitlist balance between the two locations with this change.

Some Good News

For the 2017 season, you may remember we added one FIRST Championship wild card slot to every Regional event, in addition to any wild cards that normally would have been generated. Details were inthis blog. Good news, we’ll be doing this again for the 2018 season!

I want to emphasize though, as we said in the original blog, this is not necessarily a permanent change. We will be making year to year decisions on this. We may or may not be doing this for the 2019 season or beyond. But we’ll be doing it for the 2018 season!

Frank

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I want to emphasize though, as we said in the original blog, this is not necessarily a permanent change. We will be making year to year decisions on this. We may or may not be doing this for the 2019 season or beyond. But we’ll be doing it for the 2018 season!

Because FIRST is planning on switching to four team alliances soon. It’s why were are seeing smaller robot size restrictions. I’m calling it now, folks! (along with 2019 water game.)

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I am still in favor of the wildcard. As it currently stands, the wildcard rules draw a better caliber bot than the fourth team on the winning alliance. This will, in turn, give a more competitive field at World’s.

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I really doubt this. The game gets a lot messier, regional planning gets a lot harder (events have a minimum of 32 teams now), etc.

More likely, smaller robots allow for more intricate field setups, make the weight requirement easier on rookie teams, allow for easier transport, add a packaging challenge to the game, etc.

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What makes you think that next year’s robots will be smaller?

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I would like them to extend the wildcard system down the list of top seeds rather than throw them out like happens too often at week 5 and 6 events.

Regionals get 7 potential invites to champs.

3 for the Winning Alliance.
1 for the captain of the finalist alliance (it’s called a wildcard, but it’s a guaranteed invite)
1 for Chairman’s
1 for EI
1 for Rookie All star.

By week 5, it’s not unheard of for the entire winning alliance to already be champs bound. It’s unusual when at least some aren’t or there isn’t some overlap.

But only 2 additional teams can actually be invited, the first and second picks on the finalist alliance. If there’s overlap with existing winners there, quite a few champs invites can end up getting thrown out.

A couple of years ago I emailed Frank suggesting they extend the wildcard system to walk down the seeds and offer the wildcards to those teams. I also suggested they limit it by regional size, so at a 60 team or higher regional, they’d walk down the seeds until they’ve sent 7 teams to champs, at a 50-59 team regional, they’d go until they’d sent 6, 40-49 would guarantee at least 5, and so on.

Ahh well, I think it’s a good idea but I get the feeling FIRST doesn’t agree.

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4th team on the winning alliance gets in anyways. They’re the 4th team on the winning alliance, thus a regional winner, thus they go to Champs.

Wildcard goes to finalist captain, 1st pick, 2nd pick, backup if used. I suppose it’s theoretically possible to send 8 teams from just the on-field… but that requires a lot of stuff to line up, starting with both teams in the finals using a backup robot.

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Smaller?

2012 (and earlier… not sure when this size started, but it was at least as far back as 2007!): 28x38 + bumpers
2013: 112" frame perimeter + bumpers
2014: 112" frame perimeter + bumpers
2015: something like 27’x27’ on the field, 28"x42" during transport
2016: 120" frame perimeter + bumpers
2017: 36"x40", includes bumpers

So… 2 of the past 3 years have been some of the LARGEST robot footprints in the past 11 years. Even if you subtract out bumpers from the size last year (3/4" plywood + 2.5" pool noodles, times 2), you get 29.5" x 33.5" - The largest robots we’ve had, with the exception of 2015 (and really, I don’t think 2015 counts).

The size constraints haven’t been driven by a desire to get teams used to smaller robots so we could fit more on the field, they’ve been driven by the game design constraints.

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Height is certainly a variable when comparing “size”.

2016 and 2017 had some of the smallest robots many teams have made.

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What affect does height have on the number of robots on the field? That’s really the point of his post about small robots…

2016 had short robots because of the low bar, not the rules (although yes, the 54" max height was less than the 60" seen in previous years). 2017 had short robots because of the game design - limiting the volume for ball storage and the max diagonal distance for rope climbing, ensuring robots would be off the ground when they score a climb.

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I would be interested in game theorists’ thoughts on a game which has 3 teams per alliance in Quals, and 4 teams per alliance in Elims. That would allow for 4-team alliances without completely blowing up the space & schedule of district qualifiers.

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Yeah that would blow up some District events, in the PNW we have had 28-30 team events in the past, with 28 being the FIRST prescribed minimum event size. So with that we would need district events to have a minimum of 36 teams. Not a problem for MI but it would be a problem for the PNW.

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Are you talking about a game that plays 4v4 in eliminations after playing quals as 3v3?

I can throw some thoughts out there…

The immediate thing that jumps to my mind is you would see a huge jump in the focus on defense and defeating defense in eliminations. Assuming the game offers some options for defense play, alliances would probably be deciding between going 3O1D or 2O2D. It would be a lot more man defense versus zone defense. You also could have someone focus of the defense of the resources themselves.

The counter to that FIRST could do would be to have the game change in a way to make more offense available (more game elements or different scoring opportunities). It would put more focus on scouting being able to project out how robots will do in different situations.

I also think you would see a big jump in protected area related penalties getting called in eliminations, so there would be more focus on making sure the entire alliance knows the rules.

The number of threads complaining about blockade and/or pinning type rules would skyrocket.

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The main point of having a “fourth” or “backup” robot is to allow for matches to still be competitive when a robot becomes inoperable during playoffs. I’d expect in most games you’d still want the matches to be competitive when down a robot, so you either need to add a fifth off-field pick or some other way to replace a broken robot with a backup robot. Not impossible to add yet another robot to each alliance (I mean, they’ve gone from one, to two, to three now), but I find it unlikely, especially (as others are mentioning) the trend is toward trying to have more events with fewer teams each.

It’s my understanding that in the pre-alliances era, there would be three robots on a field through qualifications and then only two during at least some rounds of playoffs. And certainly more recent games have tweaked some aspects of rules so there are differences between qualification and playoff gameplay. So, it’s not completely without precedent. I just don’t see a whole lot of advantages.

The most I’d expect is four robot alliances but with only three on the field, with some requirement to field each of the robots at some point within the playoff tournament structure. I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that, though.

Then again, FIRST has a habit of continually surprising everybody each year.

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2011 had some of the more interesting sizing constraints of recent history IMO (is 2011 still considered recent history?) Pulled from the 2011 manual:

STARTING CONFIGURATION: 28” x 38” rectangular space, 60" Max Height
PLAYING CONFIGURATION: 84” diameter vertical right cylindrical volume, Infinite Max Height

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Yeah, none of those listed playing configurations, which vary quite a bit from year to year. it’s all really about the maximum starting size.

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My personal favorite was 4 years before that in 2007.

You could be ONE OF the following:
28"x38" base, 48" height, 120 lb sans battery and bumpers.
28"x38" base, 60" height, 110 lb sans battery and bumpers.
28"x38" base, 72" height, 100 lb sans battery and bumpers.

And the robot had to fit inside a square of a certain size, I forget what it was, at all times (except in the home zone in the last 30 seconds of the match). You could be diagonal in that square, just had to be in it…

Crates were <72" high (everybody still used them) leading to the following memorable exchange on FIRST Jeopardy during Kickoff:
Moderator: “Plan ahead.”
buzz
“Yes, Woodie?”
Woodie: “How do you fit a 72” tall robot into a [crate height] tall box?"

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The maximum playing size cylinder was a rule first introduced in 2008.

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Though, to expand on this, it has been applied slightly differently every year it has been a thing.

Before the rule, in 2007, you had a square (?) shaped volume your robot could not exceed outside of the Home Zone. Teams figured out that you could place a robot in this square volume diagonally for extra reach, provided they had a somewhat thin arm.

In 2008, the rule switched to an 80" cylinder. I can’t recall if the rule included bumpers or not. This rule was VERY difficult for non-shooting teams to deal with, because it limited both how you could hold onto the ball and how you could lift it. A lot of single joined arm designs, particularly ones involving a grip around the ball, could not work with this rule, as at the middle of travel the gripper would be too far out. Teams varied in how they dealt with this - for example, 67 designed an offset four-bar linkage to bring the ball inward during the travel motion, while 341 made their four bar linkage arms telescope in and out. Other teams added a second degree of freedom, such as putting the arm on an elevator, or adding a wrist.

In 2011, the rule was an 84" cylinder, inclusive of bumpers. Initially, this was printed as a 60" cylinder, which made the game VERY interesting when combined with the requirements for full bumper coverage. You were left very little room on a full length robot for a gripper, and the gripper had to essentially lift straight up to not travel outside the volume. Eventually the rule was clarified to 84 inches, and the constraint was much easier to deal with.

In 2013, a 60" cylinder emerged as a rule. What was interesting is that the cylinder’s orientation relative to the robot / field was somewhat ambiguous. Initially the rule was 60" relative to the robot, which essentially required climbing teams to tilt their robot to stay in the box (see: 1114, 67, etc). Eventually this was changed to allow for the robot to fit within the cylinder in any orientation, while climbing. This constraint made climbing just a little bit easier, which was helpful because the challenge was extremely difficult in any case.

In 2014 and 2016, the rule changed from a cylinder to a linear extension limit from any side of the frame perimeter. This is a lot easier to measure and understand, and I think we all prefer this kind for inspection purposes.

2017 was simpler, because you just had a max square footprint you could fit in. Similar to 2007, actually, except the footprint was the same as the max robot dimensions, so extensions required you to build the robot undersized in some direction.

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Fair point, however, if the eventual goal were to lower the max size height would be where I’d start. It is far easier to cut height off of most bots than it is footprint because the traditional way folks lay out electronics. It also has a direct impact on center of gravity, it’s harder to flip when you have a 3’ tall robot than it is a 5’ tall robot (footprint being equal).

The volume of bots seems to have been decreasing, some of this can likely be attributed to the size of the control system components decreasing over time.

Anecdotally - the sizes of bots HAVE been going down since both Adam and I started our involvement in this program. Some of the flop bots in the the 2000s were simply massive. But even more, there were few if any benefits to not maxing your frame size those years so teams built to the max width all the time.