Enlarge size of playing area #soccer-2023-rules

[david]

Hi everybody,

we’re considering moving enlarging the playing area on the field (not enlarging the tables themselves). It would look like this:

• lines move outwards by 15cm (so they basically end up right in front of the ramps on the sides). This would mean that any balls that get pushed or kicked out of the playing field would most likely immediately return.
• Robots would then not fit outside the line anymore and would only be considered out of bounds if they hit the walls.
• The goals would move along with the lines and no balls would fit behind the goals anymore.
• The penalty area would be widened by 10cm (5cm each side) to keep robots further away from the goal posts which are a one of the few remaining problem spots at the moment
• The neutral spots would move outwards from in front of the goal posts to the side of the penalty areas to shooting/pushing a ball just forwards from a neutral spot would be less likely to go into the goal without the robot knowing where it’s going.

What do you think? I did not put a poll in because this topic seems too complex for multiple choice. Please make your opinion known, not just for the effect of high-level teams but also what you think about the effect of this for entry-level teams.

Best Regards,
David

[stiebel]

Great Idea !
This is almost exactly the same idea some people had in Bangkok (coincidence?)
Roland

[david]

Not coincidence, this was written in Bangkok (you can see it on the timestamps on GitHub).

David

[stiebel]

still some kind of coincidence, my team got the idea there. (from you?)

[david]

That was one of the things that were played as a technical challenge and we spoke to participating teams about the changes and got their input.

[miniapple]

As a team that participated the large area challenge.Here are some thoghts.

1. Please remove the wedges from the sides
   When the robot was push half out of the line, because of the wedge , the robot was lifted and our line sensor couldn’t see the line.
   2.If there was a way to make a robot that physicaly can’t go up the wedge(like making the wheel small etc.) they might not need a line sensor. I know this might be a trick but to be honestly i wish there should be competition and software contrivance for the line.
   From these reason, If the court is going bigger, I wish to remove the wedge from the court

[david]

We would like to keep the wedges because they are what makes the change work: Only if the wedges are there the ball returns to where robots do reach it (esp. robots that are too careful with lines). We are considering putting some more space between the wedge and the line though. Please vote what distance you think would be best - keep in mind that making a lot of space between the line and the wedge will cause lack of progress situations if robots don’t reach it.

Please also explain why you voted the way you voted. We’re looking forward to hearing your points of view

• Line immediately next to wedge - 20mm from begin of white to begin of wedge
• Line 20mm away from wedge - 40mm from begin of white to begin of wedge
• Line 50mm away from wedge - 70mm from begin of white to begin of wedge
• Line 80mm away from wedge - 100mm from begin of white to begin of wedge (18xm from line to wall)
• Line 150mm away from wedge - where it is right now (25cm from line to wall)

Best Regards
David

[david]

@MistyK

I agree with widening the field, but am I correct in understanding that the 10cm width of the perimeter means that the out-of-bounds rule only applies to the penalty area? Am I correct?

The current out-of-bounds rule is “if the robot’s entire body goes out beyond the white line of the field,” but if the outer area is reduced from 22 cm to 10 cm, it would be practically impossible for a robot’s body of 18 cm in diameter to go all the way beyond the white line into the outer area.

If the above is correct, I feel that the out-of-bounds strategy would be much easier as it would only need to be within the penalty area.
Under the previous rules, it was easy to do out-of-bounds at high speeds, which also served as a sort of speed limit, but I am concerned that the new rules will lead to higher speeds, especially for LightWeight.

In fact, my impression from the Bangkok tournament was that the out-of-bounce strategy proved to be not easy, as teams with a decent out-of-bounce strategy, both LightWeight and Open, were strong.

This change will have an impact not only on future matches, but also on robot development. In other words, in exchange for the increased difficulty and reduced burden on referees gained by a larger field, will not the difficulty of out-of-bounds strategies be reduced, causing robots to go faster?

Best regards,
Mika

@MistyK all valid questions, I hope the initial post in this thread answers them. I will create a PR to reflect the “out of bounds if touching walls” rule in the draft, that PR had to get merged to publish the draft on short notice and it seems putting that language in escaped us.

[david]

In the final rules (out now) we ended up going with the Wall - 10cm wedge - 2cm buffer space - 2cm line option, taking the advice from feedback that we need some buffer to robots don’t beach themselves on the ramps. We felt that with the general lack of experience in competitions due to the pandemic and the currently very high difficulty especially for new teams it is important that we do make this change to make games flow better.

Best Regards
David