Opinion Poll: Proliferation of Prefbricated Parts [Archive]

AndyB871

24-01-2016, 12:31

So Hopefully everyone tunes into the mild humor of my title; This isn't meant to be a bashing topic, or a rant or any such thing, simply my personal opinion and concern that I have.

I'm a veteran of FIRST from East Islip Team 311 and West Islip Team 871 (NY), back in 2005, so while I haven't been around since _THE BEGINNING_ I've been around the block. I've been very lucky to be part of teams where the students are the real designers, idea pushers.

We (as mentors) have always attempted to guide our students to the best possible solutions, teaching them the various sciences (and arts!) of engineering. One of the hardest things we have to do is learn to let them make mistakes. Sometimes a mechanism looks like it will work, but then at the last minute wont. An experienced FIRSTer can probably stave off these kinds of mistakes early on, but should we? Don't we know these mistakes because we ourselves have made them? Engineering is not "Do all the right things and make a cool widget" It's about the hundred (or thousand) failed attempts that got you to where you were, that helped you UNDERSTAND why widget X simply can't do thing Y.

So on to my real question:

How does everyone feel about the sudden Proliferation of Purchasable, Prefabricated Parts (P4 for all you DoD acronym lovers like me)?

Look at AndyMark and you can practically build a 100% functional compete-able robot just by buying prefabricated chassis, loaders, lifers, arms, grabbers. It caught my attention today, as I was looking for teflon track slides that my mechanical team has requested, that "loader assembly" and "Rhino Track" have been sold out; High demand for complex parts huh? So I looked further and discovered complete prefabricated assemblies for mech chassis, tank drive chassis, lazy Susans, swerve drive(?!).

Don't get me wrong, Andymark is a wonderful supplier, and they have many useful things, I'm not bashing them. But is this really in the spirit of FIRST? Integration of COTS parts isn't a bad thing, for sure, but when many of the "fun" achievable designs for HS students can be shelf bought, where's the real fun? Sure, ball grabbers, and tank treads, lifty-things arent fancy for us professionals, they ARE intimidating design tasks, not to mention highly rewarding successes that our students can achieve!

I'm sure someone will point out that newbie teams (or simply less sponsor-gifted) teams will argue that "How else can we compete with big powerhouse team X, who has access to 5 7-axis CNC mills of professional company Y" , and I suppose I see their point. My team, West Islip 871, is one of those less-gifted teams. We don't have the sponsorship of a massive machine shop, nor do we have a huge workshop of our own. Our robots are often ugly, and less functional than many others we see, so I understand the (honestly) feeling of despair some teams feel when they see a beautifully engineered and manufactured robot hit the field.

I argue however, that our ugly, maintenance nightmare of a robot, is in many ways more beautiful than some manufactured solidly-engineered masterpieces; Why? Because every part is student drawn, built and assembled. Does that mean we as mentors don't do some strategic nudging? No. Of course we do. But with every robot we build, our students are so proud of their achievement. The glow you see in their eyes when they start explaining to the school board, or a fellow student, how this mechanism they helped design functions, is simply the most wonderful thing I have ever experienced.

How much do we take away from them when we start down the slippery slope of buying FRC specific, competition-made assemblies and bolting them together like erector sets? I for one don't like where that path leads.

So again, this is my humble opinion, I don't mean to bash anyone or anything. How does everyone else at CD feel?

Anupam Goli

24-01-2016, 12:48

I honestly think having so many pre-fabbed parts is nice. It doesn't take as much just to have a basic robot be able to play the game. There's still a huge ceiling though, as the best teams will continue to create game specific mechanisms that can insanely outperform any COTS mechanism. I don't think very many teams would be able to get far without having a kit chassis, or without being able to buy COTS gearboxes.

There's certainly an art to engineering, but I find that the students I work with don't want to try and fail, if someone already knows it will fail. They'd rather try something that could potentially work. That may be just our differences in philosophies.

As an outsider, any of these robots will look cool and interesting. As a FIRST competitor and spectator though, I still find it sad that in the day of so many COTS options, teams still cannot field basic machines that can drive and move a game piece. I think some teams may need to reflect on their process, and determine whether buying a COTS intake solution and upgrading it would be more inspirational at competition than designing an intake that fails...

Zebra_Fact_Man

24-01-2016, 12:49

Before I begin, please everyone do not turn this discussion into a student-built vs engineer-build debate. I feel like this could turn into that VERY quickly.

That said, I have been a member of a team that did not have much support in money, knowledge, or engineers. We built very noncompetitive robots most years and were done quite frequently before lunch on Saturday. It's not as fun as playing in the playoffs. These resources allow teams with less internal data to still be competitive. As a high schooler, I had NO idea how to get power from the motor to the wheel. I was absolutely perplexed. Now as a mentor I know, and these premade gearboxed help the new kids learn how it works. Kids that might not know the difference between a sprocket and a gear (they exist on almost every team).

I am all for it. Chances are the powerhouse teams are building it themselves anyway because they can do it for cheaper. And they have the manpower to do so.

Also, many of the so-called elite teams are also all student designed and built. You'd be quite surprised.

BeardyMentor

24-01-2016, 12:49

The prefabricated parts just makes the competition closer. It clumps up the middle of the pack to where one match can bump you up to 5th or drop you down to 30th. It really increases the drama of the competition and, in my opinion, makes things better. Even with the proliferation of off the shelf assemblies, they are rarely optimized and need some significant effort to make them more than just passable.

Because these prefabricated assemblies need to be optimized to fit your specific strategy it allows the effort to be put into making a great robot instead of just one that moves kind of like how you need it to. In my experience, the students have a better experience and have more to be proud of when they can build a great robot instead of one that simply minimally performs the task. We have used the KOP chassis almost every year it has been available, but it is rarely recognizable as such after modifications to make it suit our specific needs. It is wonderful not having to re engineer everything from scratch when there is a basic starting point to work from.

Ian Curtis

24-01-2016, 12:52

AndyB871

24-01-2016, 13:07

Before I begin, please everyone do not turn this discussion into a student-built vs engineer-build debate. I feel like this could turn into that VERY quickly.

Yeah I agree, I didn't want that.

Also, many of the so-called elite teams are also all student designed and built. You'd be quite surprised.

Sure, No issues here. I wan't trying to imply that beautiful robots WERENT student designed.

AndyMark.biz was selling gearboxes in "the old days" of 2005. FRC gave you a full drivetrain and instructions in the kit too! This discussion has been had many times. My team thought about the AM gearboxes in '05, and shelled out for them in '06... and I've been giving Andy & Mark my money every since.

I actually didn't know Andymark went back that far. Gearboxes might be the straw that breaks the back of my argument.

Let me try to be a bit more specific, maybe I got a little too passionate and didn't use the right words. I didn't mean the mentors sit back and let the students screw up; I more meant for the mentors to teach concepts behind various designs and let the students apply it (and drop key suggestions when necessary).

The biggest reason (for my team particulary) is that for whatever reason, we can't seem to build up and retain that organizational knowledge. We're trying to train up new students as they move through the program, but there seems to be an upper limit to how much information we can cram into their brains before they cycle out of the program. It's entirely possible (maybe probable) that we just aren't doing a good job _teaching_. *shrug*

Richard Wallace

24-01-2016, 13:08

Our culture changing mission is served only indirectly by designing and building machines to compete in a game. Building teams (and, through those teams, new generations of informed, creative problem solvers) serves our mission much more directly. I want our students to learn that FRC robot design is less about designing components yourself than it is about learning what works and what doesn't.

If there is an existing solution to your robot component problem, then your custom alternative should only be selected to go on your robot IF it is better. Having designed it yourself doesn't not make it better, but improved function, reliability, cost, or readiness might do that.

marshall

24-01-2016, 13:45

I pretty much read OP's post as:

When I was your age, I built robots with drill motors uphill in the snow both ways and had to remove the anti-backdrive pins too! AND WE WERE HAPPY ABOUT IT YOU WHIPPERSNAPPERS!

Seriously, COTS parts are awesome! Use them to your advantage. I don't miss the old days.

Ginger Power

24-01-2016, 14:00

One of the hardest things we have to do is learn to let them make mistakes. Sometimes a mechanism looks like it will work, but then at the last minute wont. An experienced FIRSTer can probably stave off these kinds of mistakes early on, but should we? Don't we know these mistakes because we ourselves have made them? Engineering is not "Do all the right things and make a cool widget" It's about the hundred (or thousand) failed attempts that got you to where you were, that helped you UNDERSTAND why widget X simply can't do thing Y.

...

So on to my real question:

How does everyone feel about the sudden Proliferation of Purchasable, Prefabricated Parts (P4 for all you DoD acronym lovers like me)?

As mentors we can help students avoid thousands of mistakes along the way, but you won't prevent them all. There will always be failures, and the lessons we learn from them.

My personal philosophy is to correct every mistake I see when I see it, and talk to the students about the issue (and hopefully create a teachable moment). I want my team to fail at as high a level as possible. Your methods may differ as there is no correct way to mentor. I believe it's impossible for FIRST students to not learn something regardless of how a team operates i.e. mentor built vs. student built.

As for your actual question, I believe prepackaged COTS solutions are a great thing for FIRST. It raises the floor and does nothing to limit the ceiling. Anything that accomplishes those two things is a great thing. I guarantee students on a struggling team will learn more from a functional prepackaged solution than they will from a non-functional "original contraption".

Even if the prepackaged solution isn't used, it may inspire ideas to make an original mechanism work. I can't think of any downsides to prepackaged solutions.

Lil' Lavery

24-01-2016, 14:05

There are a great many real-world engineering jobs that involve the spec'ing, selection, and integration of COTS components. Not all engineers work on the component design level.

AndyB871

24-01-2016, 14:10

I pretty much read OP's post as:

Quote:
When I was your age, I built robots with drill motors uphill in the snow both ways and had to remove the anti-backdrive pins too! AND WE WERE HAPPY ABOUT IT YOU WHIPPERSNAPPERS!
Seriously, COTS parts are awesome! Use them to your advantage. I don't miss the old days.

There's always someone. I did make an attempt to say that what you "interpreted" was actually NOT what I was saying.

Again, COTS Parts are great. I was more opinionated to the more frc-specific stuff, like prebuilt ball grabbers and such.

I don't particulary appreciate the way you attempt to make me seem like a crusty old grumpy man... I'm actually not much older than my students. I also don't want or expect them to design individual gears and sprockets and gearboxes and chains, etc etc. Cut me some slack here. Try to read what I'm actually saying. I don't hate everything, I don't hate COTS, I just see a pattern towards more complete purchaseable solutions.

I wholeheartedly apologize for using words that , I guess, made me sound like I expect students to "figure it out" and "deal with it". That's NOT where I'm going here.

Sperkowsky

24-01-2016, 14:16

My team is a low resource team. I'm sure the op knows us as we have competed with his team for many years. Until last year our team was hesitant to buy these cots parts either because we simply couldn't afford them or because we thought they would take away from the experience. But after 3 years of fielding a robot that was only a drive train we decided to give some of these parts a try. They have changed our team allowing us to build working robots and finally not have to go to competitions fail a million times and come in last place. Our first working robot since 2012 was our offseason robot which took 2nd in a local offseason. The only cots speciality parts we used was the kit bot which we modified to use Mecanum wheels, competition robot parts roller kit, Rev gussets, and a banebots p80 gearbox.

We still had to manufacture a ton of parts and did stuff we never did before like tapping and getting stuff water jet cut. In fact the robot was 100% student designed and built.

Right now progress looks great. We have a articulating shooter that is 80% finished, a working drive train with pneumatic wheels. And CAD for a lifter. And we were just beginning week 3...

We are shooting a documentary right now on our teams journey obviously it's not all thanks to cots parts but they have definitely played a role. Op we are going to premier the film sometime next fall at our school. You and your team should definitely come.

Lil' Lavery

24-01-2016, 14:17

I do think there is a difference between a generic-use COTS robot part (a gearbox) and a game-specific COTS robot part (an intake). That may be the distinction that upsets some people.

marshall

24-01-2016, 14:19

There's always someone. I did make an attempt to say that what you "interpreted" was actually NOT what I was saying.

Again, COTS Parts are great. I was more opinionated to the more frc-specific stuff, like prebuilt ball grabbers and such.

I don't particulary appreciate the way you attempt to make me seem like a crusty old grumpy man... I'm actually not much older than my students. I also don't want or expect them to design individual gears and sprockets and gearboxes and chains, etc etc. Cut me some slack here.

What's wrong with crusty old grumpy men?!?!?! I'd be out a job without them...

I did say that was how *I* read your post, not how you meant it. Funny thing about meaning (and much like my sarcasm), it's not always conveyed in the way we wish it to be.

I'm all for more pre-made assemblies and more robots in 3 days! Bring it on!

Sunshine

24-01-2016, 14:28

cadandcookies

24-01-2016, 14:38

I do think there is a difference between a generic-use COTS robot part (a gearbox) and a game-specific COTS robot part (an intake). That may be the distinction that upsets some people.

The interesting thing about the intake mechanism AndyMark is selling is that while it seems like a game specific thing, if you look at the last ten or so games for FRC, you could use it as is in probably 7 of them as is, and the other 3 (2007, 2011, 2015) you could modify it a bit for use in, say, a roller claw. So while it may look like something game specific, really a roller intake is just another common component of a robot. That's a big difference in selling that versus, say, a variety of 7, 8, and 10" flywheel ball shooters.

AndyB871

24-01-2016, 15:14

Different strokes for different folks. It's all about the evolution of the individual team and how far mentors can/want to take them.

Who benefited the most. The team who bought a swerve drive from the vendor? Or the team that engineered or re-engineered the idea?

Yes, cots equal the playing field. I'm fine with that. But it's the journey not the destination. Don't buy all cots at the expense of learning.

Nicely said. Maybe that's what I was getting at all along?

The only cots speciality parts we used was the kit bot which we modified to use Mecanum wheels, competition robot parts roller kit, Rev gussets, and a banebots p80 gearbox.

Yeah, Those kinds of parts I'm all about. We buy COTS parts too, like gearboxes and the like, linear slides etc etc. I think part of the problem is that I'm still new to the whole "leading the organization thing". I'm just a software guy (Blame it on the software right?), so I've got relatively little experience designing physical stuff. But now I've slipped into a leadership role for the team itself and I've got some freedom to actually make choices that can affect where we're going.

I won't lie, that still kind-of scares me. I'm starting to ramble -- and I know it -- Sorry about that. I suppose I wanted to see how other teams approach the problem. I like to hear from people who have lots more experience than I do and try to understand how they think.

Thanks for the discussion so far everyone.

PayneTrain

24-01-2016, 15:38

The product of FIRST is not necessarily the robots. It's the teams behind the robots. FIRST wanted to expand their program almost two decades ago beyond its very narrow scope of industrial partners adopting schools and turned the relationship almost entirely upside down.

There is some sort of spectrum that every aspect of FIRST operates on. While expansion definitely has its own spectrum and I have my own opinions on it, let's talk about a side effect of the current level of expansion.

You may believe that the line has been crossed in terms of the relationship suppliers have with creating specialized products that cater to FRC teams, and you are right to have an opinion on it. One of the great things about FIRST is that I really think it can be all things to all people. The goals one team has may not just be different in sheer scope or difficulty, but may diverge at an even earlier fork in the road. Some teams do not operate under the idea that FIRST trains the next generation of engineers. Some teams recognize it as an opportunity to show kids the potential of STEM fields. Some teams find FRC to be one of the most high profile and effective programs at the high school level that can build teamwork and leadership skills. Others find it a great enabler of community service.

Sure, FIRST has a crafted mission and vision for its program, but teams should also have their own mission and vision for their own program. The meaning of participation in FIRST is whatever the participant defines it to be, which is why it can be all things for all people.

In terms of the spectrum of the relationship suppliers have with FRC teams, they really are not crossing a line for me until they are boxing up MCC kits and selling them as a separate SKU. Even then, the construction of an FRC robot can very well be a tiny fraction of the execution of the entire technical division of the team.

Ekcrbe

24-01-2016, 15:47

Different strokes for different folks. It's all about the evolution of the individual team and how far mentors can/want to take them.

Who benefited the most. The team who bought a swerve drive from the vendor? Or the team that engineered or re-engineered the idea?

Yes, cots equal the playing field. I'm fine with that. But it's the journey not the destination. Don't buy all cots at the expense of learning.

I'll say this. I don't think many teams buy COTS without a good reason. I know that on 68, we finally made the switch to COTS drive transmissions in 2014 after making them custom every year prior. Could we have made custom transmissions again that year? Sure. So why didn't we? Because that was something we knew we could buy a reliable COTS version of, and doing so would allow us to focus our efforts on other custom mechanisms and get parts out of the CAD lab and into the shop faster. That year, in no small part due to the amount of time we saved and the manpower buying COTS freed up for other things, we finally fulfilled our perpetual goal of having almost-identical practice and competition robots. Did it prevent some students on our team from learning about transmission design? I suppose, but it also allowed them to be more involved with learning other things and it improved our build season schedule and performance overall.

I think that was a trade worth making, and I suspect other teams that seem like they should be able to get by without as many COTS parts are evaluating their choices similarly. They aren't shorting their students out of the chance at learning, but rather allowing them to move on from systems that would otherwise consume a large part of their build season and inhibit having a functional or competitive robot. Whatever stage of development or competitiveness a team is at, they can move one rung further up the ladder and help their students learn something new by pushing their competitive ceiling with COTS parts.

XaulZan11

24-01-2016, 16:24

I do think there is a difference between a generic-use COTS robot part (a gearbox) and a game-specific COTS robot part (an intake). That may be the distinction that upsets some people.

I think this is a common feeling on the matter.

I think this is a fantastic discussion to bring up. I do think it is only a matter of time before companies start selling kits to make game specific systems (intake, climber, shooter...) that could be combined to build a complete robot. The past few years have brought companies building complete robots, providing CAD drawings and selling kits of the more challenging to produce parts for these robot systems. The next step is for companies to explicitly sell robot systems along with step by step instructions.

I don't think anyone wants to sell teams prefabbed game solutions (that wouldn't be any fun!).

I think it would be fun for the company if they could sell them for a significant profit. :)

Akash Rastogi

24-01-2016, 16:36

I think this is a common feeling on the matter.

I think this is a fantastic discussion to bring up. I do think it is only a matter of time before companies start selling kits to make game specific systems (intake, climber, shooter...) that could be combined to build a complete robot. The past few years have brought companies building complete robots, providing CAD drawings and selling kits of the more challenging to produce parts for these robot systems. The next step is for companies to explicitly sell robot systems along with step by step instructions.

If there is a market for it, if it is cost effective for the company, and if the prices fall within the rules, let the free market do its thing.

Nobody forces anyone to buy anything.

Do people take issue with companies making a profit?

Heck, if I had the start up money and the man power, I'd be selling my own game specific kits. Business is business.

XaulZan11

24-01-2016, 16:44

If there is a market for it, if it is cost effective for the company, and if the prices fall within the rules, let the free market do its thing.

I agree with everything in your post (I have no problems at all with the current suppliers), except this. If FIRST (either HQ or the teams/community) decided they don't want 'purchasable robots' something could be done.

Sperkowsky

24-01-2016, 16:48

I think this is a common feeling on the matter.

I think this is a fantastic discussion to bring up. I do think it is only a matter of time before companies start selling kits to make game specific systems (intake, climber, shooter...) that could be combined to build a complete robot. The past few years have brought companies building complete robots, providing CAD drawings and selling kits of the more challenging to produce parts for these robot systems. The next step is for companies to explicitly sell robot systems along with step by step instructions.

I think it would be fun for the company if they could sell them for a significant profit. :)
I do not think companies will ever sell a robot in a box. Not for moral reasons but because cots parts can't be more then $400. A robot in a box is worth more then $400.

Akash Rastogi

24-01-2016, 16:58

I agree with everything in your post (I have no problems at all with the current suppliers), except this. If FIRST (either HQ or the teams/community) decided they don't want 'purchasable robots' something could be done.

Sure, something could be done. But I have a hard time agreeing with any statements that something should be done if such a scenario exists in the future.

FIRST already has price per component rules in place, how much further would you want them to go with such restrictions? How would they be defined/enforced?

If the community doesn't want something, then those people don't need to purchase the hypothetical components. Telling others to not buy something just sounds a bit ludicrous to me.

IronicDeadBird

24-01-2016, 17:15

I'm just going to be jumping all over the place so sorry if you get lost in dyslexic translation.

One lesson that I feel is applicable outside of STEAM (STEAM) and FRC is that in the real world, when you need a wagon you don't need to invent a wheel because it has already been done. Humanity has built upon itself and made advances because it utilizes what we have learned.
Also generalizing mistakes like that is risky bidnizz. After seeing students struggle to raise money if a proposed idea for a robot is a flat waste of money I'm not going to back the idea.
You can absolutely buy a robot which looks like it can compete, but that won't be seen until competition. Even then just because you have a competition ready robot doesn't mean you will actually win. I am not going to discourage teams from using COTS parts, but if you do go into competition with a Kit Rhino with grabber and you plan on winning then you better find a way to stand out in case you aren't a captain of an alliance. Some teams will fail to realize this and while they will come to competition people will find that will they might have a robot that gets the job done, its utilization on the floor is its only really "valued" depending upon exactly how many other identical robots are out there.
From my short time in FRC and on Chief Delphi I have come to the conclusion that the "Spirit of First" is whatever reasons someone has for joining it. Some people like seeing the glow of joy in a students eye, some people like the environment, some people like giving back to the community. FIRST robotics is amazing because of all the random things you can learn and take away from it. I just feel this is just another instance of something that happens often in the real world that also crops up in FRC. I wouldn't fight it I would just take the time to show students that this is sometimes the way of the world, and while I don't always agree with the world I still have to live with it.

I won't lie it is a mixed bag completely, but it tracking what sells out has made my life easier in the scout department.

XaulZan11

24-01-2016, 17:22

Sure, something could be done. But I have a hard time agreeing with any statements that something should be done if such a scenario exists in the future.

FIRST already has price per component rules in place, how much further would you want them to go with such restrictions? How would they be defined/enforced?

If the community doesn't want something, then those people don't need to purchase the hypothetical components. Telling others to not buy something just sounds a bit ludicrous to me.

I have yet to take any stance on if pre-fab systems should be allowed or not. I was just responding to those who have expressed concerns over pre-fab game specific systems and doubt that they will ever be sold, by predicting they will likely become a reality in the near future.

I do not think companies will ever sell a robot in a box. Not for moral reasons but because cots parts can't be more then $400. A robot in a box is worth more then $400.

If I was a brilliant designer and had the manufacturing capabilities, I would look at designing a game specific subsystems using mainly the current COTS parts. Then sell a kit containing the 'custom' parts and instructions on how to assemble the 'custom' parts in the kit with standard COTS parts (sold separately). I believe these would be legal if each kit was priced under $400.

MrJohnston

24-01-2016, 17:22

Kudos on the topic: As the worlds of both engineering and FIRST evolve, it's always good to step back and ask the question, "Does this new development really jive with the mission of FRC?" Regular discussions on such topics are healthy for any community and FRC is no exception.

I do think the question as to whether or not such prefabricated parts are a good think (or should permitted) is a fantastic question - but one that goes much deeper than simply whether or not AndyMark should provide game specific items. So, backing up a bit:

* Let's face it, there will never be perfect parity in FRC. A team located in the same community as a robotics engineering firm will have some significant advantages over teams in very rural areas. Likewise, in the Seattle area, we'd have some real advantages in games requiring flight (lots of Boeing engineers around here)... There is nothing wrong with this: Programs absolutely must work with their local industries.

* Teams that philosophically believe in having a 100% student-built bot will never put up such a glorious piece of machinery as one that is near 100% mentor built.

* Overall, we need the GDC to provide rules and guidelines that allow teams to have their own approaches to the game and allow them to work within the necessary frameworks of their local communities while maintaining some sense of a level playing field. (I don't envy the members of the GDC for this.)

* Pre-fabricated items add an interesting layer to all of this. On one side, they give the less-experienced teams a chance to at least play on the same field as those teams flush with strong mentors, great facilities and cash. On the other, they potentially cut into the kids' learning experience.

* Let's face it: very few of us want to see any supplier come up with a "Read-for-competition bot-in-a-box designed by professional robotics engineers and manufactured by NASA... All you have to do is put it together - 9/16th wrench provided. Estimated time of assembly: 2 hours." (No, this is not meant as a knock against any team). There needs to be a line somewhere.

* Giving a helping hand to teams is integral to the FIRST community. How does this fit in? Certainly a team new to the game and short on mentors would be far more able to put a functional robot on the field. It's always painful to see teams at a competition whose robot doesn't even roll.

* At the same time, it's not right if it is possible to put a competitive robot forward with little or no engineering knowledge. It seems fundamental to FRC that students must be forced to develop engineering skills and knowledge in order to compete. Students who have more such ability should be able to produce products superior than what students lacking such knowledge could produce.

* At some level, we all rely on suppliers to produce products for us- every team does. It's not like we are mining metal from the ground to produce our own aluminum....

* Two AndyMark products come to mind: The Rhino Treads and the Intake System. 948 students do almost everything by hand. We have no access to CNC machines or Jet cutting.. Students are very adept with hacksaws, hand drills, etc. So, if we are going to create precise cuts and functional devices, the construction takes a lot of time... We likely would have chosen a drive system with pneumatic wheels this year, but saw the Rhinos online. After much discussion, we figured that there would be very few performance disadvantages with the Rhinos - they would do the job well. By purchasing them, we saved a tremendous amount of labor and can now focus much more on our various manipulators... Yes, I felt a little guilty when I ordered them. We chose not to go with the intake system - we figured we could do much better.

* For our intake system, we spent time looking at FRC robots over the past decade that have had very good ball intake systems and found something that the Cheesy Poofs did a few years ago that could be altered just a wee for the purposes of this game. We studied photographs and video of their robot and found plenty to make what we believe will be an outstanding ball intake. To me, this is a hugely important aspect of engineering: We don't need to invent everything from scratch. Instead, we found systems that did similar things to what we need and adapted them. Why reinvent the wheel when we can learn from somebody else?

* We did something similar for our climbing mechanism... Our mentors had spent some time talking with another team at Champs last year about their bin-grabber.. I don't remember the team number off the top of my head, but they were great: They showed us how it all worked and a mentor responded to one of our students last spring when she emailed them for more information. Yes, their bin-grabber gave us a concept for our climber. Again, this is good engineering.

* Ri3D: These teams are great as they do give us all ideas. However, I wonder how "good" we want their robots to be? (I don't have an opinion here, I just wonder...). Here is why: We had been working on two promising prototypes for our shooter (one was a catapult design, the other a single-wheel shooter). We had just gotten to the point with both designs, when we were looking at the integration with other systems on our robot -especially so space constraints. We were just trying to solve those problems -something that is very good for students to have to work through. How do we load the ball into the catapult after grabbing it with our intake? How do we secure the ball as we take it on a pretty bumpy ride through the outer-works? How do we get that big wheel to fit into the fairly small space we have on the robot? The questions were hard - but really good problems to have to figure out..... But, we then saw something on one of the Ri3D robots that would solve all of those problems and do exactly what we wanted: Shooting accurately with range, adjustable shot distances, a clean integration with our intake system and fit into the space required. So... we scrapped our own ideas and took theirs. Yes, we are learning from the experience - but we are missing out on the problem-solving that would have been absolutely necessary if we had stuck with our own promising designs.

* I guess I look at the prefabricated parts as one more piece in the continuum of "support" available for FRC teams. I don't see the current AndyMark items as harmful to the experience. However, I do think they start to flirt with that line. After all, the moment kids stop needing to actually engineer their own robot and solve the problems presented in each game is the moment that FRC lose its magic. I just hope that these discussions continue on Chief Delphi and that the GDC continues to have them as well.

(Submitting without a proofread... My wife wants me to fold laundry... I hope I didn't ramble too much.):o

Sperkowsky

24-01-2016, 17:31

Just figured the largest player in the space Andymark is owned by Andy Baker a wwfa winner. It's not like this guy doesn't understand the program and want kids to learn.

Andy A.

24-01-2016, 18:10

I'm ambivalent about it. On one hand I like that more teams get more access to more capable mechanisms for less effort, time and money. That's all great. On the other hand it's lead to what I've started jokingly calling the 'hex shaft mono-culture'. Lord knows 95 has reaped the benefits of that as much as any team, and I'm not convinced there's really anything wrong with it so long as no aspect of it is obligatory (you don't have to buy gearboxes, after all).

EricH

24-01-2016, 19:01

I like it. Of course, that won't really go into why... so here I go.

It brings the bottom up, making our collective product better and more exciting. A rookie team can buy a bunch of parts and get something that works.

But, at the same time, those parts can provide a foundation for "design-your-own". You can, after the season, take them apart and dissect the design. What is better: to buy 4 swerve modules, slap them on a frame, add in programming, and call it a day, or to buy ONE swerve module, take it to pieces and back to learn why it is doing what it's doing, and then design a custom one that better fits the team (or buy the other three later)?

My team likes custom--we do a lot of building. But we don't have a lot of precision equipment in the shop--we're still getting our mill online. Paul and John get quite a few orders from us for gearboxes and similar items--but those go onto custom framing welded together. And we have absolutely no qualms about copying something we've seen someone else, or ourselves, do in the past--though we do tend to do the rework to make it work with whatever we're doing that particular year.

Christopher149

24-01-2016, 19:15

I agree with everything in your post (I have no problems at all with the current suppliers), except this. If FIRST (either HQ or the teams/community) decided they don't want 'purchasable robots' something could be done.

(As someone involved with FTC this year) The FTC rules for 2015-16 state:

COTS parts and assemblies may only have a maximum of a single degree of freedom. It is the intent of FIRST that Teams design and build their devices to achieve the game challenge. Assemblies of COTS components, such as linear slides, and gearboxes are allowed while a pre-fabricated gripper assembly designed to grab the game elements is not. Holonomic wheels (omni or mechanum) are exempt from the one degree of freedom limitation.

So, it is not impossible that FRC may at some point have a similar sort of rule to push back on complete COTS solutions. (Though the specific rule would sure put a damper on shifting gearboxes, etc.)

Ekcrbe

24-01-2016, 19:23

* Pre-fabricated items add an interesting layer to all of this. On one side, they give the less-experienced teams a chance to at least play on the same field as those teams flush with strong mentors, great facilities and cash. On the other, they potentially cut into the kids' learning experience.

...

* At the same time, it's not right if it is possible to put a competitive robot forward with little or no engineering knowledge. It seems fundamental to FRC that students must be forced to develop engineering skills and knowledge in order to compete. Students who have more such ability should be able to produce products superior than what students lacking such knowledge could produce.

These are the two points that I think are the most pertinent, and I think my differing opinion comes from my differing understanding of the second.

Can you put a minimally competitive FIRST Stronghold robot on the field this March with very little previous engineering knowledge? Yes. I don't think that is bad. I think it is a requirement that a rookie team not feel completely incompetent and disheartened after its first season, so there should be a support structure to allow any team to put something on the field. Can that team instead field a moderately competitive robot without adding anything to their repertoire of engineering knowledge? I don't think so. It seems to me that when you are a team that knows next to nothing, having these "plug and play" options can give you the ability to start moving up competitively, which makes the competition more appealing (that's the inspiration), which in turn fuels students' drive to learn more and pushes them further. And this model says nothing of the fact, which others have mentioned here, that it's a lot easier to recruit members, mentors, and sponsors when your robot works and looks impressive, which drives yet more improvement.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I challenge the notion that COTS parts are erasing the advantage of having experience and knowledge on your team. They simply augment your capabilities and allow your students to focus on building more non-COTS systems. As long as you can't literally buy a whole robot in a box, that will remain true.

I doubt that there are many teams who have the capabilities to build the same robot they actually did, but without the COTS components they used. The purpose of buying COTS is to save time and effort, so we would expect that taking away the COTS components would require teams to cut back on other mechanisms to have the time and manpower required to build those components from scratch instead. Perhaps students are plugging in a COTS gearbox to give themselves the time to properly design, build, and test an arm. They lose out on learning about designing a gearbox, but instead get to learn about designing an arm, and their robot is more competitive (which makes them more inspired) to boot. Is learning about one mechanism more valuable than the other? I say no, which is why I say COTS components don't take the experience away from anyone.

JesseK

24-01-2016, 19:47

In developing new products, I simply hope that suppliers do not encourage sacrificing resiliency in problem solving for convenience in executing a solution. Students who are taught that mindset are terrible Engineers, expecting where to be told a solution and the complaining when it doesn't "just work by pressing the button". "Business is Business" is a cop-out when it goes that far.

With that said, there are only a couple of current products available from the 5 main FRC suppliers that seem (IMO) to provide a direct and nearly complete solution rather than encourage finding and adapting a solution. The rest of them encourage us to try, try again, and eventually succeed :)

techhelpbb

24-01-2016, 20:10

'Grumpy' 40 year old man here speaking for myself:
When I was a kid the closest thing you were gonna find to a pre-made robots were:

R/C cars
Model airplanes
RB5X robots (of which I have 2)
Heathkit Heros
Robotic arms
Armatron which is still really a toy
Legos with the original control box that was not battery operated at all

Now I am impressed with the variety of the kit parts.
I think it's great that it lets you build a robot part by part with barely any machine tools.

Here's the problem - it also lets you not learn how to use machine tools.
It lets you under-utilize tools you have.
It is teaching far too little about electronics.

So on the one hand I want FIRST to grow.
On the other I often wonder if FIRST is more about growing itself than challenging and encouraging the students to their full potential.
It is possible to win at these games without doing much down and dirty fabrication at all - and in fact - if you spend too much time getting too involved in that sort of thing you might actually work against yourself.

I think these limitations mean it's actually possible to outgrow FIRST:
I just put a AndyMark AM14U2 together with a complete RoboRIO control system, NavX, part of a pneumatic system, encoders and co-processor in 2 days. With the co-processor being the longest delay.
At some point it's possible some teams - if they plan really carefully - could be done in < 2 weeks.
So what is the project too big then?
I can see this actually getting boring.

Sunshine

24-01-2016, 20:14

Doesn't FIRST start the whole COT purchasing culture by providing a frame kit in the rookie kit of parts?

In my opinion, the line was crossed when you could buy a complete swerve drive system. The line continues to be crossed with the Rhino, intake and possibly actuator kit. But that's my line, yours may vary.

I am old school and will admit it. I'm not crazy about our culture that wants brand new teams to get instant satisfaction by being competitive at competion instantly. I still remember our rookie year, we told the kids it would be a long hard road and they had to earn their stripes. But hey, I don't like participation trophies either.

The flip side
I like the use of COTS like gear boxes. There is so much to do and learn in six weeks that our students can't do/learn it all. That's why we encourage them to switch sub teams from year to year. We suffer a little but they learn more.

Quote:
Originally Posted by JesseK View Post
In developing new products, I simply hope that suppliers do not encourage sacrificing resiliency in problem solving for convenience in executing a solution.
I really like that. I may steal that verbiage soon and often....

techhelpbb

24-01-2016, 20:23

Just to frame this conversation a little differently:

Look around at some of the reactions of some teams to the lack of pneumatic tires with easy to use hubs lately.

It was almost like the sky had fallen.
For just tires.

There was time when no one would have said a word (note my rookie year).

Ginger Power

24-01-2016, 20:38

At some point it's possible some teams - if they plan really carefully - could be done in < 2 weeks.
So what is the project too big then?
I can see this actually getting boring.

There will always be optimization. There will always be teams striving for perfection. Teams will always want to be the best, and that simply doesn't happen in less than two weeks.

I don't believe FRC will ever be boring for the general participants. It definitely won't for me. Even if I were to continue building my Ri3D robot for 6 weeks, I don't think it would get boring. There would always be improvements that I want to make.

A complacent engineer is a bad engineer.

techhelpbb

24-01-2016, 20:50

There will always be optimization. There will always be teams striving for perfection. Teams will always want to be the best, and that simply doesn't happen in less than two weeks.

I don't believe FRC will ever be boring for the general participants. It definitely won't for me. Even if I were to continue building my Ri3D robot for 6 weeks, I don't think it would get boring. There would always be improvements that I want to make.

A complacent engineer is a bad engineer.

Yes and one could make those improvements by simply buying more stuff and bolting it together. So that doesn't mean you are gaining any new skills as a fabricator or an engineer.

One could fill that time by building a practice bot but again that could be more consumption.

One could build a whole field to test on so that will fill more time maybe that would teach some fabrication skills assuming you didn't buy most of that as well.

The point still remains - we are entirely focused on that robot.
Not on all the opportunities some of these tools would offer.

Ginger Power

24-01-2016, 21:07

Yes and one could make those improvements by simply buying more stuff and bolting it together. So that doesn't mean you are gaining any new skills as a fabricator or an engineer.

One could fill that time by building a practice bot but again that could be more consumption.

One could build a whole field to test on so that will fill more time maybe that would teach some fabrication skills assuming you didn't buy most of that as well.

The point still remains - we are entirely focused on that robot.
Not on all the opportunities some of these tools would offer.

There will never be a day when 'Company A' sells a game specific solution that will be more optimized than the 254's and 1114's of the world. When that day comes then I 100% agree with you. Until that happens there will always be a place for teams to improve upon a prepackaged, game specific solution.

Hopefully they will make these improvements through the use of machine tools with the assistance of professional engineers and machinists who know how to work them.

The teams who choose not to improve upon the prepackaged solution are the teams who don't currently field a working robot. They will benefit more from the prepackaged solution than they will from building a box on wheels. The competition aspect of FRC will become more appealing to the general public which is a nice side effect of raising the competitive floor.

techhelpbb

24-01-2016, 21:22

Hopefully they will make these improvements through the use of machine tools with the assistance of professional engineers and machinists who know how to work them.

That's the thing. Once you need those sorts of tools it becomes a project bigger than the 6 weeks or the students aren't solo on the really more complex tools if it's just those 6 weeks. Also people do just send parts out to be made professionally.

So really to those teams with the ability to deeply optimize you have something going on there bigger than FIRST.
There really isn't much in FIRST to reward or penalize for custom fabrication.

MrJohnston

24-01-2016, 21:51

There will never be a day when 'Company A' sells a game specific solution that will be more optimized than, the 254's and 1114's of the world..

I disagree. There is no doubt that there are a number of teams that annually produce some very impressive robots. However, by the nature of FRC teams, all their pieces and parts are, to one degree or another, designed and built by students. I am convinced that a group of professional robotics engineers could work together to produce a better product than any team where students are an integral part of the design or fabrication of parts. If it is permitted, we will see an improvement of ready-made parts in time. Our suppliers are trying to make a profit (that's fine, of course); if their is a profit in creating better-performing pieces and parts, they will do so.

There does need to be a line - such as the FTC rule mentioned previously... I know I like the fact that we can start with the Kit Bot. I do wonder if the Rhinos go too far... I suppose I don't mind if pieces such as the AndyMark Intake are available, if they are not particularly good in comparison to what the average veteran FRC team can do on their own? (Kind of like the Kit Bot - it will roll around, but don't don't expect too much speed, pushing power, etc. without some refinement.) In other words, the struggling team can get something on the field and play the game, but will not be in a position to be stronger than teams with some know-how. )

Perhaps one differentiation could be here: Gearboxes, Actuators, etc. are not game-specific solutions. It is still up to teams to figure out how to use them. The Rhino drive and the intake are something more than that...

evanperryg

24-01-2016, 21:53

I do think there is a difference between a generic-use COTS robot part (a gearbox) and a game-specific COTS robot part (an intake). That may be the distinction that upsets some people.

Agreed. COTS parts level the playing field by providing lower-resource teams with affordable, premade options that will fit their needs well enough. However, a team who relies solely on COTS systems will find that their performance is much the same- off-the-shelf, just like everyone else. Although COTS assemblies raise the baseline for competitive robots, they don't hurt teams who put time and effort into mechanisms of their own design.

Caleb Sykes

25-01-2016, 01:20

I don't really buy the arguments that having more COTS components brings the bottom up relative to the top, although they do certainly bring everyone up. Even though there has been a steady increase in FRC-specific COTS components over the past few years, OPR distributions have remained similar (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140922). It would be interesting to see these same plots from even earlier years though. COTS components do indeed bring the bottom up, but that statement alone is misleading, because if so, they also bring the top up by a pretty comparable amount.

I am convinced though that having easily accessible drive components makes it very difficult for teams not to field driving robots. I would love it if we could get to the same point with mechanisms.

The times from before the kit chassis were the Dark Ages. We are in the Renaissance now, and after the ravaging Stronghold wars are finished, AndyMark, VEXPro, WCP, and many others will bring us so many good COTS parts that every robot will not only be able to drive, but will also have functional mechanisms. Then, we will enter the Enlightenment, and the whole world will be inspired by our amazing robots that can all actually do something.

GeeTwo

25-01-2016, 02:03

There are a great many real-world engineering jobs that involve the spec'ing, selection, and integration of COTS components. Not all engineers work on the component design level.

This. One of our mentors engineers ocean data collection and transmission systems. Most of his designs are 80-90% COTS parts integrated with the critical 10%-20% that make the system meet the requirements. There are some major companies out there who sell and service operating systems that are 90% open source and 10% custom. When a COTS product meets a one-off requirement at a decent price, designing and building a custom solution is bad engineering.

Likewise, our team starts with pre-engineered COTS drive trains, gearboxes, motors, and mounting brackets when available, and designs and assembles them to meet the requirements of our strategy, which was decided in order to meet the requirements of the game. I can't think of a time that we used anything mechanical that was more complex than a gearbox without making some modifications to it to suit our game strategy. Last year we turned the 2015 KoP chassis into an H-drive, this year we're making a 10 wheel drive starting from the same kit. We were working on a leading wedge for our robot that matches the one AndyMark will be selling soon; once we expected this to happen, we did the prototype but canceled the design and construction of the competition wedge, and moved on to even more manipulator design. This is a miniature version of the real-world situation in many, many fields.

The $400 limit does a pretty good job of preventing "prefab" robots. If a team showed up with a robot built and programmed 100% according to plans available from a vendor or on-line, there would be little STEM inspiration. When a team shows up with a well-running original design that is composed of 90+% COTS parts, learning and inspiration are all but certain to have been part of the process.

bEdhEd

25-01-2016, 05:49

Andy, I don't take your post as a bash, so please don't take mine as a bash either.

Personally, I think if someone thinks that heavy use of COTS components in a robot stifles learning, creativity, and problem solving, then that person is lacking in a little thing called imagination.

We LOVE LOVE LOVE COTS parts. VEXPro is our go-to COTS system, and the bonus is that they share our color scheme :D

The reason I bring up imagination is because the ways that COTS parts are creatively implemented is what is important. I think one issue is the very wrong implication that building with COTS yields a lack in creativity or learning value. I think it's quite the opposite. With COTS parts, we can prototype and iterate many times faster than if we had to fabricate more things from scratch. The most important part of our design process is iterating. This is what I feel can be most valuable to learn during the build season. Taking time to custom design something with the intent of learning skills should be left for the pre- and post-season.

It seems like some people think using COTS parts is a plug and play game, but it really isn't, at least on my team. It's more of a game of plug and fail, plug again, and it's kind of OK now, do some math, plug again, and well, it looks great but need to do better, plug again, and finally it works the way we want!

Some may disagree with me on this, but with the six weeks you're given, there's no time to learn through making everything custom! That takes up precious time that could be spent making prototypes and constantly improving them until they can no longer be improved. That's how progress is made in technology in the real world. The biggest technological advances don't come from one isolated design, or from some person making an original breakthrough seemingly out of nowhere. These advances come from years and even generations of gradual iteration and building upon the knowledge acquired from others.

Real engineers don't have to build everything they design, and that idea can apply to FRC teams too. If my team can put together a VEXPro ball shifter, and not bother with building a custom gearbox, then we will do it! But can we build our own gearboxes, and do we have students with the skills to design them? Yes! Because they did that learning in the other part of the year known as the off-season, where we have time to step back and go through the details with both FRC and non-FRC related projects.

If we don't spend time fabricating systems that can be bought already, then that gives us the time to fabricate the systems that really have to be custom. We may LOVE LOVE LOVE COTS, but COTS doesn't give us everything. We CNC and 3D print our own parts, weld our frame, and make our own composites. It's COTS parts that allow us to focus on the custom systems of our robots, so those systems are better tuned and ready for competition. If we had spent time machining drive transmissions, the most basic of systems that can be taught in the pre-season, then we would have less time, energy, and resources into making custom systems work, and work well.

By the time this build season is over, we will have built/worked with four robots: Concept (mostly built pre-season as an adaptable chassis), Prototype, Practice, and Competition. Without COTS parts at the ready, we wouldn't be able to do this. It is this iterative process that shows students what true learning is. True learning isn't limited to being able to recall past instructions enough to design a custom gearbox or having the skills to mill everything manually. True learning is being able to develop meta-cognition, or in other words, self reflection in what has, can, and will be done. This is what the iterative process gives to our students. It shows them that rarely is anything done on the first try. Neither is building anything easy, even with the amount of perceived convenience that COTS parts can deceptively give to teams who won't see COTS parts as something that they can make their own in some creative manner.

If we can buy an entire intake system, arm system, or shooting system, we will. But you sure can bet that our students will break it down, rebuild, tinker, and tweak it to make it suited to our own strategic needs better than what the assembly instructions recommend.

A team that heavily relies on COTS parts only misses out on the learning of building a robot if their mentors and students lack the creativity to "own" those parts and make something original from them. For that kind of team, the problem isn't in the prefabricated parts, but in the limits of their imagination. Why not buy a COTS part and ask, "can I use this for something it isn't intended for?" (but safely)

Teaching meta-cognition through the iterative process is one way to keep in mind that FRC isn't all about the robot, but about learning the skills that can make a student a productive and articulate member of society. This self reflection is one of those skills. Focusing on making students learn particular niche skills like fabricating custom parts is to lean more on the "it's all about the robot" side of the spectrum.

By no means am I saying that custom fabricating parts that are available COTS is a bad thing. If your team is capable of it, by all means go ahead. My main point is that with the short time we are given to make a competitive machine, it is OK to opt for the quicker option, and save the more technical learning for the off-season. Also, I'm not saying that build season is not the time to learn technical skills. There's plenty of time in the season to learn technical skills, but that should be through the systems that are unique to the team design and the year's game, not something that can always be designed during off-season, such as drive transmissions (which rarely change season to season) and experimental systems (e.g. if a team wants to do swerve the first time, they first do it pre-season instead of after kickoff)

COTS parts are as valuable a learning too as you make them.

techhelpbb

25-01-2016, 08:16

COTS is not a panacea.

Ask the US Military about parts obsolescence or security and quickly the issues COTS creates will appear.

http://www.militaryaerospace.com/blogs/mil-aero-blog/2010/04/parts-obsolescence-it-s-the-problem-with-cots-that-just-won-t-go-away.html

https://www.cigital.com/papers/download/ses.pdf

Now the FIRST challenge of a project too big in a time too small really does have benefit from COTS. It allows under-resourced teams to deliver on something they couldn't otherwise deliver without some serious pain.

On the other hand - personally I think it comes a bad time in their careers.
When one can continuously get financial resources from other people and direct them towards COTS vendors instead of learning the more base principals from the moment they were first old enough, and responsible enough, to understand those principals I think we might be robbing some of the students, in the long term, the value of tactile experience (even if it's hard work) early on.

To this concept let's theorize in direct relation to Dean Kamen himself. Would Dean have had the opportunity to found FIRST if his work did not show unique determination early on to acquire the resources to materialize on his ideas?

I won't deny that when I was younger I certainly used TTL chips which are COTS digital circuits and still maintain a large surplus of them. However they were inexpensive and you had to work to build something from them. The knowledge I acquired from learning how to integrate their functions together was invaluable when moving into programmable logic. While I certainly do not miss hours bread boarding and wire-wrapping circuits - I do often see the price people pay for not having that experience. Simple things to me like: delay lines, are confounding to a new generation of people who never saw a race state up close and personal. So they connect macro cells together so many years later (college and later) than when I started working with TTL at age 8 and can't understand why the resulting responses are unstable.

I think sometimes that in order to make FIRST appear ever more impressive we are trading the illusion of hard experience for the quick delivery of something that looks cool using COTS. Something that justifies more investment into it because it looks cool. Something that might not be delivering at the educational level what the casual onlooker might be thinking it is delivering.

I consider it something very much like 'my kid is a computer genius' syndrome. Where every generation looks at their own personal reference for 'genius' and assumes that their child reached the equivalent proficiency without out realizing that they are bootstrapped on the COTS of the last people who did it. Yes your child was able to write a web based accounting system. On what amounts to a supercomputer from when I was a child with a language that would be appalling inefficient on what was the practical computer when I was a child. The math is not that much more complicated and the protocols and languages were given to them basically for free. I'll issue a challenge here: anyone can write their own protocol for an IP network using UDP. In the financial industry at any place where latency is the determining factor between success and failure writing non-TCP protocols is often the tool of choice. Yet in FIRST we often seem to run away from UDP screaming because TCP 'just works' and you 'don't have to do that work'. This makes TCP basically COTS. Yes using TCP saves the user from the effort to make their work reliable on an average IP network. At the price of the user very likely not actually understanding how it even works - however FIRST is not exactly the average IP network - so what you have here is a perfect example of not understanding why the easy way may not actually be the best way.

It is very cool to watch - but lots of people own cars today - and lots of people can't change a tire properly. So the proposition becomes we expose everyone to the robotics technology like cars and hope that this makes more shining stars because it is accessible. However it is accessible within basically 4, 6 week build seasons and after that - as an adult - you now have to pay for continuing access often at a dear price (see rising college debt). Now I do see this is where the Maker community helps. Where we network our skills and resources together at a reasonable price to break this high cost consequence to not getting the basics in sooner (I spent many hours at NextFAB taking a vast number of their classes and I can clearly see the very wide gap in knowledge when people approach a subject in those required classes). However there is still a large social gap between the two. I see where coming back from being a student to a mentor can help as well. However there are many topics on ChiefDelphi as to the risk of coming back as a mentor and people often can't because the demands of college on their resources are very high.

This is a devil's due. We are advancing our primary cause of FIRST with COTS but we may not be advancing the educational goal one might casually think we are advancing.

mathking

25-01-2016, 08:54

I have read a lot of posts, and like that this thread has not turned too heated. So here is my two cents. As a teacher, I don't think using COTS parts necessarily mean students learn any less than they would without them. It is all in how you conduct your design and construction process. We do make use of COTS parts. We also have used chassis we designed and built for 10/14 FRC seasons. We go through a brainstorming - prototyping - testing phase in which we use whatever resources we have at hand to build and test various mechanisms. Once we settle on a basic design, we look for how best to implement it.

For example, last year one of our mentors found a place that was selling some old garage door opener lead screw assemblies. We used these because they were affordable. The students then had to use a combination of calculation and testing to figure out what gear box assembly would be the best to operate it. The calculations showed that we were right on the edge between two and three motors, so we selected a Vexpro gear box that could be used with two or three motors. After a couple of failures we settled on a AndyMark hex hub bored out on one end to accept the lead screw. In the end the kids had a good device and understood its operation well.

I think there is a software analogy to be made here. As techhelpbb pointed out, where kids start today with languages and processing power is amazing compared to where I started (fortran punch cards on an old VAX-11/780). As someone who teaches programming, I also know that my students in general use much better practices in designing programs than I did. Precisely because they are not worried about things like using short variable names to take up less space in memory. I know a number of people who lament that kids learn Java or C++ or Php before learning Assembly. "They need to know how computers really work." But that isn't Assembly, which is really just abstraction at a lower level. "They don't learn how to optimize a program's performance." Wrong. Plain and simple. They still learn about optimizing, but they optimize algorithms and not code. Using prebuilt libraries. Because that is the way they will need to operate when they get jobs. I find that students who learn assembly first tend to write code that is very difficult to read and maintain. It is much easier to teach (and learn) assembly after students have a solid understanding of higher level language.

OK, I am getting a little far afield now. So back to my main point. If you are a mentor and thinking about this question, your students are probably doing fine and learning well. Because the real question isn't whether they build their own gearbox or use one from AndyMark. It's whether they understand what the gearbox does and why you chose it.

techhelpbb

25-01-2016, 09:07

I think there is a software analogy to be made here. As techhelpbb pointed out, where kids start today with languages and processing power is amazing compared to where I started (fortran punch cards on an old VAX-11/780). As someone who teaches programming, I also know that my students in general use much better practices in designing programs than I did. Precisely because they are not worried about things like using short variable names to take up less space in memory. I know a number of people who lament that kids learn Java or C++ or Php before learning Assembly. "They need to know how computers really work." But that isn't Assembly, which is really just abstraction at a lower level. "They don't learn how to optimize a program's performance." Wrong. Plain and simple. They still learn about optimizing, but they optimize algorithms and not code. Using prebuilt libraries. Because that is the way they will need to operate when they get jobs. I find that students who learn assembly first tend to write code that is very difficult to read and maintain. It is much easier to teach (and learn) assembly after students have a solid understanding of higher level language.

Yes they can certainly get a job - even if they can't optimize their work. They might even be the next FaceBook and still not be able to optimize their work. My actual job besides my personal businesses is leading DevOps for a huge financial institution with about 10,000 developers. My software has been at the core of the financial markets since I was 16 (reviewed, of course, by other programmers with much greater experience at the time). The first time I wrote software that was used by my family business at IT&T and NYMEX in passing as a tool I was 11 years old.

I agree that we would be foolish to discourage the students from taking the more interesting path by using these cool tools (like COTS) we as their seniors (I am 40...when did that happen!) give them for free. However I also want to emphasize that it's easy to encourage them to take the interesting path and totally ignore the foundation. Which works great till it is a major problem (see computer security, Windows Millenium, Windows Vista's task scheduler). Then the difference between those that have the hard foundation and really any interest in that foundation will show.

This is why we can churn out and through programming consultants like water but certain highly regarded entities are looking for the needles in the haystack. So what it boils down to is: does FIRST actually make it easier for those that will be the 'needle in the haystack' who become the most valuable employees to the economy to gain interest and grow. Does COTS help those 'needles in the haystack' or does it make it easier for other people to make them take the easy path when they have the luxury of time to explore the hard path?

I've seen the outcome of this go 5 ways:
1. We've got brilliant students at cool places now that definitely did things the hard way in FRC and gained for it.
2. We've got students now who have realized that the easy way got the job done in FRC but now they need to learn the hard way with all the added pressures of school and adult life.
3. We've got some students that I think might have been better off with the challenge being greater as a participant in FRC because they had more talent and opportunity than they realized.
4. We've got students that took the hard way and it was too much for them.
5. We've got students that rode their talent and when the hard way showed up it was too much commitment for them.

It think it is unavoidable that COTS must stay in FIRST. Just as FIRST must continue to offer high level programming languages. The question then becomes - how does FIRST honor the value of the base engineering and fabrication skills and contribute to the students developing those base skills. Right now I don't think FIRST really has any protection for that flow. If it continues like this it's entirely possible schools will have shops full of tools and they will be a like pretty cars that no one drives.

MrForbes

25-01-2016, 09:13

I love having a wide variety of COTS parts...they let all of us bring to life so many more wild ideas....

mathking

25-01-2016, 09:41

I think the doing things the hard way vs. doing things the easy way is a false dichotomy. Again, it is about how you use the resources available to you. I have a ton of former students working at cool places and they pretty much all started by learning Pascal, C++ or Java. The key is they learned how to analyze problems then develop and test good algorithms. Their are FRC teams that use all or almost all custom parts where very few students know how or why those parts are created. And teams that use all custom parts where many kids are involved in the design, fabrication and testing of those parts. I don't think there is an intrinsic "right way" and "wrong way" to do this. As I said, if you are part of this discussion you are probably aware enough of the issues to make sure your students learn.

techhelpbb

25-01-2016, 09:52

I think the doing things the hard way vs. doing things the easy way is a false dichotomy. Again, it is about how you use the resources available to you.

This I entirely agree with. COTS can be used or it can be abused. I can see a team fielding an entire COTS robot bolted together still be successful at teaching the base skills for their team of that year. Maybe they are an engineering school and the FIRST robot was just a passing milestone.

The thing is: there's not much in FIRST that interlocks the concepts of 'how you use the resources available to you' for education versus to simply produce the robot. Obviously if you don't 'use the resources available to you' to build a robot you won't be able to compete. However there is no assurance that anyone used those resources to more widely educate. I am not even sure there's a prize for it and I think maybe there should be something more there.

I can see, MathKing because you have tangible results, that you are delivering on the educational side of this and I'd like to see that rewarded. It should not just be about delivering the robot and that is even a FIRST slogan.

Robomarfa

25-01-2016, 10:28

This is my second year in FRC. We bought Rhino two hours after kickoff. Does it feel "too easy?" Sure. I did not want to pass up on a competitive advantage. We did the KoP chassis in our rookie year and did not get it until the end of Week 1. We have limited resources and would have gone the KoP with pneumatics like most others. I predict the end results in six weeks would be very similar with either choice. Except the students will learn about the advantages and disadvantages of a track drive instead of a second year of six-wheel. We all start with some level of COTS after all.

I have a 9th grader who has never programmed and speaks little English. She has learned LabView and has figured out joystick, pneumatics, relays, NavX, Drive, sonar, autonomous, limit switches, Talon soft limits, PID and encoders. Starting at a higher level of software abstraction made this possible. If she wants, she can pursue a proper education in software engineering based upon this introduction. FIRST. Same can be said for mechanical systems. We inspire them to further pursue an interest in engineering or science. FRC is not the College of Engineering. It is one path to the door to the college.

In the end, I think FIRST might consider the pros and cons of sharing the game beforehand with suppliers that make game-specific COTS. That is the real issue under discussion here, not gearboxes. As for me, I'll buy the equivalent of Rhino drive next year if I can. We do not have a machine shop (or hospital or Home Depot) in our county. I want my kids to have a positive experience compared to kids that have their workspace at NASA. Looking at you my fellow Texan friends on 118! Y'all inspire us because of your history and resources. If COTS gives my kids a better overall experience on a very un-level playing field, I'm all in.

techhelpbb

25-01-2016, 11:02

I don't want to discourage students from going to college. However my intent in what I am about to link and write is to encourage students to understand that time is time - it moves forward - and one should always make the most of the time you have.

The hard analysis is that we can't rely on college to make up for the opportunities we miss teaching today. (http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/09/news/economy/college-not-worth-it-goldman/)

The longer the time you put into something the more practiced you can be at it. So while I value the late bloomer and otherwise disadvantaged as deeply as anyone else - I worry we can easily create a system where we waste great opportunity in the name 'we can fix that later'.

Ask any system administrator: 'I'll do it later' often means it won't get done and very few can afford to remain in college for very long periods of time.

FRC is huge. It gives awards for so many diverse things. We should be able to find a way to balance an award or reward for those that manage to teach the fundamental skills in: engineering and fabrication (we already do for programming we somewhat do for engineering) and can show that and the value it returns on an FRC field. If we can manage this then it doesn't matter what COTS stuff is in the community. In parallel we are helping those that are at a disadvantage by letting them challenge those who are not disadvantaged with what the community can cook up in the form of COTS.

bEdhEd

25-01-2016, 11:49

I love having a wide variety of COTS parts...they let all of us bring to life so many more wild ideas....

EXACTLY! This is precisely my point about imagination in my last post on this thread. There's a whole world of possibilities with COTS parts only if you choose to be creative with them.

Foster

25-01-2016, 12:12

I think that the COTs products are great. I'm willing to match wire wrap skills with "techhelpbb", and I am also coming from his background. But COTS parts make it easier for teams to build a robot and compete and I'm willing to put out a thesis that says COTS parts makes it easier for teams to sustain themselves.

The RI3D teams show how COTS stuff can come together to make something and I think that is a positive sign. I think that having COTS parts allows teams to try to pull some feature (swerve drive, shooter, climber) and focus on that while knowing that they can manage the rest of the robot.

Big fan of VEX, AndyMark and West Coast. But there are other places to look for parts. That was the good thing about the early days. "Why no that's not a drill that is a drive train!" Can you find all the parts to build a robot at Bed Bath and Beyond? (Hint, those stand mixers have pretty heavy duty planetary transmissions).

I like the "stand on the shoulders of giants" theory. I like that teams can build on what others have done. But I agree with techhelpbb, at some point roboteers need to be able to dig down and look at what the things are built on. In the programming world TCP is the bucket we can carry data in. And while I can design and code a UDP based system that would send 35 frames a second to the driver station the question becomes "what can I do instead of that". COTS will never replace just sitting down and thinking about the problem and put forth multiple solutions.

GreyingJay

25-01-2016, 12:24

My thoughts: Industry is trending in this direction. When I started at my company in 2005 I was on a particular project for military grade equipment. Everything about the hardware was custom designed including the chassis, the cooling system, the custom PowerPC based processor cards running VxWorks. Installing the software required hooking up to this box with a laptop over a serial cable and flashing the box with the custom boot image.

Now, 10 years later, the modern version of this box is basically: a standard intel PC, packaged in a rugged enclosure. Install a standard flavour of Linux. Deploy the software as a Linux RPM. It is so much simpler and allows us to focus on the "real" problems (bugs in our software) rather than get hung up on configuring, modifying, repairing hardware and lab equipment.

Knowing when to invent your own and knowing when to go with an established solution is itself an important design skill.

techhelpbb

25-01-2016, 12:37

And while I can design and code a UDP based system that would send 35 frames a second to the driver station the question becomes "what can I do instead of that". COTS will never replace just sitting down and thinking about the problem and put forth multiple solutions.

The question for me is: why hasn't someone just done that?
Once they do and open source it the solution can easily be the equivalence of COTS.

I get that FIRST/FRC may not want to be in that business either but it's clearly well within the scope of the skills the community can bring together. So are we dropping TCP in there just to avoid looking at the gorilla in the room?

If I didn't think the military would immediately grab any work I did on this and put it into drones I might do this myself.

Knowing when to invent your own and knowing when to go with an established solution is itself an important design skill.

I agree there is definitely value in not pushing unnecessarily uphill.

I recently have been helping a mechanical engineering firm to upgrade some data capture equipment that is somewhat high speed but also has many features you could do with a laptop from Walmart.

Their previous solution was very hardware intensive for things that would have been better served from software. It was very custom through the whole process and once it acquired data that was hugely unnecessary.

Surely the folks that designed it showed they were very interested in locking them in and getting to play with all those elements, but it drove the cost per unit over $10,000 and that was likely not necessary.

Surely it is a difficult to capture 1Msps at 24bits for 9 channels differential at these levels cleanly and that's an engineering issue. Pushing that data over a wireless to a Cloud that's actually been done and can be replicated.

So yes it matters not to over engineer - but you can under-engineer if you don't know any better.
In the case of this unit I was working in clearly there was a little of both.
Hopefully when we finish they'll have a COTS data acquisition module which solves the core acquisition issue.
The rest they can filter and modify in software with whatever expendable PC hardware they can find.

I have no doubt that the person that built this originally is a competent developer of FPGA based hardware.
They thought the rest would best be served by things like sticking a Raspberry Pi in there - COTS that makes no sense in this system.

System integration, which is what this is, requires a a wide enough experience to know where the edge of the box is.

philso

25-01-2016, 13:28

COTS parts are as valuable a learning tool as you make them.

Yes! There are other forms of competition where all one can use are COTS hardware, say in some classes of motorsports such as the Porsche Supercup. The competition is no less fierce. There is no lack of learning opportunities for the participants.

Is FIRST Lego League not inspiring for its intended audience? In FLL, the competitors can only use un-modified Lego manufactured parts which seem to qualify them to be described as COTS parts.

techhelpbb

25-01-2016, 13:33

Is FIRST Lego League not inspiring for its intended audience? In FLL, the competitors can only use un-modified Lego manufactured parts which seem to qualify them to be described as COTS parts.

FLL is age appropriate. The people who participate in FLL will not be driving actual automobiles themselves within 2 years in many states (games do not count). I also don't mentor FLL, even though I am a NJ State level judge. It would drive me 'up a wall' that I wouldn't be able to do all the things I can do with the MindStorms because of the necessary FLL restrictions.

When I did play with the original Lego Technic control system I kept making new sensors for it. That required soldering and that's not for everyone at those ages. Lego almost sued me for writing a detailed document on hacking it as a kid and then releasing it on "something called the Internet" and a few BBS. Luckily they are much nicer to those with interest these days.

marshall

25-01-2016, 13:37

Is FIRST Lego League not inspiring for its intended audience? In FLL, the competitors can only use un-modified Lego manufactured parts which seem to qualify them to be described as COTS parts.

LOL...

FLL was better before they had all those specialty pieces and you only had 1x1 and 2x2 bricks to build everything from! Back in my day, we built our FLL robots from simple bricks instead of these new fangled pre-made parts.

techhelpbb

25-01-2016, 13:39

LOL...

Originally Posted by No One Ever
FLL was better before they had all those specialty pieces and you only had 1x1 and 2x2 bricks to build everything from! Back in my day, we built our FLL robots from simple bricks instead of these new fangled pre-made parts.

That is funny but look around at the limited number of Technic sets available in most stores these days.

I still have a 12 gallon tub of Technic pieces with pnuematics and the lot - all of it bought locally.

Lego has actually in some ways gone backwards.

evanperryg

25-01-2016, 14:02

Can you find all the parts to build a robot at Bed Bath and Beyond? (Hint, those stand mixers have pretty heavy duty planetary transmissions).

I like the "stand on the shoulders of giants" theory. I like that teams can build on what others have done. But I agree with techhelpbb, at some point roboteers need to be able to dig down and look at what the things are built on. In the programming world TCP is the bucket we can carry data in. And while I can design and code a UDP based system that would send 35 frames a second to the driver station the question becomes "what can I do instead of that". COTS will never replace just sitting down and thinking about the problem and put forth multiple solutions.

I really, really want to take apart my stand mixer now...

Anyway, I think you've made a very good point. The purpose of COTS parts is to streamline the design process. Instead of spending loads of time making small, individual aspects of the robot work, COTS parts enable you to skip the tiny details and go directly to the "big picture," that is, the design of the robot itself, as opposed to the design of its gearboxes, wheels, extrusion, etc. However, it cannot be denied that custom fabricated systems, if made properly, can usually do the job better than an off-the-shelf solution. Why? Because something made custom for the specific purpose it is going to fill will inherently perform better than a more general system of the same construction quality. There's nothing wrong with COTS parts, but putting the time and effort into a really good custom mechanism will (almost) always be worth it.

AndyB871

25-01-2016, 16:22

Andy, I don't take your post as a bash, so please don't take mine as a bash either.

Haha, no worries, I don't. I was just a little worried that the discussion would turn into a flame war before the _real_ discussion started, so I was a bit defensive (plus I'd just finished shoveling after the snowpacolypse so...) . Reading the discussion now (and holy cow it's exploded over the last day) I'm really stoked with where this discussion is going.

I'm seeing lots and lots of great opinions, and even a sort of consensus about COTS parts.

As I Read further, I'm starting to see my viewpoint change a bit too with the way people frame the issue.

This is one of my favorite replies so far

In developing new products, I simply hope that suppliers do not encourage sacrificing resiliency in problem solving for convenience in executing a solution. Students who are taught that mindset are terrible Engineers, expecting where to be told a solution and the complaining when it doesn't "just work by pressing the button". "Business is Business" is a cop-out when it goes that far.

And I think that's the center of my worry too. Problem solving is important and you can't start problem solving by trying to design an airliner, you've got to start small. Where better to start that process than at the lowest (reasonble :) ) level possible?

For example, to jump into software-land. We're using Java now, and Java has a hozillion great libraries for everything under the sun, INCLUDING lots of fantastic FRC open-source projects that we could leverage. This is a LOT like COTS mech/electrical parts.

I let my students use these libraries, even if (and when) they do find them on their own, but under one condition. I get them to understand the concepts and reasons WHY that library existed.

NAVx MXP is a great example; No one is going to expect every student to understand sensor fusion, and kalman filtering, on top of a robust I/O protocol. That's Crazytown. I'm sure some particularly bright students might be able to get it. I don't expect them to reverse-engineer anything, but I do help them understand what a Filter is, and why it's important.

A yearly project for new students is to build a simple complementary filter that eats gyro data & a single magnetometer and produce a smoothed heading. This is a simple (mathematically too) project that helps them understand just what's happening under the hood. Once that project is done, the concepts are understood, I give the go-ahead and they pull in the NAVX libraries and navigate away! No re-designing the wheel, the guys at kauailabs did a fantastic job, better than we can expect to in 6 weeks, so by all means lets leverage that.

That is how I feel about larger COTS Parts. If you use them, that's great, just make sure the backup knowledge is there, the why, the question to the answer.

Thanks again guys for the fun discussion

Rangel(kf7fdb)

25-01-2016, 16:38

Software is getting to the point where not much needs to be done to get it to work. GRIP is a fantastic example of that this year. It takes most of the effort in getting vision code down to a bare minimum. That being said, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. For many other non FRC projects, vision has always been a hassle. Whether it's getting libraries to be recognized correctly, installing OpenCV, or cluttering code, it's never been quite as straightforward as I would have liked. With GRIP though, I don't think I will ever have to worry about that again. Although it only supports exports to FRC network tables, it seems like it shouldn't be too difficult to modify the export so that it can be used in non FRC projects. Does it take a lot of the work out of getting vision code? Absolutely! Would I ever go back or tell students to go back to hard coding it for the sake of doing it manually? Probably not. Especially since it makes it easier to transition into more advanced concepts. As new platforms make things easier to code, new things will likely emerge to take it's place.

Dalas

25-01-2016, 18:48

http://www.wcproducts.net/mcc2016/

I wasn't going to comment on this thread, but this is just going way too far.

Anupam Goli

25-01-2016, 19:01

http://www.wcproducts.net/mcc2016/

I wasn't going to comment on this thread, but this is just going way too far.

How is it different from a robot in 3 days?

All of the parts are COTS parts, save for a few custom gussets.

Peyton Yeung

25-01-2016, 19:01

http://www.wcproducts.net/mcc2016/

I wasn't going to comment on this thread, but this is just going way too far.

What? A bunch of COTS parts not directly designed for any game specific tasks built to play the game? I don't see what's wrong here. They aren't selling a robot in a box. They aren't even selling a climber or manipulator in a box. It's just raw products that can be modified to be useful.

George Nishimura

25-01-2016, 19:10

How is it different from a robot in 3 days?

All of the parts are COTS parts, save for a few custom gussets.

One of the Ri3D "rules" was to not release CAD drawings full CAD models.

According to that site:

*We will be updating this page, more info will be going up this weekend* *Kits will be available for purchase, please email support@wcproducts.net for more info*

I would regard their intent as completely different to Ri3D (even the AndyMark team, who use a lot of AM products).

That's not a criticism of WCP or this product, but I think it would be unfair to the Ri3D teams to group the two together. This is clearly one step beyond what they do, and what the KOP does.

EDITED: Apparently totally wrong, struck through comment

cadandcookies

25-01-2016, 19:40

One of the Ri3D "rules" was to not release CAD drawings.

Not even close to true. Actually, thank you for reminding me to post the 'Snow Problem CAD model. You can find that here (https://workbench.grabcad.com/workbench/projects/gc1_lXXnDhDLzRYpmSCRU8rNjDSXxK3frFqOXULhNfyO5q#/space/gcsDFwR4XFxIPpIIZ0sMW_67apMxhN9u6P_KFhtdM-ga_F) (or in my signature).

Sperkowsky

25-01-2016, 19:47

One of the Ri3D "rules" was to not release CAD drawings.

According to that site:

I would regard their intent as completely different to Ri3D (even the AndyMark team, who use a lot of AM products).

That's not a criticism of WCP or this product, but I think it would be unfair to the Ri3D teams to group the two together. This is clearly one step beyond what they do, and what the KOP does.
Ri3d teams are encouraged to release CAD what are you even saying.

George Nishimura

25-01-2016, 19:55

Ri3d teams are encouraged to release CAD what are you even saying.

Apologies - I'll retract amend the statement. I swear I heard that referenced in one of the videos - I must have misheard.

EDIT: Found it. So what I heard was "full CAD model". Video (https://youtu.be/uTf14P9cFEE?t=672)

The only real rule we have is that we don't want any of the teams to release full CAD models. We don't want to give any team a blueprint - or what they think is a blueprint - to build a FIRST robot

Joe Johnson

25-01-2016, 20:09

A lot of good discussion here. Thanks to everyone for being so respectful and for not getting devolving into name calling. I respect that in the Chief Delphi crowd. Thanks.

As to my views, listen, I design gearboxes for a living and I am SO GLAD to be out of the gearbox biz for FIRST. Having so many great gearboxes that we can just order lets the team focus on implementing their ideas rather than the details of involutes, center distances, ...

It is not just in the mechanical world that things are getting easier and better.

Coding:
What about compilers? Why should we steal the experience of writing in assembly from our kids?

Electronics:
What about MEMS sensors? Why back in my day, we didn't have none of these new fangled gyros telling us what our angular rate was, no sir e bob. We had to LOOK at our robots and tell THEM what direction they were headed.

Coding (again):
PID loops implemented in WPI libraries? What? and steal the experience of writing an anti-wind up integral term from the coding team? Are you nuts?

Design:
What about CAD? Why are we taking away the experience of hand drawing section views to discover interferences?

Electronics (again):
Beaglebones? Raspberry Pis? Teenseys? Arduinos? Bla! Why teams should layout their own 6808 boards. Puts hair on your chest!

The tools get easier and better in every field. These enable better and better solutions. For everyone. The top teams, the bottom teams, and the middle teams.

I think it is more inspirational. Period.

So, I'm all for them.

Dr. Joe J.

Anupam Goli

25-01-2016, 20:11

Apologies - I'll retract the statement. I swear I heard that referenced in one of the videos - I must have misheard.

Only Team Indiana doesn't release their CAD files.

2 years ago, Vex had Built Blitz, which had teams of some of the most brilliant minds in FIRST designing and building robots in 3 days for the 2014 game. There was a thread raising a stink about it here (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=123152&highlight=build+blitz). The topic isn't new, but the MCC isn't as competitive as the Team JVN robot was in 2014(No offense to RC or any of the WCP team that worked on the MCC bot :) ). I don't understand why people will continue to say that ideas like WCP's MCC bot and Ri3D are going "too far". Being able to see cool ideas work early in the season is great for drawing inspiration from and building on top of. Sometimes we need to give our kids an idea of what's been done before so they can think beyond and better.

George Nishimura

25-01-2016, 20:18

Only Team Indiana doesn't release their CAD files.

2 years ago, Vex had Built Blitz, which had teams of some of the most brilliant minds in FIRST designing and building robots in 3 days for the 2014 game. There was a thread raising a stink about it here (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=123152&highlight=build+blitz). The topic isn't new, but the MCC isn't as competitive as the Team JVN robot was in 2014(No offense to RC or any of the WCP team that worked on the MCC bot :) ). I don't understand why people will continue to say that ideas like WCP's MCC bot and Ri3D are going "too far". Being able to see cool ideas work early in the season is great for drawing inspiration from and building on top of. Sometimes we need to give our kids an idea of what's been done before so they can think beyond and better.

The Ri3D teams can each obviously choose their own rules, but I've amended my comment to refer to what I heard:

EDIT: Found it. So what I heard was "full CAD model". Video (https://youtu.be/uTf14P9cFEE?t=672)

For reference, I'm not saying WCP nor Ri3D are going "too far". I perceived that there was a difference in intent between WCP and Ri3D:

Ri3D - to inspire prototyping, designing, strategizing
WCP - to provide a (base) off-the-shelf robot solution

That may be my misinterpretation, but again, I don't personally see anything wrong with either intent.

EDIT: according to WCP, the MCC is more like Ri3D, intended to show how to effectively use their products.

orangemoore

25-01-2016, 20:33

The Ri3D teams can each obviously choose their own rules, but I've amended my comment to refer to what I heard:

For reference, I'm not saying WCP nor Ri3D are going "too far". I perceived that there was a difference in intent between WCP and Ri3D:

Ri3D - to inspire prototyping, designing, strategizing
WCP - to provide a (base) off-the-shelf robot solution

That may be my misinterpretation, but again, I don't personally see anything wrong with either intent.

I think this string of posts may clear up the issue of the "kits". While the MCC robot is designed with mostly COTS parts I think it is to show what is possible, and not just to create a robot that you will see copies of on the FRC playing field

Sorry need to put more info, most if not all of the robot is COTS components sold through VEXpro or WCP. There are a few pieces we had to custom make and have had customers ask us if we'd have those parts available. We are hoping to make specific parts available that teams can't easily produce.

Whew. Glad to hear that this didn't mean WCP would be selling a bot-in-a-box.

Ty,

Yeah we don't want to sell pre boxed g2g solutions. We've been getting a ton of customer calls and emails about how to integrate the PTO and how to do various other tasks in this game. We thought it would help teams if we were able to put something together.

PayneTrain

25-01-2016, 20:39

Only Team Indiana doesn't release their CAD files.

2 years ago, Vex had Built Blitz, which had teams of some of the most brilliant minds in FIRST designing and building robots in 3 days for the 2014 game. There was a thread raising a stink about it here (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=123152&highlight=build+blitz). The topic isn't new, but the MCC isn't as competitive as the Team JVN robot was in 2014(No offense to RC or any of the WCP team that worked on the MCC bot :) ). I don't understand why people will continue to say that ideas like WCP's MCC bot and Ri3D are going "too far". Being able to see cool ideas work early in the season is great for drawing inspiration from and building on top of. Sometimes we need to give our kids an idea of what's been done before so they can think beyond and better.

A very healthy way to look at these quick build activities coming from suppliers and other large organizations is that it can serve as an opportunity for a few mentors in FRC to offer their experience, musings, and obsessions over the sport to students they don't even know. Everyone on these assignments has volunteered their time to FIRST programs in one way or another and now they have found a way that both encourages their business model and a type of corporate social responsibility.

gblake

25-01-2016, 20:46

The teams don't exist to make the competitions the best they can be. The competitions exist to make the teams the best they can be.

If you are using prefabricated parts to produce better students in a better team, then I think there is a very good chance we see eye to eye. If your group is using prefab parts for a different reason, I might be harder to convince. YMMV.

Much of what I have read here seems to revolve around where people fall in this spectrum.

Blake

gblake

25-01-2016, 21:01

Rangel(kf7fdb)

25-01-2016, 21:05

I hope I'm not repeating something already written:

Let's follow current trends to one of their likely conclusions.

I pretty sure that in the not too distant future, some company, people, or person will sell a full, high-performance, does-great-on-the-field, FRC robot (the moving vehicle, the software, and the operator controls). They will sell it in the form of a bill-of-materials, plus instructions, plus published software, plus parts ready to be assembled. They will offer it sometime in the middle of build season.

When that happens will FRC be alive and well? Or will that be the beginning of the end?

Discuss ...

Blake

Im fairly confident that if it ever came to that, FIRST would just modify the rules as needed. They may even just ban the entire kit to make a point so other companies don't try the same thing.

MrJohnston

25-01-2016, 21:08

Here is where I feel the WCP robot and the Ri3D robots differ:
* With Ri3d, it is understood that they are merely examples, ideas - not something that teams are meant to copy.
* With the WCP robot, it is meant to be sold in a kit as a competitive robot. From their advertisement: "A Minimum Competitive Robot is a robot specifically engineered to be a vaulable asset to any alliance, while still being simple and accessible to any team, regardless of experience or resources. The WestCoast Products 2016 MCC robot is designed with the intent of ensuring teams have a greater chance of not only being chosen for an alliance in the eliminations routs, but also leading their own alliance as a part of the top 8 seeds." And later, "We show that teams can build a competitive robot in a matter of days."

This fundamentally changes FRC. I've been to enough district and regional events to say that I agree with the assessment of the ability of this robot: It will be one of the stronger ones at most events. (Think top ten, but generally not top three or four.) In other words, with zero engineering skills, a team can build a robot that is better than the vast majority of their competitors - without having to spend six weeks working their tails off designing the thing. Instead, they can build it "in a few days" and have several weeks to practice driving. most teams hoping to qualify for Champs will find that their most effective path is through purchasing of a pre-engineered kit.

"It inspires kids." No, it excites them. It's like the kid in my math class who wants extra credit for an "A" when he's really earning a "D-." Moreover, I would suggest that teams who worked hard for six weeks and build a solid robot would be very "uninspired" if beaten by a team that bought the kit and qualified for Champs. The true benefit and value of first comes in the engineering that happens over the six weeks of build. The time the kids and mentors exchange ideas as to how to best engineer a robot to solve the game.... It's the time that the kids have to work in high-stress situations and yet still function as a team... It's the repeated failures that ultimately lead to success.... The events? they are nothing more than the fun reward at the end.

I recognize that I may think very differently than many folks about this - I have plenty of personality flaws and I don't mean to insult anybody... However, in my mind, this just seems fundamentally wrong...

Consider the next steps:
* AndyMark, a competitor, produces a better MCC robot.
* WCP, to outdo AndyMark, produces a kit for a high goal shooter - that integrates perfectly with their kit..
* Etc.

"It raises the floor for all teams." I disagree. It makes the robots on the field prettier. It does not do anything to raise the level of engineering on FRC teams.

Foster

25-01-2016, 21:13

I hope I'm not repeating something already written:

Let's follow current trends to one of their likely conclusions.

I pretty sure that in the not too distant future, some company, people, or person will sell a full, high-performance, does-great-on-the-field, FRC robot (the moving vehicle, the software, and the operator controls). They will sell it in the form of a bill-of-materials, plus instructions, plus published software, plus parts ready to be assembled. They will offer it sometime in the middle of build season.

When that happens will FRC be alive and well? Or will that be the beginning of the end?

Discuss ...

Blake

I can see two things
-- The ads will say, "Act now and the first kits will ship with a free 3 member drive team.
-- The "mentor built robot" threads will be "kits assembled by mentors" thread
all which will occur well after the first water game. So I'm not worried about full kits like this for many years.

techhelpbb

25-01-2016, 22:37

I pretty sure that in the not too distant future, some company, people, or person will sell a full, high-performance, does-great-on-the-field, FRC robot (the moving vehicle, the software, and the operator controls). They will sell it in the form of a bill-of-materials, plus instructions, plus published software, plus parts ready to be assembled. They will offer it sometime in the middle of build season.

Blake

There's a few likely outcomes I can see coming from something like that:

1. Teams will buy it and still not be able to assemble it correctly.
2. Teams will not bother to read the rules and not be able to use it correctly.
3. Teams will not be able to drive it correctly because they didn't read the manual.
4. Teams will replace what I've often seen as CSA: that magical few kids who are the keystones of the team, with a series of support calls to these people.
5. Teams won't be able to fix it in the pits because they really will have no idea what they have and it will be so expensive the team won't be able to risk it.
6. Teams will find the shipping and availability dates restrictive.

In reality we already have something like this.
Buy any CNC machine too expensive for your team.
It's a robot, you did not build, that you probably have to do some assembly and repair on.
If you break it you also probably can't fix it yourself.

Will FIRST go on? Sure it will.
Will the people that do this not exploit their opportunities to the fullest? Yes.
Might they show up while other teams are trying to be custom and do more engineering and fabrication are delayed? Yes.
Would I want to mentor that team? Not at all and they wouldn't need my help either.
So since they don't need mentors there goes the community involvement.

People do this today. There are teams where the mentors build the robots and there are teams that basically send most of the robot out to be constructed. I guess maybe the goal is to focus merely on design? Maybe the goal is merely to focus on driving? Maybe the goal is to make it look like you are getting more out of this than you really are.

In any event if FIRST lets that go on in the extreme without putting some controls in place all they will have is: donors, purchasing, drivers and volunteers. The control doesn't need to be to stop it - just give award and reward where other teams can show they went the extra mile to fabricate and engineer themselves. Otherwise, sooner or later, this outside professional involvement will raise the bar so high that when the kids do participate the adults making money will have them locked out.

JABianchi

25-01-2016, 22:50

There are a great many real-world engineering jobs that involve the spec'ing, selection, and integration of COTS components. Not all engineers work on the component design level.
I do think there is a difference between a generic-use COTS robot part (a gearbox) and a game-specific COTS robot part (an intake). That may be the distinction that upsets some people.

I agree, and note that the difference in opinion in this thread is not whether or not we should use COTS. Many haved waxed eloquently about the benefits of standing on the shoulders of giants.

The product of FIRST is not necessarily the robots. It's the teams behind the robots...

Sure, FIRST has a crafted mission and vision for its program, but teams should also have their own mission and vision for their own program. The meaning of participation in FIRST is whatever the participant defines it to be, which is why it can be all things for all people.

In terms of the spectrum of the relationship suppliers have with FRC teams, they really are not crossing a line for me until they are boxing up MCC kits and selling them as a separate SKU.

If there is a market for it, if it is cost effective for the company, and if the prices fall within the rules, let the free market do its thing... Business is business.

What we should agree on is that a line should be drawn somewhere (and perhaps the $400 part limit is already good enough. If FIRST's rules allow certain behaviors, and many FRC teams see a competitive advantage, it is hard to fault a team for pursuing those advantages.

The WestCoast Products 2016 MCC robot is designed with the intent of ensuring teams have a greater chance of not only being chosen for an alliance in the eliminations routs, but also leading their own alliance as a part of the top 8 seeds." And later, "We show that teams can build a competitive robot in a matter of days."

This fundamentally changes FRC.... In other words, with zero engineering skills, a team can build a robot that is better than the vast majority of their competitors - without having to spend six weeks working their tails off designing the thing.... most teams hoping to qualify for Champs will find that their most effective path is through purchasing of a pre-engineered kit.

Moreover, I would suggest that teams who worked hard for six weeks and build a solid robot would be very "uninspired" if beaten by a team that bought the kit and qualified for Champs. The true benefit and value of first comes in the engineering that happens over the six weeks of build. The time the kids and mentors exchange ideas as to how to best engineer a robot to solve the game.... It's the time that the kids have to work in high-stress situations and yet still function as a team... It's the repeated failures that ultimately lead to success.... The events? they are nothing more than the fun reward at the end.

Ri3D has pushed into and been embraced by our FIRST culture. As a coach, I have had to adapt to that change. In order to continue using FIRST's platform to inspire students, there certainly has been more struggle for students to explore their own ideas first. Thankfully, we've learned how to re-structure our design process to accomodate (and gain from Ri3D) allowing for more creativity to flow out in the analysis of different solutions and customizing our own.

The tendency towards more game-specific COTS feels like it moves in a similar direction. I agree with PayneDrive that each team will use FIRST to accomplish its own goals, but as FRC evolves, the range of options of what FRC CAN be used for changes as well.

Is it realistic for a team that wants students to primarily struggle through their own designs (as opposed to doing a lot of analysis of existing designs) to use FRC as a platform?

No team (or company) is an island, and together, discussions like this help us to better reflect on how we WANT to evolve as a STEM-inspiring program, instead of letting major changes happen without notice.

techhelpbb

25-01-2016, 23:01

I you really think about it, all parts are prefabricated, as they are made with tools that are purchased fully made. A real fist team makes their own tools before they start building. Now thats engineering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._Gingery

Start with the charcoal forge...

Oh you thought you were kidding :yikes: should probably mention there are 4 generations of machinists and fabricators in my family.
I have hammers for nails time forgot that my relatives forged.

techhelpbb

25-01-2016, 23:11

well technically they didn't fabricate those parts themselves unless they got the wood from the handle of a tree which they planted themselves, of a tree species that they evolved themselves from a barren planet of which they brought life by themselves, where the planet was formed by the creation of a universe they brought forward for theirselves. So technically you'd have to be God to not use prefabricated parts.

In the best of humor....
In that case bio-engineering the tool bearer applies as prefabricated.
After all your hands and body are often the tools you use to do your work.

So are you implying someone is a tool :D ?

To be honest there's a difference between a raw material and a part or tool.
I wouldn't be surprised if one of my relatives used a stick to make a tool handle at all.
Seems a big waste of time today but for them they probably would have had it handy.
Working raw wood was actually something I was shown by my Dad as a kid - little did I know people would want tables that looked like that today I ruined me some nice rustic furniture in my youth.

Basel A

25-01-2016, 23:22

I hope I'm not repeating something already written:

Let's follow current trends to one of their likely conclusions.

I pretty sure that in the not too distant future, some company, people, or person will sell a full, high-performance, does-great-on-the-field, FRC robot (the moving vehicle, the software, and the operator controls). They will sell it in the form of a bill-of-materials, plus instructions, plus published software, plus parts ready to be assembled. They will offer it sometime in the middle of build season.

When that happens will FRC be alive and well? Or will that be the beginning of the end?

Discuss ...

Blake

Well, if it costs more than $400, no FRC team will be able to use it. If it costs less than $400.. well, that would be pretty amazing. So I think FRC will be fine.

techhelpbb

25-01-2016, 23:29

Well, if it costs more than $400, no FRC team will be able to use it. If it costs less than $400.. well, that would be pretty amazing. So I think FRC will be fine.

What if they give them away for free, but charge $400 for each of the plastic screws that break all the time?

MaGiC_PiKaChU

25-01-2016, 23:45

What if they give them away for free, but charge $400 for each of the plastic screws that break all the time?

because it's that hard to make/buy your own... :confused:

techhelpbb

25-01-2016, 23:48

because it's that hard to make/buy your own... :confused:

They are reverse pipe threaded, made of stainless steel, are split, bored down the middle and expand with a set screw down the bore and break once a match at the exact end :yikes:
If you substitute your own your warranty is also void.

Used to be a military contractor you'd be surprised the stunts I have seen.

Dalas

26-01-2016, 00:08

Moreover, I would suggest that teams who worked hard for six weeks and build a solid robot would be very "uninspired" if beaten by a team that bought the kit and qualified for Champs.

I absolutely agree with this. As student design lead on a very low-resource team (we were reduced to cutting parts for our custom chassis with hacksaws after our only bandsaw broke earlier this build season) I find it very frustrating when we spend time coming up with the perfect design or cutting the perfect parts, only to find that a team with less engineering experience but more money can buy a kit and defeat us easily. I feel it goes against the spirit of FIRST for a team to be more competitive by not building the best robot they can, but buying one instead. Yes, this is the way many things work in the real world, but is it really what FIRST wants to encourage?

Obviously I cannot speak badly about all prefabricated parts and designs. The KOP chassis, prefab gearboxes, and easily available mechanum/omni wheels have always been a huge help to our low-resource team and we could not have built a robot without them. Ri3D teams, as well, are always an inspiration for both concept and specific designs. The difference, in my opinion, is that the KOP and Ri3D give you a basic level of functionality while encouraging teams to continue work to improve. The KOP chassis is, on its own, obviously not a viable design. Ri3D teams give great inspiration, but it is up to your team to fabricate the robot theirself. The MCC, on the other hand, is a functional, competitive robot that requires little-to-no engineering knowledge or design skills to create. The MCC does not even require you to read the robot rules. As a team member, I find it very demoralizing that we could perform better in competition by buying a kit and sleeping in than if we got up early to build our own.

bEdhEd

26-01-2016, 00:23

As a team member, I find it very demoralizing that we could perform better in competition by buying a kit and sleeping in than if we got up early to build our own.

If you're sleeping in and using prefab parts, then you may not be using these purchased parts to their fullest potential. As i mentioned in my first post on this thread, my team uses lots of COTS and custom, but we don't sleep in.

Also, if you find it demoralizing that you think your team can build a better bot with mostly prefab parts as compared to original parts, then I recommend your team take the time and pull in the resources in the off-season to learn how to fabricate better than what can be bought. I understand that this will be a challenge, as you mention that you are a low resource team, but the other strategic planning that FRC teams face is in fundraising, sponsorships, and grants, not just a game. Do you happen to have any nearby teams that can help you make parts or help the students learn how to do so?

In the mean time, while the resources are low get as much COTS as can be afforded, and build a great robot. A "great robot" doesn't have to be an extreme performance machine, but rather is a machine that can be a valuable alliance member. How can you use your current resources to be a valuable alliance member? I feel like that question is more important than thinking about how it's built over how it performs.

Great teams don't happen overnight, and it will be a process that can take quite a few seasons. My team never got a blue banner until season 13.

gblake

26-01-2016, 00:39

Well, if it costs more than $400, no FRC team will be able to use it. If it costs less than $400.. well, that would be pretty amazing. So I think FRC will be fine.

No. You are suffering from a lack of imagination. Once you stop thinking like a current FRC participant, how to do what I described becomes obvious.

Jane Doe's Robot Emporium offers a design(s), and a bill(s) of materials. Each item in the BOM(s) sells for under $400, individually.

Any FRC team that wants to, buys the many items (each under $400) needed to acquire their favorite, complete BOM.

Once all of the items arrive, the resulting pile can be assembled into an excellent competition machine, plus control devices.

If FIRST forbids buying all of the items, any team that cares to, buys N minus M of the items. Where M is large enough to satisfy FIRST's rules. They do some trivial cutting, etc. to create the M items out of "raw" materials like extruded aluminum.

So long as on-the-field performance is the metric that dominates the thinking of many (How many? Most? Too many? Exactly the right number? Too few?) teams, I'm going to predict that this scenario will come to pass.

The question is "When?", not "Whether?".

As the number of teams grows, if the allure of the proverbial Blue Champion Banner isn't radically altered, the number of potential customers for an IKEA-style superbot also grows, and the "invisible hand" grows stronger.

Discuss.

IronicDeadBird

26-01-2016, 00:43

I find it very frustrating when we spend time coming up with the perfect design or cutting the perfect parts, only to find that a team with less engineering experience but more money can buy a kit and defeat us easily.

Why don't you just take the COTS parts into account when designing? If you know what you can buy off the shelf don't you have a solid baseline for what standards you should be performing at? If you know a kit bot runs x ft/s and has y amount of pushing power, shouldn't you design above that? If you know they have an intake that is constrained to work in one way can't you use that against them?

Ian Curtis

26-01-2016, 01:21

Let's follow current trends to one of their likely conclusions.

I pretty sure that in the not too distant future, some company, people, or person will sell a full, high-performance, does-great-on-the-field, FRC robot (the moving vehicle, the software, and the operator controls). They will sell it in the form of a bill-of-materials, plus instructions, plus published software, plus parts ready to be assembled. They will offer it sometime in the middle of build season.

When that happens will FRC be alive and well? Or will that be the beginning of the end?

Someone entertained the same thought 11 years ago, (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=303285&postcount=33) and I still can't mail-order my Cheesy Poof Powder.

We are closer today (so many different choices of gearboxes, wheels, systems, and a few generic kits), but I think its an asymptotic curve. Besides, I don't think the market for game specific solutions is large (but I suppose only Mr. Market actually knows). While many teams use the concepts proved out by Ri3D & others, (I think) very few copy the drawings.

sanddrag

26-01-2016, 01:32

Rachel Lim

26-01-2016, 01:41

I believe inspiration comes when you have a bit of success, and then keep trying to do better.

COTS parts can make it easier to get the initial bit of success, so that you desire to overcome challenges rather than just give up.
COTS parts do not necessarily remove the drive to do better, or to learn more so you can improve the pre-existing solutions.

I don't believe COTS parts are bad because I believe they make success, and therefore inspiration, accessible to more teams.

techhelpbb

26-01-2016, 07:19

While I haven't yet read this thread, I feel inclined to comment. We here at 696 too have noticed the proliferation of prefabricated parts and mechanisms in FIRST in the last few years. It certainly is a different FIRST than when I started in it 15 years ago. Nonetheless, we've invested quite heavily in CNC manufacturing software and equipment in the past 3 years. While our students are gaining awesome skills while making awesome parts, we've also noticed that it's increasingly becoming a losing battle to compete with some of these COTS parts. I can spend more than two weeks designing and manufacturing a gearbox that costs me maybe $150 and hopefully works like I designed it, or I can spend 10 minutes punching my credit cart into a website to get a roughly equivalent outcome (performance-wise) for $100 more.

While I'd like for us to make everything, like in the good ol days, it's not competitive for us to do so anymore. I mean shoot, we even used to make sprockets from bar stock. Now, every time we order a COTS part, it's not because we cahttp://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/editpost.php?do=editpost&p=1530202n't make it in-house, it's because we've elected to buy time.

Precisely. The only way to compete with the highly advanced COTS parts is to manufacture year round because that's exactly what the COTS part supply chain is doing.

Once you add the students learning into the equation it's no longer even a CNC fabrication problem. You need to teach them how to use the machine so now they need to go year round. That education alone on an advanced CNC machine could consume all of the 6 week build easily.

Sooner or later - the top teams that used to show exceptional levels of fabrication will no longer be able to avoid rampant COTS purchases unless they are a year round vocational school. This is already the case with the FRC control system. Even if you can fabricate that (Team 221 for example) you can't legally use it in the FRC competition.

We are on the same page. I had this exact revelation when Team 11 got their HAAS CNC mill and lathe. This again is why I am trying hard to setup a Makerspace. Simply put: we can't turn out the sort of fabrication I think people want us to turn out without committing to resource access year round such that when the build starts the students are basically already trained operators with a task. I can see how other manufacturing heavy places can manage this - they can bring the students to their workplaces and bootstrap them off that apprenticeship any time during the year. Let's be fair: NJ as a State is not known as the being a machine manufacturing powerhouse anymore (there are some exceptions but not enough). So if we can't introduce the skills as a byproduct of the local industry then we can serve the interest by merely providing access and letting curiosity do the rest.

In the end, however, I see the inevitable coming. Adults and business people squeezing the competition until there are more consumers and less fabricators. FIRST FRC just needs to adapt if they are not okay with it and personally I don't think we should be entirely okay with all that means. My only solace in all this is that if this is allowed to run unchecked my personal goal to mentor and help my community is unaffected because I don't care if we win the competition personally (I know some people even on my team will not agree with this, that's fine). I don't have to rely on Team 11/193 to fund my Makerspace concept. I now own 3 FRC robots personally: 2 AM14U2 chassis and a custom one. I have my own small and portable CNC tools I can offer. When the students come looking with the necessary curiosity the resources are there cause for me that's what this is about. I don't care who wins FRC: I care that my students can achieve unhindered by obstacles put in place with the very same consumerism that created FRC in the first place when we drove manufacturing offshore exploiting underpaid labor. I have been around FRC for 20 years so I remember the ideals when it was U.S. FIRST. I am glad we became global but global is still a village of villages. This is my village, they got me where I am, now I owe them some favors in return even if some people don't get it or even understand it.

Joe Johnson

26-01-2016, 08:10

What are people afraid of here, really? That we have teams buying their way to a competitive robot? Really? This is the problem with FIRST that keeps you up at night?

Specialized COTS parts enable better robots? Indisputable. That they lesson the FIRST experience for most (or even many) teams? I see no evidence of this.

AND I see the opposite actually.

Specialized COTS parts allow things that are just not possible for the vast majority of teams for pretty much any team that can fund raise a few hundred extra bucks. Is that really that bad of a thing? If I am a lower middle of the road team and I want to have shifting transmissions next year what are my options? I can spend a ton of time and energy trying to design my own (and probably failing) or I can order a tried and true solution from AndyMark or VexPro or others. I just don't see this as a problem.

/begin old man rant/
FIRST has always been one where a team could effectively buy a competitive robot if that was their goal. With enough dough, a team could effectively have a professionally designed and build robot that their kids had almost no input into designing & building.

On the Continuum of Inspiration, I suppose this is too far to one side. Just as I think that letting kids spend 1000's of hours on an arm only to watch it spin in circles all match because FIRST gave them a horrible hack for a drive system (e.g. a drill a trantorque where a chuck should be) is too far to the other.

I seriously doubt that we will ever get to the point where you can order a competitive robot in a kit but we can cross that bridge when we get to it. I still see way too many teams struggling to get a robot to play the game at all to lose any sleep over this dystopian FIRST vision.

Also... ...GET OFF MY LAWN!!!
/end old man rant/

Dr. Joe J.

marshall

26-01-2016, 08:17

GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

LOL!

Sunshine

26-01-2016, 08:17

90%+ of all the people responding are agreeing with each other. It goes back to what I said 7 pages ago. Different strokes for different folks. It's all about the evolution of the individual team and how far mentors can/want to take them.

The majority of our kids on my team are in an engineering academy with access to CNC mills and lathes. They have a few 3D printers to play with and a plasma cutter. The juniors and seniors have the experience and background to make our needed parts. Their experience will be different than other teams.

Then I remember the students I have met at competition who are from some big city schools. Their mentors have different priorities. Their goals include keeping the kids off the streets, keeping them fed. Keeping them away from the gangs. They don't have the facilities that I have access to. Sadly, they do not have the financial resources either. Do I have a problem with them using more COTS than us? Nope. Are they doing it right? Yup. Are we doing it right? Yup. Are all of you doing it correctly? Yup.

We're all doing what we think are best for our students. Some are ready for higher level goals and sophisticated challenges. Others will see success by the simple things like learning ohms law or how to wire without frying anything. Take 'em as far as you can and keep 'em excited about learning. Then we are all winners. It's really not about what happens on the field. It's about the journey getting to the field.

MrJohnston

26-01-2016, 08:47

I seriously doubt that we will ever get to the point where you can order a competitive robot in a kit but we can cross that bridge when we get to it. I still see way too many teams struggling to get a robot to play the game at all to lose any sleep over this dystopian FIRST vision.
Dr. Joe J.

That's just it: We are at that point. That is why some of us are in this discussion. Check out the advertisement. The only thing missing is the price - which you can get by calling.

http://www.wcproducts.net/mcc2016/

Dalas

26-01-2016, 09:09

Also, if you find it demoralizing that you think your team can build a better bot with mostly prefab parts as compared to original parts, then I recommend your team take the time and pull in the resources in the off-season to learn how to fabricate better than what can be bought. I understand that this will be a challenge, as you mention that you are a low resource team, but the other strategic planning that FRC teams face is in fundraising, sponsorships, and grants, not just a game. Do you happen to have any nearby teams that can help you make parts or help the students learn how to do so?

In the mean time, while the resources are low get as much COTS as can be afforded, and build a great robot. A "great robot" doesn't have to be an extreme performance machine, but rather is a machine that can be a valuable alliance member. How can you use your current resources to be a valuable alliance member? I feel like that question is more important than thinking about how it's built over how it performs.

Great teams don't happen overnight, and it will be a process that can take quite a few seasons. My team never got a blue banner until season 13.

Thank you for the advice, and we will do our best to reach out to other teams in the off-season. Utah isn't exactly a hotbed of robotics activity, but I'm sure we can find someway to collaborate. As for the business and fundraising side of things, I'm only the design guy for our team so I don't have many skills in that region. As for trying to be valuable for an alliance, one of the reasons I'm so salty about the MCC is it does virtually everything we were planning on doing to be valuable in an alliancen.

Why don't you just take the COTS parts into account when designing? If you know what you can buy off the shelf don't you have a solid baseline for what standards you should be performing at? If you know a kit bot runs x ft/s and has y amount of pushing power, shouldn't you design above that? If you know they have an intake that is constrained to work in one way can't you use that against them?

We do. I'm not bashing against all COTS parts, which as I said before have been key for many years in helping us get a functional robot out. I only dislike game-specific solutions that require little to no thought from a team. Most COTS parts make it easier to build the best robot that you can design. The MCC from WCP gives a competitive robot with no thinking involved.

Specialized COTS parts allow things that are just not possible for the vast majority of teams for pretty much any team that can fund raise a few hundred extra bucks. Is that really that bad of a thing?

No, it's not that bad of a thing. I agree that the majority of COTS parts are a mostly positive development for an individual team, as well as preparing team members for a future in engineering where many parts can be COTS.

90%+ of all the people responding are agreeing with each other.
I agree.

techhelpbb

26-01-2016, 09:50

What are people afraid of here, really? That we have teams buying their way to a competitive robot? Really? This is the problem with FIRST that keeps you up at night?

Not really. The problem is that when your competitors can get a robot that was designed over years with no respect for the build times with much less investment of their time. You no longer can compete if you fabricate yourself unless you literally also design what you are making over years. Basically you are foolishly following a 'rule' to the letter when your competitors are not really doing so.

So yes this allows other teams to be competitive. In fact it allows them to be more than competitive. It allows them to raise the bar so high that a six week build season is not even relevant any more. That same six week build season we keep telling people is the holy grail of keeping things even.

If this was not actually an issue I bet FIRST would not even exist. It came up often in the early days. Eventually the next goal will not just be to make it COTS. It will be to drive down the cost by any means because that's the only barrier. Then, as you see today already, you'll make the parts anywhere you can get cheap labor and shipping which is making this stuff anywhere but in your neck of the woods for a lot of people in FIRST.

So yes it drives the competition but it erodes a fundamental. Maybe we just don't care about that any more. Maybe some of us are just relics of an old sales pitch. If so that's fine.

The fact that we want to pretend that the only way to address this is to block COTS is as much the issue.
We can also go positive and just reward when the FIRST teams use less COTS as a special case and separate award - and let the competition field decide if the resulting robot is competitive against COTS.
Maybe some years it will be, maybe not, at least as long as the game each year remains secret it will block perfect matches from multi-year COTS builds.
Oh wait the market has recently floated letting the supply side know the game early - how early? Like a year or so ahead?
Surely the suppliers wouldn't build perfect COTS parts for 1 year once they know the game early.
I mean it's not like a very particular drive train element (ahem treads) would just appear at the start of a game that fits it perfectly!
No that would never happen. ;)

Sooner or later this is going to be exactly like FTC before it. Does that actually surprise anyone really considering where FTC fits between FLL and FRC? The only difference will be a larger field and bigger robots.

GreyingJay

26-01-2016, 09:52

In reading this thread I am also reminded that having an awesome robot is only one small piece of the puzzle.

So you buy a great COTS robot. You put it together with a single 9/16" wrench. Awesome. Time to go win a regional?

Of course not. There's so much other stuff to do. Develop a great drive team. Write the software to make the robot move. Now write the software to optimize it, give driver feedback, do autonomous modes, etc. Learn to take apart and fix every bit of the robot inside a cramped space with limited tools and not enough time. Go get some more sponsors. Plan fundraisers. Do a robot reveal video. Do your chairman's video...

We have a long to-do list between now and our first regional...

techhelpbb

26-01-2016, 10:09

Michael Corsetto

26-01-2016, 10:47

techhelpbb

26-01-2016, 11:00

IIRC, Vex Robotics Competition involves a ton of copy-paste, most robots look identical by Championships, teams are required to use pretty much just the Vex kit, and students are still inspired.

I know the comparison is not apples to apples, but it's close. Close enough for me to appreciate that inspiration is our end goal, and the road there might not look entirely like I'd want it to.

-Mike

Yes inspiration is very important. The other skills required to take those mostly COTS designs through evolution are important.

Is giving the students who have the resources at their disposal to fabricate a challenge not important? We can still have both of the above values and end up completely removing, even make negative, the aspect were we challenge students to fabricate. Is FIRST FRC okay with that knowing we already inspire at FLL/FTC in a similar way. Are we okay with subtracting that more adult opportunity at this level as well. Possibly forcing these students to wait until college (maybe beyond) or hope they have a great Makerspace nearby with mentoring? If we encourage the removal of fabrication then anyone that went from FLL->FTC->FRC is really coming in with an advantage. The skill sets are very much like each other because there's no boundless new technical example there anymore.

Joe Johnson

26-01-2016, 13:40

<snip>
Maybe some years it will be, maybe not, at least as long as the game each year remains secret it will block perfect matches from multi-year COTS builds.
Oh wait the market has recently floated letting the supply side know the game early - how early? Like a year or so ahead?
Surely the suppliers wouldn't build perfect COTS parts for 1 year once they know the game early.
I mean it's not like a very particular drive train element (ahem treads) would just appear at the start of a game that fits it perfectly!
No that would never happen. ;)

<snip>

Two things.

First, some folks at AndyMark definitely have some information about the game before the kickoff. This should be news to exactly zero people who think about what it takes to have AM ready to ship game pieces to us FIRSTers the Monday after a Saturday kickoff.

Second, I think you are suggesting a level of information leak / collusion that is just not justified by the facts. I am quite sure that that tank track product has been in development at AM for years and that this is finally the year that they figured out how to make something that they could stand behind as a product. Andy and Mark have been designing FIRST robots with tank tracks for years, before many of you reading this post were even born. It shouldn't be a surprise that they've been looking for a way to make an AM tank track product.

What is more, I was in NH at the kick off and ran into Andy in the gym on game field. Practically the first think I noticed was that he was worriedly looking at the field and scratching his head, genuinely concerned because he knew that there was no way AndyMark was going to be able to meet the demand for those AM 8" pneumatic wheels yet alone AM's newly announced tank track thingy (Both predictions have been borne out by subsequent events, FWIW). But back to Andy, I am telling you, he's not that good of an actor; I don't think he'd seen that field any sooner than I had.

Bottom line... ...I'm asking you to be careful before you go casting aspersions on some good folk, least of all Andy whom I consider something close to a brother.

Dr. Joe J.

Lil' Lavery

26-01-2016, 13:46

Oh wait the market has recently floated letting the supply side know the game early - how early? Like a year or so ahead?
Surely the suppliers wouldn't build perfect COTS parts for 1 year once they know the game early.
I mean it's not like a very particular drive train element (ahem treads) would just appear at the start of a game that fits it perfectly!
No that would never happen. ;)

I can tell you with 100% certainty that the game does not exist a year ahead of time. Please keep the borderline slanderous speculation bottled up.

techhelpbb

26-01-2016, 15:09

I can tell you with 100% certainty that the game does not exist a year ahead of time. Please keep the borderline slanderous speculation bottled up.

Slander implies something criminal.
If you're going to be outraged - be informed about it.
Keep in mind I bought multiple robots from AndyMark <- if I was here to mess with them that's a poor way to do it.

I am implying nothing less than fact.
The AndyMark treads have started shipping just before a game well suited to them.

It may be speculative but it's so unusual that I really have to question the reasons.
So if Andy might explain how this timing occurred I would be interested - as it seems a little off.

Of course this could be the other way around.
Someone at GDC might of heard about the treads and made the game fit.
It would go a long way to explain why AndyMark didn't have enough tires in that case.

Finally there's possibility that someone partially disclosed an element (desired or planned) of the coming game. That it had tough terrain and they just deduced treads might be cool which wouldn't surprise me from experience. One wouldn't need to know exactly what the terrain would look like to deduce the value of treads.

Also before you go around suggesting I am speculating just to start trouble - don't bother.
Bits of information have come back to me over the years during various interactions with FIRST prior to games.
I sit on them because it's my choice to do so.

...

I just read Joe's post (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1530397&postcount=108).
Okay option 2.

Andy didn't know but someone could have known he was working on that at FIRST.
I really am not looking to mess too much with Andy here again just to make this point:

Anyone vendor that can either influence the game decision (even unknowingly) or get pre-kickoff knowledge of it can deliver polished elements that it is entirely possible a team couldn't build themselves in the 6 weeks before bag and tag.
That would be great vendor business because it would make COTS purchases the only option to compete.

That's why I keep my mouth shut when I find out things early because I don't want that kind of stuff to happen.

ThaddeusMaximus

26-01-2016, 15:25

I do think there is a difference between a generic-use COTS robot part (a gearbox) and a game-specific COTS robot part (an intake). That may be the distinction that upsets some people.

I think this is what it boils down to.

The VersaPlanetary is probably the best example of this. It has enabled amazing mechanisms (which is good- inspiration and stuff), but isn't an amazing mechanism (which is good- students still have to design).

Individual COTS items that don't achieve end goals enable students to create those sweet mechanisms that do, and that's typically where the cool engineering that students learn the most from. There's very little interesting or challenging about figuring out how to get an 8mm, 2mm key shaft to 1/2" hex; it's just resource and time consuming. There's a lot that's challenging and interesting about selecting pinch distance on flywheels, moment of inertia, gear ratio, etc.

Joe Johnson

26-01-2016, 15:39

<snip>
I am implying nothing less than fact.
The AndyMark treads have started shipping just before a game well suited to them.
<snip>

Come on man, don't kid a kidder. You're implying something untoward was involved, don't be hiding behind "I've never said that" type statements. Your original statements were not merely statements of fact of the kind "A happened, then shortly after that B happened." Own your words.

From your comments it is clear to me at least that you intended the readers to infer that AndyMark had a heads up on the 2016 game and that they then designed a COTS product to exploit that knowledge.

I have been clear on my views: I personally don't believe it.

You on the other hand want to have it both ways. I say, nay to this. Either you say, "yeah, that's what I think." or "I take it back."

I ask you to consider and respond.

Dr. Joe J.

techhelpbb

26-01-2016, 15:52

Come on man, don't kid a kidder. You're implying something untoward was involved, don't be hiding behind "I've never said that" type statements. Your original statements were not merely statements of fact of the kind "A happened, then shortly after that B happened." Own your words.
...
Dr. Joe J.

Yes I -still- am implying something possibly untoward is involved.
That's no secret.
You can imply that it only goes towards Andy if you like but I am not.
His business does potentially stand to gain some nice bank there.

Then again his business also got publicly slammed by a bunch of people on ChiefDelphi for not being able to handle demand.
I posted in his favor then (I can look that up if you like).
It shouldn't surprise anyone that I don't think this COTS thing is panacea when the demand gets a little ugly.

So if you want to continue down there go ahead.
Point at me because the kick off secret is not as secret as you think it is.
What will that get you?
As you said - there are people that know ahead of time what's going on on both sides.
That transparently creates risk.

It can't be denied that more people asked for the disclosure of the game demands to the vendors ahead of time on ChieflDelphi when the COTS supplies were low for the treads and tires.
Releasing that information with consent would only make the cause and effect even more murky.

So which should concern me more...
1. That when we couldn't get our toys fast and cheap this got a little ugly?
2. That we traded the idea you had to be able to fend for yourself for the idea that COTS was limitless?
3. That we openly opened a can of worms by asking for pre-release of the game to only the vendors?
4. That it seems like there was some sharing of information already that allowed a synchronized event to appear?

This is a discussion about COTS. So here's what all that COTS has gotten us.
We should not forget that not all COTS supplies are limitless and now some teams are concerned they can't field a robot.
I won't blame AndyMark for that. Just like I may be making assumptions here - so many of you assumed their supply line was bottomless.

Brian C

26-01-2016, 16:05

Proliferation of Purchasable, Prefabricated Parts - P4 for all you DoD acronym lovers

I like this quote, it reminded me of the Tinman in the Wizard of Oz when he's called A clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caligenous junk! - C4 :)

But I digress.

The OP for this thread has evidently touched a nerve with a few folks. I can vouch for his sincerity and I understand the reasoning behind his questions.

While I think very few, if any of us want to go back to the days of Small Parts and limited resources. There has been a natural evolution in FIRST for prefabricated purchased items. I think it comes down to some basic things that we have all seen both in FIRST and life in general.

There will always be the "haves" and the "have nots" Them's the facts, like it or not.

I always recall the days of drill motors and Small Parts and all the things that were FIRST back in the 90's and the turn of the century. There were occasions where our team at the time, 311 did exceptionally well. There were also occasions where we were, shall we say less than stellar :rolleyes

The important thing is to realize that it IS an evolutionary process. Recalling those days of dealing with limited supplies and equipment make me appreciate what we have now even more!! I believe that an influx of COTS items that are manufactured specifically for FIRST is a benefit to students in the long term.

Sure we can go through the whole process of designing something from scratch. But there are honestly only maybe 20% of teams out there with the ability and support to actually DO that and do it well. This leaves the majority of teams somewhat lacking in many ways.

If a team purchases a (insert item name here) piece for the robot then there now lies a great opportunity for students to learn from what they see and give them ideas for other things in the future. A little reverse engineering if you will. Over my years involved with FIRST I've seen far too many teams that struggle with fabrication of various components. Only to become disillusioned and frustrated in the long run.

The complete overhaul or deletion of "shop" classes in a many school districts has become a big factor in this as well. But that's a subject for a different discussion.

In recent years I see many of those same teams that used to struggle are now able to be competitive and fully partake in the competition. Much of it is a direct result of what this thread is about. When the team has success the students become more interested and inspired. Once that happens there's no telling what they can achieve!

Someone touched on this in an earlier post. It has leveled the playing field and I think that's a good thing.

The answer, IMHO is there's room for everyone. As long as the students are learning.

As long as they understand the engineering concepts behind the design.

As long as they are exposed to the principles that FIRST displays and embraces.

Then that's what's really important.

Oh one more thing. I can certainly assure that Andy is NOT a crusty, grumpy old man!

techhelpbb

26-01-2016, 16:37

Proliferation of Purchasable, Prefabricated Parts - P4 for all you DoD acronym lovers

I like this quote, it reminded me of the Tinman in the Wizard of Oz when he's called A clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caligenous junk! - C4 :)

...

I can certainly assure that Andy is NOT a crusty, grumpy old man!

I fully noted I was a grumpy old man on my first post to this topic (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1529516&postcount=34) :)
Anyone on my lawn right now needs to work their way through 24" of snow melting to get off.
So I will give you time before I give chase with my cane on a sled.

RonnyV

26-01-2016, 20:52

I just put a AndyMark AM14U2 together with a complete RoboRIO control system, NavX, part of a pneumatic system, encoders and co-processor in 2 days. With the co-processor being the longest delay.
At some point it's possible some teams - if they plan really carefully - could be done in < 2 weeks.
So what is the project too big then?
I can see this actually getting boring.

Don't know what the real problem is here. Having a variety of COTS products (for less resourced teams that don't have machining capabilities) or having a grumpy 40 year old putting together a COTS kit with all the parts needed in two days and rush on.

I have kids on the team that struggle putting such a thing together but they get inspired and motivated. Tell them to design something from scratch can be difficult with 15 year olds..

Having COTS doesn't mean all the work is done. Implementing them and combining several parts and stuff is a challenge already.
Well... at least.... if you let them do the work ;)

Have fun :D

RonnyV

26-01-2016, 21:05

Hmm I kinda miss a topic in this thread.

What about having your team design parts for the robot in CAD. And you sent them out to a company and they mill, lathe, lasercut etc.
Is this 50% COTS?
What you all think about this? Let's maybe make a third thread ::rtm::

techhelpbb

26-01-2016, 22:10

Don't know what the real problem is here. Having a variety of COTS products (for less resourced teams that don't have machining capabilities) or having a grumpy 40 year old putting together a COTS kit with all the parts needed in two days and rush on.

The problem is that COTS can remove a motivator to understand how the parts are made. In fairness, in the other related topic, I voted for allowing COTS at every level.

This opportunity to motivate can be just as well served by offering award or reward to the teams that take the time to spin up their shops as it can by requiring it to compete. Requiring it to compete does on the other hand keep some people out.

Both approaches can coexist until the level of play gets so high that only professionally designed COTS parts are able to play - then it's a problem. Other than a shortage of tires and treads we haven't seen that yet.

muffinofsteel

27-01-2016, 02:37

The part of this debacle that irks me the most is how it could make FRC robots use the same basic design of a robot. This though may be a result of games becoming "samey", ie. shoot the ball into the goal. There's only so many ways you can put a sphere into a goal. The fact that we have COTS manipulators may be due to this lack of variety in the games. For the past 10 years, FIRST has had 5-6(lunacy) games involving spheres and goals, allowing teams to use designs from older games, which in my opinion is boring. The one thing Recycle Rush got right was being a unique game. It had a game piece that was only used once before in Stack Attack, and even though the game was boring, the designs were not. There weren't any viable COTS manipulators to stack the totes. I saw variety at competitions, due to a lack of reusable designs and COTS parts, which i don't expect to see as much this year. This game seems to lean towards having a low drive train and ball collector, which with COTS parts isn't a difficult feat. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if a box on wheel was an alliance captain.

pilleya

27-01-2016, 02:58

There weren't any viable COTS manipulators to stack the totes.

There were many COTS manipulator systems available to stack the totes.

Just look at Andymark, they came out with tote stacker kit including all the necessary parts. Extrusion just had to be cut to size and assembled

http://www.andymark.com/product-p/am-3098.htm

Vexpro and Competition Robot Parts also had gussets which allowed linear motion

http://www.vexrobotics.com/vexpro/versaframe/linear-motion.html

http://www.competitionrobotparts.com/product-category/elevator-kits/

Knufire

27-01-2016, 03:06

There were many COTS manipulator systems available to stack the totes.

Just look at Andymark, they came out with tote stacker kit including all the necessary parts. Extrusion just had to be cut to size and assembled

http://www.andymark.com/product-p/am-3098.htm

Vexpro and Competition Robot Parts also had gussets which allowed linear motion

http://www.vexrobotics.com/vexpro/versaframe/linear-motion.html

http://www.competitionrobotparts.com/product-category/elevator-kits/

All of these were linear motion kids. None included any sort of mechanism that interfaced with the totes; simply parts that would help you build a constrainted linear motion track that wouldn't bind.

Jared Russell

27-01-2016, 04:12

There have only been two years I can think of where a COTS mechanism could have given teams a spectacular advantage: minibots in 2011, and can grabbers in 2015.

Every other season, it takes more than one mechanism to play the game at a high level, and integrating various mechanisms into a cohesive robotic system is a huge part of the challenge (that happens to mirror most of real life engineering). COTS components all the way up to subsystem scale can help a team significantly, but honestly, the more substantial the COTS subsystem, the fewer options it gives to elegantly integrate it with everything else.

As a result, there will ALWAYS be an advantage in being able to fabricate specific parts tailored to your overall robot design. You can package things more efficiently, save weight, achieve higher levels of performance, fill in gaps in the COTS offerings, and fit more functionality into a robot that isn't constrained to a set of discrete COTS parts that may or may not place nice together. You not only can do this, you MUST do this (in this era of FRC) if you want to build a truly world class robot. I don't see this changing any time soon.

Brian C

27-01-2016, 08:16

I fully noted I was a grumpy old man on my first post to this topic (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1529516&postcount=34) :)
Anyone on my lawn right now needs to work their way through 24" of snow melting to get off.
So I will give you time before I give chase with my cane on a sled.

Duly noted! I'll try and stay ahead of you in my walker....................:p

Brian C

27-01-2016, 08:37

The problem is that COTS can remove a motivator to understand how the parts are made. In fairness, in the other related topic, I voted for allowing COTS at every level.

This opportunity to motivate can be just as well served by offering award or reward to the teams that take the time to spin up their shops as it can by requiring it to compete. Requiring it to compete does on the other hand keep some people out.

Both approaches can coexist until the level of play gets so high that only professionally designed COTS parts are able to play - then it's a problem. Other than a shortage of tires and treads we haven't seen that yet.

I think this is a key point to all of this. I tried to touch on it somewhat but this helps to clarify much of what's being discussed.

COTS items can be used to help motivate teams with limited resources as a way to demonstrate design concepts to them.

Teams with more available resources are already going through the design process but more in a firsthand way.

And I think you're correct in that until it becomes an issue where you HAVE to actually purchase something that's professionally done then it's not a problem.

My hope is that we never actually see that time come.

Taylor

27-01-2016, 10:04

Two thoughts:
1. If the major suppliers really had "insider knowledge" for the games, then (a) we could all get game pieces (b) suppliers' shelves would have been stocked with pneumatic wheels and treads this year (and REV and mecanums* last year) (c) the Ri3D teams would be obsolete. Also, conveniently ignored are the multiple accounts from Frank himself that this game wasn't really conceived until a few months ago.

2. It would be nice if all teams had a full machine shop and a full bevy of mentors to train the students. But we don't have that, and that's why FIRST is how it is. FIRST is here to reach the affluent, already college-bound students with boundless resources; it is also here to reach the poverty-stricken urban and rural students who don't see a diploma as worthwhile, and everybody in between. For low-resource teams of any socioeconomic or technologic level, COTS products can provide the difference between an embarrassing BLT dragging a chain behind it and a functional, respectable machine.

techhelpbb

27-01-2016, 10:15

...
Also, conveniently ignored are the multiple accounts from Frank himself that this game wasn't really conceived until a few months ago.

2. It would be nice if all teams had a full machine shop and a full bevy of mentors to train the students. But we don't have that, and that's why FIRST is how it is. FIRST is here to reach the affluent, already college-bound students with boundless resources; it is also here to reach the poverty-stricken urban and rural students who don't see a diploma as worthwhile, and everybody in between. For low-resource teams of any socioeconomic or technologic level, COTS products can provide the difference between an embarrassing BLT dragging a chain behind it and a functional, respectable machine.

1. Even a month is too much warning to a vendor.
It's a month more than anyone else.
If FIRST needs something available by kickoff that's what the KOP is for.
So, if anything, perhaps FIRST should have put pneumatic tires in the KOP this year.

2. Agreed as long as COTS doesn't decide between success and failure for everyone it's fine. In this case I mean specifically that the game leaves -everyone- no choice but to buy a COTS part or fail. I want people to have access to the tools and for FIRST to continue to be a good reason to strive for that. FIRST has saved many a machine shop in a school and if we give up on that too easily that help will disappear. As we dash to protect COTS we should remember that to detractors of having these resources COTS is just another reason you don't need them. The fact it helps those less fortunate is why I voted openly in the other topic to let all COTS, even robots, in. However that decision carries responsibilities to steward the gains FIRST made for so many. I can tell everyone right now - if not for the FIRST FRC requirements: Team 11/193 would not have the tools we do. By 1995 the Mount Olive High School shops were seeing insufficient upkeep. When I graduated in 1994 was the last year there was any room to cut back without losses. Much of the money that keeps the tools there running comes from mentors, sponsors and FRC11/193.

It is admirable to think forward but also make sure you're not forgetting the positive stuff that happened before.

Sperkowsky

27-01-2016, 11:06

1. Even a month is too much warning to a vendor.
It's a month more than anyone else.
If FIRST needs something available by kickoff that's what the KOP is for.
So, if anything, perhaps FIRST should have put pneumatic tires in the KOP this year.

2. Agreed as long as COTS doesn't decide between success and failure for everyone it's fine. In this case I mean specifically that the game leaves -everyone- no choice but to buy a COTS part or fail. I want people to have access to the tools and for FIRST to continue to be a good reason to strive for that. FIRST has saved many a machine shop in a school and if we give up on that too easily that help will disappear. As we dash to protect COTS we should remember that to detractors of having these resources COTS is just another reason you don't need them. The fact it helps those less fortunate is why I voted openly in the other topic to let all COTS, even robots, in. However that decision carries responsibilities to steward the gains FIRST made for so many. I can tell everyone right now - if not for the FIRST FRC requirements: Team 11/193 would not have the tools we do. By 1995 the Mount Olive High School shops were seeing insufficient upkeep. When I graduated in 1994 was the last year there was any room to cut back without losses. Much of the money that keeps the tools there running comes from mentors, sponsors and FRC11/193.

It is admirable to think forward but also make sure you're not forgetting the positive stuff that happened before.
FIRST putting game specific items like pneumatic wheels is absurd.

I do not mean to sound this mean but seriously think this through. Pneumatic wheels are very useful this year. We bought the pneumatic wheel upgrade kit for the am14u3 the day it came out. It was also $350. How could you expect Andymark to include pneumatic wheels in the KOP essentially cutting down their profits substantially. Besides the fact that pneumatic wheels are not the only way to play this game and plenty of teams are going to show up with alternatives or the kit bot. Also many lower level teams do not even know what pneumatic wheels are essentially removing the edge from more knowledgeable teams. I watched the reveal video and pneumatic wheels were the first wheels to come to mind but many low resource Teams do not think like that.

Second point our school got rid of machine shops many years ago and outsourced everything to a vocational program. If you want to be a welder for. Instance you spend half the day in the vocational school welding and the other half back at our school for normal subjects. Therefore we started our rookie year without any tools at all the only place with tools being the wood shop for stage crew and the 2 wood shops down at the middle school. All 3 which were pretty much off limits. We continue to build up our capabilities while also obtaining sponsors. Like our waterjet cutting sponsor. Yesterday actually the head of buildings and grounds came by he looked at our workspace and said "we can make this a lot better" we ended up finding out he has a full Metal shop and would help us out with welding. He agreed to make new workstations for us a table for our mill and drops for pneumatics with quick disconnects. I am willing to bet if you can sell robotics to your school district you can convince them to support you.

Back to cots discussion though.

techhelpbb

27-01-2016, 11:50

FIRST putting game specific items like pneumatic wheels is absurd.

I do not mean to sound this mean but seriously think this through. Pneumatic wheels are very useful this year. We bought the pneumatic wheel upgrade kit for the am14u3 the day it came out. It was also $350. How could you expect Andymark to include pneumatic wheels in the KOP essentially cutting down their profits substantially. Besides the fact that pneumatic wheels are not the only way to play this game and plenty of teams are going to show up with alternatives or the kit bot. Also many lower level teams do not even know what pneumatic wheels are essentially removing the edge from more knowledgeable teams. I watched the reveal video and pneumatic wheels were the first wheels to come to mind but many low resource Teams do not think like that.

You mean like a multi-thousand dollar cRIO previously?
How about the game pieces?
Think about it.

Historically things were often put into the KOP to insure a more even playing field.
There's nothing very fair about the tires not being in there.

If the goal of COTS was to bring the lowest teams up, then AndyMark would have to service the teams with the least ability to make tires first. He has no such control in place now. So he sold out. If I wanted I could have bought all of Andy's tires. Then what? I cornered the market and blocked all the teams that had good reason to buy them. Now I have tires and the shop at FRC11/193 might not need those tires. Effectively blocking all the low resource teams. I wouldn't do that but I could do that and I bet many teams bought more tires than they need so, in a way, they did do that. I could have held that stock past the end of the build season then used it for my stuff for the handicapped or just liquidated it.

Keep in mind my stuff runs commodity trading for the Earth. I know how to play a market. I learned from the experts.
If profit overrides ethics you can bet you might not like what happens.

Second point our school got rid of machine shops many years ago and outsourced everything to a vocational program. If you want to be a welder for. Instance you spend half the day in the vocational school welding and the other half back at our school for normal subjects. Therefore we started our rookie year without any tools at all the only place with tools being the wood shop for stage crew and the 2 wood shops down at the middle school. All 3 which were pretty much off limits. We continue to build up our capabilities while also obtaining sponsors. Like our waterjet cutting sponsor. Yesterday actually the head of buildings and grounds came by he looked at our workspace and said "we can make this a lot better" we ended up finding out he has a full Metal shop and would help us out with welding. He agreed to make new workstations for us a table for our mill and drops for pneumatics with quick disconnects. I am willing to bet if you can sell robotics to your school district you can convince them to support you.

Back to cots discussion though.

Yeap we sent Electronics to the Vocational Technical school when the Technology programs couldn't support it. In the process in 1992 they sent me from Technology I & II (Technology II was actually made form me specifically I was the only student to ever take that new class that year. It is unclear it existed after that.) to Morris County Vocational Technical where I was Valedictorian in Electronics. They also put me on the bus with a bunch of students they intended to expel and had thus given up hope on. Then a few years later the Vocational Technical school gave up on Electronics and changed it to Cisco Technology. Then the County College of Morris gave up on it and wrapped it into Mechatronics. NJIT still teaches electronics I have a friend still paying his student loans from NJIT a decade later.

Making it another guys problem usually means it is still someone's problem.
COTS is the finest example of that - you make the problem to fabricate and do the logistics for it that of a professional.

Now I want to settle this - Mount Olive is very supportive of FRC11/193 and the requirements of the competitive aspect of FIRST these days. The COTS issue runs the risk that eventually the shop requirement will no longer be a requirement at all. Having seen this I have undertaken 2 actions. One I am collecting resources to run a shop separate from this program in the event they abandon supporting their own shops. This means a shop separate from my own shop and portable. Two I am considering from the advice of someone here on ChiefDelphi offering an award from those that fabricate and learn how to fabricate what they could have bought COTS. So even if the professionals eventually make it hard for those with the spirit to fabricate to do so and potentially win - their efforts are acknowledged.

So cause and effect.

Peyton Yeung

27-01-2016, 12:41

You mean like a multi-thousand dollar cRIO previously?
How about the game pieces?
Think about it.

Historically things were often put into the KOP to insure a more even playing field.
There's nothing very fair about the tires not being in there.

If the goal of COTS was to bring the lowest teams up, then AndyMark would have to service the teams with the least ability to make tires first. He has no such control in place now. So he sold out. If I wanted I could have bought all of Andy's tires. Then what? I cornered the market and blocked all the teams that had good reason to buy them. Now I have tires and the shop at FRC11/193 might not need those tires. Effectively blocking all the low resource teams. I wouldn't do that but I could do that and I bet many teams bought more tires than they need so, in a way, they did do that. I could have held that stock past the end of the build season then used it for my stuff for the handicapped or just liquidated it.

Firstly, pneumatic wheels/tank treads are not required for this game. As many teams have demonstrated, standard traction wheels are able to cross the defenses.

Secondly, pneumatic wheels are not impossible to find. Just because it isn't available at the time by our common vendors such as WCP, Vex, or AndyMark doesn't mean it is unobtainable.

If you were to buy all the stock of something from AndyMark that's fine but people will either find a similar product somewhere else or a company will step up to meet demand such as Tank Chain for tread.

techhelpbb

27-01-2016, 13:00

Firstly, pneumatic wheels/tank treads are not required for this game. As many teams have
demonstrated, standard traction wheels are able to cross the defenses.

Secondly, pneumatic wheels are not impossible to find. Just because it isn't available at the time by our common vendors such as WCP, Vex, or AndyMark doesn't mean it is unobtainable.

If you were to buy all the stock of something from AndyMark that's fine but people will either find a similar product somewhere else or a company will step up to meet demand such as Tank Chain for tread.

1. Yes but a whole lot of people want them, some may not have better choices. Enough demand to exhaust the most common supply chain and get some ugly remarks directed at these vendors for not being better stocked.

2. This time. The topic is general COTS. What if the next time it's something you can't just run off and get anywhere? The more complex the COTS item the more likely it's expensive and stock is limited.

3. Well aware of Tank Chain. Glad to see they were able to step up more there was a little while they weren't sure they could meet demand either. Still have to make the deliveries as well. Had a great conversation with a student where they lamented that more people found out about Tank Chain and buried that supply line as well. People are literally fishing for second and third choices because COTS leads people to think in the comfortable COTS box. Great till they can't get the comfortable COTS box.

A little courtesy reminder - I am the grumpy old man with an opinion here.
Someone want to take it up with me - take it up with me not Team 11 or 193.
I am almost 40 years old well past the point where I need permission from them to speak for myself.
I am also the only remaining active member of Team 8 which became Team 11 and that's even before Ernie.

gblake

27-01-2016, 14:05

Brian C

27-01-2016, 14:17

^^^^ Well Said!

Sunshine

27-01-2016, 14:23

There is a bigger picture than any one-dimensional aspect of this topic.

Like the elephant in the famous fable, that the several blind men declared was like a tree, a wall, a leaf, a snake, a stick, a ...; FIRST FRC is no one single method of *inspiration*.

It is not all about winning tournaments. Arguments that focus almost exclusively on winning tournament matches are very weak.

It is not all about learning to write code. Arguments that focus almost solely on code development are very weak.

It is not all about learning to become a machinist or CAD user. Arguments that focus almost exclusively on part/system design and fabrication are very weak.

Et cetera.

FIRST FRC (IMO) *is* about encouraging students to recognize that any of the zillions of multi-dimensional STEM pursuits that exist can be what they choose for a career. The topics I listed above involve only a few of the tools a FIRST team/mentor can use to accomplish that. They certainly aren't the only tools; and they certainly don't have to be mastered, or even tried, by participants. If those topics are simply noticed in a positive setting, FIRST's job is nearly done.

IMO, I haven't seen anyone come up with a cogent argument about why great, heaping, helpings of COTS parts, software, and/or strategic advice, prevents anyone from helping their team and individual students choose sensible goals, and then proudly achieve them during FIRST's annual rhythm.

I have seen complaints about each of the three topics that I listed above, and about a few more, but I haven't seen anyone convincingly write that they are unable to open the eyes of students to the STEM world of possibilities.

Market forces are going to continue to drive vendors to supply what customers want. If FRC continues to grow, greater numbers of teams are going to translate into more vendors supplying what those teams want to buy.

But... Do market forces that result in useful FRC COTS items stop anyone from helping students become interested in anything? Nah, they don't.

We can stop ourselves, if we get stuck in ruts; but that is something each person among us can easily fix, if we each care to fix it.

Blake

But but but ......... That was very well done! Thank You.

The best part of this discussion has been the self reflection it has warranted. Seeing, reading, and digesting the passion, commitment, and thoughts of others has been eye opening.

You are dead on. For review, I went back and read the mission statement. Here is the mission statement of FIRST. The advancement in COTS doesn't change the mission.........

Mission
The mission of FIRST is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting Mentor-based programs that build science, engineering, and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.

Vision
"To transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology leaders." Dean Kamen, Founder

Methodology
Engage kids in kindergarten through high school in exciting, Mentor-based, research and robotics programs that help them become science and technology leaders, as well as well-rounded contributors to society.

techhelpbb

28-01-2016, 00:38

Takes a deep breath and blows the dust off this article (http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/14/business/profile-dean-kamen-inventing-heroes-for-the-21st-century.html?pagewanted=all)
That article is older than a lot of you students.

No - COTS won't stop anyone from teaching shop skills if they want to teach them and if the students want to learn them.

However if your shop skills education is only being supported because you can't get everything you need for FIRST without it - then eventually COTS on the scale of whole professionally engineered systems and robots will make that not necessary and support for those shops will be lost.

We are not at that point but when we get there (notice I didn't write -if- we get there) it is very likely we will level out more than the dynamics of the field.

So in a world where your schools don't have shops <- where do your students get inspired to work with their hands?
Read the article and remember Dean doesn't have that stuff in his house because he runs a mere museum.

This is kind of dusty as well: https://web.archive.org/web/19961125044045/http://usfirst.org/news/960905.html

HolyHacker335

29-01-2016, 19:16

So on to my real question:

How does everyone feel about the sudden Proliferation of Purchasable, Prefabricated Parts (P4 for all you DoD acronym lovers like me)?

Well, you answered your own question for a couple of areas. Rookie teams that have a couple of bucks but little experience with fabrication could build a robot fairly quickly and compete. And that is a good thing as I personally believe, as a coach, that the only thing worse than a sucky robot and/or unprepared team at a competition is no robot at all.

Ekcrbe

30-01-2016, 15:01

No - COTS won't stop anyone from teaching shop skills if they want to teach them and if the students want to learn them.

However if your shop skills education is only being supported because you can't get everything you need for FIRST without it - then eventually COTS on the scale of whole professionally engineered systems and robots will make that not necessary and support for those shops will be lost.

We are not at that point but when we get there (notice I didn't write -if- we get there) it is very likely we will level out more than the dynamics of the field.

The day a team decides not to fight the closing of their shop because "well, we can get everything we need from COTS components anyway," I'll eat my robot.

As I have argued earlier, the teams that already have decent shop capabilities aren't reducing the amount of custom design and building they have to do by replacing it with COTS, they're maintaining the same level of custom work, shifting that energy to other non-COTS mechanisms and using COTS parts to free up the time to complete them. I fundamentally disagree that COTS parts will ever get to a point where a team could be compelled to buy a kit and not do anything to it before taking it to competition.

The only teams that would be noticeably decreasing the amount of work they do themselves are the teams that could make a robot to effectively complete every objective in the game with no COTS parts at all. Those aren't the teams we need to be worried about.

Chi Meson

05-02-2016, 14:09

I have only a few comments to add. Most of the arguments have been well made and I don't want to repeat (too much). In short, it's a slippery slope:

Highly modified components off the shelf can arguably go too far, but may be necessary for those teams that do not have the fabrication tools or the sponsors to do their machining. I can also see them necessary if a team finds out, very late in the season, that their original plan for a certain part has utterly failed, and their season is in jeopardy.Whether these COTS go too far can only be determined on a case by case basis. Fuzzy-fuzzy line.

An entire Robot Off The Shelf is absolutely over the line, in my opinion. This is the "absurd conclusion" of the slippery slope fallacy itself.

Many good and great teams had to go through a season or two (or in our case, four) with machines that barely moved (if at all) in the first match. I consider it one of the best things I have done with my life just to be part of this team that went from watching the elims (for years) from the bleachers to finally bringing home a banner (I like parentheses!). What we needed to learn was the process of prototyping and fabrication in the early weeks of build. That's part of the game and part of growing your team. I remember being inspired by the whole process, watching the the other respectable teams at the regionals and thinking: "we're gonna be like THOSE teams one day."

Buying a ROTS designed with the specific purpose of getting the purchasing team into a winning alliance is skipping so many steps of the process and completely bypassing the purpose of the competition. Veteran mentors: you KNOW what Dean and Woodie have to say about that.

My final input, which may have already been proposed:
Even if the ROTS , or a game-specific COTS, is sold as a "kit" of individual components, no more than a combined total of $400 of those components that are part of the said kit should be allowed per team. If that's not satisfactory, then FIRST and we need to iron out the parameters of "fairness" in COTS, and new limits should be set. All ROTS should be banned outright from competition.

This is my opinion, and does not represent the opinions of others on this team.

xXhunter47Xx

05-02-2016, 14:51

I believe P4 was designed and is very useful for rookie, poorly funded, and/or struggling teams. It isn't like you purchase a ROTS and then compete. You still have to do work in terms of getting it working and what not. You still have to do some work to see what COTS parts work best for your design.

As those rookie/poorly funded/struggling/all of the above teams start getting more and more experience I think that they'll naturally advance to fabricating their own parts, maybe using the COTS parts as a reference or and idea but designing and fabricating something unique to their team. They'll realize that these COTS parts are designed for more general use, and they'll want to create something specific to the game. I also think this will naturally happen because many will agree that designing and building something by yourself is much more satisfying and fun than buying a kit and putting it together :D

tl;dr P4 is for starting/struggling teams and those teams will naturally progress to fabrication from scratch as they get more experience.

techhelpbb

05-02-2016, 15:41

The day a team decides not to fight the closing of their shop because "well, we can get everything we need from COTS components anyway," I'll eat my robot.

Assuming you took from my statement that I meant that the team would get that decision. A school may decide that they simply had no reason to have a shop, and won't need to support it any further, just because you can go around it with COTS and still get on the field.

When there are superstar teams that leave everyone else in the dust year after year: it just furthers that point.

If your goal is just to teach the non-fabrication skills and you don't care if you are massively competitive someone can join and say 'that's good enough'. Worse if you have a shop and aren't always a superstar team anyway the school may decide the fabrication work isn't worth the cost. Maybe arguing the'll just send it all out for fabrication. The more your school as a whole is detached from actively supporting FIRST the worse the risk. A few teams have had to leave schools for a variety of reasons. It is not easy to detach from, at the minimum, a convenient roof over a team's head. One of the things you loose is a place for the shop.

It is, after all, very similar to the argument schools use to close shop programs: it's the very expensive program serving a minority of the students and it's not getting us anything. If the quality of ROTS continues to rise beyond a certain point the quality of 6 weeks of school student conducted fabrication will not compete.

High school shops were extremely common place for a very long time in the United States. Over time the arguments that protected them slowly eroded because there wasn't a way to protect something like this when: most people involved in the decision decided that there weren't great jobs locally that could compete with the items filling the shelves of Walmart in a global economy. I also frequently heard colleges did not require them to teach these fabrication skills. US FIRST (which became FIRST) provided a counter argument (intentionally or otherwise). It specifically encouraged some schools to revive programs they were abandoning with these shops because it supported the competition, which was like a sport. It turned the shops into cost equivalent of sporting fields. Once you don't need to develop your skills to play a sport why wouldn't you reduce the number of schools maintaining these fields? Why not use the one at the park or someone's grassy lot?

If you asked the students in a school loosing the shops if they were happy about it - I bet they were not. However it takes a community to keep a commitment of resources like that and the more opportunities you give the detractors to the cost the more likely the resource is at risk.

The COTS/ROTS argument is a strong argument. It allows more competition in FIRST. It allows FIRST to go to places that *might* be willing to eventually have shops. It is an inclusive argument but not carefully managed it seeks ever cheaper and more complex goods. The cheaper the goods the more likely they are made elsewhere removing the need for the skills locally. The less fabrication skills you need locally to support FIRST the less fabrication skills you need to teach and if the quality of the COTS/ROTS reaches a point you can't compete. We in America have lived this cycle. It in part created US FIRST. It was a big selling point way back at the start. I don't see any control actively in place, and the $400 control is often manipulated, that will prevent this outcome and personally I feel that it is therefore inevitable. I mean we teach students to work like this in FLL/FTC with each passing year: why would those students not wish to continue to buy systems with parts fabricated for them eliminating their effort during the 6 week season? As long as we assume it's actually a 6 week season. The competitive aspect is at best a temporary control.

I seriously doubt 20+ years ago if I had walked into the room and you told me the goal was to sell lots of parts and play a game I would have hung around for this long. I know people, by the way, that are no longer around for this reason as mentors. Why fight a situation that looks like you want to exclude people from the game on the surface? I deeply applaud all of you that continue to teach the fabrication skills but if the manufacturing power of America couldn't avoid this outcome it is highly unlikely FIRST can either. By 1996 US FIRST had already switched to FIRST. Sooner or later design will be more important than fabrication because on the scale of America we still hold leads for intellectual property. You'll just be buying the parts for that work from some place else doing some short run prototypes and best hope the logistics work out from whatever global source you selected. Based on the rate of transformation currently it will be before I die. It will be great to teach engineering in a global age but with each generation that doesn't get fabrication skills it will ignore what every old manufacturer in America I know tells me - it's a cycle - the guy over there looks great for now but just you wait till they don't get the work to you in time or there is a problem. It only needs a few generation gap in available fabrication skill knowledge for a really unpleasant issue to develop in which the guy 'over there' can dictate what you can actually accomplish. If you doubt the reality of that argument - stop buying 3D printers that promise to let you make plastic parts in your home. I mean you could just fulfill your interests by buying that from somewhere else. I figure that won't happen so some element of what I am saying here hits the mark.

Navid Shafa

05-02-2016, 17:48

The day a team decides not to fight the closing of their shop because "well, we can get everything we need from COTS components anyway," I'll eat my robot.

Our rookie team has designed strongly around VexPro and COTS components. While this makes it much easier for a team without access to a permanent shop-space yet easier, we still have our fair share of challenges.

It's rather impressive how far COTS components have gone over the last few years and how many options are currently available. I see this continued advancment as doing wonders for the lower resource and lower to mid-tier teams. So many people talk about wanting to "Raise the floor" of FRC. In my mind, this is arguably the easiest way to do it. As long as resources are available teaching teams how to properly design for and implement these resources, COTS components have a very significant capacity to "Inspire" more students. Having working subsystems and a functional robot that allow a team to play the game is inspiring.

Not every team has access to an engineering mentor. COTS components and knowledge on how to use them allow these teams to close the gap.

mrnoble

06-02-2016, 00:06

My school recently invested $1 million in a new facility that includes a reasonable machine shop, a suite of 3D printers, and other things that make custom fabrication a major focus. We are hardly unique, or even in the forefront; I've seen many other schools and districts around the country moving in this direction. I guess I don't see the trend being that learning to build things in school is going away. We use COTS stuff extensively, like most of you, but so what? FRC is hardly becoming a "buy stuff and play a game" program. I'll bet you an ice cream sundae that I won't see three robots that look or perform the same at any of the regionals I attend this year.

mrnoble

06-02-2016, 01:11

I also want to respond to the idea that shop programs at schools were closed because goods have been manufactured in such a way (overseas) that jobs disappeared which required training in shop class.

I've been a shop teacher for 15 years, and I've seen many programs shut down in my city and region. My honest assessment as to why this has happened puts the blame on three things:

1) Short sightedness among administration. This could come from following the latest buzz in educationese (ironically, this cycle it's "STEM" and "STEAM" that everyone is saying), or from seeing that mouth-wateringly large space the shop occupies and imagining other uses for it. Whatever the reason, I've seen shops turned into weight rooms and student lounges as well as being subdivided into several classrooms, and I've seen hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment effectively thrown away.

2) Liability. Getting sued is a real and heavy concern for schools, teachers, and districts, and these types of classes sure look more dangerous than Lit or Math.

3) Lack of vision on the part of teachers. When we talk about these classes "serving a limited population", we're saying there are 10 students in a class. I've known teachers who were quite happy with that arrangement, and milked it. When shop class means "easy", and supervisors don't see much other than bird houses being built by the six students who show up, what else are they going to do other than assume it's a waste of resources? This is where I lay most of the blame. Shop classes have the opportunity to link academic disciplines through a new form of learning; they can provide kids with scholarships, travel opportunities, and community service challenges. Programs like FRC are one of the key ways shop programs can and should link up to real and valuable academic gains for our students.

TL/DR: if teachers make the shop programs valuable to the school and community, they will grow, not shrink. Just my opinion, of course.

jkelleyrtp

06-02-2016, 01:27

To me, it's a slight bit "Chief-delphi-ish" to stroll through this thread and see all the team numbers; a good 50-60% in the <1000's.

5511 is a mildly successful team, rookies in 2015. We had the opportunity to go to champs last year and it really opened our eyes to the possibilities and abilities of some of the greatest FRC teams. Like many other teams, we had to make brackets for our lift - and ended up using stepper bits and whatever steel plates were at Home Depot. Garage-built, low resource, student-run team down in NC. We have the RTP right next door but hadn't tapped into that until this year. The only COTS we had was the KOP because we didn't have the money or know-how to make our own.

A few of the other teams in our area have also had the chance to go to champs and see what some of the "champs-achieving" teams do. Their take-away was very different than ours: COTS COTS COTS. 3 CIM dogshifters with PTO from WCP puts you quite a bit close to that $400 limit. All vex bearing blocks with tensioners and versatubing. While these are great resources, they personally feel like overkill for a COTS part.

Our take-away from champs was different. We purchased the cheapest CNC router on the market (X-Carve at around $1100; took lots of convincing) and are relatively happy with the results. Getting the machine to breeze through aluminum was a challenge, but I can personally vouch for the learning process inspiring the other students. Getting into CAD, CAM, and all of the aspects of CNC machining for our freshman has been incredibly value - but they don't realize it yet. We could have just bought versatube for the rails and the crazy selection of gussets in order to be very competitive very quickly. Now, however, our students have skills applicable in jobs later on in life. They have learned design that isn't simply 'slap it together.'

Your opinion on the matter is your own, but just keep in mind that there are ways to achieve similar results with very low resources and some dedicated learners.

gblake

06-02-2016, 10:34

To me, it's a slight bit "Chief-delphi-ish" to stroll through this thread and see all the team numbers; a good 50-60% in the <1000's.

5511 is a mildly successful team, rookies in 2015. We had the opportunity to go to champs last year and it really opened our eyes to the possibilities and abilities of some of the greatest FRC teams. ...
I'm not sure if you meant to convey this, but there is a strong chance you used the phrase "greatest FRC teams." to mostly (only?) refer to teams that did well on-the-field, and not to all the teams that are great at all the many other things an FRC team is asked to do.

If I got the correct impression, and on-the-field did dominate how you were selecting who is great and who isn't, it's certainly understandable that you did; but ... I'll buy a really nice dinner for the person who gives me a magic wand I can use to get that to stop happening throughout FRC (and elsewhere).

An FRC team that exists only to build excellent robots is an FRC team that is dead. An FRC team that exists to help communities and students learn to integrate pursuing, achieving and celebrating STEM things into their lives, is an FRC team that is alive and striving to be great.

My hunch is that if you guys continue what you are doing, without letting yourselves be seduced by the bright lights and dazzle of the elimination matches, you are on your way to being a great team. A great team that uses a robot to accomplish your goals, instead of being your goal. A great team that maybe never gets a blue banner, but becomes an important part of the fabric of your community. A great team that goes beyond just engaging and training the people who are already in love with STEM things. A great team whose accomplishments last much longer than any single season.

If what I have written strikes a chord in you and your teammates, definitely keep learning from great teams whenever and wherever you meet them. And, when you are deciding whether an FRC team is great, remember to look at their robots last (if at all), not first. The robot is one tool. At best it is an *imperfect* reflection of only part of a team's success. The robot is not the team.

Blake