What doesn’t make sense to me is to e-stop a robot when you think its “damaging” a part of the field but to continue the match. If the force of the robot pushing down on the scale was in fact damaging the scale, letting that robot apply that force for the remainder of the match just subjects the field element to undue wear and tear. On top of that add the risk of that robot being interacted with by another robot and the interactions between the opposing alliance and the raised side and again it just doesn’t make sense to me. Where they really running behind on matches or something?
So I suppose I get the intent, but not the execution.
So where in the rules is it allowed to stop a match and rerun it for a robot software glitch?
By the rules, the HR and FTA made the correct call. That being said, I feel for the drive team. being in that position sucks.
We had the same idea in response to our issues. Under the current rules pressing a button to stop autonomous would violate A02 and result in both a yellow card and foul. One thing that is unclear in the current rules is the definition of an “E-Stop”, i’d argue that a button that stops the robot for the rest of auto is an E-Stop button. Regardless we will have a BIG RED BUTTON on our drive station. I think FIRST adding an autonomous mode E-Stop button to each drive station, possibly with an accompanying foul, would be a great move. Until then i’ll take my foul and a yellow card every time.
We will also be adding more software features to detect faulty sensors, replacing electronics panels with anti-static polycarb, and bringing lots of dryer sheets to our event this weekend.
That match is not a slow count. The head referee there decided to escalate to a yellow card and stop issuing tech fouls.
I think that is something being missed - after 31 tech fouls a yellow card wasn’t issued in this match. As out of whack as 1080 looks, 680 and a yellow card is worse.
A fluke can happen thats the point of a riskier auto. I don’t look at what team did what, more the fact that the game itself is designed with scale auto potentially being a high foul event. I don’t think I suggested the latter either. Its just a game that could possibly have accounted for this in its design.
Even so the event described in this thread is rare. Most of the time when I see auto fail its at the beginning not end.
Fouls are meant to be given for foul play, not as a challenge to avoid. There is no reason a game challenge should be designed “with risk of fouls”. This is why folks are saying there should be some sort of mitigating rule change. No auto mode in past years has ever had conditions that lead to fouls so easily.
Nor has the field delivered data on plate assignment either. This is a game design issue / alliance choice issue and nothing more
I like this idea, but I’d put some conditions on it. Auton-Stop would void any points or bonuses that robot scores in autonomous mode, or maybe penalty points for the other team. Wouldn’t give a yellow card. Just there has to be a (small) disincentive to interacting with the robot in auton mode. Great when you absolutely need it, but not something a team should be using as a crutch.
I thought you were arguing it wasn’t a game design issue…?
Can you point where I stated that? I did say don’t blame the rules and something to the effect tall bots low scale don’t mix.
I’m not saying re-run the match because of a software glitch, I’m saying if the ref is disabling the robot because he thinks its damaging the field or because its dangerous why not stop the match and follow up on said damage and said danger? Why keep the match going, and let blue alliance put cubes onto the opposite side of the scale to make matters worse?
On the occasions where you said don’t blame the rules, the implications, as far as I could tell, were that the team is to blame for taking risks, and therefore the rules are not part of the issue. That’s my interpretation; maybe I’m wrong. But that’s the stance you appear to be taking.
We know rules are rules. We know the refs made choices in accordance with the rules. Saying that a rule is problematic isn’t a scapegoat for an unfortunate penalized team to avoid “blame”, rather we are debating whether FIRST should make rule changes to prevent situations like these from happening in the future (or at least changing the way the situation is handled to give everyone a fair and enjoyable experience). Sorry if there’s been a misunderstanding.
As the lead programmer for Team 135, I’d like to add on to my fellow teammate in saying that I personally did not hear anyone say “kill” from our section of the stands. What I did hear was a lot of excited people wanting to post the new high score to Snapchat, Facebook, etc., and the incredulous voice of our most enthusiastic scouter about a new FRC world record. I was overjoyed at the opportunity to be able to see an FRC world record being set in person. By no means did I mean any offense to team 1747. Their auto program is simply fabulous and something I look up to every day.
Anyone who may have said “kill” does not represent the values of Team 135. I myself usually make a point of trying to take some time every competition to console and help other teams that are having trouble and try to make friends. During this competition, however, I was unfortunately tied up very much with my own programming issues (haha). Although I probably would not have been able to help much with your godly homebrew motion profiles with PID loops within PID loops, I want to let 1747 know they had and still have my best wishes.
A message to 1747:
As a programmer, I feel every bit of your pain at that match and the likely PTSD that probably ensued. But hey, I’ll be seeing you again at State. 135’s got another shot at auto and so do you. Here’s to a fair competition when the time comes again. Who knows, maybe we’ll have a good auto this time too 
Good luck and stay awesome!
Because under the rules the HR is only allowed to stop the match for a arcade fault. There is no provision for stopping the match because of a robot software failure.
There was no arcade fault. There was a robot that was out of control with the ability to damage the field. And the HR in that instance is allowed (required?) to disable them.
HR got it right, under the rules.
Now if the GDC wants to change the rules … (well, lets not go there)
The one thing I’m a bit confused about is that there have been 3? robots disabled in autonomous over the course of 2 events in Indiana. I don’t mean to imply wrongdoing by the refs or ftas just that it may be indicative of the rules needing more clarification.
Are Indiana teams just more out of control than teams in any other region? Or is there some disparity in the enforcement of the rules and the balance between the field staffs obligation to keep the field safe and provide teams with a good experience?
Intersesting comparing the fouls awarded and the disable/no-disable decisions is a similar situation…
At West Michigan, we (Red, 5675) delivered to the opposite scale plate, then our claw came down and hooked the edge of the plate. In this process, we lifted ourselves off the ground and our elevator belt slipped off. Becasue we could not raise the claw we were stuck on the scale for the duration.
The refs did not disable our robot, despite the risk of damage to the scale as our drive team tried to struggle free.
The other alliance was awarded only 255 points in total.
We’ve fixed the problem that resulted in this situation…
I’m going to make some clarification here, because this is a pretty serious accusation and I don’t think it’s fair to gloss over. I’m not particularly pleased this was brought up publicly either, because official channels are more appropriate for situations like this and it’s not our team culture to make baseless accusations. Before I go any further I want to apologize to team 135 for this grievance being aired publicly.
First of all, the situation in question didn’t occur during the first quarter-final, it was the second quarter-final we played in. It can’t be heard on the stream because of the audio from the game announcer, but we have a video taken from the stands in which the chant can be heard, but it isn’t particularly clear. It was certainly enough to upset my students, that standard was certainly enough to prompt me to look into the issue. The chant is obviously a one syllable word, and it definitely could be “Kill”, but I can’t definitively say it wasn’t something like “Cool” or “Kell” (Maybe a drive team member nickname or something). It definitely wasn’t “You”, which is a cheer we’re aware of from 135. Hopefully someone can clarify.
Also, it’s also not clear that it’s coming from 135, but clearly from the general vicinity of the area where 135/1018 were sitting. I know that 1018 has some cheers that are very clearly inside jokes from the team, see “The Bean”. My hope is that the explanation lies there and it isn’t “kill” but something that sounds like it. With that in mind, because I know parties unassociated with any of the teams on field were concerned about what they heard, it might be best to discontinue that cheer or find some other way to get that message across. I certainly know if we were cheering and that cheer were misconstrued as something definitively not GP we’d want to know and we’d want to stop it.
It is interesting you mention this, I was wondering how quick FTA in Indiana may be in disabling compared to other areas. I have watched both Indiana events and probably 10 others. There have been many occasions when I thought a robot had been disabled in other events only to see them lift off the scale and continue on during Teleop.
In our case, the head ref and the FTA came to us after the match to explain why they did what they did. I do not blame the head ref or the FTA for their call to disable. I made sure they understood that at the time and I stand by that now. They do a great job and I for one appreciate their efforts.
This thread seems to sway between looking for ways to solve the problem on the team side, placing the blame on the rules of the game, and suggesting the FTAs are at fault for disabling too soon.
The bottom line is that no matter how broken the rules or the game may seem and no matter how much we may disagree with a call on the field, our job is to play within the rules of the game.
Those of us stung by the disable button have a choice. We can continue to run our autonomous scale as it is, or we can try to code in fail safe measures. Finally, we have the ability to e-stop our robot at anytime during the match without getting a red or yellow card.
Our team will not likely have an amazing two or three cube scale auto because we have made risk reward decisions given the time and knowledge we have that exclude such an amazing feat. We haven’t let the disabled matches get the better of us though. Our programmer has worked for hours putting in the fail safes to avoid penalties, which have made us far more consistent on the scale auto.
Working with the team to solve for the new challenge, not getting disabled, has inspired new ideas. It has taught our programmer how to do much more than they thought they could.
Failure is often the best teacher, if you never fail you are not truly pushing your limits.
Thank you for sharing this. I’ve been looking to find other matches similar to ours, in order to see how things are being called elsewhere.
Let me start with this:
Both in this case, as well as in our match with 1747, I believe that the FTAs and refs made calls within the rules. That right there is what concerns me.
As a ref, I understand that FTAs and refs aren’t perfect, and that in the moment you make what you believe to be the best decision. The lack of consistency, mostly between events, is what makes me think there needs to be more clarification.
We have two examples of essentially the same initial problem, with two drastically different outcomes:
- Match 1 (IN)
- Disabled robot in the first 10 seconds of the match
- 700+ foul points
- NO CARD
- Match 2 (MI)
- Enabled robot the entire match, moving around with a higher chance of causing damage to the field
- <300 foul points
- NO CARD
To me it’s clear that the outcome of either match could have been different if the calls were made as they were at the opposite event.
In addition, what I actually find most surprising, is that there were no cards given in either match. G25 seems to make it pretty clear that BOTH cases should have included cards:
… Repeated or extended violations of this rule are likely to escalate rapidly to YELLOW or RED CARDS.
It’s been mentioned here before, but I’ll add my 2¢ in as well:
It seems to me that in either case, giving some amount of tech fouls every 5 seconds for a minute, for example, then moving to a red card would have been sufficient. As a former driver and now drive coach, I believe that would have been less humiliating while being just as effective (as far as match outcome goes).
The fact that the now high-score is more than double what a to-the-second perfect clean match could be is, quite honestly, very disappointing. There’s no long an accomplishment in beating it; only by the mistakes of the opposing alliance can it be beat.
One thing that I can say is, the “you you you” chant is audible from the video if you listen closely. The term “kill” I have a feeling was mistakenly misheard from when the crowd was chanting “scale”. The evidence supporting this, is that the alliance got a yellow card because of coaching off the field (aka the crowd chanting scale). Hope this clears things up.