since we are expanding or maybe even altering the rules in this thread, I think is dangerous to pull up examples of play from matches this year and say they should or should not have been penalized
but for clarificaiton of what we are discussing, from what I could see in that clip 56 was not between 45 and its goal, so it was not already in a ‘defensive postion’ when it shoved 45 over - it shoved it from the side
so as i have redefined these, what shall we call them, new rules? that would be a DQ.
Who is to decide what is robust enough?
Are referees going to get a sheet that says, “if the following robots become broken, it’s their own fault for not making a robust enough robot, do not give the other team a penalty.”
To be playing defence does not mean that you can only approach from a certain side. Don’t forget that the best defence is a good offence. By harrassing a robot and not letting it get to a goal is easier than letting it get to the goal and bashing it to pieces as you try to defend.
Ive tried to define the rules so you can push and shove, and even bump into other bots within limits
as long as contact is restricted to the pre-defined bumper zone on the bot
so if a bot breaks while those rules are being followed, it was not tough enough for the game
but if someone backs up 20 feet, puts there angle iron arm up at 2 feet, flys across the field at 15mph and puts its arm through the side of your bot, they are DQ’d
Steve: we are attempting to suggest ways the offensive and defensive play CAN remain in the game, so that teams can design machines that are able to slug it out, as long as their opponent follows the same rules
it might be fun watching your bot fly across the field and send another bot dashing to the floor in pieces, but its not fun from the other side of the field.
a lot of that happened this year, and so far no one has been able to recall a SINGLE TEAM getting penalties or getting DQ’d for it at ANY event anywhere this season - the refs most often said they didnt call it because there is no way to determine the drivers ‘intent’ as called out in the rules. Thats why we are trying to see if we can come up with clearer rules - so the judges will have a clear guideline for when someone has gone too far.
To be playing defence does not mean that you can only approach from a certain side.
can you do that in other sports? can you run into a basketball player from behind and knock them to the ground to keep them from taking a 3 point shot?
hockey? soccer?
can you punch a boxer in the back of the head? in the spine? can you kick them in the knees?
Good topic as our team suffered at the both regionals and nationals due to “aggresive behavior”. Don’t need a new rule or definition, if a team plays too aggressive then warn them and if they continue DQ them. The aggressive behavior will stop. Just like every basketball game is different because of different refs so can this - but for each set of refs the interaction would be similar, correlate the out front fouls vs under the bucket mugging.
Maybe we need better ref training like the videossomeone else suggested.
FIRST has now become Battlebots in my opinion unless they curtail this aggressiveness. There is little advantage to building a well engineered bot versus one that is just a tough rolling box that quick and powerful that plays only defense.
Yeah, I agree with those that say you really can’t write rules for these kinds of things, aside from what’s already in the current rules, so I’ll just say some thoughts.
I wonder if one of Aidan’s intentions was to show us how hard it is to write and interpret the rules. Whether it was or not, I think this thread has shown it.
For tipping, I would say you can’t really make a fair DQ for someone that tips a robot playing defense. The only easy way to fairly DQ them is if they have a scoop or lift that intentionally picks up a robot and flips it. If a robot is top heavy, you should probably expect that you could end up flipping. But I would hope that any team in FIRST would not consciously decide that they will aim for them at their most unstable condition and take that opportunity to flip them. They could have most likely just pushed and shoved to keep them at bay rather than flipping them. I have seen robots become just a little unstable and the opp seemingly comes in under them for the kill and finishes them off. Intentional? Don’t know. Who’s not to say it was an accidental wrong joystick movement? Or maybe they couldn’t see you were slightly unstable and thought they were just pushing you around.
For agressive play, there is one match that stands out in my mind as overly aggressive moves. Keep in mind, my intention is not to single out or bash teams, but providing and example of my opinion of overly aggressive play.
Q111 in archimedes, 494 was against 111. Wildstang was on the mid-platform and hooked. 494 came flying at relatively high speed from the floor, across the mid-platform, “rammed” into Wildstang and went flying off the other side of the platform, taking Wildstang with them. Now 111 was off the platform and a corner of them was on top of 494 due to how they landed. So 494 reversed and went flying back onto the platform, across, and off the other side taking 111 with them the whole time, and in the process breaking their hook I believe.
Now, 111 went on to win that match I think by capping and other things, but I feel that it was unnecessary to make a couple high speed passes “bashing” into the side of them, seemingly dragging them along like a ragdoll. But that’s just my opinion. Now how do you write that into a rule? I don’t have any idea. I guess you can show a video of it, as suggested before. I wouldn’t say either that 494s intention was to break 111’s hook. So aggressive play calls comes down into the hands of the refs and their interpretation of the rule. You can only write a rule that satisfies so many people. But maybe they can become more and more satisfying to more and more people in the future and hopefully this kind of collaboration helps that effort.
I don’t necessarily think that we need to have “no contact” zones on a field to prevent this type of play, but there could be an aspect where it fit. That takes some fun out of robot interaction, especially if the scoring object is in that zone. I feel one of the main objectives in this game is, besides scoring your own points, is to keep your opponent from scoring more than you. I would hate to see the rules become so restricted that it limits robot interaction.
I don’t think this should be true either. If team 45 or 71 are in front of their stny goal trying to cap, you better believe someone’s gonna try to push us out of the way, and they have. I know that 71 had been pushed a lot from the side in order to keep them from capping and it worked. But they didn’t tip, and there was no ramming involved. Now you’re saying that if 71 was tipped, the opp should be penalized? So they’re supposed to sit there and watch as 71 doubles their points? No. There’s some robots you don’t know which is the front/back/sides. So how do you call that now? We could cap the stny goal with any of our sides facing the goal. So now a team has to be able to physically see my robot and determine which side I’m facing in order to play defense.
Teams also don’t necessarily know that if they push from a certain side that the other robot will tip. If someone pushed 45 from the side while a 2x in their arm was 6 feet off to the side, we might flip, but we could have had our arm in a different position to keep from flipping. So, it’s not necessarily the opponent’s fault. It’s the nature of the game - to keep someone from scoring.
Entanglement - Unless a team does it habitually against another team (as with any of the ramming/tipping actions), you can’t call entanglement intentions. You can disable due to safety hazards, but I think there are many entanglements that can be freed. With arms and grippers like in this game, that’s one tool that can be used to keep someone from scoring a 2x, by holding their arm down. If our arm becomes entangled somehow, we should be allowed some time to free the entanglement or remain entangled for defensive purposes as long as nothing’s on fire.
I just keep coming back to common sense. There are so many ways to play offense/defense aside from ramming/tipping/etc. I think the rules are ok as they stand, but I’m sure there can be improvements. The judges do a pretty good job on these types of calls, whether we think so or not at times. If you see a trend of mean-spirited driving habits (there should be none in this organization), then warnings and flags should be flying. The idea of handing out warnings, yellow, red, etc, I think is a good one, but should apply for all their matches (vs bring the yellow ones to your next two matches only). Tangible warnings would at least let the team know their actions are questionable and on the verge of DQ.
That’s my xx cents.
And I just realized how long this post is… Sorry.
I keep coming back to how hard it is for a ref to call a DQ. There needs to be a lesser penalty that sticks with the team. That is why I offered a card system kind of like soccer where the yellow card is a warning and two add up to a red and dismissal from the game. I’ve lifeguarded for 3 years now so I get to see how kids work. When you give someone a warning for say dunking another kid and then wait until they do it again to make them sit out they will go to another area of the pool and do it or wait until you rotate stands and rely that the new lifeguard hasn’t gave them a warning yet. So that is where making a warning carry over for at least one match, maybe two comes in. Then they can’t just take their one warning every match and stay out of trouble. Teams would play less aggressively if they were on the verge of a DQ. Like a basketball player with 4 fouls. So that is where I stand. I think the rules are adequate. I agree a video of bad behavior would be good to be made so ref would no behavior that should get a warning or yellow card. And I more visible system of penalizing where the consequence can follow you to the next round and ref have an easier job of making the tough call should be implemented.
I still think that comparing “aggressive behavior” defence styles we have seen to battle bots is like comparing karate competition to the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship).
Battle bots have one objective…destroy the other robots by whatever means necessary. They have devices made specifically made to destroy another robot. Period.
You can really, honestly say that you think any FIRST team this year designed and built that? Come on.
I’m sorry, but I for one think a pushing match that ends up with a robot tipping is expected. Or, another robot waiting for a robot to start to climb the step to go to hang before they push them because they will be unbalanced is a good strategy. We never did either, because we didn’t want to tip over ourselves so we avoided contact as much as possible.
I think teams that build large, top heavy, robots have to accept the concequences that they will be tipped over instead of trying to get the rules changed to make it so they can’t get tipped. And it you build a great offensive robot that can only be defeated by a rough defensive strategy, be ready. Every design has it’s strengths and weaknesses. That’s the name of the game…find the opponent’s weaknesses and exploit it to win the game.
I like the idea of yellow and red cards being handed out at a head-refs discretion. But maybe, that is just because I trust the current referees 100% and would abide by their definition of “overly aggressive”.
It is no secret that I enjoy the defensive element present in FIRST. However, I would also be more than willing to have a line drawn by Aidan, or Benge (or whoever the head ref at the time is) in the form of a yellow card.
I feel the referees have made great strides forward in terms of consistency from event to event, and accuracy in calling the rules as interpreted by FIRST. I know they are working to better train vounteers at all levels, especially field officials.
I also believe that the refs have made a strong effort to communicate to teams how things will be called, both through the driver meetings, and through verbal warnings. They tell us how they’re going to call it, so how can we complain when they do?
So basically the way I see it is:
I like the current “refs interpretation” system. I think any attempt to quantify it would get a little crazy. I only wish the referees had a more solid way of warning a team than a verbal smack on the wrist. The yellow cards would be a good way of doing this.
I don’t think we’ll be able to get a completely quantitative system in place. I like defensive play, but agree there needs to be a line drawn for “too aggresive”. I’d like to see the current system refined, not replaced.
I actually agree with you, John. Personally, I really enjoy watching good defense and aggressive play (as long as it doesn’t get too crazy). So, just so that everyone knows, I’m not exactly advocating the things I suggested. I just threw them out there so that if there is a big cry for a big change, that is an idea. However, I really didn’t see much of a problem this year.
Most likely, I will be head ref at IRI. As long as I get approval from the IRI leadership committee, I would be willing to run a “test drive” of a yellow & red card system.
But, I am not going to wear one of those goofy soccer ref uniforms.
I like the yellow and red card idea. It will help teams drive their robots according to the rules.
I don’t particularly like the idea of the referees deciding what violates such ambiguous rules as tipping, damage, and agressive. They are great people, but I would rather see some official examples shown to all before the referees rule on a play. The referees are human volunteers (like a lot of us), and only “FIRST officials for a day.”
If team 45 or 71 are in front of their stny goal trying to cap, you better believe someone’s gonna try to push us out of the way, and they have. I know that 71 had been pushed a lot from the side in order to keep them from capping and it worked. But they didn’t tip, and there was no ramming involved. Now you’re saying that if 71 was tipped, the opp should be penalized? So they’re supposed to sit there and watch as 71 doubles their points?
I dont understand why you feel this way? do you play any sports in school? do you take gym class?
if you dont get between a bot and its goal and it gets into scoring position, then you lost your chance - its too late - why do you think its now ok to push it over and ‘take it out’ for the rest of the match?
put it in the perspective of other sports. If a batter hits a ball far out into the field, and is rounding 3rd base, do you expect the 3rd baseman to just stand there and watch him score a homerun? why not run into him as he goes past? why not knock him down to give the fielder a chance to throw the ball to homeplate before he gets there?
cause if a player is in ‘scoring postion’ then they have already played the game better than you. I defy anyone to build a bot that can lift the 2X ball up into the air and cap the stationary goal that is not vunerable to being knocked over, seriously - it cant be done
and the rules state that ‘any strategy aimed solely towards tipping… is not allowed’. But Ive seen match after match where this happened, so I dont see how anyone can say, we only intended to push them sideways, we expected there wheels to skid sideways and the bot to NOT fall over, but for some reason it fell over.
I think after this year you are going to see more and more teams who tried to build machines with complex articulated arms for capping, or ball collectors simply come back next year with tanks, armored vehicles that savage anything on the field, cause they tried to play the game to score points this year and ended up watching match after match with their bots knocked flat, and no penalites called.
if thats the way the game is played now in FIRST, why bother trying to cap or score points?
seriously, why bother to build an arm to place the 2X ball if you know you will be toppled over and over if you make it to the elim rounds? Why build a ball collector if someone can fly across the field at full speed and smash your rollers? why build a ball capture machine if someone can stuff their sky hook or claw into it and pull you over
and like I have said several times now, not a single team was DQ anywhere this year for tipping or damaging another teams bot, anywhere.
all those teams who lost out after being knocked over, or who could not continue to play due to severe damage - what have they learned this year?
I know that our robot can lift the 2X ball 13 feet in the air and we only fell over 1 time during practice and we popped right back up. We built our robot with the lowest center of gravity that we could. All motors were kept as close to the ground as posible. There is a chance that we could be pushed over but ANY robot can be tipped given the right circumstances. We also built for power and a rough game. When looking at the game we figured that there might be as much pushing as last year. We also built to hang from the outside so that we could keep our center of G low and not have to worry about fighting for a very small place at the top.
In other words we came as prepared as we could. There seemed to be more problems with teams flipping or getting hung up on those stupid purple balls than by other robots. Remember, engineering is not about building an object with the least amout of tolerance. You need to test beyond what you feel is normal. FIRST tests us in so many ways. I personally feel that we should have been allowed more weight because of the complex nature of this years game. FIRST did notgrant this and so our robot needed a diet to lose weight. We had to decide whether we wanted to lose strength or function. The robot ended up losing mostly strength but also some function. We knew what we wanted and hopefully came close.
We need to play the game as it was written just as we have to build to FIRST’s specs. To be aggressive and rough is one thing but to deliberately damage another robot is unacceptable.
There is a line between defense and agression (as mostly seen from my team’s robot 469). For instance: robot A places its arm above robot B’s open hopper.
Defensive: rbt-A holds its arm above rbt-B and trys to block balls from falling in.
Agressive: rbt-A bashes its arm continuously into rbt-B’s hopper, hopping to damage some system and cause damage.
Most of the current judging is based on how “intentional” an action is. If you look at some of the matches, you will see shoving matches, robots falling over everywhere, etc. The referees had a difficult job this year, especially with all the arms and large box robots that could be prone to tipping. Personally, if FIRST were to remove all defensive maneuvers from all games, then there would be much less variation to the game, and to me, it would be boring to watch
>>“hey joe! look! rbt-C is going to cap the large goal and gain 40 points! shouldn’t rbt-D go and block them?”
>>“they can’t touch any other robot on the field, so they can’t do anything about it.”
As for the entanglement issue (see this controversial match), it is not clearly defined. ANY fabric on a robot is prone to entanglement with other teams, so how can this be sorted out? should teams not be allowed to go anywere near fabric-teams because they could get caught? Most teams do not wish to be intentionally stuck on another robot, and unless the action looks clearly intentional the judgement is left to the refs (thus making their jobs more difficult)
overall I believe the current rules are fine for the purposes of defense, but it is difficult to definfe how intentional an action is.
I think what you’re looking for is something like football’s pass interference.
<G36> Defensive Interference-
A team may only defend a goal if they are directly in front of the goal or will be interacting with the front of the opposing robot. If the defending robot interacts with the offensive robot in any other way a 10 point penalty will be assesed.
Definitions:
FRONT - The front of the robot is considered the side which is the first part of the robot to arrive at a destination if the robot was driving at something. Crab steering robots FRONTs change dynamicly and will vary in different situations.
seriously, why bother to build an arm to place the 2X ball if you know you will be toppled over and over if you make it to the elim rounds? Why build a ball collector if someone can fly across the field at full speed and smash your rollers? why build a ball capture machine if someone can stuff their sky hook or claw into it and pull you over
Ask 469 and 71… They seemed to do pretty good…
Honestly, this is a big debate right now, right after the Championship, among a few people (compared to the total number of FIRST people out there).
I firmly believe that by the time FIRST 2005 comes around, great ideas of innovative mechanisms will take over and we won’t have a bunch of tanks driving around…
As a preface, our robot played zero defense. I hated teams playing defense against our machine - it was very effective. However, it’s part of the game. Getting hit from the side, having arms fight one another during capping, and being rammed on the 6" platform were obvious implications of this years game. I’d like to comment on some of Ken’s remarks.
Ken, I’m not a practicing engineer, but I’ve taken a simple class on static bodies. Any size robot can be tipped over if you push from a height tall enough with enough force to cause the moment force about it’s edge to be greater than it’s weight.
My point is that, most robots do indeed push from the floor, perhaps 2 - 8 inches above the ground. Robots can be pushed sideways safely, just like you can push a bottle of coke across the table when you push on its base, or it can tipped if you try to put it over at the top.
**<R10> **Teams are expected to design and build robots to withstand vigorous interaction with other robots.
I believe that being pushed from the side isn’t vigorous… it’s defense. If you don’t want to get tipped over when hit from the side… you have a few options. You can have wheels with low traction, lower the machines center of gravity, use casters that will cause the robot to pivot instead of turn. I think the major problem that teams had this year is using big wheels. Because they were using bigger wheels, their effect wheel base was smaller, causing them to be much more prone to tipping.
There are engineering choices every year that each team needs to decide for themselves. How to avoiding being tip-prone is one of them.
Isn’t it obvious? You don’t get 50 points for tipping a robot, you get 50 points for hanging on the bar. You need to build an arm so you can do so.
Hopefully teams that had problems tipping learned that having a lower center of gravity is critical to ensure that you’re stable. I also hope teams have learned that if you’re going to have a big bad arm, you better design it such that you can pick yourself up - you look really dopey if you don’t.
In conclussion, I think that there are a lot of defensive plays that people can do effectively. I think that repeated ramming isn’t effective or gracious, but I think that engaging machine robots when they are prone to weaknesses is fair game, ESPECIALLY in the finals. FIRST is a competition, and tipping, though potentially devestating, has been and always will be part of the game. Well prepared teams should be able sustain vigerous interactions.
Ken, I am not an ME, but I think I can design a robot that is extremely hard to tip. I would start by looking at team 67’s design. Their entire base is shaped like a wedge. If someone were to run into them, they would more likely drive up on top of 67, transfering weight to 67 and helping to keep them from tipping. They also had a very low base and a thin arm, which means it would be very hard to to push on anything high enough to counteract their low center of gravity.
(I should say they never tipped over, except when they wanted to at the beginning of the match ;))
