Can’t believe it hasn’t been posted in the forum yet, so let’s start this topic.
It’s very disappointing that teams illegally caught cheating were allowed to continue on to division finals. I know of at least one team that then went on and won their division as well.
First, I’m glad the issue was caught and there was a response in divisions. This was happening in both MS and ES. And I believe most the offenders were from China. I saw teams (and parents) with tables of tissues cleaning robots. But that didn’t take away the enhancement, just wiped away their guiltyness.
My problem with everything was with the severity of punishment. It’s more likely than not this lubing happened after inspection. Meaning they blantenetly did this knowing it wasn’t allowed.
How long is the RECF going to keep looking the other way to problems that arise from teams from China. ( I know not all teams are bad)
The value of Vexworlds feels like it’s deteriorating. Between the cost increasing and issues like this, I don’t feel it’s worth it anymore. Go to state and call it a day.
I feel RECF owes the community a post mortem of what happened. They also need to take some kind of action. You can’t ban teams, they will just register as different teams. Publish a list of teams caught. I don’t know what it should be. Something needs to happen.
Under normal circumstances I would discuss this type of topic with other moderators, however, as everyone has just finished worlds and are exhausted I will approve this on the understanding that no teams will be called out. If the topic in any way becomes personal or starts to degrade it will be closed.
First, for a chance at light-heartedness for what is a frustrating topic, I coined this “LubriGate”, couldn’t pass up the dad pun.
On to the heart of things, I was not there, but there was a LOT of discussion on this in the Facebook groups from coaches and mentors. Given everything that’s been brought up, I fully concur that RECF/GDC should have some address to the community about this and what changes are being made for the future (game manual updates, inspection sheet explicitness, whatever).
I realize this will (and should) take a little time to consider and get right, but this feels like a potential critical mass issue for many folks and considering whether or not they continue with Vex robotics. There has to be something addressing this, or it’s only going to encourage more programs to take the risk at getting caught, and just getting a slap on the wrist.
I think it’s also important to consider the effect that lubrication is likely to really have for the Full Volume bots; I can’t see there being that big of a gain in performance, beyond making things less squeaky. The metal on plastic friction will exist, no question, but it’s nothing like would be metal on metal. Don’t take this as me excusing the rule violation, it should not be taken lightly. This season for IQ is much more likely to have some subsystems that will benefit much more significantly from lubrication, and therefore a strong response is needed.
Vex folks, thanks for your work through the season and especially Worlds. Hope your weekend lets you get some reasonable rest!
When we went through the elevator in D lobby at the end of the event you could smell what was very similar to WD40.
I didn’t know if there is any way to really de grease the bots. I think it would have been fair to let them play in quals but remove them from finals. That would avoid bots from having to run skills matches.
IQ worlds feels less like a competition every year. Discs over the bar? Warning. Grease on your bot, which is inherently score effecting? Warning. 12 warnings for some. The effect of the grease won’t be removed. Are they checking for modified motors?
I think IQ should go to a super regional model. Just do VRC worlds. We all want to go to a competition, not a conference. It is not about winning, but it at least should be fair. It’s beginning to feel like a joke.
RECF doesn’t have the man power to police the IQ community. These teams see no reason to not cheat again next year.
In response to ‘de-grease the bots’. This stuff cleans oils/greases and will not dissolve plastic (or none yet that I’ve seen). I’ve used it for removing grease/oil from new vrc parts, cleaning circuit boards, small engine repair, etc. Pretty sure it’s flammable so be careful.
Agreed. I hope RECF next year makes it abundtantly clear if your got using any lubrication method, you will get kicked out. Teams like that are ruining the program. Im not gonna call out names. But their were team using so much lube they had to wipe the field off because it got on the field
We were in the Math division and found this totally perplexing. The first team caught greasing in our division skipped one match and got a 0, and didn’t show up for their next match. But instead of getting a 0, this match was eventually replayed later on!
I simply can not fathom how this is consistent with Vex’s fair play policies, especially given how MCs bring up fair play and student centered competition stuff every 10 matches or so.
The team that got caught greasing their axles in our division also wound up WINNING elementary skills! I strongly suspect these scores were obtained prior to being caught (because I checked the scores shortly after finding out they had missed a match). In all likelihood the winning elementary skills team had an illegal robot at the time of winning. It’s pretty discouraging.
Agreed. One of our team alliance was caught using lubrication right before the match. Our team had to be solo and got pretty good score (85). Then the two teams shared the score, This is unfair. Any team had no show should have no score.
Could open up the idea of letting Coaches be a little more involved at the IQ level. At least let them speak up if/when they see someone breaking the rules.
The unfortunate reality of this situation is that simply put, more teams are going to use lube. With such a light response from officials at worlds, more teams are going to start using lubricant to feel that they have a fair chance at competing. I feel that offenses and warnings should carry over in a season to try and prevent this issue. It would help if refs and judges could see the history of a team and the warnings/violations that have gotten before. This would allow the staff at Worlds to better hand out punishments to repeat offenses, such as using lubricant. As a competitor in worlds this season, it was very discouraging seeing teams with obvious lube or enhancing materials get by inspection and checks so easily! I hope this issue will be fixed next year
A volunteer at Worlds said that the offending robots were allowed to continue on in qualification matches, the reasoning for this was so the alliance partners wouldn’t be punished. Had they removed teams, then their alliance partners would’ve had to compete solo. They said that the offending teams were not allowed to compete in the division finals. I can’t confirm how true this is, but this is what I read on the FB feeds. My kids were telling me about it at Worlds, but I didn’t catch any team numbers.
I can tell you for sure teams that were busted still went on to finals. Assuming all they had to do is get through inspection right before the finals match (meaning they’ve wiped it down).
Just wondering, does lubricant provide that much of a difference to IQ robots? Forgive me, I haven’t built any IQ robots, but the friction would seem similar to using V5 shafts in bearing flats.
Lubricant definitely makes a difference at worlds. In a competition where just a one point average increase can result in many placement changes, any sort of enhancing material will boost a robot’s performance and how many points they can get.
This year it could have potentially been the difference between slowly and methodically retrieving field elements and simply plowing through them. Teams had up to five rollers running on 2 and/or 4 motors (with PTO), which is amounts to two dozen + contact points between shafts and beams when you take into account all the power transfers to get to each roller. So multiply the effect a single “small tuning” by 24 and it can make a very big difference.
Heh, my team was under the microscope for something that the judge wouldn’t communicate to us. But the students surmised it was lubrication because we have white plastic dust all over where our intake rollers made contact with the plastic and they were asked on the field at one point what it was.
I figured the white dust and incessant squeaking of the robot was just poor construction decisions after seeing and hearing so many of the top tier bots.
It’s not about how much of a difference using a lubricant can make. It is about cheating. It’s not fair to the teams that don’t use lubricant. Hopefully next year RECF can make rules that any team using lubricant will be disqualified for the rest of the matches.
I agree with the cheating part of it and not being fair. Here is the difficult part, if a team is disqualified and not allowed to compete in the rest of the matches that means their alliance partners will also be punished for something they were not involved in. If they are not allowed to compete their alliance partners will have to run their matches by themselves without a partner, or the tournament would have to be paused, and the match schedule would need to be regenerated. It is really a tough situation to determine the best “punishment”. I feel like zeroing all previous scores to the point that the violation was identified, making them correct the issue, and then allowing them to compete from that point on. I feel like this would be severe enough to remove them from contention, allow them to fix and continue, and not punish their alliance partners. But you might still get some teams that might choose to remove themselves if they knew they didn’t have a chance.
A possible option (that might be hard to implement) would be if refs find lubricants, clean it off and flag that team to be checked right before every match. Also, after all qualifications matches are over, disqualify the team from any awards/playoffs (without telling the team priory) that way not only is it fair for other teams in the competition, but their teamwork alliances would not be affected.
