Thoughts on Einstein 2012… the disaster that (hopefully) will change the relationship between Teams and Manchester
By: NAWAID LADAKWednesday 2nd May 2012
This past weekend, I went to the FIRST Championship Event. I was there as a volunteer handling awards for the FIRST Robotics Competition. During my free time, i was able to check out some matches, hang out in the pits, stop by the hall of fame and be inspired by some of the teams there. I also was able to check out the pits for the FIRST Lego League and Junior FIRST Lego League. This was my first time actually spending time there and i really enjoyed myself there. I’ll definitely be stopping by there again if i decide to attend Championship again.
If i decide to attend Championship again
if…..
This was my fifth consecutive year attending the FIRST Championship Event. It quite possibly could be my last for a while. Along with starting work, being busy, the trip costing quite a bit more to St. Louis then it was to Atlanta, I may just not find the time or have the willingness to go. Or maybe it could be because of the taste of vomit i had in my mouth walking off the dome floor after a disputed champion had been crowned (yes, i did say disputed, more on that later). The actions that took place on Einstein we’re unfortunate for FIRST. But the warning signs were there. FIRST as a organization should point a finger at itself for its lack of institutional control when it came to the Field Management System and robot communications. Teams have complained about this new setup from the first day. These problems became more prevalent as people started noticing that match cycles were getting longer at various regional events. Various regional’s, such as Finger Lakes, Bayou, and Israel have had their share of issues (maybe not entirely relating to the FMS and comms, but they were a part of the problem).
Team 118 is shown to be immobile due to communication issues in the Semifinal rounds at the Connecticut Regional
This year, the problems were more serious, at the Connecticut Regional, regardless of whatever robot was in a particular alliance station, the specific station would always seemed to lose communication with the field. The two major victims to this were teams 177 (who had a streak of appearing on the Einstein field at the FIRST Championship Event for six years running), and 118 (arguably one of the best robots seen this year). These issues also occurred at events such as the Bayou Regional and the Queen City Regional (I’m sure there were others, but hopefully by now you get my point).
Let’s move to the actual event. Team 971 had issues on the Curie field, teams 330, 488, 610, 330, and 1717 all had issues on Newton. I’m sure I’m missing some here, but to say that what occurred on Einstein was a fluke or coincidence is completely false and irrational. In almost all of these instances, the FTA on the field put the blame of the communications problem squally on the robot without considering what the individual teams were saying. These FTA’s should have relayed these incidents including all the details possible to the FIRST Headquarters in Manchester N.H. HQ in turn should have contacted the team as soon as possible to get their side of the story. If FIRST wants to consider itself a sport, it’s headquarters should operate like a sports league’s main office. The point guard for the Boston Celtics Rajon Rondo, got ejected from a game Sunday for chest bumping with a referee. The NBA contacted him on Monday to discuss the matter before suspending him for an additional game. This is how sports leagues solve their problems with players. If FIRST can steal a page from the world of sports and inspire students by creating a competition, then it should steal another page and handle situations effectively, virtually eliminating any chance for the organization to lose credibility. Unfortunately FIRST failed to act in this manner, and it cost them late Saturday afternoon.
The tweet above shows a timestamp of 3:01pm. Because I was in St. Louis which is CST and my default timezone is EST. the real time should show 2:01pm.
The tweet shown above was a tweet I sent partly out of frustration after finding out 1717 (this year’s #1 robot in my opinion) had been defeated in the semi-finals on Newton due to comm issues in their matches. The tweet was also partly sent because i had a gut feeling that the incident i described above would become a reality. I understood that this needed to happen in order for FIRST to make this a priority issue going into the off-season, otherwise it would be swept under the rug as I’ve seen things like this get swept many times before in other organizations (ever since the NI deal, I’ve never viewed FIRST as some special organization immune to any issues that face any growing program, not to mention the internal politicking that probably takes place behind the doors of 200 Bedford St. That deal, along with the increasing number of corporations represented on the Board of Directors shows that it can be influenced by special interests and money).
a student on 2337 replied to my tweet stating that it was a “very unpopular idea”. I’m not sure if he understood what i was getting at, (since he was a student and the NI system had been in place for an entire High School student cycle…) If he’s reading this I hope he gets the point that i was getting to.
Like i said earlier, this had to happen, it’s unfortunate to the teams that this did happen to, and my heart goes out to those teams, but it had to happen on FIRST’s biggest stage, in front of everybody, mentors, students, volunteers, Dean, Woody, the FIRST Staff, the FTA’s and FTAA’s, the sponsors, the VIP’s, the people watching on webcast or on NASA TV, and the general public. FIRST would not acknowledge that the issues were indeed field related (or as other theories have started to indicate, router related… which is another matter in itself {R55}). I have the utmost respect for all of the teams that reached Einstein, 16, 25, 118, 180, 207, 233, 548, 987, 1114, 2056, 2194, and 4334. These teams competed their butts off to get there. I watched the Curie and Archimedes finals and saw some of the most entertaining matches I’ve seen in my nine year FIRST career. I’m sure the Galileo and Newton finals were just as exciting, but FIRST needed to admit that there were major flaws with their system. The slow pitch came and the FMS knocked it out of the park.
(I promised myself that i would go in chronological order, so before i get to what i believe caused what happened on Einstein…)
I was sitting towards the right portion of Einstein on the dome floor near some 254 and 341 students and mentors (we were about 30-40 feet away from the lady who was relaying the happenings on the field in American Sign Language). The first thing i noticed was the number of paper airplanes flying down from the stands when i got to my seat. I loved watching these things fly from the upper nosebleed seats down onto the dome floor, the field, and the VIP section (I’m sure they enjoyed this microcosm of an engineering competition where if your plane went far, you got cheers and a possible interview from a lieutenant in the Air Force Academy). The planes should have been grounded when the event began, when the speeches were being made, and the matches were (or were not) being played. I hope the fleet of planes continues to rain down upon the floor of the Edwards Jones Dome as long as A) The field maintenance crew recycles the paper. B) The VIP’s are told to wear Safety Glasses (even though i’ve never heard of somebody getting poked in the eye with a paper airplane, I think the chances of lightning striking you twice are more likely than that). C) The participants cease the takeoffs once the real show begins.
The real show started off with a BANG, and i mean BANG! The Boys and Girls club of American announcement that stated that the organization would create 3,000 robotics teams and give 4 million students the opportunity to be part of FIRST by the end of 2015 was HUGE for all the programs in FIRST.
From there, came the announcement for who had won the 2012 Championship Chairman’s Award. Sure, to some of us, it may have been no surprise that the award went to team 1114, Simbotics from Governor Simcoe Secondary School in St. Catharines Ontario Canada. In fact, i somewhat expected and would have been surprised if they hadn’t worn it. That doesn’t mean I didn’t start crying tears of joy when their Chairman’s Award video submission was shown for the crowd in the Edwards Jones Dome to see. I’ve heard and noticed all the work this team has put into spreading the ideas and message of not just FIRST, but STEM education itself. This moment made me proud to be part of an organization that involved these people. The infrastructure that this group of students, teachers, mentors and parents has created not just in and around the southeastern portion of Canada, but around the world is truly awe inspiring. I had stopped by the Hall of Fame a few times before and I really didn’t totally understand what every single team had done to get there (I was starting to understand why teams like 103, 842, 111, 254, 365, and 67 had won the award in previous years). But i felt that i understood what the Simbots had put in, not to win the award, but because it was the right thing to do. This team is probably #3 on my list of favorite sports teams behind the Dallas Mavericks and Dallas Cowboys.
FRC Team 1114: Simbotics 2012 Chairman’s Award Submission Video
By this point in the show, the atmosphere was absolutely electric. I had gone to the Championship five years in a row and had never felt the crowd more pumped up for matches. You could understand why just by looking at the Alliances representing the four different fields.
The All Canada alliance of 1114, 2056, and 4334 representing Archimedes included quite possibly the deadliest duo in FIRST history, winning TEN regional championships together throughout their history. Along with a rookie Canadian team who had just gotten the FIRST Board of Directors to green light a project that would bring a regional event to Western Canada in Calgary, Alberta.
You had an alliance of one of the top robots this season, 987, aligned up with a team whom they defeated on this very stage in 2007 in the Einstein Finals, a team who was shooting for their first world title in five Einstein appearances in 233, and an elite defensive robot in 207. All three of these teams were located in places where a person with half a brain would want to vacation, Vegas, Florida, and Cali.
Galileo brought us three veteran teams, The Hall of Fame team with a Woody Flowers Award winner going for its first World Championship in team 16. Team 25, who had finally succeeded in appearing on Einstein as a division winner from every division. And team 180, the only team to ever come close to beating “The Beast” in 2002.
Newton gave us one of the most elegantly designed robots the FIRST community had ever seen in team 118. Team 548, who was rising qui8ckly thanks to their performance at the Michigan State Championships two weeks prior, and 2194, the first team to represent the great state of Wisconsin on Einstein.
All of these alliances were IRI caliber and any one of them could have walked away with the gold around their necks. We would just have to wait and see who would pull through, after all the speeches and pageantry, the crowd was eagerly ready for some matches.
This is where things started to turn…
Notice how the crowd grows quiet as they realize that 118 is stationary and not responding on the field.
The air and excitement got sucked out of the building like a balloon popping once people saw 188 not moving. Within seconds, this had gone form one of the loudest and most exciting Championship Finals in FIRST history, to one of the most disappointing and quietest Championship Finals in FIRST history. Two major questions remained, Was this an issue with 118 or the field, and if it was with the field, would FIRST finally acknowledge that their FMS is buggy (I would use a more blatant word to describe how i feel about the FMS, but i won’t here, you can see my retweets from Saturday afternoon and find the word in one of them).
Our first question was answered when we saw 4334, the team located on the Red Alliance in driver station two (the same station that 118 was in) stay motionless the entire match for ST. 2.1. The question that remained to be answered was weather FIRST would acknowledge the situation. The awards ceremony continued without a final score for SF 2.1. This was the first hint that FIRST may be starting to get the message.
The awards ceremony continued as if nothing was wrong if you were watching from a VIP’s point of view, everyone else in the dome knew otherwise. Dean Kamen and Woody Flowers showed obvious signs of stress from that point forward and weren’t quite themselves for the rest of the event. Not just the finals, but the Finale events as well. (I met Dean at the FIRSTies Talent Show sponsored by AndyMark later that night and noticed this first hand).
Dean Kamen signed my Volunteer badge after the FIRSTies Talent Show which was a part of the FIRST Finale.Finally, the announcement came, “We are aware that there was a issue with the field the last match, this issue may also have affected the match before”. They declared that they would be replaying the matches. To me, this sounded like a shot at 118, especially the “this issue may also have affected the match before” portion.
The Replay of SF 1.1 started and again, 118 failed to move. This is where it was decision time for FIRST. One of the key values of the FIRST program is Gracious Professionalism, these two words can compete with one another in that phrase just like the words FIRST and Competition can compete against one another in the term “FIRST Robotics Competition”. Did FIRST want to be gracious to the participating teams and replay these matches until they figured out what exactly was causing the various field problems, or did they want to be professional for all their VIP’s and sponsors who provide them funding and end the “show” on time? (When i mentioned sponsors and/or corporations influencing FIRST in negative ways earlier, this was one of the examples.)
FIRST exclusively choose the later, when there was a clear opportunity to show how different FIRST is from any other organizational. FIRST could have easily plowed through the awards and tried to rerun the matches. if the field didn’t want to cooperate, FIRST could have easily made an announcement.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, due to the conditions of the field, we will continue to attempt fixing the issues that are on the field and replay these matches as soon as possible. All awards have been given out and we have informed our providers for the FIRST finale to start preparing for your arrival. If you or your team wishes to attend the FIRST Finale, please note that all the activities are now available. If you wish to stay here and watch us attempt to fix the field, you are more than welcome to. We owe our teams competing a fair shot at the World Championship title. And we intend to do that in any which way possible. Thank you”
This type of announcement would have signaled the end of the awards ceremony and public finals section of the championship. The people who needed to leave could do so with ease, and the people who wanted to stay and watch these matches once the field issues were dealt with could stay and enjoy each other’s company.
FIRST failed to do this and instead allowed team members watch in horror as their robot didn’t move on the field for an extended period of time. Of course these members had a rush of emotion, anger, helplessness, sorrow…. after all, they had all put in blood, sweat, and tears for six weeks during the build season, competed for at least another six days at regional or district events along with division fields, and worked their way up to FIRST’s highest stage only to see their robot become an inanimate object instead of the item that they, themselves had given life to. To some of these students, who may never compete in FIRST again, their last view of their hard work, of their baby, was it sitting dead on a field, and nobody who had a higher authority dealing with the situation willing to do anything about it.
Watching those semi-final matches with robots not running and FIRST personal blatantly refusing to do anything about it disgusted me. This type of inaction explicitly shows FIRST does not carry the same level of respect for their participants and mentors ad they do for their VIP’s and sponsors. I had the exact opposite feeling watching team 2056, the winner of the “Motorola Quality Award” sit motionless on the field as i did when their alliance partner had won the Championship Chairman’s Award less than 90 minutes ago.
The New Orleans Saints didn’t play in the Louisiana Superdome after it had been damaged by Hurricane Katrina, the Minnesota Vikings didn’t play in the Metrodome after the roof collapsed because of heavy snowfall, The New York Knicks had to postpone their matchup against the Orlando Magic after safety concerns arose because maintainability materials had fallen onto the arena floor. A slippery court caused the cancelation of an exhibition match between the Orlando Magic and Miami Heat in Tampa. Rain always delays events such as Baseball, Tennis, Golf, and NASCAR. These are all because the playing field isn’t in prime condition for the teams to compete on. FIRST had the same issue and forcefully choose to play on through their issues.
I was at the point of walking out when i received a tweet informing me that Downtown St. Louis was under a Tornado Warning from 6:15 CST until 6:30 CST. I was forced to stay and watch the painful final matches. As soon as the all clear was given I rushed out of the building.
Congratulations to teams 16, 25, and 180 for winning the 2012 Championship Event under these conditions. This win is in no way tainted as all teams have varying degrees of communication issues along the way. But that does not mean that it is undisputed in any way either. I believe that there should be a rematch at the Indiana Robotics Invitational, not so that we as a community could have discovered what would have happened, but rather to provide an opportunity to the winning alliance to validate and cement their victory. If a rematch is unrealistic, I believe all the teams should be invited to IRI so that they can show us what they couldn’t on Einstein. (I also think all of the teams should be provided a champion banner along with Gold Medals from FIRST with automatic entry into next year’s Championship at no charge with ten free tickets from Southwest Airlines, but that’s both unreasonable and irrational).
If a future student asks me who won the 2012 Championship. I’ll answer “16, 25 and 180 … but”. I want to eliminate that but one day, but i don’t feel comfortable doing so now.
After the talent show, I sat around in the lobby of my hotel for a good 30 minutes and heard nothing but talk regarding Einstein earlier that day from various mentors and students from various teams. Some of these things showed optimistic, but many of the things said were also negative in nature and attacked FIRST to a level where I don’t think it’s fair to stoop to. Discussions of a en-mass exit from FRC towards VRC was discussed as well.
I now more than ever believe that FIRST needs competition from Innovation FIRST and the VEXPro program to succeed in its ultimate goal. As the great Stephen A. Smith said on ESPN’s First Take the Monday morning after the Championship Event (in the context of a sports debate of course) “Competition is what makes the world go round (baby)… You should be ready to go up against anybody. People have already invested in you, you get the first shot. You’re going to get an opportunity to show your worth and what you are made of (okay), and that’s exactly what you should want. Because competition is what makes you better.” For FIRST to improve as an organization, it needs the fear of competition breathing down its neck to move towards greater success. In the end, both organizations would help with STEM education, and isn’t that what most of us are here to support?
(Maybe this will happen in 2015 if FIRST turns down IFI’s proposal for a new control system)
Bill Miller, Along with Kate and Colin mentions that FIRST has a contract with National Instruments until 2014 and that they are open for ideas from 2015 inwards.
While I am throwing a lot of the blame pie on FIRST, i also think, us as a community need to be involved in diagnosing the problems and solving them as well. The E-Mail sent by the President of FIRST is one small step in this direction. The E-Mail read as follows
“Dear FRC Teams:
Thank you for your incredible enthusiasm and Gracious Professionalism throughout the year and at the Championship.
We apologize for the technical problems that affected the final matches at our Championship. We will examine all of the facts, report our findings and ultimately solve any and all identified issues.
Sincerely,
Jon Dudas
President, FIRST”
If you read the message carefully, you will notice that if FIRST is unable to find any issues, they will not report that to us. This allows them to put a halfhearted effort into this investigation and quietly sweep it under the rug until it rear’s it’s ugly head again. This is unacceptable, FIRST should let their participants get involved in solving this problem. This issue affects all of us as a community, it puts the organization that we love and care for with all our hearts credibility at stake. FIRST shouldn’t just expect our blind faithful support, they should expect us to jump in and help out in any which way possible.
With that, here are my opinions and ideas on how FIRST should consider moving forward
+ What were the issues that caused this mess? Four major theories have been presented to me over the past few days, I discount one of them because of the circumstances, and the other three theories are quite compelling.
1) Teams are using too much bandwidth with various camera feeds, sensors, and robot controls where it’s clogging up the bandwidth provided for the network on the field. This added onto the amount of smartphone and other various electronic devices constantly searching for Wi-Fi at the event facility, whether it’s to check E-Mail or Facebook, or to watches matches at another regional or to scout. There is far too much radio traffic to make sure everything communicates properly. 2) The D-Link router used on robots is a consumer grade product while everything else in the chain of command is used for industrial purposes. This means less reliability on the router’s part and an overall weak system due to this router moving around with the robot. 3) The field management system is coded poorly and is barley stable.
Here are my ideas on how this problem could possibly be fixed 1) Cell phones are currently able to carry up to 8 different radio frequencies on their chips. The Galaxy Nexus made by Samsung provides 850MHz/900MHz/1700MHz/1900MHz/2100MHz/2.4GHz/5Ghz/GPS as radio bands where it can send and collect information from. FIRST can make it a priority to make sure the new control system introduced in 2015 will have a second band specifically dedicated to core robot functions. I’m not sure exactly how difficult this may be, but FIRST has over 2.5 years to figure this out. This could also mean the end of Wi-Fi Use on the radios in the future. 2) Overhaul the FMS and build a new system from scratch, with the help of FIRSTers. 3) Request participants to turn off their Wi-Fi on their electronic devices before entering the event venue.
“FIRST is all about gracious professionalism, honesty, integrity… And they informed 10,000 kids by example that none of that matters when your reputation is on the line”. This quote from the driver of team 4334 sums up exactly what i thought about the actions that took place on Einstein.
What’s done is done; it’s all in the past. It’s now time to move forward and solve our current problems, The second part of the 2012 build season has begun, Hopefully FIRST gives us some respect and lets us get in the game and get to work.
P.S. I’d like to thank everyone who was involved in making this event a huge success other than the events listed above. This means to all the FIRST Staff, Students, Mentors, Teachers, Parents, Sponsors, VIP’s and all the other volunteers i served with over the weekend (although I’ve heard that some of you were quite rude to people as well… this will be discussed in a later post.) This event was much smoother than last year and much more fun.