Movement Towards Video Review

FIRST General Forum
1

After recent events at the World Championship, I believe the push for video reviews in FIRST. Many people don’t see the need for them and I myself was originally skeptical about them. My view changed at the Championship this week when we were pinned for an extended period of time and the ref didn’t call it.

Now on a separate note on what happened after the pin, being the driver I apologize to 48 about the flip. 100% didn’t mean to flip and was just trying to get separation by pushing your robot away before I broke hard back to the secret passage. I hope no damage was done and that there are no hard feelings. The flip was unintentional but it happened so I will apologize for it.

Video review is something that I’d like to see happen in the near future to eliminate moments like these. Penalties as we saw this year have huge impacts on the outcomes of events. Everyone knows that the refs are humans and volunteers and make mistakes but it’s unfortunate those mistakes can negate a team’s hours and hard work put into the season. Video reviews would help make FIRST competitions run smoother and more fairly.

The point of this thread is not to complain about bad refs, but a thread to discuss ways to set video reviews into action.

What are the pros and cons everyone sees in making a movement like this?

What are some solutions?

Is this something that ChampsLive can help with?

-Sean

2

You are presenting this as though it is indisputable that you were pinned. However, that’s not so indisputable.

G22 reads:

ROBOTS may not pin an opponent’s ROBOT for more than five (5) seconds. A ROBOT will be
considered pinned until the ROBOTS have separated by at least six (6) feet. The pinning ROBOT(s)
must then wait for at least three (3) seconds before attempting to pin the same ROBOT again.
Pinning is transitory through other objects. If the pinned ROBOT chases the pinning ROBOT upon
retreat, the pinning ROBOT will not be penalized, and the pin will be considered complete.

And yes, the blue box reads, in part:

As a result, contact is not required for pinning to occur. For example, a
ROBOT parked right behind an opponent that is on the BATTER could
be considered pinning because the dividers on the BATTER and the
parked ROBOT prevent the opponent from moving.

But one could argue you had a way out. It was through the opponent’s secret passage. And, it is a legal route for you to take at the moment the pin occurs.

Further, your opponent retreats and you chase the robot, hence ending the pin. True, it wasn’t for a 6 foot distance, but the opponent backed away, and you pursued. At that point you were not against an object and hence not pinned.

You may not agree with the referee’s decision, but that referee is looking right at the interaction and determined there was no pin. Perhaps what I said above is what was going through that referee’s mind.

And, seeing that your dispute involves a referee’s judgement, what would be your criteria for the resolution? If the ref isn’t counting, then the team doesn’t think they are pinning, and they don’t move. Would it be equally unfair to that opponent team who believed they were within the rules to be suddenly told they have a penalty, or worse a card, when they had no opportunity to correct their behavior?

3

As a driver coach, that match is insanely frustrating to watch. 48 was definitely taking advantage of the situation. It was either a 7-second pin or a 19-second pin. 7 seconds if the ref thought you could go through the secret passage to get out, or 19 seconds if the ref considered the secret passage as part of the pin. Or perhaps the ref thought you could drive over the invisible shield on the batter.

It really just looks like that ref wasn’t cognisant in that match. 120 matches in, and towards the end of a nearly 12-hour day, that ref was most definitely fatigued. This year the game didn’t get easier to ref just because the season progressed further. I don’t know that live reviewers would have changed anything in that match, because they may have been just as tired by that point.

4

I am not sure video replay would helped in this situation. I agree that you were pinned since you cannot go into the secret passage without high potential for a penalty. But nothing could really be done about that after the match. You would have still received a red card for flipping using what seems to be the criteria for that this year. You would no longer have been considered “pinned” the point you flipped him.

5

I highly suggest 16 sign up for Ryan Dognaux’s offseason event in St. Louis. They will be implementing video review, from what I’ve heard. It should be a nice testing platform for the future.

Feel free to contact him to register!
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/member.php?u=1812

6

*in elimination matches only, one video review per alliance :slight_smile:

Come on back to St. Louis in October - Where we’re cool and like to try stuff to make FIRST better.™

16 knows all about the GRC already though, they were at our inaugural event and they’re awesome!

7

There were two instances of where 16 looked to be “trapped” for over 5 seconds without chasing 48. There was also over a 15 second period of time in which bomb squad could not escape through the secret passage either (noting that the game manual generally considers this an egregious pin that would’ve resulted in a red card for the blue alliance). Also, the referees were not even counting the pin when it was solid contact between both robots and 16 on the alliance wall.

Even though the secret passage was an option, it was very likely that 48 would have continued the pin onto Bomb Squad, also drawing a tech foul onto the red alliance.

The argument that the Bomb Squad’s driver motions is that a video review would reduce the chance of any uncertainty and make these calls indisputable.

8

I wouldn’t focus on our match in particular. Like I said this is more for finding solutions to problems instead of looking at things that are already over. I posted our video as more of an example than something to critique. I understand that the red card would mean that the pin is useless to us but the points that could come from the pin would be huge to the other teams on the alliance that the red card didn’t affect. But like I said this is not about this one match, but missed or bad calls in general that some sort of review system can fix and I’d like to see everyone’s ideas about how this can be done like the off season trials that were mentioned.

9

In what sport do they allow video review for a missed call? Let alone a missed penalty call.

10

Basketball (NBA) has video replays… Especially for flagrant calls, who touched the ball last, whether the shot went off before the shot clock/timer expired etc…

11

Baseball now allows reviewing of just about everything.

That being said, I don’t agree with reviews for pins. The procedure for calling a pin specifically includes a 5-second warning of such. Without a referee signaling this, a driver has no way to know whether or not a referee thinks they’re pinning someone.

12

But that still doesn’t apply for 99% of fouls (common fouls, and the 99% isn’t an exact statistic). Almost always, you can’t retroactively go back and call fouls on a player in basketball, unless the foul is extremely egregious. If you’re retroactively calling common fouls in basketball, then the basketball game is going to take all day.

13

I’m not saying to do that, I’m just saying there are video replays. FIRST would have to specify what they would use replays for.

14

So what can and cannot be reviewable?

In college football, it’s things related to possession, side lines, goal line, and end line (including goal posts). That’s it. You can’t review holding, pass interference, the cheap shot on the line, or Ndamukong Suh stepping on your face.

Looking to FRC…

Well, on the definitely “can” be reviewed list would be scores that were missed. Things like a boulder being stuck in the chute, a defense cross being missed, bad frisbee count (2013), etc.

On the definitely “can’t” be reviewed list are most fouls. Particularly any foul where you get a warning before the penalty, like pinning. To retroactively invoke fouls is unfair to the team that receives the penalty, as others have posted here.

To the OP’s second post: You don’t want us to focus on your particular situation yet you use it as your sole example for establishing video review. Video review wouldn’t have helped your situation and would not have “eliminated moments like these”.

I therefore fail to see a compelling argument to implement video review. QED.

15

Personally, I think implementing video review would cause more problems than it would solve. If a team is pinning, but the refs aren’t calling it, then the drive team is under the impression that what they are doing is perfectly legal and has no reason to stop. Implementing video review and fouling that team after the match is unfair in my opinion. I understand that refs calls are not always 100% fair, but I don’t think implementing video review is the way to solve that problem.

16

Any ideas on what could be used then if anything?

17

Another problem with Video Review is that it affects game play. In football, basketball, baseball, the review happens with the play has stopped.

For FRC, video review is after the game is over. What if a shot is reviewed, and it is determined that it was an illegal shot (robot did not fully cross into the courtyard before launching the boulder), and should not have counted? That affects Tower Strength, and the Alliance may have played differently if it knew that it needed one more boulder to defeat the tower.

Maybe video review for something like a Red Card where it affects the outcome of the match (alliance gets 0 points), but does not affect the game itself.

> Any ideas on what could be used then if anything?
I am of the opinion that mostly bad things will come of Video Replay, and very little good. You have Amateur Ref’s refing the game, and you are trying to hold them to a professional ref standard. What can you do? Live with the fact that some calls will go against you, and some will go your way. Hopefully in the aggregate, it all evens out in the end.

BTW: I watched a lot of matches from the Scoring Table, and I can confirm there were a lot of bad calls (and non-calls). However, that was due to my vantage point (and what I was looking at), and the Ref was calling it best he could from his vantage point (and what he was looking at).

18

Unfortunately I don’t have any at the moment. Usually I like to provide some sort of alternative when voicing a disagreement about a solution to an obvious problem. I’ll give it some thought and post anything I come up with here. I agree that some sort of change should be made, but I’m not sure how to go about that change quite yet. I’ll get back to you.

19

Maybe it doesnt fit exactly within the definition of a “call,” but NASCAR has been using video replay for years (though replays should not take that long) and is used to determine placement of positions when cautions come out. This year alone they implemented a pit review system using cameras (which was not done beforehand) which drastically increased the amount of penalties that previously went unseen.

20

I would rather see FIRST train their head refs better so that matches are called more consistently. Video review doesn’t do much when the refs don’t do their jobs well in the first place.

However, it is not a bad idea for refs to review video before making the decision to hand out a red card (i.e. all the tipping fouls this year).