The AWS43 Feedback Thread

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mTubes
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The AWS43 Feedback Thread

Post by mTubes »

Hi everyone,

This is Mark - you've probably seen me today pressing buttons on antlog and feeling slightly overdressed. After several months of planning, and a frantic evening of hacking away at the arena and arguing with the AV equipment, we've finally finished AWS 43.

Firstly, I'd like to say thank-you to all of you who were here today - this was the largest AWS ever, and we still managed to complete the competition far quicker than we'd ever expected to. After last year's event, we've done everything we could to speed up the event and make things clearer and easier for the competitors - however, we still wouldn't have been able to run everything so smoothly without your efforts, and it's thanks to all of you that we're not here late into the evening still desperately trying to complete the tournament.

I'd also like to say thanks to everyone in the audience - both here in the lecture hall and online - I hope you've had as much fun watching as we've had running the event.

Lastly - and I will get to my point soon, I promise - congratulations to our winners, Andrew, Alex and Alasdair. I hope you each find something fun to do with the prize money from the IET.

So, finally, my point is this: we'd love to know what you thought about everything that's happened today - what worked, what didn't, and any suggestions you have for how we could improve things if we run this event again in the future. Any thoughts?

Send along anything that comes to mind, and we'll definitely take everything into consideration. I'll make sure to read all your replies - but maybe not this evening - first we've got to pack up, and then I'm off for a well-earned pint.
Mark Pattle
Antlog-clicker at AWS 40 & 43
shakesc
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Re: The AWS43 Feedback Thread

Post by shakesc »

Great event , thanks to all the organisers

The double elimination tool certainly helped
The separate areas for the fights vs the pits was great

My impeccable driving meant I went out to the chickens - that was no yolk :)
I started out with nothing and still have most of it left
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Shakey
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Re: The AWS43 Feedback Thread

Post by Shakey »

The event was great and I liked the setup including the screens in the pits. The timings were run very efficiently and we got some extra games in. Slightly disappointed I didn't get to enter the annihilator as it was mid main comp and limited to 10, at the time I couldn't risk Stanley in the annihilator while It was still in the main comp.

A well run event and thanks again.
Nuts And Bots - For all your components and ready built antweights!

Alex Shakespeare - Team Shakey / Nuts And Bots / Team Nuts:
AWS 44, 45, 49, 51 & 55 Winner - Far too many robots!
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peterwaller
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Re: The AWS43 Feedback Thread

Post by peterwaller »

I think the organisation was just about spot on.
The only suggestions I could come up with were that the announcements in the robot room came out twice one delay by several seconds that made tham difficult to hear and that we could have done with slightly more table space in the main hall to store the robots while waiting to compete.
Other wise I think it was well thought out and very efficiently carried out.
Great event and I hope this becomes a regular venue.
mTubes
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Re: The AWS43 Feedback Thread

Post by mTubes »

Thanks! Good to know you enjoyed it. To address some of the points raised:
shakesc wrote: The double elimination tool certainly helped
You've got Gary to thank for that - I'm very embarrassed that I forgot to mention this in the first post, but I'd personally like to just say how perpetually impressed I am by Antlog. I think it's safe to say that yesterday's event would have been completely impossible with Gary's macro wizardry.
Haywire wrote: Slightly disappointed I didn't get to enter the annihilator as it was mid main comp and limited to 10, at the time I couldn't risk Stanley in the annihilator while It was still in the main comp.
We decided to do the annihilator before the finals for a few reasons - we thought that giving you and the other competitors a chance to make sure that their robots were in good working order would make for a more entertaining final, and that putting those fights off for a few minutes might slightly build up the tension/drama a little bit. Also, we did it to give ourselves a couple of minutes to relax and catch up with everything :wink:.
We certainly achieved the last of those, but I'd be very interested to know whether people think we managed either of the first two reasons. From where I was sitting, it was impossible to tell.
peterwaller wrote: The only suggestions I could come up with were that the announcements in the robot room came out twice one delay by several seconds that made tham difficult to hear and that we could have done with slightly more table space in the main hall to store the robots while waiting to compete.
I had no idea that there was an 'echo'-type sound issue in the other room. Unfortunately, even if we had known, I doubt there'd be much we could've done about it - I expect this was due to the long delay it took for the stream to go halfway around the world to wherever ustream's servers are, and then come back again. It would've been nice to directly run the sound from the lecture hall to the other room, but I don't think it occurred to whoever designed the building that someone would want to do such a thing.
peterwaller wrote: Great event and I hope this becomes a regular venue.
Thanks! There seems to be very tentative interest from the university and sponsors in doing it again, but it really is far too early to say. I know I'd love to do it again, but when there's so many other people whose cooperation is essential to running the event, that really doesn't count for much.
Mark Pattle
Antlog-clicker at AWS 40 & 43
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Craig_Anto3
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Re: The AWS43 Feedback Thread

Post by Craig_Anto3 »

I object to the judges who had no idea how to judge a fight, non competing builders are meant to be the judges because if you dont understand what constitutes an attack you shouldnt be judging.
I wouldnt be judging a figure skating because I don't know what would constitute a winning performance, it was clear these judges were in the same situation.

We are putting together a proposal for a new scoring system, which would eliminate the problems we had with the fight.
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joey_picus
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Re: The AWS43 Feedback Thread

Post by joey_picus »

I have to (somewhat sadly, since the event was otherwise brilliantly organised and I'd like to have my thanks to all the organisers) back up the above point - I was watching the fight in question (in case anyone isn't aware, Fan-dabbey-dozey vs. Robot Simulator 2014) and I was genuinely unsure of who had won at the time and I still didn't agree with the decision fully - I've had quite a bit of time to think about it and I think (as a largely ignorant observer) that it could be a good opportunity to fix things a little;

There aren't any regulations for judging fights in the antweight class presently (it is entirely possible that I am an idiot and haven't noticed them, but there aren't any mentioned in the AWS rules v4.2) and I think we need something...not defined in terms of explicit scores, since those seem to lead to arguments quite a bit (c.f. the RFL) but definitely some kind of guidance to replace the "style, control, damage, and aggression" line which was inherited from Robot Wars the television event and seems to be the default (and is also too vague - 'style' and 'aggression' can be very subjective, 'control' has multiple relevant meanings, and 'damage' might require an inspection which I have never seen happen).

Judges should also be people with reasonable combat experience in the weight class in question, as Craig put very well, because it's incredibly easy for an observer to mistake a faster robot for one showing more aggression (as happened yesterday) or miss out on other important aspects of a fight when making a decision. However with antweights enjoying more popularity than ever (aided by excellently organised and promoted events like this one!), finding three non-partisan, non-involved roboteers might be difficult, but it shouldn't be too hard to ensure at least someone on the panel is a veteran of a few World Series (and, of course, it gets easier as the event goes on because of people like me who go out early!).

I do want to add that it was an extremely difficult fight to judge and probably the two worst robots to be drawn together to get a conclusive fight from, and I don't believe for one second that anything happened that shouldn't have (ultimately, Fan-dabbey-dozey's fan unit broke so RS2014 would have gone through in any case), but it was definitely a fight that highlighted a massive oversight in the rules.

I'll shut up now :) but hopefully that all made some sense...
Joey McConnell-Farber - Team Picus Telerobotics - http://picus.org.uk/ - @joey_picus
"These dreams go on when I close my eyes...every second of the night, I live another life"
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Re: The AWS43 Feedback Thread

Post by EpicentrE »

Thanks to you guys for putting all this together, it was a good day. The way things worked between the two rooms was FAR better than last time, mostly because of Antlog, the ability to call fights 4 in advance, and having area for people to live their robots and transmitted in the room ready.

I would be interested to know why we didn't have the same arena as last time, as I preferred it to this one, mostly because of the size. Also, as Andy and I's arena has proved, fights are universally better and more tactical with less than 50% drop off, so I don't understand the reasoning to sticking with 50% drop off when making a new arena. That said, I did like the portholes for loading/unloading robots, although cleaning the surface of the arena wasn't particularly easy.

I also agree with what Craig said above. Whether the decision on the obviously contentious fight was the correct one or not, it seems pure common sense to me that someone who is not a competitor would not be aware of the nuances and specifics of combat. As we don't have specific rules on how to judge fights, or what criteria should be important (such as damage/control/style/aggression from Robot Wars or the scoring system from Battlebots), I think knowledge and experience of robot combat is very important. That said, without such a system, judging is always going to be subjective, so hopefully Craig's system will be good and something we can adapt to Antweights in the future to try and stop this kind of issue occurring again, no matter who the judges are.

I look forward to watching the videos when they're up. How many viewers did we have on the stream?
Scott Fyfe-Jamieson, Captain of Epic Robotics. Champion of AWS38/41/42.
http://www.epicrobotics.co.uk
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Shakey
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Re: The AWS43 Feedback Thread

Post by Shakey »

mTubes wrote:
Haywire wrote: Slightly disappointed I didn't get to enter the annihilator as it was mid main comp and limited to 10, at the time I couldn't risk Stanley in the annihilator while It was still in the main comp.
We decided to do the annihilator before the finals for a few reasons - we thought that giving you and the other competitors a chance to make sure that their robots were in good working order would make for a more entertaining final, and that putting those fights off for a few minutes might slightly build up the tension/drama a little bit. Also, we did it to give ourselves a couple of minutes to relax and catch up with everything :wink:.
We certainly achieved the last of those, but I'd be very interested to know whether people think we managed either of the first two reasons. From where I was sitting, it was impossible to tell.
I was due to fight directly after the annihilator and competing in it would have left me needing to switch the battery and if any damage was inflicted by a spinner I would have fubbared any chance of competing with a fully functioning robot in the rounds after.
Nuts And Bots - For all your components and ready built antweights!

Alex Shakespeare - Team Shakey / Nuts And Bots / Team Nuts:
AWS 44, 45, 49, 51 & 55 Winner - Far too many robots!
playzooki
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Re: The AWS43 Feedback Thread

Post by playzooki »

It was a nice watch online, bit of buffering but i have slow internet lol
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