At the Orlando Regional, the number one ranked alliance was retroactively disqualified for two matches because of a failure to be re-inspected after a modification had been made to one of their robots, the robot of Team 1902, Exploding Bacon. I received a phone call from the field on this incident before the disqualification was announced, and supported the recommendation of the disqualification based on the information I had available at the time.
I received detailed reports from volunteers at the event within a few days after the incident, reinforcing my understanding that the team had not been re-inspected after the modification. Recognizing this differed from the teamâs account as reported on the forums, I decided to not address this issue publicly, over concerns of causing additional friction between the volunteers and the teams.
However, because of additional information I received and after more consideration, I decided to look more closely at this incident. I recently reached out to both the team and the volunteers for additional reports. Unlike the additional information I received in the recent Team 1323 incident, the additional information I received in this situation did not let me resolve the discrepancies in reports. I am not able to construct a coherent narrative based on the information I have, and I wonât be reversing the ruling that was made at the event. I donât believe anyone supplying information is being disingenuous âhuman memories are imperfect, and itâs easy to misremember exact sequences of events or precisely who said what, especially days or even weeks after the event itself. FIRST is a Character driven organization, and my working assumption, unless unambiguously demonstrated otherwise, is that everyone who participates is reporting information accurately as they remember it.
From the recent information I received, however, I was able to get a better sense for the damage caused to the reputations of Team 1902 and their alliance partners, Teams 233, The Pink Team, and 624, CRyptonite. I understand now that a report of this issue even reached at least one of the local papers. Whatever the actual sequence of events was, I am absolutely convinced that neither 1902, nor their alliance partners, intended to skirt the rules in this situation or believed that anything they were doing was wrong.
I apologize to Teams 1902, 233, and 624 for any tarnish this has put on their reputations. I believe this is not deserved. I also apologize for my lack of immediate action on this issue.
Lastly, FIRST wants to improve from this experience, so we are putting guidelines in place with the Inspectors to ensure re-inspections required because of robot modifications are fully documented, to help prevent an issue like this from occurring again.
I apologize again to the teams and the community, for this incident.
What I donât understand here is why the officials on the field seemingly could not make a call that was final. I understand consulting with FIRST about the issue to get the call right but take responsibility for what was or wasnât done. Frank can give his opinion based on information he was given but donât come out and say the ruling from FRC headquarters is this and thatâs final. Say the refs consulted with FIRST regarding what they thought the rules said and the final call from the field is this.
I want to thank Frank and FIRST for public comment on the matter and I am glad provisions are being looked at to make the reinspection process better.
It will be interesting to see how weâre going to be tracking reinspections. As Iâm sure everyone can agree, teams make changes or repairs at competition all the time - the work seems to never stop, and just walking around the pits for 5 minutes shows me at least a dozen teams who are doing something that needs reinspection - and an hour later, itâll be a different dozen! This poses some interesting paperwork issues, in that weâll possibly be generating a lot of additional paper to keep track of it!
I know at my regionals, I have inspectors stationed at 3 spots Friday and Saturday - in the queueing line, at the field, and at the inspection station. This means teams can get reinspected when they ask, AND that every team gets a small reinspection before every match AND that every team that breaks on the field has an inspector following them back to their pit to ensure the repair or replacement is reinspected immediately (often because the inspector is helping the team do the repair or figure out what to do!). If we have to keep track of paperwork for all of these reinspections at a regional⌠yikes! I certainly hope that FIRST can come up with a wireless, computerized solution for us (something like the NI Parkway app so inspectors can document reinspections quickly right from their smartphone or tablet!).
Very glad to see Frank finally publicly address this issue. I have had the pleasure to work with both 624 and 233 closely and they are both world class organizations and I respect them both greatly. I havenât competed with 1902 since their rookie season but they are still my go to example of what FIRST imagery is all about and I have only ever heard great things about their program.
As it stands now, when teams are inspected, is there a timestamp that goes along with it? Perhaps on the display it could show exactly when an inspector last officially passed a team, and as long as itâs before the match time, all is well.
I like this approach. I know at one of our events this year I had to wander around for 20 minutes trying to find an inspector to reinspect us after we added a GoPro to our bot (we had plenty of weight but given that the LRI at the event had ALREADY cursed at us for asking a question I wasnât taking chances). 30 minutes later one came by and okayed it.
So, I think I might push to have this practice implemented in NE. Thanks
I for one am definitely looking forward to an improvement in the reinspection process. Given the meticulous nature of initial inspections, it always seemed strange to me that reinspections could be a cursory once-over by an inspector. I would love a bit more thoroughness, even if it means reinspections take a little longer. Hopefully what happened at Orlando wonât happen again.
Funny that you should mention thisâthe inspectors at Springside-Chestnut Hill and MAR Champs were using tablets with some sort of inspection app. We werenât given any forms to sign, just a sticker when we were done. There were a bunch of features, including a nice diagram of all the teams on a pit map and where they stood in the inspection process.
Maybe they were piloting something? Really not sure.
It still concerns me that there seems to be a precedent set here where a team can be retroactively DQâed for being in violation of a robot rule.
T6 seems to have been taken to the extreme and interpreted to mean that if a team is ever in a condition where they would not currently pass inspection (but were previously inspected), they can be DQâed from a match at any point in time thereafter.
My interpretation of the rule is that a team must have passed initial inspection in order to play and that any condition that puts them out of compliance with the rules must be remedied as soon as it is called to their attention, before they can go on the field again, per G4
I heard there was a pilot of a new event management app in MAR⌠you never know if pilots will be successful and adopted, or fail and be set aside though - I certainly hope it was successful!
I hope the paperwork burden is minimized or even eliminated. I think an decent solution would be a pad of change forms that all inspectors could keep in their back pocket. It would include a tear off portion that the team retains as proof of re-inspection and part that stays in the pad (and is filed at the inspection station). It would note the date/time of re-inspection, nature of changes, and new weight (if re-weighed). This would still allow for âon the spotâ re-inspections when a team doesnât have time to go to the inspection station before the next match or during elim fix-ups.
Maybe even simpler is for the team to whip out a video camera/phone/tablet and record a short video that includes the nature of the change and a statement from inspector that it has been inspected and a statement of date/time etc.
I actually had a team do exactly that when I re-inspected their bot after they added a frisbee blocker to defend against a tall FCS bot last year. It keeps the situation as now, but the team retains video evidence that an inspector has said âTeam 9999 has officially passed re-inspection at 11:40AM on March 15th for the addition of a nuclear reactor to drive the Freon cooled hydraulically controlled flame throwing arm system.â The video would include shots of the parts on the robot that have been added or changed. Only the team needs to retain the video to respond to any challenges about re-inspection.
This is correctâŚI heard the overall response was pretty positive. It was used for everything from judging to inspecting to the game announcer reading off names.
If a ROBOT is modified after it has passed Inspection, other than modifications described in T8, that ROBOT must be re-Inspected.
â
Followed by T6
A Team is only permitted to participate in a Qualification or Elimination MATCH and receive Qualification Points if their ROBOT has passed Inspection. If it is discovered after the start of the MATCH that a ROBOT did not pass Inspection and the Team participated in the MATCH, the entire ALLIANCE receives a RED CARD for that MATCH.
Consider the following scenario:
Team 1337 passes inspection weighing 100lbs.
Team 1337 plays Match1
Team 1337 decides they need to ballast their bot, they add 15lbs of ballast.
Would anyone object to saying that 1337 needs to be re-inspected? If not, we can safely say that their first inspection no longer counts and they HAVENâT passed inspection. Obviously, Match1 is legal but any matches until they get reinspected they are playing with an uninspected robot. Why is this important? What if instead of adding 15lbs of steel ballast they added 25lbs of steel ballast? Or changed some wiring to be a smaller gauge and now it is a potential fire risk?
I had the privilege of using GMS (the system being referenced) at Chestnut Hill and it was brilliant for the inspectors. Never had to go back to the inspection station, all paperwork, signature, status updates, notes and pictures could be done on the tablet. Team had to go to inspection station for weighing, but thatâs it. Individual inspectors could also be assigned to a team from the inspection desk and when they looked at the pit map on their tablet, they would see the teams they were assigned to.
Iâm pushing hard to get this implemented out here in SoCal for inspectors.
Same system also supported judges in much the same way. I used it as Match Observer at Chestnut Hill and loved the ability to get up and roam while observing matches.
And now back to the original topic of the threadâŚ
GMS would be perfect for doing reinspections in the queue line, on the field, in the pit and having a record of the reinspection.
I donât know if the paperwork has to be that extreme. I could see a few lines at the bottom of the Inspection Checklist - Reinspection Date / Time, Changes Made, Inspector Signature. Just have 4 sets of those 3 fields at the bottom of forms to know a robot has been reinspected. The Changes Made field will clear up issues like these where it wasnât obvious to some if the change was included in a particular reinspection.
Iâd like to commend Frank for continuing to comment on these difficult circumstances, even when he canât give news that satisfies everyone. His maturity and gracious professionalism continue to inspire.
Yes, it is a pilot program in MAR. From what I understand the guys at FIRST are watching its progress. I volunteered at bridgewater and I got to use the program for Queuing. Tablets are lent to volunteers (signed out at the beginning of the day, then signed back in before you head out). The app features Queuing, Inspection status of teams, pit maps, a Game Announcer mode where you can scroll from match to match and get info on each of the 6 teams (Name, Motto, Sponsors, Robot name, everything.) For queuing, we had a match schedule that would autoscroll to highlight the match on the field in yellow and the next two matches in green. You could tap a team to bold them, a method of âmarkingâ them as in queue.
A judge showed me the judges portion of the app. This section seemed like it needed the most work, but it did show promise. They had everyone fill out surveys after the event and asked for feedback. Overall, it made everyoneâs lives easier and saved a bunch of trees.
In the case of inspectors, it has the full inspection checklist and the inspector simply scrolls down it and answers yes/no or checks off various things. Teams start showing up with a red backround which is shown in the pit map, match schedule, pretty much everywhere. When theyâre fully inspected they turn green. Queuers were told if a team showed up to queue with anything but a green background to grab an inspector. There were some other colors as well, such as yellow and pink. Iâm not entirely sure what the significance of those were, but Iâm sure someone that was an inspector could answer.
Attached is the form used at South Florida to track robot changes and reinspections.
Hopefully this ends any of the nonsense talk about willful malfeasance. These are all three Chairmanâs Award teams that we all should be emulating. They are among the nicest, kindest, and fun people youâll get to meet in FIRST.
Bacon and CRyptonite: Best of luck in St. Louis!
Pink: Champs wonât be the same without you guys. But weâll try to represent Florida proudly, as you all have done the last 16 years.
