[FRC Blog] FIRST STEAMWORKS Audience Displays

FIRST General Forum
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Posted on the FRC Blog, 2/28/17: http://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc/blog/2017-audience-displays

FIRST STEAMWORKS Audience Displays

Written by Danny Diaz, FIRST Robotics Competition Systems Engineer

We’re using today’s blog to give everyone a sneak peek at a few of the graphics you’ll be seeing up on the big screen at your events. There’s a lot of information being displayed on the audience screens this year, including information not available in any other format during the match, so it’s important to understand how this information is being presented. Please remember that team numbers, names, ranks, cards, performance, or events or descriptions are all for illustrative purposes only and are not indicative of any actual or perceived clairvoyance or precognition. As far as you know.

Match Preview

The first screen shown prior to the start of the match is the “Match Preview” screen, this screen is used to introduce the teams that are playing in the upcoming match. This is the only place that a team’s nickname is shown, reflecting information provided to FIRST via the Team Dashboard in the Team Registration System. This screen provides information about the team such as team number, team nickname, and their current rank in the tournament (if the team has played any matches thus far). During playoffs this screen changes slightly to reflect alliance information as well as the series progress, e.g. “Red Leads Series.”

http://www.firstinspires.org/sites/default/files/uploads/frc/Blog/2017-match-preview.png

Real Time Scoring

Once the match is ready to begin, and while the match is running, the “Real-Time Scoring” screen is displayed in the lower or upper 20% of the live match video (exact position is determined at the discretion of the Event Management). You should recognize this screen from Figure 10-3 in the FIRST STEAMWORKS 2017 Game Manual (Section 10.7). This screen provides information that reflects the current status of the match, such as team information (including cards), match progress, game timer, real-time score, and match/event information. Each alliance has four primary stats being tracked in the Real Time Scoring:

  1. Match Score – Total Match Score for each alliance is calculated in real time and shown in the colored banners in the center of the Real Time Scoring screen.
  2. Boiler Status – Accumulated Pressure (in kPa) is represented in the rectangle overlapping the lower portion of the Boiler badge. Progress toward the next earned kPa increment is represented by the nine (9) circles surrounding the Boiler badge; for example, each fuel scored during autonomous in the low-efficiency goal completes three circles, whereas each fuel scored during teleop in the low-efficiency goal completes only one.
  3. Rotor Status – The total number of rotors engaged is shown in the circle overlapping the lower portion of the Rotor badge.
  4. Ready for Takeoff Status – The total number of Touchpads triggered by robots is shown in the circle overlapping the lower portion of the Touchpad badge.

During Playoffs, a banner will appear under the team “pennants” to indicate which alliance the teams belong to. And finally the Head Referee has the ability to place the match “Under Review” at any point in the match this season, indicating that further referee review is required to finalize the match outcome, and this will be indicated on the screen between the match scores.

http://www.firstinspires.org/sites/default/files/uploads/frc/Blog/2017-real-time-scoring.png

Match Results

Once the match details have been finalized by the Head Referee, the “Match Results” screen will be shown. The Match Results display contains a wealth of information. During qualification matches each team is displayed with their team number, card(s) issued to them during the match, their new ranking, and how that rank changed versus their prior ranking; during playoffs this information is combined for the alliance. If a team receives cards during the match, a graphic is shown to indicate the card and any additive card promotion due to card accumulation. Badges are once again shown on the Match Results screen for successful completion of match goals that result in Ranking Points (RP) or Extra Match Points; engagement of all rotors during the match, minimum accumulation of pressure via scoring fuel in the boiler, and match outcome. Earned badges are emblazoned with the alliance color, unearned badges are shown without color. Additionally, points earned for Auto Mobility, Pressure accumulation, Rotor engagement, Ready for Takeoff, and any points due to penalties incurred by the opposing alliance are displayed. Also present from last season is the “High Score” indicator, which indicates when a new local tournament high score has been achieved as well as a “Winner” banner that indicates which alliance won the match (or “Tied” banner if the alliances tie the match). Detailed match results information for each match can also be found on the FRC Events webpage.

http://www.firstinspires.org/sites/default/files/uploads/frc/Blog/2017-match-results.png

Be sure to also watch the Match Results screen during Qualification and Playoff matches for special cut-scenes that complete the FIRST STEAMWORKS story, brought to you by our friends at Automation Direct!

Have a GREAT competition season!

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I really love the improvement in the last two years of the real time scoring over the previous system, but when I was watching matches at the week 0 event I felt that the score was on the wrong side because it was opposite from that alliance’s scoring. It would be awesome if there were two different versions that the AV person could pick depending on which side of the field the camera is on so that it always matched up with the gameplay.

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+1

This would go far to prevent confusion.

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Is a pressure score of 44 possible in eliminations? I would think it would be in the range of 0-39 or >=60.
And a 200 rotor score in elims shouldn’t be possible either.
nit meet pick

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The pressure and rotor bonus points are tallied up next to their icons (above the rest of the scoring counts). The points listed under pressure bonus would not include the 20 bonus points. Same goes for rotors.

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I’m really hyped to see the “cut-scenes” Frank mentioned. My money is on airships taking off.

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During this past offseason (FIRST Stronghold) the version of the Audience Display we had access to with an official field had what they called a “beta feature” called “Horizontal Orientation” or something like that which could be put into a mode where it would swap the red and blue sides. It had a bug and we were told not to use it, but the feature was there. Let’s hope it’s fully functional for Week 1!

-George

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Can’t wait for Northern Camelot! It’s gonna be a blast.

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The secret regional is finally revealed. Winning at Northern Camelot sends you to the North Dumpling Island World Championship.

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Last year was my first time going to a competition and it took a couple hours to really understand what was going on. With that knowledge I still have a hard time figuring out how exactly teams are winning.

I know FIRST is keeping with the theme using words like “pressure” and “ready for takeoff” as a scoring category but to the average person in the stands or viewer on twitch this makes it SUPER hard to get into immediately. I wish they would use standardized scoring names from year to year and just change the way they are earned.

Lastly… PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE use the team names on more things rather than their numbers. Gotta help the casual fans out if you want to grow your audience.

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Out of curiosity, do you find it easier to associate robots with names rather than numbers? I generally find that the bumper numbers make recognizing robots by number to be a lot easier although I could understand how keeping track of team names throughout a competition might make more sense.

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I think the best thing FIRST could do to help the audience track team identity is implement the robot photo system used at Chezy Champs. Have a quick photo become part of the inspection process, and display these on the match preview card.

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Being on a team, remembering teams by number is way easier. But on the other hand, my dad only really knows the teams by name.

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The problem with referring to teams by their nickname is that some teams have the same or almost the same nickname. For example, at the Iowa Regional last year, 5172 Gators and 3750 Gator Robotics both attended. If someone referred to one of these teams by their nickname, it was sometimes hard to know if they were referring to 5172 or 3750. However, numbers are completely unique, so if you refer to a team by its number, there is no other team with the same number. There are many examples of teams with the same name though.

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And we can’t wait to be on an alliance with you :wink:

For the second year in a row we’re used in one of these examples.

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No one curious about the “special cutscenes” in-between matches?

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Good point, until you run into this problem: https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=156097

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I’ve been saying for over ten years now that the best thing they could do to make it more accessible to public spectators is to use names instead of numbers. FTC is even worse, many of the teams now have five-digit numbers.

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I know this probably won’t happen since it would require way more work on the ref’s part, but it would be nice to have a box showing exactly what the match penalties were and what teams they were on.

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If I am looking at a scoreboard I would much rather see names that are similar instead of random numbers.

I look at excel sheets at work, I don’t need them at the robot competitions :stuck_out_tongue:

Casual fans (parents, friends, random people, etc.) aren’t going to be as technical or know as much about all this as the members. There are ways to make the activity more open and approachable without lowering the bar or dumbing it down.