Rules that are [not] getting called at Regionals, the +s and -s

Competition Rules/Strategy
#69

In the case we experienced, we were rammed by a fast robot which was pre-aimed to intersect the path we normally took to shoot balls at the high goal. The collision bent our 1/4 inch aluminum side panel. Our lesson was that we need bumpers on our robot, which we have added. However the rules may be interpreted in the future, something similar could happen, so our top priority was to protect our robot from further damage.

Our match in question was an early match on Friday, and hearing George 1902’s experience, things were called differently later during the UCF event.

#70

The ramming penalty was called on my team during a quarter final round, we were trying to beat 181 to the corner goal,(a move we had been doing all day to great success) our intention was to hit the wall infront of them and block them but we ended up hitting them. We certainly didn’t injure 181, only stopped them. The 5 point penalty caused us to lose the match and get knocked out of the competition. We weren’t even opperating at top speed and most people were shocked at the call, the corner goal ref even apologized to one of my team mates after the competiton, saying it was a bad call. When team 20 was knocked out of the competition we went over to talk to them, their frame had been bent in an inch THROUGH a bumper and no penalty was called. It seems to me that this particular rule hasn’t been called fairly.
I think this competition is alot like football, esspecially in auto mode. Your gonna get hit and hit hard, no matter what happens. FIRST even mentioned making your robot robust for this game in their animation.

#71

One thing I noticed wasn’t called was penalties due to contact outside of the 28x38x60 area (aka due to extensions).

Personally, I think there are just too many things to fully take account of when there are 6 robots on the field, making contact, and doing their own thing.

I’m sure every team has their story of a time that a penalty was not called that could have changed the match or an error occurred that wasn’t their fault (ex: one team’s switch was pushed somehow when a robot went full speed into the lexan and they couldn’t operate their robot after that) and it really isn’t anyone’s fault. The judges make their call on the spot and can’t change it for obvious reasons.

I mean, suppose after every match, teams were allowed to go up with disputes with the scores and calls made. This means more distractions to the current game occurring (and therefore more possible complaints) and we’d probably need a whole other day of matching to redo the matches that weren’t “perfect.” Even if we do have proof, the only thing the judges can do is give us a rematch and I’m sure every team would desire a rematch of some sort or another (and how would you do a rematch during the elimination round? that would mess everything up). There’s just a lot going on in a small given amount of time.

Lesson: Control what’s in your hands and just take what happens. You can’t do much more than that and if you try to, you’ll just probably lose more brain cells than anything else.

note: you might notice that I’m a little sore, yes, it’s true. I’m not going to mention what or when because i know it’s not the opponent’s fault nor the judge’s fault. things happen.

#72

I’m sorry to hear you lost a match. But not as sorry as I am the hear that one official put themselves above another. Please say it wasn’t so! I hope your team mate (sic) was mistaken. Officials have no business apologizing for another’s call.

#73

We all need to take a lesson from nehalita. FIRST (and CD) needs more of this and less whinging.

Changing topics abruptly:

I saw what struck me as a very interesting (!?) call by our head ref at STL yesterday. I didn’t observe the play itself, but did see the position of the robots just afterward. Bluabot had pushed Redabot so that Redabot extended more than three inches into a corner goal. Redabot was DQ’d for the incursion and Bluabot was DQ’d also. One ref thought that Bluabot’s DQ was called for ramming, while another thought it was called for intentionally causing the incursion. Since it occurred in the elimination rounds, the result of this double-DQ was a replay.

Can someone who was directly involved please offer clarification, or correction if I got the story wrong?

#74

[FONT=Georgia]Rule G22 was commonly disregarded throughout the Pittsburg regional. Rule G22 establishes guidelines and penalties for contact with other Robots. It clearly states that “Contact outside of the BUMPER ZONE is generally not acceptable” but then undermines itself with a loophole stating “Incidental contact will not be Penalized”. All damages to our Robot during the Pittsburg Finals were classified as “Incidental contact” and not a single penalty assessed. To give you an idea of the level of damage you may consider “Incidental contact” we had a ½ inch wide piece of angle aluminum, which supported our ball hopper 6 inches above the bumper zone bent back and forth so many times the aluminum was actually severed.

Team 888[/FONT]

#75

Neha is being very kind in her post, by speaking in generalities - her team was on the receiving end of what I felt was an obvious violation of the tipping rule during elimination matches. Another team with a long, high blocking “wing” that extended outside the base footprint came alongside them, turned around and used the force of their wing against the top of 1345’s robot to tip them over. Intentional or not it happened right in front of the head ref who immediately signaled that there was no foul. If that’s not a tipping violation I don’t know what is.

I had an issue with the same robot and the 60" max height rule. This wing was statically within the rules but when used for blocking it would continually deflect several inches higher - it was made of PVC and contact with the other robot would bend it up. I must say, however, that this is an excellent feature and very effective so a simple modification could prevent violation of the 60" rule.

#76

I cannot speak for the other referees, but I was personally repremanding teams that I saw had a repetative nature of running cross-field and slamming into whatever was there. Each team that I talked to changed their programming to let up at the last second to allow for another robot being there.

The robot you are referring to was warned for this action and was watched for further violations of the tipping rule. I didn’t see the original tip, so I cannot comment further on this.

#77

I’m not aware if you spoke to our team or not Dan, but here’s what we did and why:

We were intentionally trying to knock the autonomous 3 pt shooters off target, before they started shooting. This required us to notice/guess where they were going to be and when they would be there. We also had to account for their alliance partner coming between us to block us or knock us off course. What we knew was our speed in each gear - we didn’t have shaft encoders or a yaw rate sensor hooked up (yet) so we had to program a distance based on time. As you can imagine that’s a pretty big window to account for all of the unknowns. To expect programming to “let up” is rather optimistic - if you’re already travelling at 12 fps, letting off the gas isn’t going to slow down a 145 pound robot much as far as impact momentum. We’ve got plenty of power to push other robots around, but we needed the speed to compensate for all the stuff that the robot can’t sense in autonomous.

But we did set a limit; our concern was if we missed their robot and ran full bore into the field railing that we would topple over out of bounds. Again, in the finals the robot we were trying to knock off target remained in the starting box so that gave us a better window for aim but not much for distance, especially if their alliance partner tried to block us.

Team 86 (Resistance) had an excellent autonomous in that they changed their shooting position on the field so we couldn’t predict where to aim.

I don’t see how you can call any robot with regulation bumpers for ramming - as Ken said it’s only a couple g’s and certainly can’t fit the intent of the rule which is to penalize intentional damage, not defense.

#78

Ok, orinigally I was just going to PM Dan, but I feel I should clear this up.

I was both the ref who made the call and the ref who “apologized”. However, I was not apologizing for making the call nor was I saying it was a bad call. I was merely saying that they did a good job, congrats on chairmans, etc, and that I wished I didnt have to make the call in the first place as I know what it’s like to loose a match off a penalty and the ref’s arent there to ruin people’s fun.

Regardless, I stand by the call I made. It was discussed after the match with fellow refs and those that saw it agreed with the ruling. It was not the first time we penalized a team for such an action, nor was it the last.

#79

So alot of people are probably wondering about this…I talked with ref’s aobut the wings and asked the extent of this rule, they said that if we had them up and someone ran into us and they went outside the 60" cube it was ok, but if we drove into someone with them up and then this happened then we would be penalized.

As to tipping 1345, I was pretty sure we were going to be dq’d after that I don’t know why it wasn’t a penalty.

#80

I would be interested to know the specific circumstances as many people do not know/understand the pinning rule (which has changed this year from previous years).

Directly from <G24> (emphasis added):

Pinning - While on the carpeted field surface, a ROBOT cannot pin (inhibit the movement of another ROBOT while in contact with a field element or border) for more than 10 seconds. This rule does not apply if either ROBOT is entirely on an ALLIANCE PLATFORM…

#81

I will post the video tommarow when I go to school. I feel like that is the best way to show it. Explaining wouldn’t cut it. but our robot was on the carpet when it happened and the explaination the ref gave me was that since I was pinned against a field element and not a barrier the penalty did not apply.
Which is clearly wrong, although I did not think of asking for a rulebook since I figured the head ref would know the rule better than me, so it may be my fault for not demanding that the rulebook be reviewed.

#82

I wish that more people had this opinion

it should also apply during autonomous too

#83

On a few occasions at Arizona we were “rammed” pretty hard. I do not know if anything was said or done to the offenders. When my kids asked me if they could do the same, I said no…GP comes first. Maybe I am old fashion, but “it is not about the robots.”

Ken

#84

Wasn’t there, nor involved, but it’s been posted and in Q/A (and maybe update?) that regardless how you get in the goal past 3in, you will be DQ’d… so if a robot gets pushed into the goal that far, they can be DQ’d.
http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?p=1811#post1811
I suppose the
I believe update 15 addresses this as well.
The pushing robot risks penalty from ramming or safety, as I’m not sure what the point of pushing a robot at the corner goal would be.

#85

Were they inside the robot dimensiosn? Because if so, they are completley legal. If not well then they aren’t.
Also, yes balls being behind the human player was useful, to mea s human player because then i didn’t have to worry about stepping over the line as i would hit the holder first.

#86

I saw the earlier thread, and expected that the incursion DQ would be called as it was on Redabot. The earlier thread doesn’t anticipate Bluabot also being DQ’d – that’s why I asked for clarification (or correction) of what actually happened from someone who was directly involved.

A referee who was on the scene and witnessed the play commented that he hoped this double-DQ call would not occur frequently, since it seems to be a method for a team that is hopelessly behind in an elimination match to force a tie and (in effect) get a replay.

#87

Sorry, I know this is redundant, but I feel it’s very important to reiterate.

Hey now… one catchy soundbyte echoes in my head: “life’s not fair, and neither is FIRST.” I’m saying this even though it was my team that suffered because of some other people’s errors. We’re going to put up with a lot of crap from a lot of idiots in the real world; frankly, I’m just greatful to have experienced FIRST, where idiots and crap are at a minimum.

Having cleared that up, I can say confidently that team 888 had an overall pleasant, positive experience at the Pittsburgh Regional, despite the frustrations. To any individuals who made our acquaintances, please understand the team’s frustration and try to look at it from** our point of view**–you were there too. The situation simply outraged us. This does not excuse our team’s rants, but perhaps the rest of the FIRST world could borrow a little bit of perspective.

To tell you the truth, on Thursday, we felt that a few other teams were absurdly aggressive towards us, both in and outside of the arena. We were even subjected to repeated “speed screenings” because “other teams reported” that our shooter violated a velocity regulation. After three intermittent screenings, absolutely no breach of regulation was found. We were suspicious and a bit insulted, but we beared it.

I feel it’s also important to acknowledge that there were *individuals *who were notably courteous and pure-intentionedly helpful to us as well. They made gestures that were more typical of FIRSTers.

most importantly:
I’m ready to put all of this behind me so that I am completely unburdened to look forward to the Chesapeake Regional. I can only ask and hope that everyone else feels similarly. After all, each day is fresh with no mistakes in it [yet].

#88

The key to understanding this year’s Robot Interaction rule <G22> is to look at last year’s rule, <G25> and compare.

The first difference is in the title. <G25> last year had none. This year’s reads, “Intentional Robot - Robot Interaction.” This makes is more clear that unintentional interaction is generally not governed by G25.

The first two sentences start off the same the same: “Strategies aimed solely at the destruction, damage, tipping over, or entanglement of ROBOTS are not in the spirit of FIRST Robotics Competition and are not allowed. However Triple Play/Aim High is a highly interactive [contact] game” (2005-G25 includes the word “contact”, 2006-G22 does not)

Here, the rules diverge crucially in setting the standards for legitamite and illegitamite interaction. First, 2005-G25:

Some tipping, entanglement, and damage may occur as a part of normal game play. If the tipping, entanglement, or damage occurs where it is not a part of normal game play, at the referee’s discretion, a 10-point penalty will be assessed, and the offending team/ROBOT may be disqualified from that match.

The standard here is “where it is not part of normal game play, at the referee’s discretion”. This can be very broadly interpreted, and in some regionals last year, it was. In an attempt to clarify the rules and establish some consistency, FIRST offered examples of normal/inappropriate robot interaction.

On the other hand, 2006-G22 reads “Some appropriate contact is allowed subject to the following guidelines:”, followed by a list of guidelines, followed by: “In all cases involving robot-to-robot contact, the Head Referee may assess a 5-point penalty and the robot may be disqualified, subject to these guidelines.” The standard for allowed robot interaction is specifically laid out here in a set of guidelines. It does not depend on a referee’s opinion of “normal game play”.

The guidelines themselves specifically set a great deal of robot interaction inside the realm of allowed play. Contact within bumper zones and extension-extension contact “will generally not be penalized”, and incidental contact “will not be penalized.” Notably, FIRST makes it clear twice that tipping over a tilted robot is usually considered incidental contact: “Contact outside the BUMPER ZONE that is a result of tipping caused by contact within the BUMPER ZONE will be considered incidental contact. … Contact with a tilted robot such that the contact is outside the bumper zone will generally be
considered incidental contact.” As for ramming, “high speed ramming” in 2005 has become “long-distance high speed ramming” in 2006.

It is arguable that the <G25>-to-<G22> changes were made to avoid the controversial robot-robot interaction calls that occured in several regionals last year. It is not arguable that this year’s rules governing robot-robot interaction are far clearer and easier to interpret, and the standard they set for improper interaction is much higher than the standard applied by many regional referees last year. Read them throroughly and realize that they do not read the same as last year’s rules.