Hello everyone,
I received another question regarding the current line rules that I could not really answer, so I will redirect it to the forum.
3.5.12: […] Points for a dead victim will only be awarded after ALL of the live victims have first been rescued. […]
What if a robot collects all victims and deploys them all at once, simultaneously. Will the team get the full score or does the judge have to check in what order the victims touch the surface during deployment? What if they are deployed at the same time and the judge can’t see in what order they are deployed?
My first suggestion regarding this would be that the team should get the full scoring if the referee can’t see in what order the victims are deployed. But then again the point of this rule is to reward the teams that can identify living victims and prioritize them. If the teams get full scoring if the victims are deployed at the same time, then this rule is pointless again because then teams waste time first searching for all victims, no matter dead or alive, and then deploy all at the same time.
The next idea is to take the time of pick up by the robot as a reference instead of deployment. But then again, it might not be clear in some cases in what order the victims are picked up and it might become really confusing for the judge.
Also it seems quiet arbitrary if in some cases the judges have to give full scoring and then sometimes not if it can’t really see the order they are deployed…
So how can this problem solved?
Best, Jan
Dear Jan,
Yes, this point has been raised within the discussion of the TC members, and was a tough one to decide upon.
So, in the case that a robot rescues all the victims at once, and if there are both dead and alive victims being rescued, it will be treated as the dead victims being dropped before the live ones. To define what classifies as evacuating the victims all at once is tricky (as in reality, there will never be a case when all the victims are evacuated all at once).
While the very details of this may be a case to case scenario, as a rule of thumb, if the robot is carrying (or pushing) a collection of victims, and the method of evacuation is to “dump” the victims into the evacuation zone or “push” it all at once (opposed to dropping them one by one, or pushing them one by one), it will be regarded as rescuing the victims all at once.
The point of this rule is for two reasons.
- Making it easier for referees to check which victim has been rescued before.
- Preventing any dispute between teams and referees on which victim has been rescued first.
You have mentioned that this interpretation would make the rule meaningless. As you mentioned, teams that do decide to go with a method to try to deploy all the victims at the same time, in some cases this will yield higher points. However, it does also mean such a team will be trusting on luck in terms of
- Collecting all the victims on to the robot before the first deployment (which from observation usually doesn’t happen)
or
- At least collect all the live victim within the robot.
It may be a strategy (in the same way that some teams have a robot that is not designed to be able to overcome a specific obstacle like a speed bump on a ramp), for some teams, but it definitely is not what the best teams will go for, as the accuracy of the robot is too reliant on luck, which is of course not what a rescue robot should rely on; i.e.: this is why it is in the rules that teams are encouraged to develop a system in which the robot can identify the difference between a live and a dead victim.
Does this make sense? It may be that the way I have defined “dropping at once” is not so accurate. Please follow up if it isn’t.
Best,
Kai Junge - 2018 Rescue TC
1 Like
Hello,
I have a question, that is very close related to this one (or the answer to this one), so I ask it here instead of creating a new topic.
3.5.12 […] Points for a dead victim will only be awarded after ALL of the live victims have first been rescued. Teams must prioritise the evacuation of live victims first;
Should we EVACUATE or RESCUE the living victims first? Both ways we have to identify a difference between living and dead victims, so the sense of the rule is fulfilled.
3.5.12 […] A successful victim rescue occurs when the victim is moved to the evacuation point.
(So RESCUEING means moving them to the evacuation point and EVACUATING means collecing them ?)
It might be very tricky to collect them in the right order when a black and a silver ball are very close together, but a real rescue robot should maybe collect the living one first in order to bring it out there in time for saving it’s life.
Best, Felix
Hi Felix,
as far as I can see the rules don’t distinguish evacuation from rescue. I’d say evacuation and rescuing are the same thing. What matters is the deployment to the evacuation zone, only then the victims are rescued. You probably want to know it it would be okay to pick up all the victims first and then decide which victim to deploy only when the robot is in front of the evacuation zone.
Since @kaijunge said
it sounds like it is allowed to collect all victims first and then decide in which order to deploy them into the evacuation zone as long as they are dropped sequentially.
In my opinion (and how you also pointed out) this is again not really the point of the rule (since it there is not really a gain in time for the life victims to be collected and dropped first) and it will also result in ambiguities in terms of referees decisions (since it might be difficult to tell if victims are deployed simultaneous or not), but as it is defined at the moment it should be allowed. A clarification from the TC would be good 
Best,
Jan
CLARIFICATION:
In the case that a robot rescues all the victims at once, and if there are both dead and alive victims being rescued, it will be treated as the live victims being dropped before the dead ones.
I made a mistake in a previous post, but this is the correct version.
Sorry for the confusion if it caused any.
Best,
Kai Junge - 2018 Rescue TC
Dear Felix,
I am so sorry for the confusion. It was essentially a typo when I posted about rescuing multiple victims at once.
So EVACUATING = RESCUING, and multiple victims will count as rescuing live victims, and then rescuing dead victims.
Best,
Kai Junge - 2018 Rescue TC