I actually don’t blame the refs, despite that its their mistakes causing the problem.
The game design this year has given the refs a nigh-impossible task, resulting in a high degree of error from the overworked refs.
While I agree that the volunteer badge should not be protection against criticism, I believe just complaining without action is useless diversion. My hope (by my previous post) was to spur action.
I usually try to stay quiet in discussions like this, but I feel the need to address this:
If replacing them is that easy, take on the roll of volunteer coordinator and do it. See how easy it is. Referee roles are the most difficult to fill because of the demands placed on people in that position, this year more than any other. Each year there has always been a shortage of people signed up to referee, typically because not many people volunteering their time want that level of responsibility. It’s very much a thankless job, when every call and action/inaction is subject to the scrutiny of potentially thousands of people.
It usually takes weeks of active searching and solicitation to recruit the base number of refs just to make the event happen. I’m not saying that justifies mistakes being made, but if the alternative is an untrained reallocated field reset person to act as a warm body to fill the role, or at worst, no one at all to hit End Cycle, how is that any better?
To the most critical people, all I can say is step up, volunteer, and prove you can do better.
^This.
I guess when I stop making any mistakes myself…then I will start complaining more about other people’s mistakes. Especially volunteers…
This my new mantra. I have certainly been guilty in the past…
I do think that constructive comments can be valuable but I know that if I were a volunteer referee in a brand new game I would certainly not be able to get everything absolutely correct and I know for certain I would not see everything
I used to work as a paid referee in the past with long established games and I know I made mistakes from time to time. This was after being a player myself for years and the being professionally trained and tested. I also know that the perspective as a player and a referee is quite different. It made me a better player after I was a referee.
Good luck to EVERYONE on the field
There is a huge gap between expecting perfection (I do not) and expecting competence such that mistakes are minimized, learned from, and not repeated (I do).
I am seeing a LOT of repeated, glaring mistakes, with little being done to correct them. Quite a few mistakes are occurring in situations where FMS issues are irrelevant, when the action is occurring less than 10 feet directly in front of an individual.
Does the FMS system make it harder this year for a referee to do their job? Unquestionably.
Are some quality referees making more mistakes as a result of the above? Undoubtedly.
Are there sub-par referees out there who are unqualified for the role, either due to lack of skill or lack of preparation/training, whose mistakes are being magnified exponentially as a result of increased scrutiny upon this game? Undeniably.
I believe event staffs should prioritize “competition-critical” volunteer recruitment and training (and retention) over many other aspects of event planning; however, it seems many are burdened with the need to chase down enough sponsors for the event to even exist. It is unfortunate that anything so critical to the “team and spectator experience” could be an afterthought at any competition. One wonders if Manchester couldn’t invest more to assist events in addressing this glaring need?
Also, for the if you don’t like it, volunteer yourself crowd, I have a simple answer - NO. Volunteers are being stretched to and beyond their limits by a system in need of fundamental change. Dumping more volunteers into that system (especially johnny come lately’s who are likely even more inexperienced and ill-prepared than those who signed up ahead of time) isn’t going to solve anything. If you wish to direct your attention toward the people who could and should help fix the “competition experience” problem, affix your gaze toward Manchester, NH and collectively speak your minds.
This seems to be your primary thesis. How, specifically, do you think it should change? Your very next sentence asserts that adding more volunteers does not solve anything, so you must have some idea in mind for what these fundamental changes should be.
Also, my understanding of the system is that volunteers are assigned to specific roles by local leadership (Regional Directors and the Regional Planning Committee), not by Manchester. Unless your proposal for fixing the perceived volunteer issue is to centralize all detailed Regional-level planning in NH, I am not sure how affixing your gaze towards Manchester will help in this specific instance.
That attitude has nearly erased the sympathy I had for your position.
If you’re going to refuse to put yourself in the position of those you are complaining about, and especially if you don’t propose a solution beyond “they need to do better” and “something must be done,” your complaints become mere noise.
I have known Travis for quite a few years now. I understand were he is coming from. He also spends countless hours at events with his team and others making them the best they can be. He has even come to event without his team just to help other teams. Is he a volunteer? Sorry Travis, he is. Just not in the official event status.
I believe that what he wants are volunteers that rise to the challenge. Ones that spend extra hours making sure that they know their responsibilities and strive to be the best in their role. Is that asking too much? This is a fantastic program with fantastic people. What we need to do is encourage mentors that are just watching from the sidelines during competitions to become involved. I personally clear all of the volunteer roles that I take with the mentors of the team I am with. They are either more that willing to get rid of me or willing to sacrifice a bit to hopefully make the event better. I am still available for the team if needed but volunteering at the event keeps me busy and out of our pit area.
Choose a job at an event that you can contribute your skills to and volunteer. It is a great experience and a new challenge. I am not pointing a finger here at you Alan but at all mentors in FIRST.
I think one of the problem that Travis is getting at is that we are going into Week 4 and FIRST has yet to come out and address the pedestal problems or come up with a fix that works. Even from the start of scrimmages there was a known problem so its not like these issues have just come out of the blue they have always been an issue. There has been a mixture of reasons to why pedestals aren’t lighting up of referees not seeing because too much is happening on the field, touch screen delays/bugs, entering in penalties during a score which again detracts from watching the field, and reported software bugs that it was input correctly but the pedestal just didn’t light up.
The worst part is that while penalties are one problem of the game that FIRST has slowly been addressing this area has not and it is **critical **to a game. FIRST made a game where one ball can be used by three robots at a time and that’s great. The fundamentals of the game have been setup to deliver a different but good game. However the process of scoring and getting a new ball started is just flat out unacceptable with teams being delayed by 10+ seconds. Then there are teams who are given replays for these issues and others who are not.
If volunteers are doing the best they can to try to deliver this game to teams but its not working then this needs to be put back on FIRST in a serious manner. If Week 4 goes by and the pedestals still are an issue there needs to be an alternative system put in place using humans to override a system that does not work. This is similar to the manual counting of frisbees after each match because the automatic system did not work and was later replaced by a few volunteers behind each alliance wall with a computer to enter in scores. This year we have gone through 4 weeks of competitions with a faulty system which is completely unacceptable (by FIRST not the volunteer who is just doing the job they were told to do).
The system was already going to have slight delays as a referee has to see that a ball is scored and then enter in the data on screen taking a few seconds here and there. The best method is there should be a referee next to each pedestal that tells human players when they can grab a ball (allowed once the ball is scored in a goal).
This is not unrealistic. Yes life is not fair however in life if you can’t deliver on your promise to someone you do whatever is in your power to make it right. I would hope FIRST would do the same for teams.
I don’t really understand why the field can’t use a photobreak sensor array to detect the ball crossing the plane of the alliance wall and automatically score it high or low and relight the pedestal.
The refs could still have to hit end-cycle (to capture those last second possessions), but the next cycle beginning needn’t be delayed while that happens (the human player is going to take 2-3 seconds to return the ball to the field anyway).
How would this handle the following situations:
- Ball scored in the wrong goal (I’ve seen this happen more than once!)
- Autonomous ball scored during teleop while there’s still at least 1 other ball in play
- Ball passes through the goal without qualifying as a scored ball (for example, going in on a truss shot)
Well, the system already knows how many auto balls must go through.
It would need to deal with the ball not really being scored scenarios somehow though.
Ball 1 enters Line break sensor is now tripped while that ball is passing through.
Ball 2 enters. Line break sensor is still tripped from Ball 1.
Ball 1 completes traveling through sensor.
Ball 2 completes traveling through sensor.
How many balls were detected? (hint, it’s less than 2)
Why are they using touch screens when you could assign a ref to watch a ball and give him a hand held trigger with a button for assists, truss/catch, high, and low goal. She would never have to take her eyes of the field.
refs would have to calculate assists in their head (more complex than recording zone/robot possession pairs, which would require 9 buttons)
- It only knows how many if someone tells it for each match.
- Optical sensing of goal-traversing balls has been tried before (2006). It wasn’t reliable. Even detecting balls that were guaranteed to come through a sensor block one at a time was problematic (2010).
This year might be a lost cause - if FIRST cannot quickly design and deploy hardware/software fixes to the system that make it easier for humans to input scoring/foul information - fixes that minimize any one individual’s distraction from on-field activities - then no number of additional volunteers is going to help. The bottleneck is at the human->FMS point of interaction. I WOULD CERTAINLY HOPE THEY ARE TRYING TO FIX IT, however. Alas, the community hasn’t really been updated on whether or not that is actively being pursued. I’d consider this to be of a “DEFCON” level similar to or even greater than that of the 2012 Einstein fallout, since many, many, MANY more teams are actively being affected. We praised FIRST for their openness in that situation - we need it even more right now.
Regardless of continuing FMS concerns, my contention that many referee volunteers out there are either ill-prepared or ill-suited for the role remains, independent of FMS issues. I have seen more direct video evidence of referees staring at blatant infractions (i.e. not distracted by HMI data entry at the time) than I care to recount this year.
So how to fix both in future seasons? Seems Manchester can easily invest some resources to GREATLY address these problems, with the expenditure of a little more money and acquisition of more employee manpower.
Better referee training. Earlier referee training. Visual referee training. A focus, once and for all, in ensuring CONSISTENCY in application of the rules - which has been a long standing complaint of countless teams and mentors for as long as I’ve been involved in this program. FIRST can spend more money to hire quality control staff to develop better, more visual training materials - referee training and any other training of key volunteers - LRI’s, etc.
FIRST can also, critically, spend more money to hire more field development staff to design and build and VET better field control systems. Many hands make light work, and many brains can help identify the human interaction bottlenecks experienced with this year’s FMS and ensure that they are properly eliminated.
I have asked a veteran referee - a degreed engineer - his thoughts about the overall training process. He has been thoroughly underwhelmed by the available training materials and methods over the years. I encouraged him to email FIRST HQ and explain this in detail to them, for anyone who sits back and simply accepts things the way they are is not doing anything to affect necessary change. Here is a brief summary of his feedback shared with me:
- Text-based referee training materials are insufficient to properly prepare referees for their critical role. If veteran referees are not enthused/confused by the material, that does not bode well for referees who’ve never done this sort of thing before.
- Many questions on the referee qualification exam are nebulous and/or confusing and do not lend themselves to ensuring command of the rules and manual.
- The lack of any visual/video support materials highlighting examples of what is and what is not an infraction is a glaring omission. The development of such things would help eliminate individual interpretation and spread consistent interpretations throughout the entire referee community. In addition, such things could be published publicly TO SHOW TEAMS A BASELINE FOR WHAT IS AND IS NOT ACCEPTABLE GAMEPLAY BEHAVIOR in regards to rules that are most open for interpretation. Show teams what to expect, and they are more likely to CONFORM TO THAT EXPECTATION, minimizing the freaking wide gamut of CRAP GAMEPLAY referees have to sift through during matches. Note the capitalization and embellished emphasis was my own and not his. Go figure.
- Video can also help a referee better understand how to interact with and operate the field control HMI’s. Perhaps much more quickly and effectively than a text/pictorial based manual.
- Interaction with head referees in any pre-event Q&A sessions is often limited and insufficient to truly prepare one for the role, especially if prior training has left one with a lot of doubt as to how they should be calling key infractions.
- Pre-event conference calls with head referees are not mandatory - they are at the discretion of the head ref.
So there you go. The upfront expense to add additional human resources toward improving referee preparation and optimizing the field system to minimize referee distraction from gameplay. Better communication to teams as to what is and what isn’t an infraction using video-based examples BEFORE the competitions get under way. A top-down approach to improved communication to help once and for all generate some consistency in gameplay oversight and help cement FRC as the pinnacle of PROFESSIONAL robotics competitions.
Here would be one obvious example of what I am talking about. Recognizing the FRC game scales such that the rules/penalties/manual are more complex than this competition, that simply means FIRST needs to hire sufficient staff to produce similar content for a more complex game challenge. http://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvvcc7S26YEgpG05t-wu-E8Bbcg8ifQpa
My understanding is that the prematch ref screens require the refs to indicate how many alliance BALLs are on the field.
To your second point and the other poster above?
I used to do volunteer work in racecar timing applications. We used a single photo beam and were able to detect 2 cars crossing the beam together, so long as they did not do so side by side by measuring the length of the occlusion. If it was longer than the longest car in the field, you knew it was 2 cars.
In the case of the 2014 FRC goals, the low are easy to deal with, as only one ball can cross the plane of the alliance wall at a time there. In the high goal, if you orient an array of sensors perpendicular to the floor, spaced across the width of the goal such that a ball will always break exactly two of the sensors, it becomes simple to distinguish multiple balls crossing the opening.
Just because we have been unsuccessful in FRC applications before does not mean it isn’t possible to do.