SR2015 Retrospective

[Peter Law]

Hi,

After the end of what is probably the most successful competition SR
has ever run, I'd like to thank everyone who contributed to that
success. Whether it was shepherding teams, lighting the matches or
just handing out drinks and biscuits: thank you.

As ever, I'm sure there will be a number of aspects which can be
improved so we should work to record those for next year. Before the
competition this year I went through the post-2014 discussions and
pulled out the actionable items into trac tickets and items in the
recurring-tasks repo [1].

I'd therefore like to suggest a slightly different format for things
this year, largely based around items in that repo. Please remember
when making changes to it that the items should be easily transferred
from one year to the next, so phrasing should allow for this. It's
fine to use a previous year as a reference for how things should be
done though.

if you have something which was improved on-the-fly at the
competition, please find the trac ticket for the setup of that item
and add a comment there explaining what was changed and why. If there
is no ticket then please create and submit a patch (to gerrit [2])
which adds it. Discussion can then occur as "reviews" on that
submission.

If you have something which should be done better or differently, then
please submit a patch [2] against the recurring-tasks repo which
changes the item (or adds it). Discussion can then occur as "reviews"
on that submission.

In either case, or if you have a general comment you'd like to make,
please do post in this thread (and include links to any relevant
submissions/tickets).

For reference, the main competition ticket was #2770 and you can see a
list of all the tickets on the (two) milestones on the
2015/Competition page [2].

Let's ensure we know how we did it so next year can be even better.

Thanks,
Peter

[1] https://www.studentrobotics.org/cgit/recurring-tasks.git
[2] Please take care to submit as patches rather than just pushing
into the repo; I'm happy to provide help doing this if you've not done
it before. If you don't have access to gerrit, then feel free to just
post here & I'll try to ensure things get converted eventually.
#2770 https://www.studentrobotics.org/trac/ticket/2770
[3] https://www.studentrobotics.org/trac/wiki/2015/Competition

[Peter Law]

Hi,

> After the end of what is probably the most successful competition SR
> has ever run, I'd like to thank everyone who contributed to that
> success. Whether it was shepherding teams, lighting the matches or
> just handing out drinks and biscuits: thank you.

I'd also like to add some general comments about where I think things
went particularly well this year.

I think the single biggest thing which stands out this year is the
simplification of tasks which had to be done on the competition days.
Included in this are:
* the linesmen's jobs (a simpler game and clearer score sheets),
* the network deployment (which was configured in one corner of the
venue on Thursday evening before being dismantled and relocated)
#2686: http://trac.srobo.org/ticket/2686
* the automation of the competition software and clear routing of
score-sheets #2743: http://trac.srobo.org/ticket/2743
* the separation of ticket scanning from wristband crimping and the
guidance of visitors to reception via barriers #2953:
http://trac.srobo.org/ticket/2953
* the back-off of the shepherds so they didn't go looking for teams
who were not at their desks, and the one-way system implemented
in the staging area #2993: http://trac.srobo.org/ticket/2993

In particular, I think the ways in which these resulted in constrained
and predictable flow of items enabled everyone who interacted with
them to get into a sustainable rhythm without having interruptions to
throw them off was crucial to the way things worked. As a reference
point to this, there were for example no queues outside the venue for
people arriving, and, for the only time I can remember, not a single
match was delayed in any way.

Backing this of course are the few individuals who were either
scheduled to handle the special-case situations as they appeared (many
thanks to Jeremy, Rob, Rich and others for this) as well as those
stepped into jobs as they appeared (for example the staging manager
who looked after the badges & competition-mode USB keys).

Other things I've raised:
* Require two sets of robot badges: http://gerrit.srobo.org/2415
* Add staging area setup: http://gerrit.srobo.org/2416

Thanks,
Peter

[Murray Colpman]

On 27/04/15 22:23, Peter Law wrote:
> I'd also like to add some general comments about where I think things
> went particularly well this year.

Here are a few comments from me, some about where things went well, and
some about where they didn't. I'll get round to ticketifying them when
I'm not on fire with TYP stuff; I'd appreciate it if someone could
remind me if I haven't done it by this time next week, as I might forget.

Because it's much easier to point out where things went wrong than to
make general statements on where things went well, let me first say that
I agree with Peter's sentiments that this was probably the competition
where everything went the smoothest. I also agree with Peter's points,
so I won't repeat them here. Most of these things are just nitpicks,
albeit ones which, if fixed for next year, would still improve things
somewhat.

* The network worked. Admittedly, the WiFi mostly didn't appear to be
able to cope with the loads (though I'm not sure whether or not this was
the primary issue with it — I was getting weird things like duplicate
ping packets (!) when attempting to use the WiFi even with no
competitors). But since all teams had an ethernet port, this didn't
matter nearly as much as it did last year (when the WiFi also didn't
work but teams' only alternative was tethering), and so everything
network-related went reasonably well. I would suggest the main cause of
this is the hiring of kit from an actual hire company, rather than using
SR's mostly clapped out hand-me-down switches and cables some of which
had serious issues like lack of autonegotiation. I would certainly say
we should continue with providing Ethernet next year. If we can get the
WiFi working too, that's a significant advantage. I know Phil from the
wireless society (who was working the live streaming with BATC this
year) suggested to me he'd quite enjoy working with the WiFi himself — I
suspect it would also help to have a dedicated person doing just the
WiFi, to reduce the load on Jeremy (though this year I get the
impression that it wasn't nearly as bad as it has been in previous
years; please correct me if I'm wrong, Jeremy).

* Following on from this, the live stream worked really well. Thanks a
lot to Phil/BATC for doing this. It was higher quality than last year
thanks in part to the use mostly of software rather than hardware video
equipment. The overlay didn't happen, though speaking to Phil in the pub
on Saturday night it did seem like the sort of thing that would still be
potentially feasible with a software (ffmpeg) solution and chroma
keying. We need to remember that we can use the control room on level 2
next year to have the live stream on the venue monitors upstairs, so
that we can plan for an ethernet cable to here when we're doing the
network rather than having to lay it after competitors have already
arrived, and perhaps to set up a dedicated laptop for it on the Friday
so we don't need to rush around on Saturday and Sunday morning with
Blueshirts' personal laptops trying to work out why Windows won't boot.
The page to display the two streams side-by-side worked well on the
second day after a bit of wrangling to make it work in Firefox.

* No spare kit on helpdesk, or anywhere in the venue. This was an issue
when one team apparently had to borrow a Ruggeduino from another team
who weren't using theirs. This would have been more of a problem had it
been a motor or power board that failed!

* "No tactical switch-offs" was a very good rule, but I think there
needs to me some clear definition (even if just internal, as opposed to
something we give to teams) of when switch-offs to prevent robots
damaging themselves is allowed. I know the linesmen (including me) plus
Sam had a few deliberations during the knockout on whether or not to
honour a team's switch-off request. In particular, one of the requests
was only resolved when the robot started smoking, at which point it's
probably too late (fortunately this didn't cause any issues as the team
was knocked out anyway).

* Team photos happened well! Every single team had a team photo taken.
Organising to send up teams after league matches somewhat worked, but
wasn't sufficient (and didn't appear to catch all teams, as some seemed
to have no idea they were going on well after the instruction was given)
— the idea of Tyler's to appoint me as a photo shepherd when I had no
other jobs was a good one, as I was able to liaise with him to get the
list of teams who hadn't yet had a photo, and confront them individually
and agree a time when they would go (for the teams who were reluctant to
do so). This should definitely be repeated in the future.

* Blueshirt group photo didn't happen, which is a bit of a shame. This
should happen in the future.

* Radios (ignoring those for shepherding since I wasn't part of that)
worked perhaps a little worse than in the past. People often seemed to
be away from them, and I still think some of the people who could have
usefully had radios didn't. Perhaps a small briefing on radio protocol
and how the radios should be kept (ie within earshot of at least one
person, and on full volume so they can hear them over things that might
be going on) would be useful, as I believe has happened in the past. The
fact that we had six (!) licensed radio amateurs to pass along messages
using handhelds also helped avoid going up and down stairs.

* Scheduling worked quite well, although it turned out that my schedule
was somehow messed up and I only got given the correct one on the day of
the competition when I turned up in the wrong place! The shifts were
about the right length this year (longer than SR2013 but shorter than
SR2014, unless I'm much mistaken) with enough breaks. It generally felt
like we had about the right number of blueshirts — whether this was an
illusion due to the good scheduling and general lack of major problems
this competition, or whether we actually had more blueshirts than last
year, I have no idea.

* Robots not going up and down the stairs was not strongly enforced this
year. I know there was an accident on the stairs (which was handled
well); I have no idea whether these two facts were related or not. In
either case, next year I would recommend having a person on the ground
and second floors whose sole job it is to redirect people who are
carrying robots away from the stairs. I believe there was a lift
shepherd who somewhat filled this role in 2014, but correct me if I'm
wrong — how was it done then? This was particularly an issue after the
group photo, but I don't really know how this could be sanely resolved
without a teleporter.

* MY OLD SCHOOL WON WOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Murray.

[Lila Fisch]

Forwarded feedback from German parents, roughly translated by me:

They very much enjoyed watching the streams from Germany, some of the robot interaction was very amusing.

A huge thank you to everyone who helped with the event and all preparation that went into it.

[Jeremy Morse]

Hi,

I enjoyed it, the most since 2011. I agree with most of the things
mentioned by Peter. I would attribute much of the improvement to more
people taking on ownership of tasks and interacting about their
requirements: Elizabeth requestioned additional shepherds, Peter spec'd
required resources for competition-software machines. This includes
specing what competitors need to know and providing that.

--
Thanks,
Jeremy

[tak]

Hi,

I would also like to congratulate everyone on another successful SR competition!
I think it made it very clear, that a more thorough organisation of the event goes a long way to make things run more smoothly for everyone - blue-shirts and participants. I would especially like to thank the person(s) who designed the clear scoring sheets for t linesmen and the coloured timetables for the shepherds. It helped enormously!

Also, here are some thoughts I think we should consider for next year:

a) There ought to be one person who collects and records suggestions and feedback for the following competition. This way, when ones has a suggestions or idea, it is clear whom to take it to. Also, by the end of the event we should thus have a clear record of ideas and suggestions in one place. It would prevent good suggestions from getting lost and make it unnecessary to collate multiple posts and emails from different places later on. As long as this person dutifully records, organises and presents all ideas from everyone, I believe such a delegation could be helpful. Group the ideas, then submit them to your task/tracking system afterwards?

b) The teams should make up a tall, easily recognisable, table decoration with their group acronym on it to help shepherds identify their group table. The groups and the adjoining tables tend to merge into one big blob. Also, it would make it very clear at the beginning, when groups are not at the table they were assigned initially, something that did happen this year. Also, several times I had to ask people whether this was indeed the table of the group I was looking for. The artistry of the table decoration could be judged with a separate (small) price?

That's all for now. Best regards from Germany.

Tobias

[Harry Cutts]

Hi,

On 27 April 2015 at 21:47, Peter Law <peter...@gmail.com> wrote:

In either case, or if you have a general comment you'd like to make,
please do post in this thread (and include links to any relevant
submissions/tickets).

I've submitted a few patches to recurring-tasks and Trac tickets, but most of it doesn't lend itself well to such things. (If anyone else wants to put them in this form, feel free.

As others have said, from my perspective this was the least stressful competition I've been to. This was probably due to a mixture of many different things: we had more Blueshirts than before; SRComp has finally reached maturity; volunteer roles were very well organised. I'll be mentioning a number of improvements below, but overall this was a very successful competition.

With my Public Interaction hat on, we had 2,356 total reach from our Facebook posts Around 1,700 people visited the site, most from the UK (787), US (610) and Germany (275) [0]. We had between 60 and 80 external viewers of the stream most of the time.

Unfortunately, neither of the reporters from the local media who'd said they'd come turned up, due to other stories, I think. I was interviewed by a reporter from the Breeze network of local radio stations on Tuesday, and they were planning to run the story on Saturday. I've sent the Newbury and Thatcham Chronicle all the information I can, and they intend to print a story on us. If we'd known that such a prestigious speaker would present the prizes earlier, I could have included it in the press release and maybe got more attention.

Team photos were taken for every team very efficiently this year, thanks to Tyler and Murray.

I noticed a number of issues at helpdesk, which I was manning on Saturday. We generally had too many people on battery charging and too few on helpdesk (with the exception of the start of the morning, when we were ferrying batteries up from reception). The procedure for replacing kit was not explained to those on helpdesk at all, leading to some confusion. The Blueshirts on helpdesk on Saturday morning didn't know how to use the radio, or weren't confident with it, so we need a briefing on this. (I've raised a recurring-tasks patch for these two.)

An interesting incident occurred, which doesn't require action, but is worth noting. An IMAX charger starting emitting magic smoke while in use, which was thankfully noticed and quickly identified.

Upstairs, we realised that we could access the screens around the room some time on Saturday, and quickly set up a Blueshirt's laptop to display something on them. Apparently we discovered this last year, too; I intend to create a section on Trac to hold venue information such as this.

The spectators were pretty packed around the arenas, especially when we went down to one. Putting seats next to the crowd barriers (where there's room) could improve this, as would having some tiered decking (as we did in 2013).

Other than that, thanks everyone for helping make this the best competition yet!

Harry Cutts

[0] https://www.studentrobotics.org/piwik

[Tyler Ward]

Having been doing quite a bit of roving photography during the event I got a chance to see a lot of bits from a slightly stood back perspective.

SR Branding at the competition

There seemed to be a lack of visible SR branding at the competition. The two main branding points where the banner by the arenas and the blue-shirts themselves. We should probably aim to make our brand a bit more obvious at the event. Some potential ideas for improving this is to get some SR branded tablecloths that we can put over the tables for helpdesk and reception Southampton use them for quite a lot of events and they look quite good. In addition we could add SR logos to the outside of the arena walls.

Slightly off topic for this section but generally making reception a bit tidier would help with its appearance. some sinage for blueshirt locations would also help with the appearance and make it easier for people to find things.

This has been raised as [0] for improvement next year.

Arenas

The new staging layout for the arenas looked to be working well and seemed to be quite efficient. 

The barriers around the arenas where shifting on the first day, these where held down with tape on the second day which prevented them moving. Potentially consider using different barriers or adding additional weight to them (adding a seating row may also help with this).

The lower walls remained in place fine despite the best ramming attempts of the robots. however the rear facing of the walls looked a bit utilitarian. Adding a box back to the walls would allow us to hide the weights and cables inside the walls and provide a space for adding SR logos. suggested in [1].

The new layout provided less space for viewers when we moved down to one arena for the final.

Helpdesk

help-desk seemed to take the brunt of the issues this year and other people have commented on most of these.

some branded sinage could help with people going to the right place for battery replacements or kit help.

Electrical Safety Testing

Again we failed to test out electrical equipment before the competition. The screens where tested on the setup day with a tester borrowed from Andy. however there where bits of kit that where missed e.g. (RCD's and some SR 4 ways) and some of the hired kit had not been pat tested before it was delivered, this has been raised as a recurring task[2,3].

Team Photos

We got a team photo for all of the teams present at the competition, Thanks to Murray for helping Shepard teams for their photos.

These will be post processed and uploaded to Flickr in the near future.

Prizegiving

Philip from facebook did a brilliant job of presenting the prizes and having the robots around the presentation area improved its appearance.

We however forgot to thank our sponsors during this[4].

[0] https://www.studentrobotics.org/trac/ticket/3049

[1] https://www.studentrobotics.org/trac/ticket/3050

[2] https://www.studentrobotics.org/trac/ticket/2929

[3] https://www.studentrobotics.org/gerrit/#/c/2422/

[4] https://www.studentrobotics.org/gerrit/#/c/2420/

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[Tyler Ward]

A couple of other items I forgot.

It might be worth bringing the kit testing set-ups to the competition so that we can quickly test kit that competitors are having issues with.

One helpdesk issue that hasn't been raised yet is that it is worth informing helpdesk about any patches distributed through the IDE at anypoint near the competition, as some teams this year where not suing the IDE and as a result didn't get the patches (I believe the patch was the ability to see markers in arena B)

[Justyn Butler]

Hi,

On 27 April 2015 at 22:23, Peter Law <peter...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think the single biggest thing which stands out this year is the
> simplification of tasks which had to be done on the competition days.
> Included in this are:
> * the linesmen's jobs (a simpler game and clearer score sheets),

I agree, I really felt linesmanning was much more sane than last year,
and everything seemed improved from a volunteer's perspective.

There was one thing I noticed that alarmed me during my time at the
competition, and it was students leaping - nearly flying - down the
stairs (which I took rather than the lift whenever possible).

I mean I know I'm just becoming an old man, but some of them were
tearing down there so fast, including one I saw in a long, trippable
cape, that I feel if the same venue keeps being used then sooner or
later someone will have a head-smashing accident. The stairs are quite
isolated so it could be a few minutes before someone discovered
them...

Now where's my walking stick? I mean, congratulations to everyone on
an amazing competition :-)

Justyn
ps. I raised a ticket for this, if you think it's too laughably
trivial for one just close it: http://trac.srobo.org/ticket/3054

[Justyn Butler]

I've just been informed that we did actually have an unfortunate head-smashing
incident while I wasn't there.

So definitely not just a theoretical worry...

http://trac.srobo.org/ticket/3054

[Naomi Hayward]

Hi all, as purely a volunteer on the Saturday (and having volunteered in previous years) I just wanted to congratulate you all for such a well run competition this year.

As a linesman last year and this year the difference this year in both the rules of the game and with the students getting ready to enter the arena was outstanding! So smooth and not at all stressful, so huge well done!

Can't wait for next year!

Naomi

[Johannes van der Horst]

Well done everybody, that was a jolly good show.

As many of you know, I'm currently based in Toronto. This makes me very aware of the remote visibility of the competition. 

Generally, on the day of the competition, I post links to local hackerspaces and suitably excitable people going "Look at this!  This is awesome!".  And generally they agree. 

From this side, things that worked really well (focusing on the remote viewing experience only):
- Online score boards.
- The video streams were much better than the previous year.  (i.e. no make-it-look-like-analogue filter)
- Press release at the end. This is vital.
- Everything seemed to run very smoothly.  This looks very good when showing it to others.


Things that could be improved:
- Going from scoreboard title "Team ABC" to what the actual robot looks like in the area is non-trivial, and frequently confusing.
- Social media. Social media. Social media.  Build up, reporting during the action, round-up/recap at the end.  Aggressive hastag marketing.  (We still haven't seen any tweeting robots?!)
- Getting to word out on tech/STEM blogs before the event.  And after the event.  This is by far the easiest way of upgrading visibility. 

I see a number of small (i.e. sucky) robotics events happening here at various ages and levels of sophistication.  SR is significantly more impressive.  Again, well done everyone! 

Johannes

[Murray Colpman]

On 08/05/15 14:09, Johannes van der Horst wrote:
> (i.e. no make-it-look-like-analogue filter)
Last year, it WAS analogue...

Murray.

[Howard Buck]

I thoroughly enjoyed the competition this year and second all the comments about its smooth running. I would probably put this down to the large amount of effort that went into the preparations -- things like pre-constructing the arena parts and ordering in the IT equipment are two examples.

I'll put the rest of my comments in the volunteer survey, but as there isn't really a section which covers the external experience, I'll just mention the following...

On Fri, May 8, 2015 at 2:09 PM, Johannes van der Horst <johannes.v...@gmail.com> wrote:

- The video streams were much better than the previous year.  (i.e. no make-it-look-like-analogue filter)

My parents had the video stream on in their living room through most of Sunday, they had two comments in particular:

 * Limited viewing angle meant you didn't see any people (no crowd, excitement, costumes, sense of scale)

 * Not much action

I guess the viewing angles can be easily sorted. I did also notice that on the second floor of Newbury the TVs had an edit/cut/mixed stream, but on the website you had to switch between arenas. Could we broadcast the edit as well?

In terms of the action, I think this really needs to be addressed more generally in terms of helping/motivating the teams to make more progress earlier, but that's a whole other topic we can talk about later ;)

Well done everybody.

[Murray Colpman]

On 10/05/15 22:37, Howard Buck wrote:
>
>
> I guess the viewing angles can be easily sorted. I did also notice
> that on the second floor of Newbury the TVs had an edit/cut/mixed
> stream, but on the website you had to switch between arenas. Could we
> broadcast the edit as well?

It was actually just a website with both streams side-by-side on a black
background. This could probably be an option on the website, however.

Murray.

[Peter Law]

Hi,

Tobias wrote:
> b) The teams should make up a tall, easily recognisable, table decoration
> with their group acronym on it to help shepherds identify their group table.
> The groups and the adjoining tables tend to merge into one big blob. Also,
> it would make it very clear at the beginning, when groups are not at the
> table they were assigned initially, something that did happen this year.
> Also, several times I had to ask people whether this was indeed the table of
> the group I was looking for. The artistry of the table decoration could be
> judged with a separate (small) price?

I've submitted this as https://www.studentrobotics.org/gerrit/2617

Thanks,
Peter