Lessons Learned - The Negative

[Koko Ed]

What happened this year that FIRST could stand to improve upon?

[BuddyB309]

One thing. ANIMATION!!! It was neglected this year. The autodesk booth was small, they didn't play the audio of the animation for AVA winner. Its a serious competition that no one pays attention to.

At least give us some tables in the autodesk booth so us few animators would have a place to sit learn from eachother. Its really hard for us to swap info with seating only for Phill and Ted presentations.

[Alan Anderson]

[These all relate to the big screens in the pit.]

Not having the field video showing was a disappointment, and made it difficult to know how close to on schedule the matches were.

There was a sign by Pit Admin advising everyone to pay attention to the "dynamic" match schedule in order to know when to leave for queuing, but the displayed schedules always seemed to be the originally published times.

After the qualification matches were finished, it would have been better to show the alliance selection screen rather than the now-empty match schedule.

The Galileo screen had the Windows task bar hiding much of the match score information at the bottom of the screen for a while. Nobody in Pit Admin knew anything about where the displays were coming from or who could do something about the problem.

[BuddyB309]

Another thing.

-If the Chairmans Award is the highest honor FIRST can bestow upon a team. Then save that award for last. If you give out the Chairmans award second, it doesn't seem like a big deal, and the rest of the day is.....blah.

[artdutra04]

Another thing.

-If the Chairmans Award is the highest honor FIRST can bestow upon a team. Then save that award for last. If you give out the Chairmans award second, it doesn't seem like a big deal, and the rest of the day is.....blah.They used to do that, but nearly everyone would leave right after the second (or third) finals match was over to get to the wrap party and half the people wouldn't be there to witness the CA winner. By moving it to the beginning, they get to enjoy the rest of the competition and everyone gets to see them win.

BTW, Congratulations 236!

[rsisk]

How about do all the awards first then run the final matches? Or is that too much buzzkill? Maybe there is no good way to run the finals and First is just searching for what works.

[SamC]

Another thing.

-If the Chairmans Award is the highest honor FIRST can bestow upon a team. Then save that award for last. If you give out the Chairmans award second, it doesn't seem like a big deal, and the rest of the day is.....blah.
Doing it towards the beginning also allows the awarded team to be seated on stage and recognized by everyone throughout the remainder of the matches/awards ceremony.

[Herodotus]

I would suggest moving some of the award to the beginning of Saturday or end of Friday, instead of putting them in between Einstein matches. Have the biggest awards on Saturday, such as Chairman's, Engineering Inspiration, and the FLL and FTC big awards (the names escape me for those.) It's pretty annoying to watch a match, sit for a half hour, and then watch one more match, and then sit for another 45 minutes and so on.

Though I can also see the flaws in what I've suggested, so maybe there is indeed no good way to arrange the awards and satisfy everyone.

The camera work could be pretty bad sometimes. Showing the drive teams every once in awhile is nice and all, but sometimes the camera would hover on the driver team or human player for 5 to 10 seconds (which is a long time in one of these matches.) I'm sure it doesn't matter up on the big screen but it is extremely frustrating to be watching the webcast and not even be seeing what's going on half the time. This seemed to be mostly an issue during the semi-finals on Einstein, oddly enough. Finals were pretty good and the divisions were pretty good. Maybe a separate feed for the webcast could be done? It would be pretty sweet to allow people watching the webcast to choose which camera to see, or at least have the option of watching from some kind of fixed camera that sees the whole field.

Outside of Atlanta the only thing I'd do is make sure to never, ever penalize a team for doing well. G14 wasn't too much of a big deal, thankfully, but the concept itself is just not good at all.

[EricH]

How about do all the awards first then run the final matches? Or is that too much buzzkill? Maybe there is no good way to run the finals and First is just searching for what works.
Now how do you deal with dead time during finals?

Here's how I'd do it: First, have all the non-robot awards other than the CA on Friday at opening. That includes the Founder's Award, Website, Animation, Autodesk, Volunteer, and WFA. (moves at least 3 to Friday AM)
Second, speed up the transition time. Slim down the intros as much as possible--the videos the last time I was watching were great for that.
Third, trim down the award/team intros if possible.

Oh, yeah, and keep speeches to a known length. Also, keep Dean from speaking (like that'll happen).

The real buzzkill is that it goes later than it's supposed to.

[Steven Sigley]

choose which camera to see,

at least have the option of watching from some kind of fixed camera that sees the whole field.

never, ever penalize a team for doing well.

I like those 3 points.

To be able to choose camera angles may be pushing it but it'd be nice.

And a fixed camera would leave me very grateful.
It's annoying to try and see how exactly you played out a match when your most interesting part for your team isnt visible because the cameraman is focused on something else. At least one fixed field cam would be fantastic.

And penalizing a team for doing well. I just don't like it, it kinda hurts the game. Instead of focusing on achieving the most with your robot and aspiring to be "the best you can be" better teams are spent making sure not to get too far ahead of the opposing alliance rather than showcasing the power and ferocity of the robot they spent so much time and money on.

[Mike Ross]

The camera work could be pretty bad sometimes. Showing the drive teams every once in awhile is nice and all, but sometimes the camera would hover on the driver team or human player for 5 to 10 seconds (which is a long time in one of these matches.) I'm sure it doesn't matter up on the big screen but it is extremely frustrating to be watching the webcast and not even be seeing what's going on half the time. This seemed to be mostly an issue during the semi-finals on Einstein, oddly enough. Finals were pretty good and the divisions were pretty good. Maybe a separate feed for the webcast could be done? It would be pretty sweet to allow people watching the webcast to choose which camera to see, or at least have the option of watching from some kind of fixed camera that sees the whole field.

Outside of Atlanta the only thing I'd do is make sure to never, ever penalize a team for doing well. G14 wasn't too much of a big deal, thankfully, but the concept itself is just not good at all.

Agreed on both counts. The webcasts were hard to watch sometimes because of the camera work. I realize that in this game it can be tough to follow all the action, but lingering close-ups of pinned robots or drivers don't help anyone.

As for G14... well... no... just no. Please, never again. A team should never have to worry about being "too good". I would bet the farm that it will be among the rules to be "adjusted" for IRI. That's usually not a good sign.

[jblay]

the camera work was pretty good i most of the divisions but Einstein was truly awful. it was impossible to keep track with them zooming in on random things and doing top views.

[Billfred]

-G14. It's my least favorite rule in six years of FRC. I don't like the concept of teams being handicapped for success in competition--and I say that as a mentor of teams that have been whooped pretty hard in some matches over the years. Outside of the GTR finals, where 188's absence caused them to try to double-G14 their opponents for the third match, there wasn't any real strategy to it either. The concept might work in other sports--victory ballast in auto racing comes to mind--but not here.
-On Q&A, the only ruling (battery panic aside--it was resolved in time) that really caused me to grumble was that of the IFI Kitbot's legality. If I've got an old kit part that is still commercially available and otherwise legal, let me put down the cost on the BoM and move on. It's reminiscent of the "grip tape" versus "safety tread" debacle of 2007.
-On the pit displays, the blue alliance was a little too blue--so much so that it became hard to read the team numbers at times. A little lighter shade of blue would make it much more readable.
-At the Championship, we were a backup on Curie. We were stymied a little bit during lunch because we didn't know to pick up pit crew badges from the scoring table before going back. Announcing that next time would help greatly--it's not quick to get those badges back to the pits!
-The Driver's Station woes leave me a little uneasy for the off-season. I'm sure, however, that if FIRST isn't working on it already, they're starting as soon as they can get the trucks unloaded and breathe for a split-second.
-I'm sure others will harp on the open-trailer-equals-death matter here, but I'm neutral about it. It's always been hard, sometimes nearly impossible, to win a round with a dead or missing robot; this year was just more pronounced.

For the most part, I enjoyed this season. On to 2010!

[fuzzy1718]

A new DS system is much needed:D !!! And consistantcy on what is a field fault and a team fault. I don't know how many times a team would be given a 2 min clock to replace a fried DS and then the next match a team was given a 5 min, because it was ruled a field fault.:ahh: :confused:

I personally hated the emphasis on the human players this year; a team could win due to an awesome human player, not a robot. To me that at a robotics competition is not right.

[Rick TYler]

I'm sure others will harp on the open-trailer-equals-death matter here, but I'm neutral about it. It's always been hard, sometimes nearly impossible, to win a round with a dead or missing robot; this year was just more pronounced.

So let's not ever have a missing robot on an alliance. By coincidence I was talking to an Old Respected mentor this last week on this very subject. Starting with his notion (I liberally borrow ideas but at least I don't steal them...):

1. In regionals, allow a "hot fix" robot to compete. This might be a team's second robot, or maybe just a team that likes a weird challenge. During qualifying, this robot fills in every time there is a no show. It isn't listed in the standings, but its won/loss record and other scores are recorded and made available during alliance selection. While the hot fix robot cannot be an alliance captain, it may be chosen for an eliminations alliance. During eliminations, the rules would work as they do today.

2. In invitational tournaments (like Championships), whatever means is used to pick a team off the waiting list is used to pick the hot fix robot for each division. Since this team may or may not get a chance to compete, they get the "Rudy Ruettiger" trophy and an automatic invitation to Championships for the following year. They are eligible for selection to an eliminations alliance just like in paragraph 1.

Something like that...

[martin417]

After my second year of involvement with FIRST, I still have the same complaint. I understand that while COOPERTITION is way of FIRST (now trademarked and patented), this is, at its heart, a COMPETITION (otherwise, why keep score?). I understand that it's not about winning, but teams DO want to win the competition. Besides punishing teams for doing well (G14), there is the random, or "luck" factor. If a team works hard, and makes a great robot that meets the goals of the competition better than other teams, they should be rewarded. At every regional I attended, including championships, The seedings did not reflect the ability of the robots or the teams. If FIRST wants this to be a "sport", and be as popular as football, they need to come up with a better way to rank teams prior to alliance pairings. I have no problem with the serpentine draft and the no refusal rules, I see how that can prevent "super alliances", and make scouting important. I do have a problem with some of the best teams not even being in the top 8. Throughout the season, I saw teams that could not score at all ranked as the number one seed, while top scoring bots were not even in the top 10. Perhaps the seeding should be done based on the scoring of the bots rather than a win-loss record.

I don't have all the answers, but the questions remain. As many smart people as there are involved with FIRST, I am confident that they can come up with something better.

[nahstobor]

Bring the district format to Virginia :)

[RyanN]

What did everyone think about the new control system?

Maybe some criticism will help NI and FIRST make the system better for next year if your team ran into any problems.

[Dmentor]

Bring the district format to Virginia :)

Amen. Although I tend to think of this as a positive for the Michigan District format rather than a negative for the traditional regionals. The extra competitions, more matches per competition and selection process was really apparent (at least to this viewer) at the Championship. As much as I loved the DC and NASA/VCU regionals this year, I hope that Virginia follows the Michigan model soon.

[BJT]

Just one thing, the TV screen that shows everyones ranking and win/loss record is really hard to follow when it jumps a few lines every few seconds. As soon as you find your number it moves and you lose it. It would be easier to follow if it could smoothly scroll through the rankings.

[Doug G]

1) The game this year was really hard to follow and not that fun to watch. Most of the time, especially in elims, you could not tell who was winning. In a couple of elim matches all the bots were pinned in the corners for most of a match. Boring. Games need a couple of central places where scoring happens. 2008 had two hurdling areas centrally located, 2007 had the rack, etc..

2) The playing surface really leveled the field and G14 was not required at all.

3) 40 lb allowance was great, THANK YOU!! However, 6 week build season now becomes an 8-10 week season for some and since some teams basically redesigned and rebuilt devices between events; we are treading into more sticky situations in future years if this continues. I attended 3 events (2 as a coach, and one as a spectator) and none of them enforced / checked the 40 lb allowances. I know GP was in place and can't think of any exceptions, but I know the GP boundaries will be pushed further in the future.

4) The DS seems a bit delicate and could use some improvements to beef it up. Don't get em wrong, what WPI has done is really amazing - but it could be a bit more durable.

[shgshgshgshg]

I think that FIRST need a more diverse game. It almost seemed like this year that every other robot did the same thing, and only the most experienced and wealthy teams that can afford the best parts seem to be able to win. The other problem I have is the charge for Atlanta. Our team knew before even going to our regional that even if we won we would not be going to the championship due to lack of money. There needs to be some sort of fund to help rookie, or struggling teams keep a team, because as of right now we do not know if the team will exist next year...

[MikeReilly]

Love the ideas on fixing the "no show" problem. As mentioned in another post by a team mentor of ours, there was a regional where a robot missed the first 4 matches and was ranked #1 since they had not lost. They ended up ranked 6th at the end.

I think there are other remedies as well:
If you're in cue/q/queue(?), and your opponent is missing one, you get to pick from the previous alliance that left, they don't. Bring a spare battery.

Or, in "graciousness", your team chooses to leave a team from your alliance off the floor. That's the easiest, closest to "gracious profoopertition" you can get. Is "profoopertition" trademarked yet?

[MishraArtificer]

At the Great Lakes Regional (cough, cough) Michigan State Championships, the driver's stations kept dying Mysteriously. Turns out they weren't grounded for static charges: the plastic wheels running on the regolith surface was popping the driver's stations all weekend.

First, GROUND THEM!

[Herodotus]

Another thing I remember now. Could we get a more readable font for alliance selection and the brackets being projected up on the big screen? It's always pretty tough to read the numbers.

[Tottanka]

At the Great Lakes Regional (cough, cough) Michigan State Championships, the driver's stations kept dying Mysteriously. Turns out they weren't grounded for static charges: the plastic wheels running on the regolith surface was popping the driver's stations all weekend.

First, GROUND THEM!

i wouldn't worry about that, regolith and rover wheels are not returning.

[DarkFlame145]

G14, was unneeded as many have said before. Also one thing that I have noticed from 2006 on is that FRC is starting to get soft, first with the bumpers and now with the Themed game. I miss the older days (2005 back) where it was metal on metal slamming into each other. One more thing I think FIRST is making too many robot design rules, so the robots are becoming bland, look-a-likes.

[AlexD744]

Well I would like to see matches replayed if there were feild prolems. Our first qualifier was lost because our robot, which had communication, which worked right before we left the pit and right after we returned, did not move the whole match, the match did not ount for us, however, that looks exactly like a los because no points are given. Also, could alliance pairings for qualifications be a bit more even.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

After my second year of involvement with FIRST, I still have the same complaint. I understand that while COOPERTITION is way of FIRST (now trademarked and patented), this is, at its heart, a COMPETITION (otherwise, why keep score?). I understand that it's not about winning, but teams DO want to win the competition. Besides punishing teams for doing well (G14), there is the random, or "luck" factor. If a team works hard, and makes a great robot that meets the goals of the competition better than other teams, they should be rewarded. At every regional I attended, including championships, The seedings did not reflect the ability of the robots or the teams. If FIRST wants this to be a "sport", and be as popular as football, they need to come up with a better way to rank teams prior to alliance pairings. I have no problem with the serpentine draft and the no refusal rules, I see how that can prevent "super alliances", and make scouting important. I do have a problem with some of the best teams not even being in the top 8. Throughout the season, I saw teams that could not score at all ranked as the number one seed, while top scoring bots were not even in the top 10. Perhaps the seeding should be done based on the scoring of the bots rather than a win-loss record.

I don't have all the answers, but the questions remain. As many smart people as there are involved with FIRST, I am confident that they can come up with something better.


While I agree that this is a competition, the rest of your statement I must, respectfully, disagree with.

1) <G14> is not a punishment. It is a conditional statement and one that the teams can control. A failure of a team to not control their own scoring, and thus invoke the 2x or 3x condition, just means that that team is not paying attention well enough (with very few exceptions).

2) There is no "no refusal" rule, but there is a "refuse and you cannot be picked again" rule. This rule is strategic in nature.

3) The game is not about scoring. The game is about your alliance having more points than your opponents alliance. Have you ever considered that those 'non-scoring' robots are picking because they make their whole alliance better?

And now back to the thread:
My biggest concern this year was the number of 'redos' and the lack of information getting back to the teams in question as to why they were happening.

[sdcantrell56]

While I agree that this is a competition, the rest of your statement I must, respectfully, disagree with.

1) <G14> is not a punishment. It is a conditional statement and one that the teams can control. A failure of a team to not control their own scoring, and thus invoke the 2x or 3x condition, just means that that team is not paying attention well enough (with very few exceptions).



And I will have to disagree with this. At the regionals we attended, the real time scoring was not accurate enough to be able to stop scoring to avoid a G14. We had one match where the score at the end of the match showed us winning 46 to 34. After the volunteers had finished there official count the final score showed us with 109 to 36. I completely agree that if we had seen that the score was what it actually was we could have slowed down our scoring or scored on ourselves. However, as it was there is no way I as the coach was going to tell our drive team to slow down when we only had a 12 point lead. This happened throughout our matches, and because of this, there was no way I would call off our drive team no matter what the real time scoring said. Additionally, teams are picked based off of scouting, which this year was primarily based on how many balls you could score versus how many were scored on you. If we were capable of scoring 25-30 balls in a match, then we would absolutely do it so that we would be the most appealing team to other scouts if for some reason we did not seed in the top 8.

Additionally this whole idea of punishing our students by not allowing them to perform to there full potential just because they put in more time or effort than others is ridiculous. Teams should be rewarded for building truly impressive robots and should be allowed to play to there full potential no matter what. I have been involved with FIRST for a while now and have been a part of teams with very good robots and very awful robots. I know in my rookie year when we were beaten very badly, I never once felt bad about myself, and instead took it as a challenge to not let that happen next year. After improving from year to year, I am finally a part of a team that builds incredible robots, and it is because we have very good, dedicated students and mentors.

I do feel that FIRST has gotten "soft" in the past few years with various rules to try to level the playing field. This is a competition, and the competition aspect is what draws the majority of people, and especially spectators to the event. There is no other sport that penalizes a team for being stronger than there opponent, and I hope FIRST gets away from this silly practice in the future.

As a whole I did enjoy this game very much and I liked the complexity of building a truly competitive robot to accomplish the various intricacies of this game.

[MikeReilly]

I agree with my 1771 mentors on their points. Want to level the playing field? Unlevel the surface. That is, let's get away from building a pizza box bottom, let's make these things crawl over something for an advantage, but still allow the common pizza box to go around. Something like that.

I now know that you can't be truly competitive without massive hours and generosity by mentors and sponsors, and enough money for a twin robot and preferably a second regional. If I calculate the volunteer mentor hours as cash donations, we probably spent over $50,000 this year. Heck, two regionals, the Nationals and a twin robot will bring you to $20,000, and that doesn't even include pizza on build Saturdays. The BEST competition is much more fair in this resolve.

Is it time for FIRST Elite, and keep FIRST FRC for those that can't get the cash? Maybe that's IRI? I'd like to know the average budget of other teams like the ThunderChickens, etc. Not to point fingers, but to bring reality to what exists. My guess is you can't get to the top without amazing dedicated volunteers and resources (material, financial, etc.).

On an ending positive: after only a few years, I have students disappointed that they didn't make it to the World Championship Finals of an engineering contest. Pretty cool.

[sdcantrell56]

I guess my question then is why do we even need to impose rules to try to level the playing field. No matter where you are in the real world there will always be people or companies with more or less than you. I know our team budget does not even come close to many other teams but that is ok. It makes the accomplishment that much sweeter. Additionally, those teams who do have more should feel great for achieving all that they have. It takes a ton of work to obtain funding and tooling to be able to get to the level of some teams and that should be applauded. I think the FIRST model is fine and instead of trying to force the field to be "level" through a rule (G14), we should just embrace that some teams have more and some have less and no matter the situation you can build a very good robot. I know that I will be pushing and motivating our team to seek out more sponsors and such and to way day grow our program into one as incredible and efficient as 217.

[Chris Fultz]

while is is disappointing to have a no-show robot on Friday, doesn't it provide an extra incentive for you on thursday to make sure every robot is ready to play? the team you help may be your partner in the first match.

if the easy solution to a no-show robot was to grab a replacement from the field, then there would be less incentive to help the struggling teams and eveyone would be "more likely" to focus on themselves. the struggling team would continue to struggle, and miss the inspiration that comes from being part of the competition.

[sdcantrell56]

I guess I dont really think that teams need the incentive to help teams fix there robots. For me if I have time at a competition I would rather help a struggling team fix there robot than sit around and talk about nothing. Most teams would help each other out whether they were allied with them in the future or not. That is just the FIRST spirit I guess, so I don't see how adding a filler line would hurt that aspect of FIRST.

[Francis-134]

1) The game this year was really hard to follow and not that fun to watch. Most of the time, especially in elims, you could not tell who was winning. In a couple of elim matches all the bots were pinned in the corners for most of a match. Boring. Games need a couple of central places where scoring happens. 2008 had two hurdling areas centrally located, 2007 had the rack, etc..

2) The playing surface really leveled the field and G14 was not required at all.

3) 40 lb allowance was great, THANK YOU!! However, 6 week build season now becomes an 8-10 week season for some and since some teams basically redesigned and rebuilt devices between events; we are treading into more sticky situations in future years if this continues. I attended 3 events (2 as a coach, and one as a spectator) and none of them enforced / checked the 40 lb allowances. I know GP was in place and can't think of any exceptions, but I know the GP boundaries will be pushed further in the future.

4) The DS seems a bit delicate and could use some improvements to beef it up. Don't get em wrong, what WPI has done is really amazing - but it could be a bit more durable.

WPI did NOT make the driver station, Quikbyte did.

[davidalln]

while is is disappointing to have a no-show robot on Friday, doesn't it provide an extra incentive for you on thursday to make sure every robot is ready to play? the team you help may be your partner in the first match.

I agree with you completely. FIRST is a collective learning experience, not an isolated one. If it were, almost every team with a number over 1500 would not be at the level they are today. I know we wouldn't be around if it weren't for Kell Robotics (1311).

And on the <G14> issue, I thought that it was gentle enough that the "punishment" helped more than it hurt. In all honesty, if any team quadruples another team's score, they probably don't need their super cells to win. Yes, there are some exceptions and it isn't perfect, but it was an OK system with good intentions.

That said, I wouldn't be the first one to bring it up at a GDC meeting.

[MikeReilly]

Completely agree on assisting other teams. Our first match last year we helped a team from another country (with no common language) get past inspection and onto the field. While I may be incorrect, a team this year refused assistance, and did not show. It is also the professional thing to admit the need for assistance, to help your alliance by acknowledging your true state.

[pentau]

I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, but I think it would be great if FIRST could return to hanging the enormous "sponsor logo" banners on the black curtain at the regionals instead of just a banner with the FIRST logo. It seems to be an easy way to give recognition to sponsors that support the event.

[bigbeezy]

I have been with FIRST since 2005, was a driver from 05-08 and a spectator this year. And i have to say I thought last years game was boring to watch, but this one was bad. As a driver this game is sweet, but as a spectator theres no real excitement. I mean sure when your bot is out there or your rooting for certian teams to win its a little more fun, but still theres no "wow" factor. Like in 06 and 07 there were ramps teams would climb in the last second, which made it exciting; 05 the line; 04 hanging on the bar. The Supercells were rarely scored and most of the time it was scored by the alliance that was winning anyways.

I would like to see a game where more than 3 designs would be present. maybe have 2 different shapes or sizes of element to manipulate.

Another thing, on Archimedes the DJ had like 10 songs he would play over and over again. They are good songs but they get old real quick.

[FRC4ME]

Let me say something about the uneven resources issue.

I've been a student member of Team 339 for three years, and we've always considered ourselves one of the "small teams". We get a reasonable amount of money each year (enough to attend two regionals, but not for a second robot or Atlanta most years), but we have to work for it. We don't have a large corporate sponsor; instead, we have many smaller sponsors for whom we must perform demonstrations to keep the money flowing in.

In terms of volunteers, we are very limited in that regard. We have no engineers on the team; just a mechanical mentor (who is a social studies teacher), a programming mentor, and an animation mentor. We are also limited in our number of students; this year we took sixteen total to Atlanta.

This year, we decided we wanted to attend Atlanta and performed extra fundraising efforts. Every single person on the team participated in the process, sending letters and talking to local businesses, trying to raise the necessary cash. We also had to make other sacrifices; for example, to save money, we were unable to buy a second cRIO, let alone build a second robot. In the end, though, with $100 donations here and $500 donations there, we raised enough money to go. That experience alone provided us the satisfaction of working together to ultimately achieve a goal as much as building the robot itself.

Our competition season was great. We led the #4 seeded alliance and won the Delphi Driving Tomorrow's Technology award at DC, and won the Autodesk Visualization award at Chesapeake. In the end, we all felt very satisfied with our achievements, and considered 2009 a great year.

As I said, thanks to our fundraising efforts, we were able to attend Atlanta this year. We went knowing that we had no chance against the larger teams with their own practice fields and practice bots and professional engineers, but that was okay. It did nothing to dampen the excitement of our own experience; we had a great time in Atlanta, and though our record was 4-3, we were very satisfied with the performance of our robot. We didn't expect to win, didn't win, and still had a great time.

Then, five minutes before leaving to catch our flight home (since we couldn't really afford to stay another night), we won the Delphi DTT award at the Championship level. Needless to say, the team was ecstatic. Now in our tenth year, we won our first ever national recognition. Who knows: maybe this will make fundraising easier in future years.

But anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that not having the resources required to "be truly competitive", in no way dampens the FIRST experience and in many ways actually enhances it. Winning a national engineering award with no engineers on the team - meaning the work being recognized was 100% the result of us students' efforts - is really an indescribable feeling. FIRST doesn't need to do anything to "level the playing field", because its unevenness only improves the challenge for some of us. The big teams should be happy they can perform so well and win with consistency, while the small teams should be happy they can perform as well as they do with their limited resources. This way, everyone has a great experience, no handicaps required.

But to get back on topic. I think they need to do something about the way Einstein is run. They are the international finals for pete's sake; they ought to be at least as exciting as a regional, if not more exciting. Instead, as everyone worries about whether they are going to make their flight and/or the wrap party, no one except the team competing really cares about what's going on on the field.

[RoboMom]

I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, but I think it would be great if FIRST could return to hanging the enormous "sponsor logo" banners on the black curtain at the regionals instead of just a banner with the FIRST logo. It seems to be an easy way to give recognition to sponsors that support the event.

The sponsors "banners" were put on the screen as video banners this year. I believe this change was due to finances.

[BurtGummer]

Well, being a rookie team, it was our first year in Atlanta.

But once again I will bring up the topic of a rookie team. From this weekend, I see FIRST defining a rookie team as a team with a number from 2700ish to 3100ish. AKA a number chosen this year. So I have a question. Is team 2753 a rookie team who has never participated in FIRST? What about 3091? 2753 was almost exactly the same as 399, and 3091 sounds like several teams just recombined into one, making them a rookie team. Can anyone clarify this for me? If they are in fact rookies, who have never done FIRST before, then who built the robot? I can guarantee it wasn't the students. I am not saying that we should of won by an means......I would have been happy if any real rookie team won.

Second.....rules. First off, regionals need more control. We fit easily into the measuring box at the LA Regional, but somehow our robot grew 3/8 of an inch between then and Atlanta, and the frame was not bent. In fact, I cut off a piece that was a little too high on Thursday morning just because I didn't like it sticking up. It fit that way into the measuring box at the LA Regional, but after cutting it off, it didn't fit in the boxes at Atlanta. If you are going to be so specific about something, the equipment measuring it needs to be precise as well.

Wiring colors? I'll be honest, I had no idea because I didn't have the time to sit down and read a rule book, and other students assigned the task did not complete it. But with that aside, why does it matter what color a wire is? Gauge is of course understandable, but the color? I've been working with electrical 'stuff's for years. IMO, it's a rule that is not necessary. Rules are normally for controlling the robot entries from having extra advantages (Size, Weight). But wire color? Come on. Don't pull the safety card on this either. Knowing a wire is ground or hot shouldn't decide how you work with it. You treat every wire like it's hot, just like you always treat a gun like it's loaded. On top of that, our wire coding was not correct at the LA Regional either, but none of the inspectors noticed. It would definitely help if we knew about it then, rather than at the Championships.

Third. Mentor involvement. Some of the teams I see have robots that you just KNOW that high school students didn't build, because when you go to the pits, you see a mentor fixing it, not a student. If your students are not capable of building a high caliber robot, then don't. Build a kitbot. They'll get more experience out of building that than some other complex robot. When awards were given out at the individual divisions, I saw several teams with parents/mentors getting handed the awards, with the students following behind them.

Match scheduling. If you want people to 'watch the monitors' make them visible! Being next to FTC, the only thing we saw was FTC. Being 8 minutes ahead of schedule, in my opinion, is unacceptable. If times are given out to the minute, then that schedule should be stuck to. Sure, fall behind, but getting ahead? We had to fix a bent frame from a match right before, which took A LOT of work, and then we show up at the field 8 minutes early and the match had already started.

Overall, I see a lot of unnecessary control in places, and not enough/no control in many others. I agree on several other things in this thread, like G14 and the control that human players had. Having a good human player could easily win the match for you, not the robot. But I won't elaborate that stuff.

I will say that I am glad I went to Atlanta and had the opportunity to experience it, because it will be much harder to get there after our rookie year. It had the fun parts.....and it had the parts that made me steaming mad. Some improvements can definitely be made though.

[rspurlin]

[These all relate to the big screens in the pit.]

Not having the field video showing was a disappointment, and made it difficult to know how close to on schedule the matches were.

There was a sign by Pit Admin advising everyone to pay attention to the "dynamic" match schedule in order to know when to leave for queuing, but the displayed schedules always seemed to be the originally published times.

After the qualification matches were finished, it would have been better to show the alliance selection screen rather than the now-empty match schedule.

The Galileo screen had the Windows task bar hiding much of the match score information at the bottom of the screen for a while. Nobody in Pit Admin knew anything about where the displays were coming from or who could do something about the problem.
Perhaps the cost savings forced onto FIRST by the economy had something to do with not having video in the pits. They did have video last year.

The dynamic schedule should have shown when each actual match started. If you view the online results at FIRST's website, you'll see the actual times the match was started (for Galileo (http://www2.usfirst.org/2009comp/events/Galileo/matchresults.html)). For example, when Friday's opening ceremony ran long and forced us to start match 1 at 9:42 instead of 9:25 as scheduled, all the following match schedule times were moved. Three matches scheduled to begin before lunch were actually moved to after lunch. As far as I can tell, match times will never be moved back before the original scheduled time however. Much of Saturday morning we were running ahead of schedule. We did in fact wait until the scheduled time for one robot. I was not in the pit to verify what was on the screen, but I'm pretty sure that the display was the current dynamic schedule. This year FIRST had available an internal VOIP phone system linking the inspection stations, pit admin and the fieldside scoring tables. If that is available in future years, please ask pit admin to check with us.

I'll pass the suggestion about the alliance selection screen on to the software person. I know that was visible in the pit last year, but that might have been because there was a copy of the video feed which was showing the alliance selection display in the dome.

The pit display is run by a laptop in the pit area connected to the scoring server fieldside. Had you voiced this comment to one of us at the scoring table, we could have had someone look into it. In a perfect world, everyone who volunteers for FIRST would know the answer to every question. I'm sorry you didn't get a helpful answer.

[MikeReilly]

Third. Mentor involvement. Some of the teams I see have robots that you just KNOW that high school students didn't build, because when you go to the pits, you see a mentor fixing it, not a student. If your students are not capable of building a high caliber robot, then don't. Build a kitbot. They'll get more experience out of building that than some other complex robot. When awards were given out at the individual divisions, I saw several teams with parents/mentors getting handed the awards, with the students following behind them.

While I agree that there may be "mentor-only made" (MOM?) bots out there, keep in mind that mentors working with kids in the pits may actually be an instructional moment. It may be something simple too, allowing the kids to do other things. Of course, sometimes we do need to remind a mentor that they are not the student too, I had to do it myself twice on Saturday. I will always disagree that the design and concept and all construction should be student-driven, because the "I" in FIRST does stand for "Inspiration". Our team has grown by leaps and bounds because of inspiring ideas from our mentors.

[rspurlin]

Well, being a rookie team, it was our first year in Atlanta.

But once again I will bring up the topic of a rookie team. From this weekend, I see FIRST defining a rookie team as a team with a number from 2700ish to 3100ish. AKA a number chosen this year. So I have a question. Is team 2753 a rookie team who has never participated in FIRST? What about 3091? 2753 was almost exactly the same as 399, and 3091 sounds like several teams just recombined into one, making them a rookie team. Can anyone clarify this for me? If they are in fact rookies, who have never done FIRST before, then who built the robot? I can guarantee it wasn't the students. I am not saying that we should of won by an means......I would have been happy if any real rookie team won.

Second.....rules. First off, regionals need more control. We fit easily into the measuring box at the LA Regional, but somehow our robot grew 3/8 of an inch between then and Atlanta, and the frame was not bent. In fact, I cut off a piece that was a little too high on Thursday morning just because I didn't like it sticking up. It fit that way into the measuring box at the LA Regional, but after cutting it off, it didn't fit in the boxes at Atlanta. If you are going to be so specific about something, the equipment measuring it needs to be precise as well.

Wiring colors? I'll be honest, I had no idea because I didn't have the time to sit down and read a rule book, and other students assigned the task did not complete it. But with that aside, why does it matter what color a wire is? Gauge is of course understandable, but the color? I've been working with electrical 'stuff's for years. IMO, it's a rule that is not necessary. Rules are normally for controlling the robot entries from having extra advantages (Size, Weight). But wire color? Come on. Don't pull the safety card on this either. Knowing a wire is ground or hot shouldn't decide how you work with it. You treat every wire like it's hot, just like you always treat a gun like it's loaded. On top of that, our wire coding was not correct at the LA Regional either, but none of the inspectors noticed. It would definitely help if we knew about it then, rather than at the Championships.

Third. Mentor involvement. Some of the teams I see have robots that you just KNOW that high school students didn't build, because when you go to the pits, you see a mentor fixing it, not a student. If your students are not capable of building a high caliber robot, then don't. Build a kitbot. They'll get more experience out of building that than some other complex robot. When awards were given out at the individual divisions, I saw several teams with parents/mentors getting handed the awards, with the students following behind them.

Match scheduling. If you want people to 'watch the monitors' make them visible! Being next to FTC, the only thing we saw was FTC. Being 8 minutes ahead of schedule, in my opinion, is unacceptable. If times are given out to the minute, then that schedule should be stuck to. Sure, fall behind, but getting ahead? We had to fix a bent frame from a match right before, which took A LOT of work, and then we show up at the field 8 minutes early and the match had already started.

Overall, I see a lot of unnecessary control in places, and not enough/no control in many others. I agree on several other things in this thread, like G14 and the control that human players had. Having a good human player could easily win the match for you, not the robot. But I won't elaborate that stuff.

I will say that I am glad I went to Atlanta and had the opportunity to experience it, because it will be much harder to get there after our rookie year. It had the fun parts.....and it had the parts that made me steaming mad. Some improvements can definitely be made though.Regarding 3091, they are not a 'recombined' team. Their students and mentors have some experience with FIRST through FLL and FTC, but this was indeed their initial adventure into FRC. I've seen some teams that go on a hiatus for a while. Though they cannot technically be a rookie team, there is often no one involved with any FIRST experience or memories from the team's earlier existence. There are in fact teams that are started by established mentors that move for jobs or other reasons. Perhaps the definition of rookie isn't perfect.

I'm not sure how the sizing boxes could have been very different. They are in fact the same sizing boxes that were used at the regionals. Of course there may be some small variation between them, but it's hard to understand the variation you're describing.

[sdcantrell56]

A more likely scenario for the discrepancy in sizing would be that your robot shifted during shipping. The crates are handled, less than cautiously, and if your robot is bot very structurally sound you could have frame members shifting in the crate. Not to mention, after one regional and countless hard-hits, a frame can easily be tweaked enough to through the superstructure of a robot outside of the box.

[Billfred]

The sponsors "banners" were put on the screen as video banners this year. I believe this change was due to finances.
I could believe this. That said, with regard to the video screens:

-On Curie, the team numbers on the scoring display were completely unreadable. The alliance selection screen wasn't much better (and, in the 87-team division, cut off the lower-ranked teams).
-The way of displaying the final score could be refined. It took me until the later part of Bayou to figure out that the red background to the match number meant the score was final. I'm not sure that someone just walking in would figure it out that easily.
-I miss the days where the seeding was shown on the screen. Showing sponsor logos is important, but a screen for a few minutes once or twice a day with the information would be great for those of us stuck to the stands.

[BuddyB309]

ANIMATION!! nobody knows how hard it is.....:(

[sgreco]

Well, being a rookie team, it was our first year in Atlanta.

But once again I will bring up the topic of a rookie team. From this weekend, I see FIRST defining a rookie team as a team with a number from 2700ish to 3100ish. AKA a number chosen this year. So I have a question. Is team 2753 a rookie team who has never participated in FIRST? What about 3091? 2753 was almost exactly the same as 399, and 3091 sounds like several teams just recombined into one, making them a rookie team. Can anyone clarify this for me? If they are in fact rookies, who have never done FIRST before, then who built the robot? I can guarantee it wasn't the students. I am not saying that we should of won by an means......I would have been happy if any real rookie team won.

Second.....rules. First off, regionals need more control. We fit easily into the measuring box at the LA Regional, but somehow our robot grew 3/8 of an inch between then and Atlanta, and the frame was not bent. In fact, I cut off a piece that was a little too high on Thursday morning just because I didn't like it sticking up. It fit that way into the measuring box at the LA Regional, but after cutting it off, it didn't fit in the boxes at Atlanta. If you are going to be so specific about something, the equipment measuring it needs to be precise as well.

Wiring colors? I'll be honest, I had no idea because I didn't have the time to sit down and read a rule book, and other students assigned the task did not complete it. But with that aside, why does it matter what color a wire is? Gauge is of course understandable, but the color? I've been working with electrical 'stuff's for years. IMO, it's a rule that is not necessary. Rules are normally for controlling the robot entries from having extra advantages (Size, Weight). But wire color? Come on. Don't pull the safety card on this either. Knowing a wire is ground or hot shouldn't decide how you work with it. You treat every wire like it's hot, just like you always treat a gun like it's loaded. On top of that, our wire coding was not correct at the LA Regional either, but none of the inspectors noticed. It would definitely help if we knew about it then, rather than at the Championships.

Third. Mentor involvement. Some of the teams I see have robots that you just KNOW that high school students didn't build, because when you go to the pits, you see a mentor fixing it, not a student. If your students are not capable of building a high caliber robot, then don't. Build a kitbot. They'll get more experience out of building that than some other complex robot. When awards were given out at the individual divisions, I saw several teams with parents/mentors getting handed the awards, with the students following behind them.

Match scheduling. If you want people to 'watch the monitors' make them visible! Being next to FTC, the only thing we saw was FTC. Being 8 minutes ahead of schedule, in my opinion, is unacceptable. If times are given out to the minute, then that schedule should be stuck to. Sure, fall behind, but getting ahead? We had to fix a bent frame from a match right before, which took A LOT of work, and then we show up at the field 8 minutes early and the match had already started.

Overall, I see a lot of unnecessary control in places, and not enough/no control in many others. I agree on several other things in this thread, like G14 and the control that human players had. Having a good human player could easily win the match for you, not the robot. But I won't elaborate that stuff.

I will say that I am glad I went to Atlanta and had the opportunity to experience it, because it will be much harder to get there after our rookie year. It had the fun parts.....and it had the parts that made me steaming mad. Some improvements can definitely be made though.


A couple comments.

I'm not going to claim that I know anything about 3091, but it sounded like in the awards that the kids came from different towns, not different prexisting teams. (Correct me if I'm wrong).

As for 2753 and 399, they are from completely opposite sides of the country. The fact that their designs are similer seems random to me. It is very possible for rookies to dominate. 2753 is a good example of this. It doesn't mean they aren't really rookies, it just means that they are good. My team's most successful competitive year was our rookie year. All I'm saying is, just because a rookie is really good, doesn't mean they aren't really rookies.

About the mentor involvement. Mentors are crucial. Students need to work to learn, but they need mentors. Kids can also learn by watching mentors do things. (I'm not advocating it, it still teaches kids). Part of the real world is designing things and sending them off to be made. I'll be completely honest, my team had a student and mentor designed swerve drive, we sent away the CAD models and had the parts machined for us, it's just the way it is. I may not have operated a manual mill to make the parts, but I learned about 4-axis CNC machines, which in many ways can be just as valuable. Even if you don't make all the parts on the robot, you can make them for other things like prototypes. I learn just as much from prototypes on manual machines as I do from the computer made final product. Even though the final product is professonally made, it doesn't mean I didn't learn a ton of things along the way. Mentors shouldn't do everything, but sometimes they need to do certain things. FIRST is about learning and if kids are doing everything themselves, then they likely aren't learning as much as they could be.

About the rules. If you aren't happy with the rules of inspection, specifically the box, go out and prove them wrong. In Boston last year, my team's robot didn't fit in the box, we got out a measuring tape and showed them that their box was actually 3/8 of an inch too small. We passed inspection. If in fact somehow your robot did grow, and they have an accurately sized box, then that's something you have to find a way to deal with. In the real world, if they tell you to make a 4 foot wide robot and you make 4 feet and 1/8 of an inch, you get fired, if it's 4 feet, you get a raise. The rule book may be long, but someone has to read it. Someone on my team always reads the entire book each year just ensure that we know what we are doing. It's just one of the things that you have to do. All of these things are learning experiences, and honestly, there isn't a better place to learn than FIRST.

[Vikesrock]

Burt,

First of all, being an FRC rookie does not mean you have never done FIRST before. FIRST runs both FLL and FTC both of which can provide extremely valuable experience to a group of individuals who would still be FRC rookies. Team 2753 was made up of students from last year's FTC Champions so they definitely had some FIRST experience. You can also search around for posts by the user "Lowfategg", he is a student on 2753 and after seeing some of his posts here I am fairly confidant that students did a lot or all of the work on that machine.

With regards to mentor involvement, you would be surprised at what students can do when they have experienced knowledgeable mentors guiding them and assisting them. Many of the machines probably have much more student involvement than you think. Having said that there are no rules regarding mentor involvement (other than driving) for a reason, FIRST knows that different teams will choose to run in different ways and has decided not to regulate this. Some teams will have mentors doing all or almost all of the work. Some teams will have students doing all the work with no engineering mentors at all. Most teams will fall somewhere in between. If this is a problem for you and/or your team there are many other Highschool robotics competitions that are limited to participation by highschool students. There are many other topics on this subject already and I suggest you search and read through some of them. Many others have done a much better job of expressing some of the points I am trying to make.

I agree with your point regarding the measuring box, it is important for the measuring instruments and scales to be consistent between events.

With respect to inspection consistency. It is and always has been the job of your team to insure that your robot meets all the rules and you sign a sheet expressing that to the best of your knowledge you meet the rules as the last part of inspection. Inspectors are volunteers doing the best job that they can.

While many of the rules are put in place for safety and to prevent teams from gaining a competitive edge others are put in to ease inspection and to instill good practices. If you have been working with electrical stuff for years then you should know the value of respecting the common standards for electrical wire coloring. Using consistent coloring allows for easy visual inspection of electrical systems to insure that they are wired correctly which benefits both the team and the inspectors. I'm sure Al has some even better insight about the reasoning behind this rule. If he doesn't wander in here and see this I recommend you post in the electrical forum or send him a PM.

[davidalln]

...and 3091 sounds like several teams just recombined into one, making them a rookie team.

Just to clarify this, as a member of one of the teams that was involved in 3091, they were a completely new team who consisted of completely new members from two different high schools in Atlanta sponsored mostly by the 100 Black Men of Atlanta. Several Atlantian teams, including us, helped them get started (as in, helped them become an official team, watched over their build season and helped out when possible), but their Rookie All Star award was all due to their dedicated work.

[RoboMom]

Well, being a rookie team, it was our first year in Atlanta.

But once again I will bring up the topic of a rookie team. From this weekend, I see FIRST defining a rookie team as a team with a number from 2700ish to 3100ish. AKA a number chosen this year.

FRC has a definition of a rookie team, which can be found here:
http://www.usfirst.org/community/frc/content.aspx?id=6632

[BurtGummer]

Burt,

First of all, being an FRC rookie does not mean you have never done FIRST before. FIRST runs both FLL and FTC both of which can provide extremely valuable experience to a group of individuals who would still be FRC rookies. Team 2753 was made up of students from last year's FTC Champions so they definitely had some FIRST experience. You can also search around for posts by the user "Lowfategg", he is a student on 2753 and after seeing some of his posts here I am fairly confidant that students did a lot or all of the work on that machine.

With regards to mentor involvement, you would be surprised at what students can do when they have experienced knowledgeable mentors guiding them and assisting them. Many of the machines probably have much more student involvement than you think. Having said that there are no rules regarding mentor involvement (other than driving) for a reason, FIRST knows that different teams will choose to run in different ways and has decided not to regulate this. Some teams will have mentors doing all or almost all of the work. Some teams will have students doing all the work with no engineering mentors at all. Most teams will fall somewhere in between. If this is a problem for you and/or your team there are many other Highschool robotics competitions that are limited to participation by highschool students. There are many other topics on this subject already and I suggest you search and read through some of them. Many others have done a much better job of expressing some of the points I am trying to make.

I agree with your point regarding the measuring box, it is important for the measuring instruments and scales to be consistent between events.

With respect to inspection consistency. It is and always has been the job of your team to insure that your robot meets all the rules and you sign a sheet expressing that to the best of your knowledge you meet the rules as the last part of inspection. Inspectors are volunteers doing the best job that they can.

While many of the rules are put in place for safety and to prevent teams from gaining a competitive edge others are put in to ease inspection and to instill good practices. If you have been working with electrical stuff for years then you should know the value of respecting the common standards for electrical wire coloring. Using consistent coloring allows for easy visual inspection of electrical systems to insure that they are wired correctly which benefits both the team and the inspectors. I'm sure Al has some even better insight about the reasoning behind this rule. If he doesn't wander in here and see this I recommend you post in the electrical forum or send him a PM.

I'm not blaming the volunteers, I'm just saying that some of the ruling is unnecessary. I am an individual who uses whats available. If I had the option of buying red and black wire at home depot in the correct gauge sizes, then I would have, because I do understand wiring codes. I used blue for black (not an uncommon practice for common/ground). They didn't have the red or even black wire (both surprising and not surprising in a way for Home Depot), so I used what I could buy. Having wire is better than none at all. Home Depot was not our only stop either.....electrical specialty shops no longer exist in our area.

The measuring tape idea from Sgreco is one I wish I would have thought of. Great idea, and I'll be sure to do that if we ever have this problem again.

Rookie then, should be defined, and maybe separate awards. Just an idea I'm throwing out. A team with robotics experience against a team with none at all has a large advantage, whether it's FTC or FRC, or some other robotics experience. Those are two completely different types of rookies in my opinion.

[Billfred]

Foreword: I've posted in a similar style to this post times before; there are very legitimate questions Burt asked in this one. This one is similar to some of the other discussions in construction only.

Well, being a rookie team, it was our first year in Atlanta.

But once again I will bring up the topic of a rookie team. From this weekend, I see FIRST defining a rookie team as a team with a number from 2700ish to 3100ish. AKA a number chosen this year. So I have a question. Is team 2753 a rookie team who has never participated in FIRST? What about 3091? 2753 was almost exactly the same as 399, and 3091 sounds like several teams just recombined into one, making them a rookie team. Can anyone clarify this for me? If they are in fact rookies, who have never done FIRST before, then who built the robot? I can guarantee it wasn't the students. I am not saying that we should of won by an means......I would have been happy if any real rookie team won.

FIRST has a definition (http://www.usfirst.org/community/frc/content.aspx?id=6632) of what makes for a rookie team. Some rookies are always going to have better resources--2753 had a dominant run in FTC, 2815 has such mentor help that five years' experience still makes you a youngin'. I can't speak for anyone else, but 2815 remained a "real" rookie team through the conclusion of the Championship. Mentors drove our design this year, which I have absolutely no problem with--they had the experience. With time, I expect our kids to step up and work with the mentors to pick up some of the techniques and wisdom we've amassed.

Second.....rules. First off, regionals need more control. We fit easily into the measuring box at the LA Regional, but somehow our robot grew 3/8 of an inch between then and Atlanta, and the frame was not bent. In fact, I cut off a piece that was a little too high on Thursday morning just because I didn't like it sticking up. It fit that way into the measuring box at the LA Regional, but after cutting it off, it didn't fit in the boxes at Atlanta. If you are going to be so specific about something, the equipment measuring it needs to be precise as well. If you think the measuring box is off, ask the inspectors (politely) to measure the dimensions. The sizing boxes are shipped with the fields, so damage isn't impossible, but you're really best off breaking out the tape measure on this one.

Wiring colors? I'll be honest, I had no idea because I didn't have the time to sit down and read a rule book...And there's your first mistake. Just like the trailer hitch rules, or the team number sizes, or the display of schools and sponsors, it's a specification handed down by FIRST. You have to read the manual to be sure you find them all....and other students assigned the task did not complete it. But with that aside, why does it matter what color a wire is? Gauge is of course understandable, but the color? I've been working with electrical 'stuff's for years. IMO, it's a rule that is not necessary. Rules are normally for controlling the robot entries from having extra advantages (Size, Weight). But wire color? Come on. Don't pull the safety card on this either. Knowing a wire is ground or hot shouldn't decide how you work with it. You treat every wire like it's hot, just like you always treat a gun like it's loaded.You might be fine, but other teams aren't so lucky. I've seen some genuine rat's nests over the years--with no wire color rules, I'd have no chance of figuring out the issue. I imagine Al Skierkiewicz or another one of the electrical know-it-alls can expand on FIRST's logic here. On top of that, our wire coding was not correct at the LA Regional either, but none of the inspectors noticed. It would definitely help if we knew about it then, rather than at the Championships.That the LA inspectors missed it is unfortunate, but it's not a free pass down the road. Your team is ultimately responsible for ensuring compliance with all the rules.

Third. Mentor involvement. Some of the teams I see have robots that you just KNOW that high school students didn't build, because when you go to the pits, you see a mentor fixing it, not a student.There's no rule prohibiting this, and several awards celebrate partnerships between students and mentors. Partnership would imply that both groups are putting in their fair share of the work, not sitting quietly on the side and making sure the other group doesn't kill themselves. If your students are not capable of building a high caliber robot, then don't. Build a kitbot. They'll get more experience out of building that than some other complex robot....or they could be working alongside mentors, learning the process that goes into producing an effective machine. I've been on both sides of the high-caliber coin; the kids seem much more inspired by the latter. If you've got a mentor that can show the students what you can do with a certain construction technique, why not let the kids discover what it takes to do it?When awards were given out at the individual divisions, I saw several teams with parents/mentors getting handed the awards, with the students following behind them.Many times, judges will give one award to a mentor and one to a student. I know this was the case when we received our Rookie All-Star award at Palmetto.

Match scheduling. If you want people to 'watch the monitors' make them visible! Being next to FTC, the only thing we saw was FTC. Being 8 minutes ahead of schedule, in my opinion, is unacceptable. If times are given out to the minute, then that schedule should be stuck to. Sure, fall behind, but getting ahead? We had to fix a bent frame from a match right before, which took A LOT of work, and then we show up at the field 8 minutes early and the match had already started. I agree that matches running early can be perilous, but shifting deadlines are a part of life. I'd suggest sending a person next time to keep watch on the schedule screen and give you proper warnings to give you time to get to the field. We had a scare at Bayou with the match schedule--we didn't see that we had the second match back from lunch, resulting in our drive team having a quarter-mile sprint back to the arena. One of our partners wasn't as lucky, and no-showed the match. You live, you learn.

[JesseK]

I've never seen such a huge FRC crowd be so quiet as the one watching Einstein matches. While I appreciate the game's dynamics, and love how it opened up the doors to creative ideas in ways to do drive systems, it was downright boring to watch. Many of the regulation matches during regionals wound up with clumps of robots and trailers. It was difficult to tell who was doing what scoring, then all of a sudden the group would break apart and there would either be a pile of balls on the floor or a trailer loaded up. Without watching specific bots, it was hard to tell. It was a great game to design for and play though.

The fields weren't completely consistent regional to regional. We gave ourselves a 1/2" clearance...yet the bots sank 1/8" into the regolith, you needed another 1/8" to get over the seams (varying regional to regional), and the Atlanta fields were put onto a soft plastic floor which caused even more sinkage. Combined with another 1/8" reduced clearance to due material fatiguing (yea, our fault), Atlanta just left a bad taste in our mouth. We could take our bot to the practice field and fly around, yet on the Galileo field we kept getting stuck. I understand it was already very difficult to manage field setup this year in this regard, so I'm not sure if there's room for concern or if I'm just venting here.

I believe that next year we will have to help this year's rookies along if the field surface is highly tractive. There were several atypical drive train designs (crab/swerve) that simply will not work on carpet due to axial loading ... or at least they won't work for very long. I also expect to see some 2nd year teams with 4 wheels on the corners of their robots wondering why they're having difficulty turning.

I also don't think it's a coincidence that there were so many Michigan teams on Einstein this year, percentage-wise. I don't begrudge any of the teams who were there, and I applaud FIRST for finding a format that cuts costs and increases field time. It will be highly disappointing if this format is only used in Michigan again though.

I do not agree with the 40-lb allowance for future years. It's supposed to be 6.5 weeks, and it's supposed to be hard for a reason. Of the 3 competitions I attended it was only enforced at DC, and even there it was only sporadic checking.

[EricH]

I can respond on the wiring colors. It's happened before, on occasion, that teams have shown up with wiring that is all one color. You'd think that that wouldn't be a problem. But, it is. It's a lot harder to trace. That makes it dangerous. You see, if you wire something backwards and don't have the standard colors, something could easily be destroyed when that isn't caught.

[MrForbes]

After reading all these posts...I still have nothing to add to "The Negative" thread

:)

[AlexD744]

After my second year of involvement with FIRST, I still have the same complaint. I understand that while COOPERTITION is way of FIRST (now trademarked and patented), this is, at its heart, a COMPETITION (otherwise, why keep score?). I understand that it's not about winning, but teams DO want to win the competition. Besides punishing teams for doing well (G14), there is the random, or "luck" factor. If a team works hard, and makes a great robot that meets the goals of the competition better than other teams, they should be rewarded. At every regional I attended, including championships, The seedings did not reflect the ability of the robots or the teams. If FIRST wants this to be a "sport", and be as popular as football, they need to come up with a better way to rank teams prior to alliance pairings. I have no problem with the serpentine draft and the no refusal rules, I see how that can prevent "super alliances", and make scouting important. I do have a problem with some of the best teams not even being in the top 8. Throughout the season, I saw teams that could not score at all ranked as the number one seed, while top scoring bots were not even in the top 10. Perhaps the seeding should be done based on the scoring of the bots rather than a win-loss record.

I don't have all the answers, but the questions remain. As many smart people as there are involved with FIRST, I am confident that they can come up with something better.

Thank you for saying this. This was what frustrated our team during this championship, I think we ended up ranking 54 because on our first day we were with some of the worst teams against dome of the best teams. Because we didn't have a name with any of these teams (except Bacon, and 179, who also got gyped by the rankings), we were not picked despite how well our individual robot performed. Maybe a system where the average of your scores determines, I don't know I haven't sat and thougt of how to rank teams, however, I do know that luck is way too prevalent in the current system. I might only feel this way because we got the short end of the stick on it, but other than that, I saw alliances such as 67, 111, and 45 in qualifiers. Most of 71's matches had another powerhouse against not that good teams. It just irks me that we had a robot at a high caliber and then lost because of random luck with alliance selections.

p.s. keep in mind that I am not being biased about my robot, our average scores for Friday, the day we didn't win a single match, was in the 80's (If you disclude the match were we got a DQ due to field issues). Sadly, the alliance pairing consistently gave us a pairing with teams that could barely make a score and against teams that could put scores above that number, it seemed unfair that this happened every match (except for Saturday after the teams had done their scouting).

On a different note: BRING DISTRICTS TO FLORIDA!!! It seemed to work great in Michigan, and that would increase the competition of the regional. SPeaking on a purely financial note however, paying for the initial districts, and the state competition might leave our team high and dry for Championships, but it would cost less than two regionals, which we have been thinking about.

[FRC4ME]

To everyone complaining about the withholding allowance and GP; how is this any different from previous years? We used to have the two build sessions, and teams were on the honor system not to spend any more time than that building things. Now, we're on the honor system not to build more than 40lbs worth of stuff. In fact, at least the withholding allowance can be weighed if necessary; in previous years, it was not possible to tell if a team had spent more than their two sessions working.

[Andrew Y.]

- G14... i agree that im not the biggest fan of it. I know it was in good intentions, but if the real time scoring is going to be off? How can a team be penalized? One match the ending score was 55-32 us. Then after everythig is re scored, it was 122-32. We got a tripple G14....

- I was working the front gate at championships on wednesday night. It really did tick me off when mentors, not students, are yelling at me because we wouldnt let them take 8 people in. or take multiple trips. This has been the way for a LONG TIME. The way i see it, FIRST could easily say "just unload thursday" Remember, most volunteers there wednesday have been working tuesday 7am-11pm and wednesday starting at 7am. READ THE RULES

- about the wire colors... hate to be crude, but you gotta read the rules or suck it up. sorry. "i didn't have time isn't an excuse to me...

- Practice field was not run properly. Schedualing team for 10-10:10 then 10:10-10:20 does not work. You gotta leave a gap for unload and load. Also seemed to me the volunteers running the fields had no idea what they where doing. Example, letting 3 robots run with over 5 people on the field. I watched 2 kids get hit too. People running the field didn't seem to care.....
(i know...first i defend volunteers, then i bash em)

- I agree that awards such as spirit, animation, ect. can go friday. That way, chairmans, rookie all-star, EI, and competition stuff cna be done saturday, with time ti spare. O.....speeches should be cut down....

[Aren_Hill]

For some reason the practice field by Newton was being ran like a competition field, 6 robots, and then have an "official" match as opposed to what it has and always should be,
A place for tweaking running reseting tweaking running reseting.

[David Brinza]

Well, being a rookie team, it was our first year in Atlanta. Congratulations! Being a "Rookie All-star" or rookie regional winner is truly special. Experiencing Championship is so intense and can almost be overwhelming, even for veteran teams.But once again I will bring up the topic of a rookie team...I'm not familiar with the details of the composition of Team 2753, but as others have pointed out, FIRST has specific definitions of what constitutes a rookie team.Wiring colors? I'll be honest, I had no idea because I didn't have the time to sit down and read a rule book, and other students assigned the task did not complete it. But with that aside, why does it matter what color a wire is? Gauge is of course understandable, but the color? I've been working with electrical 'stuff's for years. IMO, it's a rule that is not necessary. Rules are normally for controlling the robot entries from having extra advantages (Size, Weight). But wire color? Come on. Don't pull the safety card on this either. Knowing a wire is ground or hot shouldn't decide how you work with it. You treat every wire like it's hot, just like you always treat a gun like it's loaded. On top of that, our wire coding was not correct at the LA Regional either, but none of the inspectors noticed. It would definitely help if we knew about it then, rather than at the Championships.As a robot inspector, I look for consistency of colors for the power distribution wires. Most teams use red for +12V and black for return. I'll ask the students if this color convention is used throughout the robot, then I look at the power distribution board and Victors/Jaguars just to make sure no colors are crossed. It's OK to use white (or brown) for +12V and blue for ground in the robot, as long as it is consistent within the robot. Hooking up certain electrical components with the polarity reversed can be an expensive, even unsafe practice, so adopting a wire coler convention is a smart thing to do. At regionals, some inspectors may give a rookie team some leeway with the requirements, especially if a minor deviation is not giving the team an unfair advantage. The standards are higher at Championship and what passed at a regional may not cut it in Atlanta.Third. Mentor involvement. Some of the teams I see have robots that you just KNOW that high school students didn't build, because when you go to the pits, you see a mentor fixing it, not a student. If your students are not capable of building a high caliber robot, then don't. Build a kitbot. They'll get more experience out of building that than some other complex robot. When awards were given out at the individual divisions, I saw several teams with parents/mentors getting handed the awards, with the students following behind them.I spoke very briefly about this with one of your teachers (Gary) Saturday afternoon. It's important to understand that FRC is not a robot-building contest, it's a project-based, team-building experience. FIRST does not dictate how much robot design and fabrication is to be done by students. What is important is the students learn the process used to develop the robot. There are a few FIRST teams which are 100% student operated, but this is not something FIRST endorses. The mentor-student partnership is key to the FIRST experience. Your team will establish what level of mentor involvement is possible and appropriate for your team goals. Your team will evolve accordingly.Match scheduling. If you want people to 'watch the monitors' make them visible! Being next to FTC, the only thing we saw was FTC. Being 8 minutes ahead of schedule, in my opinion, is unacceptable. If times are given out to the minute, then that schedule should be stuck to. Sure, fall behind, but getting ahead? We had to fix a bent frame from a match right before, which took A LOT of work, and then we show up at the field 8 minutes early and the match had already started. Being ahead of schedule is rare, but the time pressure to get matches completed is intense. One field fault or rules interpretation issue can cause the schedule to slip substantially (there was such an issue on Friday at Newton that delayed matches by about 45 minutes). At regional events, the pit announcer will page a team repeatedly or a queuing person will come get you - this just isn't possible at Championship. In Atlanta, teams typically arrive field-side 15 to 20 minutes before the match. I was "symbolically scolded" by a senior veteran coach (pointing to wrist watch) when our team arrived less than ten minutes before we went on the field. If you are working on your robot, a human player needs to be sent early to let the the alliance partners know whether to expect your robot or not for the match. Missing a match is painful for the entire alliance (and a hard lesson learned for the team involved).Overall, I see a lot of unnecessary control in places, and not enough/no control in many others. I agree on several other things in this thread, like G14 and the control that human players had. Having a good human player could easily win the match for you, not the robot. But I won't elaborate that stuff.Miscues by alliance partners, questionable calls by referees and other factors outside of your control can adversely affect the outcome of a match. At Championship, the emotions can and will get amplified. Human player scoring was far more important in regionals than at Championship. Teams 67, 111 and 971 earned the Championship with superior machines, skillful drivers and effective tactics.
I will say that I am glad I went to Atlanta and had the opportunity to experience it, because it will be much harder to get there after our rookie year. It had the fun parts.....and it had the parts that made me steaming mad. Some improvements can definitely be made though.EVERYONE (rookies to veterans) in FIRST will have both terrific and frustrating experiences at competitions. Hopefully, your team enjoyed the experience and learned from it. Don't sell yourself short on going to Championship in future years. As a rookie all-star, your team is obviously doing things well. In future years, can find your team back at Championship by being on a regional winning alliance. If your team is focused less on winning matches and more on building a complete team, you can come as Engineering Inspiration or Chairman's Award winners. Some teams will sign up their team for Championship during open registration (October) every two to four years, to ensure each student has at least one opportunity to experience this most amazing event.

[DonRotolo]

I now know that you can't be truly competitive without massive hours and generosity by mentors and sponsors, and enough money for a twin robot and preferably a second regional.
This is something that does need to change. The most competitive teams often have the most cash. Attending four regionals and building a second robot certainly improves your chances of winning. But many/most teams don't have this opportunity.

Change 1: Limit the number of regionals that teams can attend, perhaps to two. (There are cross-pollination advantages to attending more than one)

I also did not like the extended build season this year. While it was common in FVC to rebuild your robot, this gets brutally expensive and time-consuming - and somewhat unfair - in FRC.

Change 2: Eliminate fix-it windows completely - you build during 6 weeks or at a regional only. Hard to enforce though, especially for software.

The on-screen font for the score was hard to read via webcast, with 8 and 6 and 2 all looking alike.

Change 3: A larger or more optimized font for on-screen display.

As for Rules: Yes, they are cumbersome, and the GDC sometimes shoots itself in the foot, but they are doing an excellent job already; who am I do request more excellence? All I ask is that the GDC be proud of this year's game, as it did throw a lot of teams for a loop and leveled the field.


Is team 2753 a rookie team who has never participated in FIRST?
.....
who built the robot? I can guarantee it wasn't the students.
I can vouch for 2753 as being a student-built robot. And they are FRC rookies as defined by FIRST. Just because they are one of the most awesome teams ever - and genuinely nice people, too - don't jump to conclusions.Wiring colors? I'll be honest, I had no idea because I didn't have the time to sit down and read a rule book, and other students assigned the task did not complete it.
If you did not have time to do it right the first time, did you have time to do it over? Sorry, that is no excuse at all. Did those students feel any repercussions of their failure to complete their assignment?

Just ask Nick from 1676 if he felt any repercussions from his 3.5" high 1/2" wide team number plates he made...
Maybe a system where the average of your scores determines....
Yes, we call it a scouting system, where we look at what each robot does, rather than what an alliance does. In this way, luck has very little to do with anything.

[Herodotus]

Change 1: Limit the number of regionals that teams can attend, perhaps to two. (There are cross-pollination advantages to attending more than one)


Or make it easier for people to attend more competitions. Thanks to the Michigan set up we had 62 matches for $9500, as compared previous years where $11,000 would have gotten us between 14 and 32 matches depending upon how far into the eliminations we would have gotten.

Even if the total district system does not spread all over the place right away, I think the other regionals need to look into how the Michigan districts saved money and implement some cost cutting measure. Or increase the number of regionals so there are fewer teams at each regional and thus more matches for each team(this is where the majority of the bang for the buck comes from in Michigan).

I really hope that the district system can expand to other areas and give more teams the chance to have as fantastic a season as Michigan teams had this year.

[artdutra04]

Okay, time for some of the negative.

Kit of Parts - FIRST, please give us push-to-connect pneumatic fittings in next year's Kit of Parts again. Seriously, since you didn't give us any this year our team is almost out. If money is an option, have a points system where before Kickoff we can "bid" on what we want in the KoP. Obviously some teams always use some parts while other teams never use them.

Dumb Rules - Every year FIRST creates a rule that every post-season event eliminates or changes in some way due to pretty much nearly unanimous disapproval of the rule. Last year it was G22. This year it was G14. Can we just avoid this all next year and just not have any such rules?

Actually, after being a referee at the VRC competition a few weeks ago, their game rules were all of two pages long. That's it. There was no "we-secretly-want-you-to-build-this-exact-kind-of-robot-rules" that many in this program really dislike. (And there is no denying this was the intent of many of the rules this year, given the limited bumper configurations, mandatory unmodified Rover wheels, trailer attachment, extreme robot size restrictions, etc). Let teams be creative, by please making less rules. I want to see robots that make me say "Wow!" again, as those were the robots that hooked me in this program. Sadly, they are an extremely endangered species nowadays with "stop-lawyering-the-rules!" people striking down all creative out of the box thinking, and I'm worried that students in the program now won't be as amazed and inspired by the winning robots of today as the students of yesterday were.

Why are the rules so complex? It seems there are too many chefs in the kitchen. Perhaps it should be time to ignore some of the lesser chefs, and concentrate on satisfying the majority of the goals from the most important of the chefs. It's sad, but I don't think we'll ever see a game as awesome as 2004 FIRST Frenzy ever again because of the number of chefs.

This is only a partial negative. Districts - From apparent results, they seem to work well in Michigan, and for that I wish them the best of luck. But from my years of experience in FIRST, I've noticed that the attitudes of people within the FIRST community vary region-by-region, and I'm not convinced the district model can properly scale out to the rest of the country/world. In addition, the way points were assigned at the districts seems very biased towards the robot performance and not enough towards the core values of FIRST. The other problem I have with the districts as it currently stands is that it "secularizes" FIRST. By not letting teams from outside the "district" (in this case Michigan) participate in the competition, it cuts down on the diversity of teams one can play against. Now if there was a provision to allow something like 20 teams from outside to compete in each week of competition, this would allow teams the chance to spread out more and compete against a broader base of teams, because as it stands now non-winning teams are screwed if they wish to play against a greater diversity of teams, and it can be disheartening to play against the same dozen teams over and over and constantly keep losing (although winning against the same dozen teams can be as equally boring).

However, there are some aspects of the districts that I believe are good, such as bagging the robot. You know what? Even without district competitions, I would love to have $1000 or even $500 shaved off regional registration just if we agreed to transport the robot there ourselves without the need for a shipping crate. Shipping a 400 pound crate across the state, only to have it return to a warehouse a town over for several weeks, then again get shipped across the state for the Regional seems wasteful.

...

Wiring colors? I'll be honest, I had no idea because I didn't have the time to sit down and read a rule book, and other students assigned the task did not complete it. But with that aside, why does it matter what color a wire is? Gauge is of course understandable, but the color? ...I hate to harp on the same post as everyone else, but nearly all respect for this post was lost when I read the quoted sentences above.

The issue here is not about the wire color (which obviously does matter, but I'll leave that aside for now), it's about that you admitted you had not read the rule book before the competition. Then you come out and complain about the wiring color? As a tip for future years, take the time on Kickoff Day and fully read through the sections of the manual on The Game, The Robot, and The Arena. Read every rule as if you've never read it before. Don't ever assume anything.

Smokey the Fisher Price motor says only YOU can prevent rule infractions.

[Vikesrock]

The issue here is not about the wire color (which obviously does matter, but I'll leave that aside for now), it's about that you admitted you had not read the rule book before the competition. Then you come out and complain about the wiring color? As a tip for future years, take the time on Kickoff Day and fully read through the sections of the manual on The Game, The Robot, and The Arena. Read every rule as if you've never read it before. Don't ever assume anything.

Smokey the Fisher Price motor says only YOU can prevent rule infractions.

This is a fantastic point that I don't think enough teams realize. I tend to know the rules inside and out, and we also have one high school student that is in charge of knowing the rules well and keeping track of updates and the Q&A. I feel like this is how many teams work and is a good way to run into trouble. Everyone working on the robot must know the rules.

On 2175 anyone working on the robot must also know the robot and game rules, specifically rules governing the section you are working on. I will pop-quiz kids and hand them a rulebook to sit in the corner and read if they get it wrong. I'm not doing it to punish them or to put them in "timeout" or anything like that. The only way for us to do things right the first time and to make sure our robot complies with the rules is for us to know what the rules are.

[BurtGummer]

I hate to harp on the same post as everyone else, but nearly all respect for this post was lost when I read the quoted sentences above.

The issue here is not about the wire color (which obviously does matter, but I'll leave that aside for now), it's about that you admitted you had not read the rule book before the competition. Then you come out and complain about the wiring color? As a tip for future years, take the time on Kickoff Day and fully read through the sections of the manual on The Game, The Robot, and The Arena. Read every rule as if you've never read it before. Don't ever assume anything.

Smokey the Fisher Price motor says only YOU can prevent rule infractions.

To be quite honest I did not have the time. If I could make a 36 hour day, then maybe. The student assigned for rules did not complete the task, and after talking with him, he did not seem to understand why it was a problem at all. There are other issues at work here but I would rather not discuss them on these boards. For a quick background, we didn't have a kickoff day.....we didn't even know about the competition until after kickoff day. We started on February 4th, and until ship date I was building, coding, debugging, wiring, fixing, more debugging, more building......you get the picture. I am not saying it's an excuse at all, and if it does, I apologize. When your working the whole day Thursday swiss cheesing the robot to make weight, and you find out the robot doesn't fit size, then wiring colors are incorrect, and that the bumpers were less than adequate, you get, well, really annoyed. I'm still cooling down from the stress of this weekend.....and I'm sure it's obvious in my posts.

If I end up mentoring next year, it will start on kickoff day, a student will read the rulebook, another student will learn programming, and another student will work on scouting systems, etc. With 6 students on the team this year, and none having experience in FIRST, it made it REALLY difficult. We did great! But we have so many things we could have improved upon if we had the time and larger workforce.

Unfortunately, the other students have never had the experience with tools, power tools, or coding programs, or just working on something mechanical. The feeder schools that feed our high school don't have any 'woodshop' type classes, and neither does our high school. I was the only person who had this experience, because to be honest, I'm a freak, haha. I've worked on pinsetting machines at bowling alleys, which gave me most of the mechanical experience. I feel bad because I couldn't teach the other team members how to use certain tools, but the time just wasn't there But already I'm thinking of doing a whole after school type of class in the fall on what tools are and how to use them, along with coding and wiring, so we don't build our next robot in the dark.

All in all, we learned it is almost completely about planning and good organization. It wasn't possible this year, but next year it will be a priority.

Oh, and about Championships. How is judging really done? I only saw 2 judges the entire time at our pit. Is that normal? If it is, I think a large judging force should be used, just like the regionals.

[Jeff Pahl]

Second.....rules. First off, regionals need more control. We fit easily into the measuring box at the LA Regional, but somehow our robot grew 3/8 of an inch between then and Atlanta, and the frame was not bent. In fact, I cut off a piece that was a little too high on Thursday morning just because I didn't like it sticking up. It fit that way into the measuring box at the LA Regional, but after cutting it off, it didn't fit in the boxes at Atlanta. If you are going to be so specific about something, the equipment measuring it needs to be precise as well.

Wiring colors? I'll be honest, I had no idea because I didn't have the time to sit down and read a rule book, and other students assigned the task did not complete it. But with that aside, why does it matter what color a wire is? Gauge is of course understandable, but the color? I've been working with electrical 'stuff's for years. IMO, it's a rule that is not necessary. Rules are normally for controlling the robot entries from having extra advantages (Size, Weight). But wire color? Come on. Don't pull the safety card on this either. Knowing a wire is ground or hot shouldn't decide how you work with it. You treat every wire like it's hot, just like you always treat a gun like it's loaded. On top of that, our wire coding was not correct at the LA Regional either, but none of the inspectors noticed. It would definitely help if we knew about it then, rather than at the Championships.

I will say that I am glad I went to Atlanta and had the opportunity to experience it, because it will be much harder to get there after our rookie year. It had the fun parts.....and it had the parts that made me steaming mad. Some improvements can definitely be made though.

I'm not blaming the volunteers, I'm just saying that some of the ruling is unnecessary. I am an individual who uses whats available. If I had the option of buying red and black wire at home depot in the correct gauge sizes, then I would have, because I do understand wiring codes. I used blue for black (not an uncommon practice for common/ground). They didn't have the red or even black wire (both surprising and not surprising in a way for Home Depot), so I used what I could buy. Having wire is better than none at all. Home Depot was not our only stop either.....electrical specialty shops no longer exist in our area.


First of all, the opinions that I am about to express are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect that of any other inspector, or of FIRST...

Let me start by saying that I'm glad you enjoyed the fun parts in Atlanta. It's a fantastic experience and I wish everyone could go. It's almost impossible to go there, especially with a rookie team, and not have your team improve next year just from the exposure to other teams, robots, and ideas that they receive there.

I'm very sorry that you made it all the way to the Championship with a problem that should have not passed inspection at the regional. Having to tell teams at Atlanta that their robot is not legal, after they have passed at a (or multiple) regionals is certainly not the enjoyable part of the job.

We try very hard to make the inspection experience uniform between the 43 regionals, and the Championship. However, as it involves 300+ volunteer inspectors and at least 10 different sets of inspection equipment, sometimes there are variations and things slip by. In addition to the manufacturing variation in the boxes, they take a lot of abuse. We try to make sure at setup that the boxes are square, and the dimensions are correct. Teams are constantly bumping (or worse) them with the robots, and they may get knocked out of proper size. If you think there is something wrong with a box, please ask to have the box checked!

Others have done a good job of providing reasons why imposing some sort of color code requirement makes sense. All I will add is that I am often asked to help try to assist teams with problems. It's hard enough to figure out the wiring in many robots as it is, without adding in having to deal with some random color code. (Or even worse, having it all be Pink or Moe green:) )I'm sure Al can provide many more reasons, and horror stories.

From the rules document that you did not have time to read:
<R47> All active Power Distribution Board branch circuit wiring with a constant polarity (i.e., except
for relay module, speed controller, or sensor outputs) shall be color-coded as follows:
A. Use red, white, brown, or black with stripe wire for +24 Vdc, +12 Vdc and +5 Vdc
connections.
B. Use black or blue wire for common (-) connections.

I did not personally inspect your robot, but my understanding is that the problem was not with the use of blue wire, which is acceptable for use as the negative connection (in agreement with the practice you refer to above), but with the use of a color for positive that was not on the above list in item (A). Please correct me if I am wrong about this.

As far as not having time to read the rules: If we are trying to expose students to engineering, then they might as well learn now that reading the requirements is not an optional activity. The requirements documents at my job run to several hundreds of pages for any given product. Not being aware of what the requirements are can lead to many unpleasant consequences, ranging from additional costs to my employer, to the loss of my job, all the way up to the loss of life on the part of my end user. It only takes a few minutes to skim thru the rules so that you are at least aware that there is a requirement for wire color, or bumpers, or the size of the robot, or size and placement of team numbers, or a bill of material, or ....... Then at least you can go back and find it later when you need to.

Please do not take the above personally. One of my biggest frustrations during build seasons is trying to get the team members on my own teams to read the rules. They seem to think it is easier to keep coming up with stuff and asking me if it's legal than to read the 32 page manual section containing the robot rules :( And sometimes I just let them show up for inspection with stuff that I know will not pass. And I make sure that whoever is going to do their inspection knows exactly what to look for :)

I hope you had an overall positive experience, and I hope to see you and your team back in Atlanta soon!

[BurtGummer]

We did have an overall good time. Just many things got to me........I've been able to cool down after resting today and getting some decent food. My prior posts have been rather malicious after reading them. And as I've said, if I had the time, the rules would have been read. I've already done 98% of everything on the robot and coding, and having to do yet another thing as big as the rule book myself was not possible. I was hoping the assigned student could complete it, but the task floated away. At the time, we didn't even know how important the rules were/are. Now we know, eh?

[AndyB]

I have to second everything Jeff said above. As an inspector, it is so frustrating when we run across issues that should have been noticed at previous competitions. We don't want to fail anybody. Our job is to make sure everyone followed the rules correctly and to help teams succeed in doing so. But nobody is perfect and in the end, all of the inspectors are volunteers. If they were perfect, there wouldn't need to be a second inspection.

I can't stress enough how important it is that teams read the manual. Seeing teams fail inspection for simple things that could have been avoided is very frustrating. You spend at least $6,000 on the season. That just isn't worth risking.

[Jeff Pahl]

To be quite honest I did not have the time. If I could make a 36 hour day, then maybe. The student assigned for rules did not complete the task, and after talking with him, he did not seem to understand why it was a problem at all. There are other issues at work here but I would rather not discuss them on these boards. For a quick background, we didn't have a kickoff day.....we didn't even know about the competition until after kickoff day. We started on February 4th, and until ship date I was building, coding, debugging, wiring, fixing, more debugging, more building......you get the picture. I am not saying it's an excuse at all, and if it does, I apologize. When your working the whole day Thursday swiss cheesing the robot to make weight, and you find out the robot doesn't fit size, then wiring colors are incorrect, and that the bumpers were less than adequate, you get, well, really annoyed. I'm still cooling down from the stress of this weekend.....and I'm sure it's obvious in my posts.

If I end up mentoring next year, it will start on kickoff day, a student will read the rulebook, another student will learn programming, and another student will work on scouting systems, etc. With 6 students on the team this year, and none having experience in FIRST, it made it REALLY difficult. We did great! But we have so many things we could have improved upon if we had the time and larger workforce.

Unfortunately, the other students have never had the experience with tools, power tools, or coding programs, or just working on something mechanical. The feeder schools that feed our high school don't have any 'woodshop' type classes, and neither does our high school. I was the only person who had this experience, because to be honest, I'm a freak, haha. I've worked on pinsetting machines at bowling alleys, which gave me most of the mechanical experience. I feel bad because I couldn't teach the other team members how to use certain tools, but the time just wasn't there But already I'm thinking of doing a whole after school type of class in the fall on what tools are and how to use them, along with coding and wiring, so we don't build our next robot in the dark.

All in all, we learned it is almost completely about planning and good organization. It wasn't possible this year, but next year it will be a priority.

Oh, and about Championships. How is judging really done? I only saw 2 judges the entire time at our pit. Is that normal? If it is, I think a large judging force should be used, just like the regionals.

I'm going to post again, since this popped up in the 45+ minutes I spent writing my other post (and convincing a 2 year old it was bedtime).

It sounds like you pretty much had the normal rookie experience, just compressed into about half the time. I do not envy you that, and it truly does make your getting to Atlanta all that more impressive.

I cringe every time I hear "the studentassigned to read the robot rules". I have posted my thoughts on this subject before, and they can be read here (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?p=776636#post776636). Make one the expert, but everyone that is going to walk within 10 feet of the robot should at least read thru them.

Other than that, it sounds to me like you have a great plan for next year! Good Luck! If you need any help or advice, hop in here and ask! Feel free to send me a PM any time, I've been thru the "Rookie Experience" more than once. I don't claim to know the answers, but I have learned a few things I don't recommend...

Judging at the Championship is done by a very large team, just like at the regionals. You just did not happen to see the rest of them.

[AlexD744]

Original post by me: A system based on score or something, i don't know.

Yes, we call it a scouting system, where we look at what each robot does, rather than what an alliance does. In this way, luck has very little to do with anything.

True however, when your in a field of unknown teams, not all of them scout and jump to conclusions about robots based on previuos years. I guess I'm just a litle annoyed because we got the short end of that stick. Sorry for my sourness :( , I don't mean to bring you guys down. Despite what happened, Atlanta was still super amazing.

[Dale]

This is the first game I can recall where robots are scoring on other robots. Normally the robots are all working with a neutral game piece and scoring with it on some disinterested structure. By scoring on other robots, the team you just scored on gets hit with the double whammy of you scoring points and doing it at their expense in an in-your-face way.

I saw many matches where a powerful alliance had obviously decided in advance which robot they thought was the weakest of the opposing alliance and then proceeded to take turns filling their trailer to capacity. I over heard one strategy session where they called this a gang bang! Yikes!

I would suggest in an environment where we are looking to increase the self confidence of weaker teams, and have them leave the competition feeling good about themselves, that game structure is counter to what we're trying to accomplish.

We're all used to having some alliances with a weak member and that's fine. Often the stronger robots can make up for that member. Lunacy put too much pressure on weaker teams. That, plus the boring traffic jams, is why it's my least favorite of the last six FRC games I've watched.

[EricH]

This is the first game I can recall where robots are scoring on other robots. Normally the robots are all working with a neutral game piece and scoring with it on some disinterested structure. 1999 might count, though I don't really remember the rules. The robots' job was to raise scoring objects over 8' in the air. That was the only way to score them. But, they weren't usually putting the objects on the other robots themselves.

[Nawaid Ladak]

allright, let me get to it

1. G14 /// please FIRST, Never again try to cut a teams sucess short. We honestly could have seen a High Score placed this weekend, but you put the best teams on leashes that didn't allow them to perform at full capasity, and make us say... wow

2. Bumper Rules/Rober Wheels etc... Xerox Creativity Award. /// 7, Helux, Power Dumper, Shooter, These were the four designs that i saw most of this weekend. FIRST. please stop making the award about the sponcor (Xerox...copies) and more about what it stands for.... Creativity, bending the envolope, thinking outside the box. Seriously, a robot with a Gyroscope won XCA this year at CMPl.... thast sad

3. Districts /// Ovbiously we saw that this is something that either, FIRST needs to limit, or they need to make everything a district next year. There is no doubt in my mind that the #1 reason there were four MI robots in the finals on Einstein was because of the experance their drivers had accumulated by going to their respective events. Just to give an example, here are the match counts for the four MI teams that were on einstein (these numbers are after championships)

217: 85 Matches Played
67: 87 Matches Played
247: 82 Matches Played
68: 79 Matches Played

here are the totals for the other two teams that were on Einstein

111: 46 Matches Played
971: 32 Matches Played

I see a huge discrpeency there, Im srue you see it as well. Districts either need to be eliminated, or FIRST needs to start making Multi-Regionals affordable for everyone else

4. The Game /// Give the audunce something to cheer about, Someone was right when they said the stands were very quiet during Einstein Finals.

5. Volunteers and Cowd Control /// During Einstein Matches. If your a Volunteer and you were assigned to be on the floor for any of the divisions, I don't see why your not allowed to view the Finals matches from the floor of the GA Dome on the Archimedes/Curie side of the field. The volunteers this year would kick off Voluntters while keeping kids/mentors from other teams (Not the teams on Einstein or the Backups) would be sitting right there. Give volunteers some appreation and let them watch the matches from there instead of watching them from the bleeder seats because they were busy helping out on their respective possision and couldn't get good seats.

6. Sustaining before Growing /// FIRST keeps on telling us to grow teams. What they don't realize is that 40% of all FIRST teams eventually fold. Instead of trying to create mroe teams, try sustaining and satisfying the wants and needs of the teams you already have, try to bring back already folded teams, and THEN try to grow from there

7. Founders Award...NI vs IFI, Patent /// Please FIRST, don't start this mess, don't start a war, because honestly, that what it looks like your trying to do. first you debrand VEX in favor of NXT, and then you give a company thats been helping out with FLL since 2003, instead of a company thats been helping the orginization and it's teams for much longer in FRC.... and now witht he patent, I think FIRST is asking for it.

8. Awards/Finals. If my memory serves me correct. the finals were supposed to end at 6, Why was i sitting in the dome at 6:15 waiting for Finals match 2.... when the MINIMUM number of matches had been played? FIRST needs to work on time management, they give us six weeks to build a robot and fix it windws after (at least up intil last year,) you should be held to the same standards when you give yourself 2 hours to complete the Fnals on Enstein. on a side note, Teams, please don't call timeouts on Einstein, Dean Speaking is your timeout.

[AustinSchuh]

This is the first game I can recall where robots are scoring on other robots. Normally the robots are all working with a neutral game piece and scoring with it on some disinterested structure.

1999 might count, though I don't really remember the rules. The robots' job was to raise scoring objects over 8' in the air. That was the only way to score them. But, they weren't usually putting the objects on the other robots themselves.

I would have to say that 1999 doesn't fall in either category, since you weren't scoring on the other alliance's robots, and you weren't scoring the floppies on a structure.

If you want to be particular, you could say that 2007 counts as robots scoring on other robots, since you climbed on top of another robot to score bonus points at the end of the match.

[Chris Fultz]

There are lots of "comments" on G14, but if you paid attention to it in your strategy you were rewarded.

In every division, the final rankings were determined by RS, average losing alliance scores.

In Newton, all top 8 teams were 6-1, RS determined the order.

In Archimedes, 2 - 8 were 6-1, RS determined the order.

In Curie, 2-5 were 6-1, RS determined the order.

In Galileo, 1-2 were 7-0, 4 - 10 were 6-1, RS not only determined the order, but if you were even an alliance captain.

Use the rules in your strategy and to your advantage.

[martin417]

There are lots of "comments" on G14, but if you paid attention to it in your strategy you were rewarded.

Use the rules in your strategy and to your advantage.

There seems to be a misunderstanding about RS. It has nothing to do with score differential, only with the losing teams score. If the losing team only gets 36 points, that's all you get, regardless of your own score. If you win 38-36, it is no better for RS than winning 135 to 36. The G14 doesn't enter into RS.

On another note though, your average score is the tiebreaker for two teams with identical W/L records and RS. It was the strategic goal of my team to receive a G-14 every match. If the real time scoring had been accurate, we would have boosted the other team's score by scoring on our own trailer, but having seen 70 point swings from real time to final score, we decided that we needed to score as much as possible.

[ebarker]

6. Sustaining before Growing /// FIRST keeps on telling us to grow teams. What they don't realize is that 40% of all FIRST teams eventually fold. Instead of trying to create mroe teams, try sustaining and satisfying the wants and needs of the teams you already have, try to bring back already folded teams, and THEN try to grow from there

FIRST clearly understands the issue of teams folding. They have also stated with abundant regularity that teams need to learn how to build sustainable organizations. Your team is responsible for its financial well being, NOT FIRST.

[Chris Fultz]

There seems to be a misunderstanding about RS. It has nothing to do with score differential, only with the losing teams score. If the losing team only gets 36 points, that's all you get, regardless of your own score. If you win 38-36, it is no better for RS than winning 135 to 36. The G14 doesn't enter into RS.

On another note though, your average score is the tiebreaker for two teams with identical W/L records and RS. It was the strategic goal of my team to receive a G-14 every match. If the real time scoring had been accurate, we would have boosted the other team's score by scoring on our own trailer, but having seen 70 point swings from real time to final score, we decided that we needed to score as much as possible.


i disagree -

if you are winning 135 - 36, you should start scoring on yourself to push up the other alliances score, so that it is 135 - 100. You get the win, you get of RS.

[sdcantrell56]

i disagree -

if you are winning 135 - 36, you should start scoring on yourself to push up the other alliances score, so that it is 135 - 100. You get the win, you get of RS.

The important point was that real time scoring was so incredibly inaccurate that there was absolutely no way that I as a coach would tell our team to start scoring on ourselves for fear that the score was inaccurate and that we would mistakenly lose. When real time scoring is off by 70 points, there is a serious problem. We were going for at least 1 G14 per match after deciding how ridiculous the rule was.

[MrForbes]

2. Bumper Rules/Rober Wheels etc... Xerox Creativity Award. /// 7, Helux, Power Dumper, Shooter, These were the four designs that i saw most of this weekend. FIRST. please stop making the award about the sponcor (Xerox...copies) and more about what it stands for.... Creativity, bending the envolope, thinking outside the box. Seriously, a robot with a Gyroscope won XCA this year at CMPl.... thast sad

That's an interesting observation. I noticed that the concentration of helix/power dumper/shooter/7 robots was very high at championships, but at the regionals out West they were not that common. I guess most of the very creative robots just didn't work as well as these four designs, which is why you didn't see nearly as much creativity at Champs. The few, effective desings won the regionals, so they made it to Atlanta.

http://selectric.org/nerds/2009la/

shows the robots at Long Beach, notice the very wide variety of designs! Arizona was the same way, lots of very interesting designs.

[martin417]

i disagree -

if you are winning 135 - 36, you should start scoring on yourself to push up the other alliances score, so that it is 135 - 100. You get the win, you get of RS.

And how would you know you were winning 135-36? It has been demonstrated that the real time scoring is often not even close.

Hypothetical match: RTS shows you winning 135-36, so you score 30 points in your own trailer making the RTS 135-66. Then the real score appears and the final score is 136-135 and you lose. This is not an exaggeration. I witnessed at least one match where the RTS was off by more than 70 points. It was not worth the risk.

[MrForbes]

You could look at the trailers.

[sdcantrell56]

Unfortunately looking at the trailers and determining the number of balls in each is also not reliable particularly in the heat of the match. I think FIRST needs to do away with these supposedly "leveling" rules. Some teams will inevitably be better than others and they should not be punished for building a more effective robot. For me it is inspiring to see a team go out and truly dominate a match with superior driving, strategy, and robot. I must say this year watching 217 and 67 in various matches was a wonderful experience.

[Steve_Alaniz]

First of all, congratulations to all the teams for their achievements. I don't want to take anything away from the winners but I do have some concerns about the way the judging went.
I think the most obvious example was the All Star Rookie award. There were some really fantastic rookie robots out there and a lot of people who struggled to make it to Atlanta. But this DOES feed into the definition of a rookie team and more specifically... WHEN you become a rookie team.
Team 3091 is an excellent team and They have given enormous support to FLL and FTC... However, when Woodie was chronicling their activities and reasons they were selected, one line stood out to me. They had done fund raising for FLL/FTC over the summer and sponsorship of FLL/FTC teams before the start of the 2009 season. In my estimation, you become a rookie team on Jan 3 2009 and should be judged by your rookie season IF it is indeed a rookie award. I must have missed something because I have never seen a guide detailing what you should do the year before you become a rookie team. Normally, a rookie team is not expected to have extensively promote the FIRST family because they are... well... new. (I don't think you are even ALLOWED to submit a Chairman's Award bid as a rookie.)
I have no problem with the award being given to 3091. But I have a problem with the reasons the judges chose to give it to them. There seemed to be a bias due to their involvement with FLL and FTC and it made for an uneven playing field for the other rookie teams. Not all areas have FLL and FTC, and FRC is often the first competition that arrives (though I think that may be changing) so the opportunity to help isn't even there.
Still, I'm sure the judges had their reasons but I hope prior involvement does not become a requirement to win a rookie award at the championships.

My 2 cents

[sdcantrell56]

First of all, congratulations to all the teams for their achievements. I don't want to take anything away from the winners but I do have some concerns about the way the judging went.
I think the most obvious example was the All Star Rookie award. There were some really fantastic rookie robots out there and a lot of people who struggled to make it to Atlanta. But this DOES feed into the definition of a rookie team and more specifically... WHEN you become a rookie team.
Team 3091 is an excellent team and They have given enormous support to FLL and FTC... However, when Woodie was chronicling their activities and reasons they were selected, one line stood out to me. They had done fund raising for FLL/FTC over the summer and sponsorship of FLL/FTC teams before the start of the 2009 season. In my estimation, you become a rookie team on Jan 3 2009 and should be judged by your rookie season IF it is indeed a rookie award. I must have missed something because I have never seen a guide detailing what you should do the year before you become a rookie team. Normally, a rookie team is not expected to have extensively promote the FIRST family because they are... well... new. (I don't think you are even ALLOWED to submit a Chairman's Award bid as a rookie.)
I have no problem with the award being given to 3091. But I have a problem with the reasons the judges chose to give it to them. There seemed to be a bias due to their involvement with FLL and FTC and it made for an uneven playing field for the other rookie teams. Not all areas have FLL and FTC, and FRC is often the first competition that arrives (though I think that may be changing) so the opportunity to help isn't even there.
Still, I'm sure the judges had their reasons but I hope prior involvement does not become a requirement to win a rookie award at the championships.

My 2 cents

So I guess you are trying to say that because they went above and beyond what most if not all rookie teams do, then they should not be allowed to compete because most other rookie teams can not accomplish as much as they have. This sounds incredibly flawed to me. We had the privilege to play with 3091 at Peachtree and they are a great group of young people. They are without a doubt a real rookie team, but they happen to be very dedicated and they have some very strong mentorship from many local atlanta teams. Rather than saying it is unfair for a team who is capable of so much to win this award maybe all the future rookie teams should look to this as an example of what should be done to win the Championship Rookie all-star award. It sounds to me like they are already on there way to winning an EI award or a Chairmans award which should be applauded.

[Steve_Alaniz]

So I guess you are trying to say that because they went above and beyond what most if not all rookie teams do, then they should not be allowed to compete because most other rookie teams can not accomplish as much as they have. This sounds incredibly flawed to me. We had the privilege to play with 3091 at Peachtree and they are a great group of young people. They are without a doubt a real rookie team, but they happen to be very dedicated and they have some very strong mentorship from many local atlanta teams. Rather than saying it is unfair for a team who is capable of so much to win this award maybe all the future rookie teams should look to this as an example of what should be done to win the Championship Rookie all-star award. It sounds to me like they are already on there way to winning an EI award or a Chairmans award which should be applauded.

Without a doubt they are an excellent team and a great bunch of young people. I believe I said that. And I never said they were in anyway unfair. And you are quite right, they are on their way to a chairman's award. My point, that you have horribly twisted, is that they should win on the merits of being rookies... there are other awards... like the judges award that would cover the extraordinary work they did. In fact I wouldn't mind if they had been given BOTH a Judge's for their work and the All Star rookie for being an exceptional rookie team. I'd actually wouldn't be mentioning this if they had. I just feel the work they did PRIOR to becoming a rookie team should not have been a consideration for this particular award. Just splitting hairs what "rookie season" means.

[sdcantrell56]

I think rookie season should encompass the entire time before a team finishes competing in their first season. All of the planning and team building as well as fundraising that occurs before the official season is just as important as what goes on during the six week build season and ensuing competition.

[GaryVoshol]

I just feel the work they did PRIOR to becoming a rookie team should not have been a consideration for this particular award. Just splitting hairs what "rookie season" means.
Effectively, we are now in the 2010 season. It started at about 6:45 pm EDT Saturday. Existing teams are free to do tons of pre-build-season work, both on robot prototypes and extra-curricular activities; why not rookies? (Just don't use any of the parts you fabricate before kickoff on your 2010 competition robot.) If there's no FLL team in your area to mentor, start one.

[Andrew Y.]

First of all, congratulations to all the teams for their achievements. I don't want to take anything away from the winners but I do have some concerns about the way the judging went.
I think the most obvious example was the All Star Rookie award. There were some really fantastic rookie robots out there and a lot of people who struggled to make it to Atlanta. But this DOES feed into the definition of a rookie team and more specifically... WHEN you become a rookie team.
Team 3091 is an excellent team and They have given enormous support to FLL and FTC... However, when Woodie was chronicling their activities and reasons they were selected, one line stood out to me. They had done fund raising for FLL/FTC over the summer and sponsorship of FLL/FTC teams before the start of the 2009 season. In my estimation, you become a rookie team on Jan 3 2009 and should be judged by your rookie season IF it is indeed a rookie award. I must have missed something because I have never seen a guide detailing what you should do the year before you become a rookie team. Normally, a rookie team is not expected to have extensively promote the FIRST family because they are... well... new. (I don't think you are even ALLOWED to submit a Chairman's Award bid as a rookie.)
I have no problem with the award being given to 3091. But I have a problem with the reasons the judges chose to give it to them. There seemed to be a bias due to their involvement with FLL and FTC and it made for an uneven playing field for the other rookie teams. Not all areas have FLL and FTC, and FRC is often the first competition that arrives (though I think that may be changing) so the opportunity to help isn't even there.
Still, I'm sure the judges had their reasons but I hope prior involvement does not become a requirement to win a rookie award at the championships.

My 2 cents


What a team can put in their rookie and chairmans award, in my opinion, starts right after the end of the previous season. Team 2415 came to me my senior year, 2007. As soon as my season was over, i began helping them plan events, activities, etc. "rookie" year is defined the first season a team competes. Its clearly defined by first. Why did 3091 have a easier time because they were involved in FLL or FTC? They helped others...isnt that the point of FIRST?

[Rick TYler]

FIRST clearly understands the issue of teams folding. They have also stated with abundant regularity that teams need to learn how to build sustainable organizations. Your team is responsible for its financial well being, NOT FIRST.

Which doesn't change the fact that the more teams fold, the less often FIRST achieves its goals. Telling soldiers that it's their job to charge machine-gun nests doesn't change the fact that charging machine-gun nests is hard and a lot of soldiers will die trying. Perhaps FIRST needs to change the program so that it doesn't cost $500-2,000 per student per year to be successful? What if there were an exciting STEM robotics program that only cost $150-200 per student, AND allowed more hands-on engineering opportunities for students?

[Steve_Alaniz]

Effectively, we are now in the 2010 season. It started at about 6:45 pm EDT Saturday. Existing teams are free to do tons of pre-build-season work, both on robot prototypes and extra-curricular activities; why not rookies? (Just don't use any of the parts you fabricate before kickoff on your 2010 competition robot.) If there's no FLL team in your area to mentor, start one.

Well you can indeed plan for it and work towards that goal. That sounds good to me, but there is a, albeit small, risk that we have had our last FIRST season. You never know, so UNofficially the season has started as you so astutely pointed out. Why not rookies? Well... can you actually be a rookie before you register for 2010? I don't know the answer to that question and therein lies the problem. FIRST has not clearly defined the WHEN part. Arguably though, when you pay your registration fee because they will not give you a kit of parts until you do.
Hey I never said I had a problem with local FLL teams. There are plenty around. And start a FLL team? Been there done that. SO I'm good.
And just as a reminder... all this is just my OPINION. But I also have the opinion that FIRST is not perfect so, what do I know.

[Carol]

We sat on the far side of Galileo for the finals and closing ceremonies, at the very top, and it was very hard to hear the announcements. It was speculated that perhaps the speakers were aimed for the top tier of seats as these are closed off during the rest of the competitions.

Dave's Top Ten List was shown only on the middle screen and not on the side screens, so we still have no idea what he said (there was a lot of laughter so it must have been good). The flags and equipment blocked our view of the main screen. Will the list be posted somewhere?

There was a closing video that we also didn't see, shown as we were headed out at the end. It would have been nice if they announced that there was going to be one at the very end so we could have stayed in our seats and watched it. (Rumor is that there is a brief shot of our team's Green Man Group in it). Again, will this be posted as well?

[Steve_Alaniz]

What a team can put in their rookie and chairmans award, in my opinion, starts right after the end of the previous season. Team 2415 came to me my senior year, 2007. As soon as my season was over, i began helping them plan events, activities, etc. "rookie" year is defined the first season a team competes. Its clearly defined by first. Why did 3091 have a easier time because they were involved in FLL or FTC? They helped others...isnt that the point of FIRST?

Oh... Hey Thank you... You FOUND it.

"rookie" year is defined the first season a team competes

and from the FIRST website

"Each year, the FRC season begins in early January with a Kickoff "


SOoooo you've made my point... the rookie year starts in January according to FIRST.

[MrForbes]

Interesting...do they also say when the season ends? I would guess that's probably some time around the third week of April?

:)

The season is only four and a half months long, but we work all year long. And a rookie team simply cannot compete in FRC if they don't form their team and do fundraising and whatnot well before January.

I try to learn from successfull teams....

[Steve_Alaniz]

Interesting...do they also say when the season ends? I would guess that's probably some time around the third week of April?

:)


The season is only four and a half months long, but we work all year long. And a rookie team simply cannot compete in FRC if they don't form their team and do fundraising and whatnot well before January.

I try to learn from successfull teams....


Hey I don't make the rules I only read them and follow them. and no... you are a rookie until the next season... just like in baseball so it is a full year until January rolls around again.

[ShortBang]

Until the Michigan System is imposed nationwide, I think FIRST should involve some sort of at-large bids for teams that do not qualify from regionals.

After pairing with 40 for eliminations in Chesapeake, and losing by three points in the Third match of the finals, not only were we disappointed that we did not qualify for nationals, but that 40 did not. 40 had the best autonomous scoring that I had seen this year, and reached the finals in both of their regionals. Luckily they made it to Atlanta off the waitlist, and Captained an alliance in Divisional Eliminations. I think there are five or six more teams that didn't qualify that had the potential to do the same thing in Atlanta.

From what I can tell, 40 is the only team that made it in off the waitlist, while there were many other teams I can think of that would've greatly added to the overall competitive level in Atlanta. In watching webcasts of Atlanta, I saw teams that preregistered for Atlanta that barely ran and functioned. I understand some teams decide to preregister for Atlanta instead of competing at a second Regional, but Atlanta is supposed to be The World Championships of FIRST. If FIRST is to be considered a sport, I think something needs to be changed about this. I think preregistration should be for Hall of Fame teams, Previous World Champions, and Division Champions. After that, and filling Atlanta with the qualifiers, FIRST should have some sort of system similar to the Michigan Points to fill up the divisions, until the whole country is on that system.

[Adam Y.]

Home Depot was not our only stop either.....electrical specialty shops no longer exist in our area.
For future reference it appears you live really close to a McMaster-Carr storefront. It is much better than an electrical specialty storefront because it literally has everything including the kitchen sink. That is where I order all my wire for my projects. If I actually have the right location for your team it isn't that far away.

[Bharat Nain]

If FIRST is to be considered a sport, I think something needs to be changed about this.

That's the thing. We're not sure if FIRST is a sport or like one. We are told that it is not about the game or the robots but that seems like the main and most fun part. Even the game rules are written seriously (little too seriously) to make the game and the robot serious business.

Clarity is lacking.

[Jeff Pahl]

8. Awards/Finals. If my memory serves me correct. the finals were supposed to end at 6, Why was i sitting in the dome at 6:15 waiting for Finals match 2.... when the MINIMUM number of matches had been played? FIRST needs to work on time management, they give us six weeks to build a robot and fix it windws after (at least up intil last year,) you should be held to the same standards when you give yourself 2 hours to complete the Fnals on Enstein. on a side note, Teams, please don't call timeouts on Einstein, Dean Speaking is your timeout.

The timeout was called between the first and second finals matches. It was for a problem that occurred after the first match. It was not something that could have been addressed during any of the previous speakers. Also, you may have noticed that the robots sit on the field during the speakers, making it hard to work on them then. The field personnel were telling the team that they had to have the robot on the field immediately. Their two options at that point were to either call a timeout or to place the backup robot on the field. What would you have done? I know I sure would have called the timeout.

I agree completely with the time management problems on Einstein. However, they are not due to a team needing to call a 6 minute timeout.

FIRST should have something prepared to fill a timeout if necessary. Something besides having the DJ cue up "YMCA".

[Roger]

Dave's Top Ten List was shown only on the middle screen and not on the side screens so we still have no idea what he said (there was a lot of laughter so it must have been good). The flags and equipment blocked our view of the main screen. Will the list be posted somewhere?There was something early Friday morning too, on the video broadcast, when Dave ran thru a list. Was that the same list or a rebroadcast from another year? I'm sure it was amusing, but I guess the "people at home" will never see the photos up on the big screen.

[Tom Line]

I don't like listing just the negatives, so here are the postives too:

Positives:
1. The district system in Michigan was very nice. Though there still some improvements that need to happen in scoring (chairmans being worth 0) and time management (closing pits at 10:00PM & 8PM is insane - teams don't get to enjoy themselves and do things with other teams), we got HUGE bang for our bucks.

Negatives:
1. Judging consistency.
Crab is cool. It's also pretty old in terms of FIRST. It's time to educate the judges about standard FIRST systems so we stop seeing awards given out to teams for the same thing. It's my opinion that every team that made an effective fan this year should have won an award (and we did NOT make one).... but I saw multiple awards at every district I attended that mentioned... CRAB.... this is a personal beef but it's also a microcosm of what we see with judging around the country. With the current judging setup of volunteers, I don't know how you can fix it.

The judges need some better standards to work from. In one district, our presenters were told we needed more planning for future work. When we presented that at States, we got a very chilly reaction because we hadn't done them yet.

Oh - one final comment. Please folks, stop attributing a large part of the Michigan teams' performances to the district structure. 2 of the four teams were in the finals last year, Da Bears have multiple regional wins over the years, 68 has been incredible as well, and I think you'll see through the years that Michigan teams have always done pretty well at Nationals.

[BurtGummer]

The season is only four and a half months long, but we work all year long. And a rookie team simply cannot compete in FRC if they don't form their team and do fundraising and whatnot well before January.


We, Team 3020, did.

[sdcantrell56]

Negatives:
1. Judging consistency.
Crab is cool. It's also pretty old in terms of FIRST. It's time to educate the judges about standard FIRST systems so we stop seeing awards given out to teams for the same thing. It's my opinion that every team that made an effective fan this year should have won an award (and we did NOT make one).... but I saw multiple awards at every district I attended that mentioned... CRAB.... this is a personal beef but it's also a microcosm of what we see with judging around the country. With the current judging setup of volunteers, I don't know how you can fix it.

The judges need some better standards to work from. In one district, our presenters were told we needed more planning for future work. When we presented that at States, we got a very chilly reaction because we hadn't done them yet.



I couldnt agree more about teams winning an award for crab or swerve drivetrains. At both regionals we attended, the same team won a design award for a swerve drivetrain. I completely believe that they had a very good swerve drivetrain, and many teams iterations were not as effective but there was nothing new or unique about there rendition. I think the xerox creativity award should actually award a creative design, not a design that has been around FIRST for at least the last 5 years. I think that the judges should be better versed in what has been done previously to have a better understanding of what is truly unique.

[MrForbes]

We, Team 3020, did.

Then I'm wrong....and congratulations on getting so much done in so little time!

We've had to work to get money at least a few months before kickoff.

[BurtGummer]

Also, I think there should have been some normal regolith fields to practice on. After we programmed our gyro, we wanted to test it out, but the practice rounds were already over. We didn't want to compete in a practice round anyways, we just wanted to see it on some regolith.

[EricH]

Also, I think there should have been some normal regolith fields to practice on. After we programmed our gyro, we wanted to test it out, but the practice rounds were already over. We didn't want to compete in a practice round anyways, we just wanted to see it on some regolith.
There were. If the practice fields were being run as practice rounds, then I think FIRST made the biggest mistake ever. (<G14> not excepted.)

[AdamHeard]

There were. If the practice fields were being run as practice rounds, then I think FIRST made the biggest mistake ever. (<G14> not excepted.)

Yup, to test auton I had to jump on the field, reset it, risk getting hit, and piss off volunteers.

[BurtGummer]

Then I'm wrong....and congratulations on getting so much done in so little time!

We've had to work to get money at least a few months before kickoff.

Thanks!

Well, we hopefully won't be forced to wait this long again.....it isn't something I'd like to repeat.

[KF987]

3. Districts /// Ovbiously we saw that this is something that either, FIRST needs to limit, or they need to make everything a district next year. There is no doubt in my mind that the #1 reason there were four MI robots in the finals on Einstein was because of the experance their drivers had accumulated by going to their respective events. Just to give an example, here are the match counts for the four MI teams that were on einstein (these numbers are after championships)

217: 85 Matches Played
67: 87 Matches Played
247: 82 Matches Played
68: 79 Matches Played

here are the totals for the other two teams that were on Einstein

111: 46 Matches Played
971: 32 Matches Played

I see a huge discrpeency there, Im srue you see it as well. Districts either need to be eliminated, or FIRST needs to start making Multi-Regionals affordable for everyone else

I agree with you here, FIRST needs to go to district events nation wide, I know team density in some states is too low like Nevada to have district events, they could have a west coast district where AZ, NV, CA, & UT can go and compete in any district event with in the four states and then have a "West Coast Championship" I think that would be really fun and is a possible solution.

-Keaton

[MrForbes]

I doubt the district thing would work so well when it's a two day drive to many locations (like from here to the bay area, for example).

[Alex Cormier]

Yup, to test auton I had to jump on the field, reset it, risk getting hit, and piss off volunteers.

Who said you can't drive the robot back, use the dongle to switch the robot off and on to perform auto mode? numerous teams did this.

[Aren_Hill]

positioning it within the box in the correct orientation and everything just as well aligned as when youd do it on the field is no easy task

[AdamHeard]

Who said you can't drive the robot back, use the dongle to switch the robot off and on to perform auto mode? numerous teams did this.

because the drivers cant reset the robot perfectly?

Either way, the practice field setup was stupid. The fact that teams we're playing "matches" screwed over teams trying to TEST things, which is what the field is for in my opinion. At champs, you shouldn't be playing practice matches on it.

[David Brinza]

The Newton-Galileo practice field set-up was strange (to say the least).

On Sat morning, we were trying to fine-tune and test autonomous modes, which required us to modify code. Even though only two robots were using the field, the drill was put the robot on the practice field for several minutes, then take it off. Even though no robots were waiting to get on, we had to come off the field.

This is a training matter for FIRST to work in their "off-season".

[pyr0b0y]

FIRST could have dealt with practice a lot better. A lot of teams in our area did not have easy access to regiloth. Going back to the carpets would make it a lot easy, especially for testing code. Our team did not really know how traction control would work until we actually got to competition.

[BurtGummer]

I like how they did continue holding the practice rounds, because if everything is working, then all you should be doing is practicing as much as possible. But for just testing something quickly, you could not get on the field. I wanted to test something on Friday 1 hour before the pits closed, but I couldn't because they were holding practice matches that you had to be signed up in advance for.

Practice rounds are great, but a testing field also needs to be somewhere. Something like what I saw at the Las Vegas regional would be great (maybe bigger though).

Rewriting autonomous code without regolith is pretty much impossible if you want the robot to do something other than go straight for 15 seconds.

[Andrew Y.]

Oh... Hey Thank you... You FOUND it.

"rookie" year is defined the first season a team competes

and from the FIRST website

"Each year, the FRC season begins in early January with a Kickoff "


SOoooo you've made my point... the rookie year starts in January according to FIRST.

so the way your saying it, a team should not and can not do anything during the off season? shoot....then almost all the chairmans teams and all the teams who go do outreach and put it in their presentations are "cheaters" aka" rule breakers"

[BurtGummer]

I think what he is trying to say is that many rookie teams don't start with FTC. The ones that do already have a "season" going, and fundraising, summer, camps, and other activities are already in place and occurring from being in FTC. By joining FRC they just continued with what they were doing, and won the Rookie-All Star Award largely because of it. They may be rookie in FRC, but their activities aren't. (I don't know if that is true, but I think that is what he's trying to say.)

Now, I don't know when Rookie teams have to be registered by so they can get a KoP, but I know that even the sponsors and teachers who organized our team didn't know about doing this until late 2008. And at that point it was merely a thought in the back of their minds.

[234smidget]

Next year, it would be nice if the fields were more towards the middle of the domebecause in the stands, it was hard to scout some robots because of all the teams infront of us.

[Andrew Y.]

I think what he is trying to say is that many rookie teams don't start with FTC. The ones that do already have a "season" going, and fundraising, summer, camps, and other activities are already in place and occurring from being in FTC. By joining FRC they just continued with what they were doing, and won the Rookie-All Star Award largely because of it. They may be rookie in FRC, but their activities aren't. (I don't know if that is true, but I think that is what he's trying to say.)

Now, I don't know when Rookie teams have to be registered by so they can get a KoP, but I know that even the sponsors and teachers who organized our team didn't know about doing this until late 2008. And at that point it was merely a thought in the back of their minds.

ok, i understand that that has a large part, but thats only if FIRST ran all 3 competition together, which they don't. Each are their own identity, with their own rules and judges. If a baseball player plays in the minors, then he comes up to the majors.....is he not a rookie in the majors?

[JamJam263]

allright, let me get to it

... Xerox Creativity Award. /// 7, Helux, Power Dumper, Shooter, These were the four designs that i saw most of this weekend. FIRST. please stop making the award about the sponcor (Xerox...copies) and more about what it stands for.... Creativity, bending the envolope, thinking outside the box. Seriously, a robot with a Gyroscope won XCA this year at CMPl.... thast sad


Please inform me of how a Gyroscope is anything that you normally see on an FRC robot. From my understanding and observations I have seen very very few robots that incorporated a Gyroscope into their robot's design.None in the past, and a select few this year. I would love to know how it is a copy of anything previously done in this competition.

[sdcantrell56]

I agree that a gyroscope was pretty innovative. We threw around the idea early on but quickly moved on thinking it wouldnt be worth it. I still don't know if it was a worthwhile venture but it was very cool to see.

[MrForbes]

There are two types of gyroscopes...the sensor that comes in the KoP, and the type of heavy spinning disk that a few teams put on their robot.

[Andrew Y.]

I agree that a gyroscope was pretty innovative. We threw around the idea early on but quickly moved on thinking it wouldnt be worth it. I still don't know if it was a worthwhile venture but it was very cool to see.

agreed, i personally really wanted all sorts of sensors and shinnanigans, but with a rookie programmer, and me as the only EMO (engineering mentor...and im not even an engineer...just a lonely college student.) with NO programming skills....(i do know java....kinda). I decided it was way too much for us to finish.

I mean, barely got our robot shipped!

[JamJam263]

There are two types of gyroscopes...the sensor that comes in the KoP, and the type of heavy spinning disk that a few teams put on their robot.

Very true. Ironically we used a gyroscope sensor on the Gyroscope (flywheel)

So let me rephrase what i said before:

"Please inform me of how a Gyroscope flywheel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroscope) is anything that you normally see on an FRC robot. From my understanding and observations I have seen very very few robots that incorporated a Gyroscope flywheel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroscope) into their robot's design.None in the past, and a select few this year. I would love to know how it is a copy of anything previously done in this competition."

[BurtGummer]

Very true. Ironically we used a gyroscope sensor on the Gyroscope (flywheel)

So let me rephrase what i said before:

"Please inform me of how a Gyroscope flywheel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroscope) is anything that you normally see on an FRC robot. From my understanding and observations I have seen very very few robots that incorporated a Gyroscope flywheel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroscope) into their robot's design.None in the past, and a select few this year. I would love to know how it is a copy of anything previously done in this competition."

/Agree

We were the other team, 3020, who had a Control Moment Gyroscope on our robot. Now, it wasn't 22 pounds and it couldn't flip the robot 180 degrees, but it did affect steering. The award was well deserved if the team had a gyro. Unfortunately one of our team members spoke to a judge about the gyroscope on ours, and had no idea how it worked so he decided to throw BS out, which sounds like how they determined who got the award. I'm glad that 263 go it though, and not a team with a less innovative device.

Now, if I remember correctly, 1717 got an award for crab drive. Correct me if I'm wrong though. I will admit, I'm a fan of 1717, and their crab drive was working beautifully.

[Steve_Alaniz]

so the way your saying it, a team should not and can not do anything during the off season? shoot....then almost all the chairmans teams and all the teams who go do outreach and put it in their presentations are "cheaters" aka" rule breakers"


Wow you certainly have a chip on your shoulder! What I am saying is that the judges used improper criteria FOR THE ROOKIE AWARD... I never said anything about veteran teams and chairman's awards, but you seem determined to make me an evil person by trying to twist my meaning.
The discussion has centered around WHEN are you considered a rookie team. FIRST seems to define that as the start of the season and that was Jan 3rd, of this year. SO that would imply that they should consider the rookie season activities starting on Jan 3rd in determining this award. And may I point out... 3091 WAS helping FLL/FTC during that time so little has changed as far as that goes.
I never said anything about cheating OR that team 3091 did not deserve the award.. but that the reasons cited by Woodie, activities over the summer, were inappropriate for a rookie award. If anything, this was a disservice by whoever wrote the speech, to team 3091.
I think you need to read carefully before you comment. I recognize that this is a touchy subject but I believe FIRST needs to clarify all this rookie stuff.... there were 30+ other rookie teams at Atlanta, some of whom had just managed to convince their schools to back them and did a fantastic job of promoting FIRST in other ways. I don't believe it was fair to them to have an unknown bar set that forced them to be retroactive to include their previous year's activities to a time they may not have even known they would field a team.
But hey this is just my opinion. I can't change the ruling nor would I want to. I DO believe I have a valid point that should be addressed for future consideration. ( I personally wanted to see team 3020 win it... that gyro was awesome!)

[Gary Fields]

[QUOTE=EricH;852427]There were. If the practice fields were being run as practice rounds, then I think FIRST made the biggest mistake ever. (<G14> not excepted.)[/QUOTE

FIRST tried something new this year, wireless control of the robots on the practice field. In years past robots were required to be tethered.

The wireless operations required having set practiced rounds, and safety required not having people on the field while the robots were moving....It does not require a lot of thought to realize that you don't want people to get hit by a 130lb robot going full speed down the field. I don't know about you, but it is not worth getting hit, to make an adjustment. To get a prospective on how dangerous the practice fields were, more trailers were damaged on the 2 practice fields, than were damaged in competition on all 5 fields.

I for one, because of all the comments made here, and comments, abuse, and the non-GP treatment that was given practice field volunteers, am going to recommend that FIRST goes back to the all robots must be tethered while on the practice field.

Please remember the volunteers were running the fields as they were instructed. Ask yourself.....Did you treat those volunteers as you would have liked to be treated? I witnessed on more than one occasion mentors verbally abusing the volunteers running the fields. This should be unacceptable to all of us. Instead of criticizing the volunteers you should be thanking them!

To illustrate some of the non-GP actions....While repairing one of the trailers on the Curie/Archimedes practice field I set down a wrench, & a socket wrench (My own tools.) on the sign up table. A volunteer was dealing with a mentor, and need my help to answer a question. Turned around to pick them up less than a minute later, and they were gone.

I hope that all of you who found time to criticize how the practice fields were run, will find time to volunteer at a practice field next year.

[BurtGummer]

I don't think people are complaining about how they were run by volunteers. We are talking about not having a field were we could just test stuff on the regolith without having to sign up for a match. We know it isn't the volunteers fault....it was the organization by FIRST. Not having a regolith surface available for testing like at regionals was a big mistake.

I brought a 100 foot ethernet cable because i thought there would be a practice area where they would be required to be tethered.

[Blue_Mist]

Something interesting I noticed about the Chairman's Award winners (Congratulations 236 TechnoTicks!); do they get any view of the field? It looks like it is near impossible to see the action where they were currently situated. In my opinion, it would be unfair to place the team where they could not see the field. I mean, personally, I think the robots are an awesome part of FIRST.

[MrForbes]

FIRST tried something new this year, wireless control of the robots on the practice field. In years past robots were required to be tethered.

I guess one of the problems was that the teams didn't know that ahead of time....

Maybe there could be one wireless practice field, and one tethered? As long as it's described ahead of time, I think teams could adapt.

[Brian C]

This is the first game I can recall where robots are scoring on other robots. Normally the robots are all working with a neutral game piece and scoring with it on some disinterested structure.

2002 comes to mind. Playing pieces were soccer balls. 3 trailers started in the center of the field and were approx 180lbs (empty). Most teams chose to either tow or clamp to the trailers. Others chose to harvest balls and then dump into the trailer.

[EricH]

Gary, I wasn't even AT the Championships this year. In the past and at the regionals, it's been, bring a tether and join the line/get a block of time. It shouldn't require a lot of thought to realize that teams might want the regional practice field setup, not a setup that is Thursday every day when something just needs a minor software tweak and repeatability testing. That's what I'm calling a mistake.

Steve, when does FIRST change your status from "rookie" to veteran? Right after the Championship, right, at least officially? I.e., at the end of the season? So, logically, the year begins in late April. Therefore, summer counts.

But when does the "rookie" status begin? That is a tough question. When you sign up as an FRC team? Then you have a wide spread of time for rookies to get something going. When registration opens, all teams that haven't competed before are rookies? That would be more fair, but then you have a gap of several months with no rookies, only "pre-rookies". Right after Championship, when the previous rookies are now veterans (sophomore-type)? That makes more sense, but they're still "pre-rookies" all through the summer.

It's a tough call, and not one I'd want to make.

Brian, the trailers weren't assigned to an individual team and were also scored on when no robot was attached. They were neutral; the only time they counted was in a given zone. I'm not quite sure that counts.

[Brian C]

From my understanding and observations I have seen very very few robots that incorporated a Gyroscope flywheel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroscope) into their robot's design.None in the past, and a select few this year. I would love to know how it is a copy of anything previously done in this competition."

Glad to see you got the Xerox award at in Atlanta, Maybe they would have been more impressed with the "flame job" you did at SBPLI? :D

[Cory]

Something interesting I noticed about the Chairman's Award winners (Congratulations 236 TechnoTicks!); do they get any view of the field? It looks like it is near impossible to see the action where they were currently situated. In my opinion, it would be unfair to place the team where they could not see the field. I mean, personally, I think the robots are an awesome part of FIRST.

There was a television placed in front of the Einstein stage which the people on stage could watch.

[Steve_Alaniz]

Steve, when does FIRST change your status from "rookie" to veteran? Right after the Championship, right, at least officially? I.e., at the end of the season? So, logically, the year begins in late April. Therefore, summer counts.

But when does the "rookie" status begin? That is a tough question. When you sign up as an FRC team? Then you have a wide spread of time for rookies to get something going. When registration opens, all teams that haven't competed before are rookies? That would be more fair, but then you have a gap of several months with no rookies, only "pre-rookies". Right after Championship, when the previous rookies are now veterans (sophomore-type)? That makes more sense, but they're still "pre-rookies" all through the summer.

It's a tough call, and not one I'd want to make.




Eric,
No according to FIRST a rookie is a team that is competing in their first SEASON with FIRST and the SEASON, as defined BY FIRST, starts at kickoff. SO logically it cannot stretch back to the previous April. You are a rookie in the same way baseball players are rookies... until the start of the next season. But the in between time is undefined as far as I can tell.
I agree with you it is confusing and that is part of the problem and exactly what I was trying to say. It's definitely a tough call to make and you make some very valid points that highlight that confusion.
I must also admit that this whole thing may just be Bad writing on the part of Woodie's speech writer. Perhaps only the season was considered by the judges.
I nitpick when it comes to wording. Let's just call it a bad habit.

[Steve_Alaniz]

ok, i understand that that has a large part, but thats only if FIRST ran all 3 competition together, which they don't. Each are their own identity, with their own rules and judges. If a baseball player plays in the minors, then he comes up to the majors.....is he not a rookie in the majors?

Yeah you're a rookie ... but your previous STATs don't come with you.... You start over.

[Nawaid Ladak]

FIRST clearly understands the issue of teams folding. They have also stated with abundant regularity that teams need to learn how to build sustainable organizations. Your team is responsible for its financial well being, NOT FIRST.


Thats understandable, but when you lose mentor support/school sponsor support, thats a whole different thing, FIRST needs to make this appealing to schoolteachers and make it worthwhile for the teachers to stay after their scheduled hours. A lot of teams fold because of funding, or a ridiculusly high percentage of their kids are graduated the previous year. or just overall support for the program has donwhill.

I agree with you here, FIRST needs to go to district events nation wide, I know team density in some states is too low like Nevada to have district events, they could have a west coast district where AZ, NV, CA, & UT can go and compete in any district event with in the four states and then have a "West Coast Championship" I think that would be really fun and is a possible solution.

-Keaton

I wouldn't say district events nationwide. I live in Florida, where we currently only have 43 teams. I don't think a district system would work here. You just don't have the density of teams. I would rather see SuperRegionals pop up like the Greater Toronto Regional in 2006, an event with two fields where up to 128 teams can compete would be something worth attending.... even if your team doesn't qualify for championships. I'd like to hear from the teams that only went to district events (not state or championship) and get their experience compared to regional events.

Very true. Ironically we used a gyroscope sensor on the Gyroscope (flywheel)

So let me rephrase what i said before:

"Please inform me of how a Gyroscope flywheel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroscope) is anything that you normally see on an FRC robot. From my understanding and observations I have seen very very few robots that incorporated a Gyroscope flywheel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroscope) into their robot's design.None in the past, and a select few this year. I would love to know how it is a copy of anything previously done in this competition."

I didn't mean to offend the team that won the Xerox creativity award, so please if i did offend you, im sorry

What i was trying to say was, usually when i hear the Xerox Creativity award, i usually have this "wow" type of moment, like, "did some tea really think of that crazy idea, and it really worked?", this year, it seemed like that "wow" factor wasn't there. im sure many teams thought of the gyroscope. not all of them thought it would work, thus they ditched it. you guys stuck to it and made it work for you. That deserves to be awarded. but as i said above, it just didn't bring in that "wow/gasp" factor

[BurtGummer]

Thats understandable, but when you lose mentor support/school sponsor support, thats a whole different thing, FIRST needs to make this appealing to schoolteachers and make it worthwhile for the teachers to stay after their scheduled hours. A lot of teams fold because of funding, or a ridiculusly high percentage of their kids are graduated the previous year. or just overall support for the program has donwhill.



I wouldn't say district events nationwide. I live in Florida, where we currently only have 43 teams. I don't think a district system would work here. You just don't have the density of teams. I would rather see SuperRegionals pop up like the Greater Toronto Regional in 2006, an event with two fields where up to 128 teams can compete would be something worth attending.... even if your team doesn't qualify for championships. I'd like to hear from the teams that only went to district events (not state or championship) and get their experience compared to regional events.



I didn't mean to offend the team that won the Xerox creativity award, so please if i did offend you, im sorry

What i was trying to say was, usually when i hear the Xerox Creativity award, i usually have this "wow" type of moment, like, "did some tea really think of that crazy idea, and it really worked?", this year, it seemed like that "wow" factor wasn't there. im sure many teams thought of the gyroscope. not all of them thought it would work, thus they ditched it. you guys stuck to it and made it work for you. That deserves to be awarded. but as i said above, it just didn't bring in that "wow/gasp" factor

I didn't get to look around at Atlanta, but what other teams would you consider having that wow factor? Personally I consider a 22 pound disk rotating at 1400rpm, or ours a 7lb disk at 5200 rpm a 'wow' device. Getting something like a control moment gyroscope to work is not only more difficult than you think, but it takes ALOT of careful building. With such a high speed and high energy device, safety is a huge concern. It's more "Wow" than a crab drive imo.

[Nawaid Ladak]

I didn't get to look around at Atlanta, but what other teams would you consider having that wow factor? Personally I consider a 22 pound disk rotating at 1400rpm, or ours a 7lb disk at 5200 rpm a 'wow' device. Getting something like a control moment gyroscope to work is not only more difficult than you think, but it takes ALOT of careful building. With such a high speed and high energy device, safety is a huge concern. It's more "Wow" than a crab drive imo.

thanks for making my point for me. there was no wow factor to begin with. FIRST gave us size limitations, specific wheels that we couldn't tamper with, and a half page checklist on BUMPERS!!! this honestly took all the creativity out of the game... you couldn't have a robot that would intentionally tip it's trailer over, you couldn't have a robot that could remove moon rocks from it's trailer, you couldn't really use omni wheels. thus, out of the smoke came four designs that succeeded.... i've seen MUCH more variety than this in previous years game..... heck, all you have to do is look back to last year or the year before and you would understand exactly what im talking about.

I'll give you the fact that they won with a gyroscope, and that's something difficult to do, what i meant was there was potential for SO MUCH MORE creativity and yet, FIRST made sure we stayed inside the box.

[EricH]

You are a rookie in the same way baseball players are rookies... until the start of the next season. But the in between time is undefined as far as I can tell.
I agree with you it is confusing and that is part of the problem and exactly what I was trying to say. It's definitely a tough call to make and you make some very valid points that highlight that confusion.
I must also admit that this whole thing may just be Bad writing on the part of Woodie's speech writer. Perhaps only the season was considered by the judges.
I nitpick when it comes to wording. Let's just call it a bad habit.Poor analogy, Steve, due to having to play x games to not be a rookie in MLB (i.e., if you have to play 70 MLB games to be a non-rookie, then you can play 68, get injured, and still get Rookie of the Year the next year.) But I'll take it at face value--you're a rookie until your second season or declared otherwise.

I also have that habit, so no comment there.

And yeah, it is very confusing. Let's say that a team goes through 4 stages. It may not go through all of them, but here they are, along with an approximate timeframe:

Pre-rookie. Did not compete in FRC the previous year, it's their first year coming up, and the season hasn't started. For simplicity, they become rookies on Kickoff, though they have a number previously.
Rookie. Kickoff through Championship/other final official event of the season. Please note: EVERY year that I can remember, Dean or Woodie tells the rookies for the year that they are now veterans at some point during award ceremonies.
Sophomore-class. Starts right after the Rookie status ends and continues for a year or two. (Years end at Championship now.)
Veteran. 3+ years under their belts.Note that it's easy to jump stages; I would count 2753 as sophomore-class after they won NJ, and a full veteran now. Most other teams their age would be sophomore-class right now.

The problem is that FIRST doesn't define exactly when a team goes between pre-rookie and rookie, effectively. They also don't use the full spread, confining themselves to 2 and 4.

If you start as a pre-rookie after it's completely impossible to get into the event, anything after you start is fair game in my book.

[Carol]

I think it is interesting that this forum, Lessons Learned - Negative, now has 10 pages of posts whereas Lessons Learned - Positive has three pages. I challenge everyone who has posted here to go to the Postiive forum and post there as well.

(Including me)

[Mr MOE]

Going back to the main point of this thread...

* Too much human player scoring.

* Practice field set-up could be much better.

* No match video in the pit. Some team members hardly get out of the pit. It would be nice if they could see some matches too.

* No opening ceremonies video on the DaVinci Field side of the dome. I know why it was done (to get everyone to come to the other side). However, for those teams that got up early to secure seats, team members needed to stay in the seats and could not see the opening ceremonies.

* Country flags blocking the view of spectators in the upper section to the left of Einstein (while looking at the field). We could not see the main screen at all and totally missed Dave V.'s Top 10 list.

* It would be nice to see the names/teams of the recipients of the FIRST scholarships on the big screen at all the fields.

* I know this is the pink elephant in the dome, but I thought that Dean's closing ceremony speech sucked a great deal of energy out of the dome. The message was too long and too repetitive. I understand his intent and absolutely agree with it, but the message delivery was off, in my opinion.

* Closing video was overlooked, everyone was running out to get plates so they had something to put food on at the Wrap Party. :D This was a good video and people spent lots of effort putting it together. It's a shame not many people got a chance to see it.

[Brandon Holley]

If you start as a pre-rookie after it's completely impossible to get into the event, anything after you start is fair game in my book.

Eric, can you explain to me what you guys are arguing about?

I'm just confused as to what the point of establishing exactly when a team "starts" ?

I know we've been involved in the creation of dozens of FRC teams. All of them start a little differently, some get a grant and register and start a season right away.

Others gradually build up sponsors, mentors, interested students, and it may take them a year or more to finally "register".

If a team is proactive during this year or more time period, and reaches out to the community, or builds a relationship with a school, why would it not "count" towards an award? Honestly, if a "team" has been around for a while trying to get going and finally register to become an FRC team, why would what they do not count, or be considered?


Please let me know if this is what you guys are talking about or if I missed it completely.

-Brando

[Koko Ed]

I think it is interesting that this forum, Lessons Learned - Negative, now has 10 pages of posts whereas Lessons Learned - Positive has three pages. I challenge everyone who has posted here to go to the Postiive forum and post there as well.

(Including me)

This brings me back to a discussion me, Chuck Glick, Jessi Kaestle and Brian Stempin had at the Spaghetti Warehouse after the Philadelphia Regional.
We were talking all things FIRST (as us FIRST-aholics always do) and Brian made a very interesting observation. Every one of us just brought up negative aspects about FIRST from people we've dealt with, teams we put up with and the way FIRST is run in general. Not one positive thought was said. We didn't even realize it.
As Brain pointed out that why he no longer bothers with CD because it's become a negative bitter place. I notice that FIRST in general has that element. There's an ugly undercurrent of anger and resentment in FIRST. Towards people, towards teams, towards FIRST itself and no one team is above the behavior or immune to it. We are all guilty of it. That's why I personally dislike the term Gracious Professionalism because it's being used as a measuring tool when no one has shown they have the right to pass judgment on other around here (me included). It reminds me of a term from the bible "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." We should all be dropping those stones right now.
One reason is people expect quality and therefore see no reason to compliment it but will complain bitterly when they feel wronged in any way shape or form. It's real easy to say we should check ourselves, behave better and so and so forth but complaints also change whatever flaws are out there (acting like it's not happening will not solve the problem) and if you keep what's bothering you inside it's not good for you physically and you'll just leave FIRST out of frustration anyways due to your overall dissatisfaction with the program. So not complaining is not an answer either.
I just think we need to step back and take a little perspective that's all.
Maybe everyone who has posted here should take a moment and post something in the positive thread too. There had to be something you liked about FIRST this year or else you all would have left a long time ago.

[martin417]

One reason this thread may be so long is that people are posting multiple times, arguing over a particular statement. While it is easy to argue with a negative statement, arguing over a positive one is less so.

[Mr MOE]

This brings me back to a discussion me, Chuck Glick, Jessi Kaestle and Brian Stempin had at the Spaghetti Warehouse after the Philadelphia Regional.
We were talking all things FIRST (as us FIRST-aholics always do) and Brian made a very interesting observation. Every one of us just brought up negative aspects about FIRST from people we've dealt with, teams we put up with and the way FIRST is run in general. Not one positive thought was said. We didn't even realize it.
As Brain pointed out that why he no longer bothers with CD because it's become a negative bitter place. I notice that FIRST in general has that element. There's an ugly undercurrent of anger and resentment in FIRST. Towards people, towards teams, towards FIRST itself and no one team is above the behavior or immune to it. We are all guilty of it. That's why I personally dislike the term Gracious Professionalism because it's being used as a measuring tool when no one has shown they have the right to pass judgment on other around here (me included). It reminds me of a term from the bible "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." We should all be dropping those stones right now.
One reason is people expect quality and therefore see no reason to compliment it but will complain bitterly when they feel wronged in any way shape or form. It's real easy to say we should check ourselves, behave better and so and so forth but complaints also change whatever flaws are out there (acting like it's not happening will not solve the problem) and if you keep what's bothering you inside it's not good for you physically and you'll just leave FIRST out of frustration anyways due to your overall dissatisfaction with the program. So not complaining is not an answer either.
I just think we need to step back and take a little perspective that's all.
Maybe everyone who has posted here should take a moment and post something in the positive thread too. There had to be something you liked about FIRST this year or else you all would have left a long time ago.

Totally agree and guilty as charged. I wanted to make sure I posted in both posts (positive and negative) with feedback. One comment on the Negative feedback, as opposed to simply listing all the negatives, be prepared to share how you would turn each negative around to make it a positive. It's easy to knock something, but much more challenging to suggest alternatives that result in lasting improvements.

Also, if you go through this thread, you will have commonality over a few key topics. If I would be working for FIRST and looking at this thread to make improvements, these common issues are those that I would target. Some of these are low-hanging fruit and others would take some time and effort to implement.

[Jared Russell]

* I know this is the pink elephant in the dome, but I thought that Dean's closing ceremony speech sucked a great deal of energy out of the dome. The message was too long and too repetitive. I understand his intent and absolutely agree with it, but the message delivery was off, in my opinion.

Thank you for mentioning this. I feel the exact same way. Getting a 22 minute address (yep, timed it) after three days of intense competition and little sleep completely derails the adrenaline-fueled enthusiasm of the crowd.

There has to be a better compromise between getting the message across, and remembering that Atlanta is a celebration of all of our hard work. Yes, even engineers get to celebrate.

[Koko Ed]

Thank you for mentioning this. I feel the exact same way. Getting a 22 minute address (yep, timed it) after three days of intense competition and little sleep completely derails the adrenaline-fueled enthusiasm of the crowd.

There has to be a better compromise between getting the message across, and remembering that Atlanta is a celebration of all of our hard work. Yes, even engineers get to celebrate.

I've given up hope of this getting fixed because every year it's brought up it seems the response is "Oh you guys don't like the speeches? OK we'll do more!":rolleyes:

[Jared Russell]

This brings me back to a discussion me, Chuck Glick, Jessi Kaestle and Brian Stempin had at the Spaghetti Warehouse after the Philadelphia Regional.
We were talking all things FIRST (as us FIRST-aholics always do) and Brian made a very interesting observation. Every one of us just brought up negative aspects about FIRST from people we've dealt with, teams we put up with and the way FIRST is run in general. Not one positive thought was said. We didn't even realize it.
As Brain pointed out that why he no longer bothers with CD because it's become a negative bitter place. I notice that FIRST in general has that element. There's an ugly undercurrent of anger and resentment in FIRST. Towards people, towards teams, towards FIRST itself and no one team is above the behavior or immune to it. We are all guilty of it. That's why I personally dislike the term Gracious Professionalism because it's being used as a measuring tool when no one has shown they have the right to pass judgment on other around here (me included). It reminds me of a term from the bible "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." We should all be dropping those stones right now.
One reason is people expect quality and therefore see no reason to compliment it but will complain bitterly when they feel wronged in any way shape or form. It's real easy to say we should check ourselves, behave better and so and so forth but complaints also change whatever flaws are out there (acting like it's not happening will not solve the problem) and if you keep what's bothering you inside it's not good for you physically and you'll just leave FIRST out of frustration anyways due to your overall dissatisfaction with the program. So not complaining is not an answer either.
I just think we need to step back and take a little perspective that's all.
Maybe everyone who has posted here should take a moment and post something in the positive thread too. There had to be something you liked about FIRST this year or else you all would have left a long time ago.

The plight of the engineer is that he is never satisfied with what is, and he is always thinking of what could be. He applies this to his work, and also to other aspects of his life. But where metal, wires, and electrons don't complain when perfection is demanded of them, people do.

This is unfortunately a distinction that not all engineers can recognize, and I think it's at least one of the factors at play here.

[Steve_Alaniz]

Eric, can you explain to me what you guys are arguing about?

I'm just confused as to what the point of establishing exactly when a team "starts" ?

I know we've been involved in the creation of dozens of FRC teams. All of them start a little differently, some get a grant and register and start a season right away.

Others gradually build up sponsors, mentors, interested students, and it may take them a year or more to finally "register".

If a team is proactive during this year or more time period, and reaches out to the community, or builds a relationship with a school, why would it not "count" towards an award? Honestly, if a "team" has been around for a while trying to get going and finally register to become an FRC team, why would what they do not count, or be considered?


Please let me know if this is what you guys are talking about or if I missed it completely.

-Brando

Brandon,
I'm not arguing with Eric, he has made quite a few points that have made me think about what I've been saying so I'd say we are discussing or perhaps, at worse, debating... (oops... that thing I have about wording again! Could be a programming thing... you have to get the syntax right or else.)
In the presentation of the All Star Rookie Award, Woodie mentioned 3091's fantastic work in supporting FLL and FTC over the summer. My point is that they were not yet a rookie team and that that work should place them in contention for a judges award. Not that they don't deserve the rookie award too but that Woodie cited the wrong criteria for the award. So the question was at what point in time do you become a rookie and shouldn't it be that time frame that counts towards a rookie award?
FIRST defines the season as starting at kickoff. If Woodie had cited 3091's work over the last 3 months I would never have mentioned this. Clearly, FIRST can define it anyway they want to, but they probably should tell someone.
Bottom line for me is that I think FIRST need to clearly define this period or Woodie needs to get a better speech writer.

[artdutra04]

Thank you for mentioning this. I feel the exact same way. Getting a 22 minute address (yep, timed it) after three days of intense competition and little sleep completely derails the adrenaline-fueled enthusiasm of the crowd.

There has to be a better compromise between getting the message across, and remembering that Atlanta is a celebration of all of our hard work. Yes, even engineers get to celebrate.Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was three minutes long.

And yet is has become one of the most memorable speeches of all time.

There's no reason why Dean can't do the same.

Or at the very least, talk at a faster amount of words per minute.

// On a side note, most of the students on our team started to fall asleep during Dean's speech (and judging from the amount of head bobs in the audience, so were most other teams). So I decided to wake them up by softly playing a theme song for Dean's speech from my iPod. As he went on about the three little pigs and brick houses, Brick House by the Commodores (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrBx6mAWYPU) seemed the obvious choice. It worked, and they stayed awake for the rest of the speech.

[Brandon Holley]

Brandon,
I'm not arguing with Eric, he has made quite a few points that have made me think about what I've been saying so I'd say we are discussing or perhaps, at worse, debating... (oops... that thing I have about wording again! Could be a programming thing... you have to get the syntax right or else.)
In the presentation of the All Star Rookie Award, Woodie mentioned 3091's fantastic work in supporting FLL and FTC over the summer. My point is that they were not yet a rookie team and that that work should place them in contention for a judges award. Not that they don't deserve the rookie award too but that Woodie cited the wrong criteria for the award. So the question was at what point in time do you become a rookie and shouldn't it be that time frame that counts towards a rookie award?
FIRST defines the season as starting at kickoff. If Woodie had cited 3091's work over the last 3 months I would never have mentioned this. Clearly, FIRST can define it anyway they want to, but they probably should tell someone.
Bottom line for me is that I think FIRST need to clearly define this period or Woodie needs to get a better speech writer.

I disagree with your argument. Why should when the support of this team was given, matter in the giving of an award? Teams are not judged on chairman's awards and etc from just the previous year.

The argument I was trying to make in my earlier post was that some teams take a considerable amount of time to come to fruition. They are a team, maybe just without a team number yet, or without a sponsor yet, but theyre still a team. If they are reaching out and supporting the community before they have even competed, that stuff should definitely count....regardless of when it was, summer, winter, months, or even years before they became a "team".

[JackN]

Issues I had this year:

1) Dear FIRST can you please post the order by which teams were picked on the website so someone who didnt attend the event can figure out how picking went. Which of these is the correct order and how am I supposed to know, 1279 834 1391, 1391 1279 834, 1391 834 1279, or 834 1279 1391. I remember in 05 and 06 the location of teams in driver stations didn't change during eliminations, I would love to see this return.

2) Please don't ever again have a rule like G14 that punishes a team for winning matches. When stopping scoring and instead scoring on yourself is a valid and legitimate strategy i think you have a problem.

3) I would like to see webcasts being broadcast from event to event, so no matter where you were there would be some place in the event that is playing other events.

[JaneYoung]

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was three minutes long.

And yet is has become one of the most memorable speeches of all time.

There's no reason why Dean can't do the same.

Or at the very least, talk at a faster amount of words per minute.

We are living in a time that is a result of nations, cultures, and leaders building houses of straw and sticks. It takes a little more time to build a house of brick.

Agreed that the competition energy is a completely different energy than the focus that is required to pay attention to the speeches. It makes it difficult following the end of a long 3 days but the time spent is no less valuable. This is one of those, there are no easy answers or solutions, aspects of celebrating the culmination of a great FIRST season.

[Zholl]

This is more of a lesson I learned personally while I was in Atlanta. Definitely shouldn't try to take on multiple jobs for your team. I ended up being in charge of photography and scouting in Atlanta, and spent WAY more time than I would have liked just running around trying to get stuff done. Plus, when you can't sit with your scouts because you're on the field with the drive team, it's hard to actually get scouting done. I noticed that the scout sheets never returned....

With the number of people on my team doing nothing, there's not really a good reason for me having had to cover both and do a mediocre job instead of delegating someone else for one of those jobs and letting both of us do well. But I guess this is what rookie years are for, eh?

I also learned from some of the other guys that you really shouldn't care so much about how you're doing in the matches. If you're winning, that's great, but I saw a lot of guys on my team really upset about our losses when we knew going out there that we weren't really even a dominant force at regionals, and that we would do worse when the average ability of the rest of the competition jumps up a couple notches.

[Karthik]

* No opening ceremonies video on the DaVinci Field side of the dome. I know why it was done (to get everyone to come to the other side). However, for those teams that got up early to secure seats, team members needed to stay in the seats and could not see the opening ceremonies.


This is a big one for me. Our team was on Archimedes this year, and elected to stay in our seats for opening ceremonies, to ensure we would be able to keep them. There was no audio or video being broadcast to our side of dome. Our team was actually completely unaware that we had won the website award. I found out from a congratulations email that was sent to me on my Blackberry by someone who was watching at home!


1) Dear FIRST can you please post the order by which teams were picked on the website so someone who didnt attend the event can figure out how picking went. Which of these is the correct order and how am I supposed to know, 1279 834 1391, 1391 1279 834, 1391 834 1279, or 834 1279 1391. I remember in 05 and 06 the location of teams in driver stations didn't change during eliminations, I would love to see this return.

This is a huge pet peeve of mine. For the purposes of accurate record keeping, please list the alliances in the order that they were picked.

[Vikesrock]

This is a huge pet peeve of mine. For the purposes of accurate record keeping, please list the alliances in the order that they were picked.

I agree. They should either go with what Jack said and set an order and keep it through all the eliminations or at least have the way the teams are arranged in the first match follow some set order.

[Brandon Holley]

This is a huge pet peeve of mine. For the purposes of accurate record keeping, please list the alliances in the order that they were picked.

To go along with this...I find it weird that for eliminations, in the first match, the #1 bot on the alliance (aka the captain) starts in the #2 driver station....it just seems odd to me.

[Chris is me]

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was three minutes long.

And yet is has become one of the most memorable speeches of all time.

There's no reason why Dean can't do the same.

Or at the very least, talk at a faster amount of words per minute.


I don't think Dean plans to do 22 minute speeches. I was reading some article the other day where someone close to him joked that if you asked him the time, he'd go on a 10 minute explanation of the theory of relativity first. I think it's just in his nature to keep going on and on.

[craigcd]

I guess this is just about as good of thread to place this. Kind of goes under category of a list of thing that need improvement.

I was the Field Supervisor for the Archimedes Division this year. After helping move 85 robots on and off the field I have the following suggestions.

FIRST should make gloves mandatory. This is a requirement that’s time is past due.
FIRST should make lifting handles mandatory on all robots. I saw several robots that were lifted at awkward and un-balanced locations.
FIRST should make all robots have a mandatory decal or sign pointing to the location of the main power switch.

I really enjoyed working with the teams on Archimedes this year. You guys were awesome.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Was it just me, or did it seem like Woodie and Dean's speeches contradicted each other? Woodie's theme was to keep FRC strong, keep the current teams from folding and to expand FTC if possible. His was very realistic and probably was the best speech I've heard from him in quite some time. It was quite a sobering speech that really made me think about FIRST's current position in this economy.

Then on Saturday, Dean came out and said that FIRST needs to expand faster than ever because it's the only way to truly fix our current situation.

I just thought that their messages should have aligned more and I think Dean's speech sort of took away from what Woodie said on Friday.

[sdcantrell56]

Was it just me, or did it seem like Woodie and Dean's speeches contradicted each other? Woodie's theme was to keep FRC strong, keep the current teams from folding and to expand FTC if possible. His was very realistic and probably was the best speech I've heard from him in quite some time. It was quite a sobering speech that really made me think about FIRST's current position in this economy.

Then on Saturday, Dean came out and said that FIRST needs to expand faster than ever because it's the only way to truly fix our current situation.

I just thought that their messages should have aligned more and I think Dean's speech sort of took away from what Woodie said on Friday.

I guess I am a little weary of expanding FIRST too rapidly. It is already increasingly difficult to raise money and find sponsors, and adding more and more teams per area will saturate the area and decrease the amount of funding per team.

[Mr MOE]

Was it just me, or did it seem like Woodie and Dean's speeches contradicted each other? Woodie's theme was to keep FRC strong, keep the current teams from folding and to expand FTC if possible. His was very realistic and probably was the best speech I've heard from him in quite some time. It was quite a sobering speech that really made me think about FIRST's current position in this economy.

Then on Saturday, Dean came out and said that FIRST needs to expand faster than ever because it's the only way to truly fix our current situation.

I just thought that their messages should have aligned more and I think Dean's speech sort of took away from what Woodie said on Friday.

Ryan:

I agree that the main messages in the speeches were contradictory.

-j-

[Alan Anderson]

I guess I am a little weary of expanding FIRST too rapidly. It is already increasingly difficult to raise money and find sponsors, and adding more and more teams per area will saturate the area and decrease the amount of funding per team.

On the other hand, reaching a "critical mass" of teams in an area can make it possible to adopt a FiM-style district system and decrease the amount of money necessary to run a team.

[Cory]

I could write 10 pages about all the things I didn't like about this year.

Reading this thread, I realized the biggest negative is all the people who are just a bunch of whiners.

[AdamHeard]

I could write 10 pages about all the things I didn't like about this year.

Reading this thread, I realized the biggest negative is all the people who are just a bunch of whiners.

Oh Cory, stop whining....

But really, most of the actual issues with FIRST this year are being overlooked in this thread, and people are complaining about really stupid stuff. On top of that, complaining here will accomplish nothing, do you think the FIRST board of directors looks on CD for these threads?

[MrForbes]

You California guys are funny!

[Aren_Hill]

FIRST should make gloves mandatory. This is a requirement that’s time is past due.
FIRST should make lifting handles mandatory on all robots. I saw several robots that were lifted at awkward and un-balanced locations.


My vote to those is NO and NO
bumpers were one of the last things done for "safety" and see what they've become?

Requiring gloves is completely unnecessary as is mandatory handles, if a team wants the convenience of handles leave them to build them in themselves. (233 did this year)

Gloves, if someone is personally worried about their hands let them get a pair of gloves, dont mandate that they use them.

I myself have never worn gloves at a robotics competition and also have never seen reason too

[Herodotus]

I've always been taught that using gloves is more dangerous around any kind of machinery. You put your hand near a spinning wheel and you'll probably hit it and scrape your finger or some other minimal damage. Do the same with a pair of gloves on and the glove could get sucked into whatever is spinning. You lose a sense of touch that could be the difference between cutting your finger and losing your finger.

[Rick TYler]

On the other hand, reaching a "critical mass" of teams in an area can make it possible to adopt a FiM-style district system and decrease the amount of money necessary to run a team.

*cough* VRC * cough * FTC * cough *

[David Brinza]

I think it is interesting that this forum, Lessons Learned - Negative, now has 10 pages of posts whereas Lessons Learned - Positive has three pages. I challenge everyone who has posted here to go to the Postiive forum and post there as well.

(Including me)"It's easier to criticize than to create!"

To be fair, a significant number of posts were responses to criticisms. I do agree with Cory, though: There's too much whining with not enough suggestions for improvements!

[Rick TYler]

But really, most of the actual issues with FIRST this year are being overlooked in this thread

10-yard penalty for being incomplete. What ARE the actual issues?

complaining here will accomplish nothing, do you think the FIRST board of directors looks on CD for these threads?

The Board may not, but FIRST staffers sure do -- at least some of the time.

[johnr]

It sounded like Woodie was getting us ready for some changes down the line.

[Rick TYler]

It sounded like Woodie was getting us ready for some changes down the line.

Go watch the season-introduction video for FTC. What Woodie said was really surprising. As a voice-over to a video of FRC teams working on their robots, Woodie says, "FIRST is a microcosm of a real engineering experience because it's a problem too big, in a time too short, with a budget too small, and, in fact, a team too large." The video ends Woodie's segment without a strong conclusion, but it sounded (to me anyway) like Woodie was gently criticizing the FRC model. What was missing was Woodie saying, "and because of this, FIRST is going to do <something>" Since this was a video promoting FTC, the conclusion hanging in air is "FTC addresses these concerns." Or not. I wish Woodie had finished the thought.

[MrForbes]

It sounds to me like a complete thought, as is.

[Chris is me]

The season is only four and a half months long, but we work all year long. And a rookie team simply cannot compete in FRC if they don't form their team and do fundraising and whatnot well before January

Unless you're 2970.

Obviously it's not an ideal or even remotely sensible approach to running a team, but stranger things have happened. It's more important than ever now to fundraise early and often.

[BurtGummer]

Unless you're 2970.

Obviously it's not an ideal or even remotely sensible approach to running a team, but stranger things have happened. It's more important than ever now to fundraise early and often.

Well, I have nothing against 3091. But they did have FTC and FLL experience from what I have read. Summer camps or not, they have robotics experience. It might not be FRC experience, but FTC isn't something simple. In my opinion, if a team has experience in robotics, that needs to be put in consideration, or maybe a separate award.

Compare 3091 or 2753 with us, 3020. We have never touched a robot before this year. But from what I have read, both 3091 and 2753 have, and 2753 has been champions in FTC. Rookie to FRC yes, Rookie to robotics, not in the slightest.

I think FIRST needs to take a closer look at things like these.

[Brian C]

Well after reading through all the posts and contributing a couple that were a bit OT I have to say this.

- FIRST is NOT perfect.

- LIFE is NOT fair.

- Luck *good or bad* and opportunity will always affect what happens to teams.

After being involved with different aspects of FIRST for 10 years I will admit there are some flaws, in fact I would be amazed if there weren’t. But, as in other aspects of life there will always be flaws.

My advice to you is something I have been preaching as a mentor for many years;

Get over it! Learn from your experience. Adjust, adapt and overcome as you participate in FIRST (and Life).

If you don’t like the way an event is run – volunteer so you can help make changes. If you don’t like the way things are in your community then get involved and make an effort to change things for the better.

Most of all don’t expect things to be perfect. If you do you will always be disappointed and that’s not a great way to go through life.




**phew** thanks for letting me vent a bit.

[synth3tk]

Don't trust an school lacking trustworthiness at maintaining a team.

Don't expect a bad school to co-operate with a team.

Did I mention that we had issues with the school?

[Chris Fultz]

"FIRST is a microcosm of a real engineering experience because it's a problem too big, in a time too short, with a budget too small, and, in fact, a team too large."

Woodie has used that statement many times, and it is a true statement of engineering programs in general, that is why he uses it. I have never been asked to manage a program where i felt i had all of the information i needed, all of the time i needed, or all of the skilled resources i needed, or all of the funding i needed.

If i think about it, the addition of the "in fact, a team too large" does make some sense. It is difficult to get the right resources, and sometime you have to many people "helping" to be effective.

[Bill Baedke]

In the context of Continuous Improvement (or if I were King):
1. Match Screen in the pits at Atlanta: Make team numbers white on the red and blue backgrounds, not black. I was in Curie and we could not read the team numbers due to lack of contrast.

2. Scoreboard at field: Team numbers (in green background) are way too small to read. Make them bigger---plenty of white space available. Same with match numbers. (Hey, some of us are getting older every year)

3. At Pit admin. all competitions: Have a white board for teams to list need for help. Example: 217 needs Alum rod 3/8" X 10" or 217 needs wiring help or robot too heavy. Our team (217) members and most others are always happy to help other teams, but we need a central point to post needs.

4. At Pit Admin: Another board for teams to list tools they have and are willing to share. Our team would list: Lathe, Mill, Arbor Press, Sheet Metal Brake (small) etc. Then when the need arises, one would only have to go to Admin. to see who has taps and dies or pop rivets, or a bandsaw. What is usually shear panic would turn into just a short walk to borrow a tool. We can't all bring everything, but you know it is all there, somewhere.

5. Creativity: Have each team submit things or designs on their robot that they think are unique, maybe at check-in or before. Then the judges would have things to look for and could decide in advance if it has merit. Maybe this year traction control was creative, but how was it done?

6. Mentioned before and I agree that people in the pits want to watch the matches. Even a few TVs placed around would help.

7. Post the rules: If we are trying to get the public to come see the competition, we need to help them when they get there. Have a place at all Regionals and the Championship where a beginner could go to get a copy of the basics of the game (condensed to a small piece of paper). Have this place staffed with volunteer student team members to answer questions. Those students would have a complete set of rules, be knowledgeable, and be FIRST team members so they should be able answer most questions, and more importantly express their enthusiasm.

As someone above said: Engineers always see how to make it better. These are just starters, I know you can improve on them and add more.

Bill Baedke, Team 217, Thunderchickens mentor

[Steve_Alaniz]

I disagree with your argument. Why should when the support of this team was given, matter in the giving of an award? Teams are not judged on chairman's awards and etc from just the previous year.

The argument I was trying to make in my earlier post was that some teams take a considerable amount of time to come to fruition. They are a team, maybe just without a team number yet, or without a sponsor yet, but theyre still a team. If they are reaching out and supporting the community before they have even competed, that stuff should definitely count....regardless of when it was, summer, winter, months, or even years before they became a "team".

Brandon, you miss the point. FIRST defined what a rookie team is and what the award entails. FIRST is free to define it anyway they see fit. But as it is at this snapshot in time, I see a contradiction in the very definitions FIRST has given.
FIRST defines the rookie season time frame and I think they need to be as specific as they are with the time frame of the build season.
It is the time frame that seemed a bit unfair. There was no "level" playing field for a team that may have just managed to convince their school board to allow a team at the beginning of the school year and so missed the opportunity to work on the All Star Rookie award the previous summer. If they have no chance ... FIRST shouldn't allow them to believe they do.

I think 3091 might have won without the summer having been taken into consideration. They DO fantastic work and I have nothing but praise for that work. Perhaps the summer was NOT taken into consideration by the judges and Woodie misspoke. It wouldn't be the first time.
It doesn't really matter... the award has been given and that's that.
FIRST is a really great organization... but even FIRST needs to be watched and called to task occasionally for inconsistencies.

[The Lucas]

Well, I have nothing against 3091. But they did have FTC and FLL experience from what I have read. Summer camps or not, they have robotics experience. It might not be FRC experience, but FTC isn't something simple. In my opinion, if a team has experience in robotics, that needs to be put in consideration, or maybe a separate award.

Compare 3091 or 2753 with us, 3020. We have never touched a robot before this year. But from what I have read, both 3091 and 2753 have, and 2753 has been champions in FTC. Rookie to FRC yes, Rookie to robotics, not in the slightest.

I think FIRST needs to take a closer look at things like these.

Depending on a team's circumstances, I would often recommend a team compete in FTC for a year before FRC. Obviously, if you already have students/mentors with FRC experience, or far too many students for a FTC team, or a major sponsor (like Boeing for 3020) by all means jump right into FRC. In most other cases, I think a team would benefit greatly from some FTC experience, and be prepared for their rookie year of FRC. After the FRC team is started, the FTC team can be kept as sort of a junior varsity (we have an FTC team for the freshmen on our team).

Over my years of helping teams and inspecting, I have met many rookies teams with only a few students, 1 mentor and no money for anything other than the kit. They just dont have the manpower or resources to compete in FRC, and it can be discouraging for the students. However, they are well suited to FTC. While competing in FTC, they can recruit more students, mentors and sponsors. I worked with a rookie team last year that decided to compete in FTC this year. Although I am sure they had a good experience overall in FRC, they probably would have had a better experience in FTC.

My point is that we should be encouraging the FTC to FRC transition and FTC as a way to prepare for FRC. It shouldn't disqualify them from awards. FRC is different enough from FTC that it is still a major step. If your team wants to go directly into FRC more power to you, but their is nothing wrong with an FRC rookie competing in FTC previously. FIRST doesn't really tell you how to run your team and the rules to determine a rookie status are pretty much based on FRC experience not FTC, FLL, Vex, Botball, etc... FIRST doesn't want to make things to be more difficult than necessary for rookie teams.

[ebarker]

Thats understandable, but when you lose mentor support/school sponsor support, thats a whole different thing, FIRST needs to make this appealing to schoolteachers and make it worthwhile for the teachers to stay after their scheduled hours. A lot of teams fold because of funding, or a ridiculusly high percentage of their kids are graduated the previous year. or just overall support for the program has donwhill.

It isn't FIRST's job to make this appealing enough to school teachers. It is the job of teams to communicate the value of FIRST programs to policy makers including the general public that this is an important program.

Teams should help policy makers and educators learn how to embrace FIRST programs as a critical co-cirricular activity that reinforces classroom learning. Far too often the educational establishment view robotics as a "club' and not as a serious adjunct to learning.

At this past Championship the message was clearly stated. Corporations, Foundations, students and volunteers have donated an enormous sum of money and effort to promote STEM education. This group has voted with their time and money. This vote serves as a clear statement of dissatisfaction of the methods of how STEM education is currently taught.

Institutions do not like to be told they are wrong. They have to go through the Kubla-Ross stages of grief as they process this information. If FIRST'ers persist these institutions will eventually get the message and you will be able to ask them to build into their structures proper teacher stipends and other support resources.

Transforming the public culture and attitudes, including the institutional attitude is precisely the goal of FIRST.

[Akash Rastogi]

Well, I have nothing against 3091. But they did have FTC and FLL experience from what I have read. Summer camps or not, they have robotics experience. It might not be FRC experience, but FTC isn't something simple. In my opinion, if a team has experience in robotics, that needs to be put in consideration, or maybe a separate award.

Compare 3091 or 2753 with us, 3020. We have never touched a robot before this year. But from what I have read, both 3091 and 2753 have, and 2753 has been champions in FTC. Rookie to FRC yes, Rookie to robotics, not in the slightest.

I think FIRST needs to take a closer look at things like these.

I respectfully would like to point out to you that the way 2753 and 3091 started their FRC teams is exactly what FIRST intended and is what is expected of new rookies. Do NOT criticize these teams for taking the leap into FRC correctly or take away from their accomplishments, as a mentor I would really expect to hear better than complaints of awards. Students like me are the ones who complain about awards.

Frailty in rookie FRC teams is common but is avoidable when the team is initiated properly. Big name PA and NJ teams have been with 2753 every step of the way, and we can vouch for them in saying that they have built a strong foundation by themselves AS A HOMESCHOOLED TEAM. When they needed help from anyone, THEY ASKED.

Do not downplay the accomplishments of these teams because they started out the way FIRST intended them to start out, through FTC and FLL.

The best lesson learned for team who feel 2753 or other successful rookie teams this year had the upper hand: Learn how to have the upper hand. There is always a way, just find it.

[BurtGummer]

I respectfully would like to point out to you that the way 2753 and 3091 started their FRC teams is exactly what FIRST intended and is what is expected of new rookies. Do NOT criticize these teams for taking the leap into FRC correctly or take away from their accomplishments, as a mentor I would really expect to hear better than complaints of awards. Students like me are the ones who complain about awards.

Frailty in rookie FRC teams is common but is avoidable when the team is initiated properly. Big name PA and NJ teams have been with 2753 every step of the way, and we can vouch for them in saying that they have built a strong foundation by themselves AS A HOMESCHOOLED TEAM. When they needed help from anyone, THEY ASKED.

Do not downplay the accomplishments of these teams because they started out the way FIRST intended them to start out, through FTC and FLL.

The best lesson learned for team who feel 2753 or other successful rookie teams this year had the upper hand: Learn how to have the upper hand. There is always a way, just find it.

I'm sorry to see you failed to understand that I am not downplaying the award(s) they won, or their achievements.

I have not see anything, anywhere, of how a team should start in FIRST. If it should be that way, then it should be a requirement to start in FTC or FLL.

Once again, I will state that FIRST needs to look into something here. We are not the only school who has started out in FRC and not FTC or FLL. I did not set our team up, our sponsor rep did. We didn't even know what FRC was. All I am trying to say is that there are two different types of rookies in FRC. Rookies with prior robot experience in FTC and FLL, and complete newbies to the entire field of robotics. I think that is a fair statement, and not one which criticizes any teams that do have prior experience. It isn't their problem, it's something FIRST should look into.

I apologize that my post sounded like I am criticizing these teams. I found the facts about their history, and I applaud them for it. It is a deal with how FIRST is handling it, not them.

[David Brinza]

Burt,

Just like in the real world, there will never be a level playing field in FIRST. Some teams will enter as rookies with FRC-experienced mentors and generous sponsors, others will enter with a teacher, a few students and a NASA grant. There are veteran teams with an army of engineering mentors, full machine shops with seemingly limitless resources and there are student-run teams who struggle just to compete in one regional. That's just how it is.

FIRST can only do so much to make the program reasonably equitable for such diversity in their constituency. The KOP, robot rules, short build season, cost restrictions, and a new alliance-based game each year are there to avoid total domination by a small number of veteran teams. Yes, there are a few teams that are top competitors year-in and year-out. Many teams look at those powerhouse teams as role models. Those same powerhouse teams will do almost anything to help fellow competitors to succeed. Learn about the Techno-Kats, ThunderChickens, Bomb Squad, MOE, and so many other top-notch FIRST teams. They are willing to share their knowledge (i.e. you can get team handbooks by searching CD media).

Successful teams set goals for improving each year. If the focus remains on inspiring as many students as you can reach, your doing the right thing and will be a winner in everyone's book. The awards may or may not come...but the real trophies are the students.

[dwaynetrip3119]

My team could just become a little more organized at the beginning of next season.

[santosh]

As a whole I did enjoy this game very much and I liked the complexity of building a truly competitive robot to accomplish the various intricacies of this game.

I cant say there were too many intricacies... there was 1 goal. put balls into a trailer.

FIRST, please take this back to 2004 with multiple things happening at once. I understand the idea of leveling the playing field for rookies and making them competitive with everyone, and I agree with it. But look at a complex game such as 2004. and rookie could have gathered balls effectively and score them.

These 1 dimensional games are getting kinda old for me atleast. And I mean 1 dimensional in scoring (yes I understand the super cell).
2005 - place tetras on goals, 2006 - throw balls into a goal (fun but 1 dimensional), 2007 - put ringers on a rack, 2008, throw a ball over a rack (one of the most boring games ever to watch)
But in 2004 you had the bar, the balls, and the 2x ball. that year the beast was able to do everything and win, but other younger teams like us (alumni 1002) did just fine only doing one task, the bar...

It makes it a lot more fun to watch and more fun to play. Lets be real. how much fun was it to watch 6 robots collide in the center of the field and roam around slowly. this is not a shot at the GDC, a close mentor of mine is on it (Jeremy Roberts). that is just my opinion. But

[Akash Rastogi]

I have not see anything, anywhere, of how a team should start in FIRST.

The FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) mid-level robotics competition:

* Provides a more affordable, more accessible opportunity to participate in FIRST
* Creates a bridge between the FIRST LEGO League and the
FIRST Robotics Competition
(Emphasis mine)
http://usfirst.org/what/FTC/content.aspx?id=382

I did not mean to call you out either and I apologize if I misinterpreted your post.

[Ian Curtis]

These 1 dimensional games are getting kinda old for me atleast. And I mean 1 dimensional in scoring (yes I understand the super cell).
2005 - place tetras on goals, 2006 - throw balls into a goal (fun but 1 dimensional), 2007 - put ringers on a rack, 2008, throw a ball over a rack (one of the most boring games ever to watch)
But in 2004 you had the bar, the balls, and the 2x ball. that year the beast was able to do everything and win, but other younger teams like us (alumni 1002) did just fine only doing one task, the bar...

I beg to disagree. Most of these games weren't entirely one dimensional, and I'd say 2007 definitely had two dimensions.

2005- Stack tetras on top of goals or place tetras under goals
2006- Shoot balls through upper goal or deposit them through lower goal
2007- Place Ringers or lift robots. (This game was definitely not one dimensional
2008- Hurdle Trackball over overpass or Herd Trackball under overpass or race around the track
2009- Put balls in Goal

Granted, in 2005 good teams all stacked. In 2006 though, 195 and 1902 rose to fame playing exclusively with the lower goal. Other teams may have too, but my memory is starting to fail me. 2007 definitely was not one dimensional, as those bonus points for lifting robots were important, and lifting robots was not an easy task. 2008, most good robots did hurdle. However, at GSR a herder (58) captained an alliance all the way to the finals, and 148 played an integral role in the RoboSimChickens Championship victory. This year, we all did the same thing though.

That said, I'd love to play another 2004-esque game. :D
(It seems FIRST Frenzy is quickly acquiring some sort of cult status as a magical perfect game around here...)

[Koko Ed]

I beg to disagree. Most of these games weren't entirely one dimensional, and I'd say 2007 definitely had two dimensions.

2005- Stack tetras on top of goals or place tetras under goals
2006- Shoot balls through upper goal or deposit them through lower goal
2007- Place Ringers or lift robots. (This game was definitely not one dimensional
2008- Hurdle Trackball over overpass or Herd Trackball under overpass or race around the track
2009- Put balls in Goal

Granted, in 2005 good teams all stacked. In 2006 though, 195 and 1902 rose to fame playing exclusively with the lower goal. Other teams may have too, but my memory is starting to fail me. 2007 definitely was not one dimensional, as those bonus points for lifting robots were important, and lifting robots was not an easy task. 2008, most good robots did hurdle. However, at GSR a herder (58) captained an alliance all the way to the finals, and 148 played an integral role in the RoboSimChickens Championship victory. This year, we all did the same thing though.

That said, I'd love to play another 2004-esque game. :D
(It seems FIRST Frenzy is quickly acquiring some sort of cult status as a magical perfect game around here...)
I think 1902 started in 2006.

[GaryVoshol]

Can we end this debate over what a rookie can do? Please read the rules on rookie criteria: http://www.usfirst.org/community/frc/content.aspx?id=6632

It only says what makes a rookie. It says nothing about what a rookie season is. The only time it references "season" is when it is talking about returning teams - if they have not competed in three previous seasons, they may regain their rookie status. The rules defining rookie status do not care if you've competed in other robot competitions, either inside or outside the FIRST umbrella. You could have done FLL, RoboFest, VEX, any number of things. As long as you have not competed in FRC before, you are a rookie. (There are additional rules for teams that have some members with previous experience in FRC.)

In the awards descriptions at http://www.usfirst.org/uploadedFiles/Community/FRC/Hero_Assets/2009%20FRC%20Regional%20%20Awards.pdf it says Rookie All-Star Award
Celebrates the rookie team exemplifying a young but strong partnership effort, as well as implementing the mission of FIRST to inspire students to learn more about science and technology.

It says the same thing in the manual: 5.23 ROOKIE ALL-STAR AWARD
This award celebrates the rookie team exemplifying a young but strong partnership effort, as well as implementing the mission of FIRST to inspire students to learn more about science and technology.
NOTE: This is essentially the “Chairman’s Award for Rookie teams”. We encourage, but do not require, rookie teams to enter a Chairman’s Award submission relative to this award.

Nothing about seasons there.

When FIRST talks about the season starting at kickoff, they are usually talking about the build season. The build season is defined and has lots of rules about what you can and can't do before and after the season.

[Chris is me]

7. Post the rules: If we are trying to get the public to come see the competition, we need to help them when they get there. Have a place at all Regionals and the Championship where a beginner could go to get a copy of the basics of the game (condensed to a small piece of paper). Have this place staffed with volunteer student team members to answer questions. Those students would have a complete set of rules, be knowledgeable, and be FIRST team members so they should be able answer most questions, and more importantly express their enthusiasm.


This little "rules booklet" was in the first page of every Lunacy book handed out. I saw them at both regionals I went to, I don't know about Atlanta though.

[Billfred]

This little "rules booklet" was in the first page of every Lunacy book handed out. I saw them at both regionals I went to, I don't know about Atlanta though.
I remember seeing signage near the pit entrance explaining all three games; I suspect they were in the Championship programs as well, though I never got my hands on one.

Speaking of rules, one place of improvement I could see: throw a current copy of the manual in the case for pit admin. Having one at the scoring table on Curie was a life-saver (show of hands, how many people not named Lavery remembered by heart the rules for backup robots on Einstein at the Championship?); having them in the pits as well would be handy for those quick double-checks.

[Elvee]

One thing I think needs to be addressed: the college recruiters would be better served with hours on Saturday, or extend the hours during Thursday and Friday. Many of the pit crew/drive team/scouts were unable to avail themselves of the college reps due to team responsibilities...just one person's point oh two...

[dlavery]

Speaking of rules, one place of improvement I could see: throw a current copy of the manual in the case for pit admin. Having one at the scoring table on Curie was a life-saver (show of hands, how many people not named Lavery remembered by heart the rules for backup robots on Einstein at the Championship?); having them in the pits as well would be handy for those quick double-checks.

OK, on that one I will admit that even Aidan and I had to refer to the manual just to be sure our memories were correct. :)

Anyway, you make an excellent point. Having current, complete versions of the manual in several locations (pit admin, scoring tables, inspection stations, practice fields, etc) could help alleviate several opportunities for added stress. Or even better, an updated version of the Lunacy iPhone app (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=74276) (or whatever next year's game name turns out to be) that is complete with all the rules (including illustrations and reference links) and updates automatically every time FIRST issues a rules update.

And then include an iPod Touch in every KOP so the teams can read the Manual. Call it the "FIRST Robotics On-line Display Object (FRODO)". Which could be an element of a larger system of electronic manuals, known as the "Student's Handheld Internet Reference Encyclopedia (SHIRE)."

OK, maybe not.

-dave


.

[MrForbes]

I have to admit it was kind of hard to read the rules that I had in my pocket on my USB drive all weekend....

Nice acronyms.

[Greg Peshek]

And then include an iPod Touch in every KOP so the teams can read the Manual. Call it the "FIRST Robotics On-line Display Object (FRODO)". Which could be an element of a larger system of electronic manuals, known as the "Student's Handheld Internet Reference Encyclopedia (SHIRE)."



Now just add the Self Automated Manual Wielding Intense Search Engines (SAMWISE) and Manual Offering Rule Directives Overridden Regularly (MORDOR) to keep us constantly updated on the status of bumper rules and the like. Also the GDC would be referred to as Supervisors Acting Upon Rule Obstructing Ne'er-do-wells (SAURON). (It should be noted I don't think people who bring up rule issues are Ne'r Do Wells)

[Chris is me]

I do have a negative!

Why did this game feature and emphasize camera tracking of non-lit targets when lighting conditions were inconsistent between regionals? Hell, in Atlanta the lighting conditions changed with the number of clouds in the sky and this screwed up robots. Vision Targets should be lit if they're going to be featured.

[MrForbes]

The camera is in the kit mainly to keep the programmers busy.

It was successfull for that purpose, we spent about 4 weeks of programming time getting it working well in the shop, used it for one practice match at our first regional, tried to calibrate it that day, and didn't use it the rest of the season. Finally took it off Friday morning in Atlanta.

Kind of like that lead screw thing, and the energy chain. It keeps students busy.

[EricH]

OK, on that one I will admit that even Aidan and I had to refer to the manual just to be sure our memories were correct. :)

There's another point to be made here...

If a pair of GDC members, one of whom is the Head Ref, have to refer to the manual, that they wrote, to make a call, because they aren't sure they remember the rule, then it just might be that the said tome is getting a little thick...

Admittedly, the backup robot rules are in the "obscure" Section 9, which tends to be overlooked in the rush to get to Sections 6, 7, and 8.

[santosh]

I beg to disagree. Most of these games weren't entirely one dimensional, and I'd say 2007 definitely had two dimensions.

2005- Stack tetras on top of goals or place tetras under goals
2006- Shoot balls through upper goal or deposit them through lower goal
2007- Place Ringers or lift robots. (This game was definitely not one dimensional
2008- Hurdle Trackball over overpass or Herd Trackball under overpass or race around the track
2009- Put balls in Goal

Granted, in 2005 good teams all stacked. In 2006 though, 195 and 1902 rose to fame playing exclusively with the lower goal. Other teams may have too, but my memory is starting to fail me. 2007 definitely was not one dimensional, as those bonus points for lifting robots were important, and lifting robots was not an easy task. 2008, most good robots did hurdle. However, at GSR a herder (58) captained an alliance all the way to the finals, and 148 played an integral role in the RoboSimChickens Championship victory. This year, we all did the same thing though.

That said, I'd love to play another 2004-esque game. :D
(It seems FIRST Frenzy is quickly acquiring some sort of cult status as a magical perfect game around here...)

True true, however, in 2005, 2006 (Sans the end game ramp), 2007, and 2008, only 1 of the field elements was used to score. that is aside from the thing you actually score on.
in 04, you had the 2x ball, you had the kick balls, I think but cant remember if there was a bonus for winning auto (wouldnt mind leaving that in the shed bc we cant get a great auto yet haha...), moving goals, stationary goals, stairs, and the bar.

It really makes for fun strategizing. especially if you are going against a team like 71 who collected the balls after they fell from above the driver station, could 2x i believe, and hang from teh bar.

It makes for a more fun game to watch and as a tour guide to many VIPs throughout the years, it makes it more fun for potential sponsors to watch.

and yeah,

[Vikesrock]

There's another point to be made here...

If a pair of GDC members, one of whom is the Head Ref, have to refer to the manual, that they wrote, to make a call, because they aren't sure they remember the rule, then it just might be that the said tome is getting a little thick...

Admittedly, the backup robot rules are in the "obscure" Section 9, which tends to be overlooked in the rush to get to Sections 6, 7, and 8.

I disagree with this. By definition the Einstein backup rules are only relevant to a very small number of teams one time a year. It is important to have a rule for this procedure in case it is needed, but I am perfectly fine referees needing to reference a manual to recall this rule.

[GaryVoshol]

I disagree as well. The important thing is that Dave and Aidan knew that special rules exist for Einstein backups, and knew where to find them.

All teams should have someone who knows the manual that well.

[ebarker]

Kind of like that lead screw thing, and the energy chain. It keeps students busy.

Keep them under lock and key !! Otherwise you can't get anything done. Ha Ha .

.

[Lil' Lavery]

Why did this game feature and emphasize camera tracking of non-lit targets when lighting conditions were inconsistent between regionals? Hell, in Atlanta the lighting conditions changed with the number of clouds in the sky and this screwed up robots. Vision Targets should be lit if they're going to be featured.

I'm going to echo this.
If FIRST is going to provide teams with an expensive piece of technology and even more expensive controls designed to work with it, they should ensure that said technology should be not only possible, but plausible to work with at each and every event/venue.
To the best of my knowledge, only a single team scored in autonomous during the entirety of the Championship event (40). A number of teams who had previously used successful tracking code (2056, 1712, 612, etc) were unable to successfully accomplish the feat in the Georgia dome to changing lighting (both from the skylights and the actual arena lights) and the color similarities between the red seats and the pink vision target.

[Koko Ed]

I do have a negative!

Why did this game feature and emphasize camera tracking of non-lit targets when lighting conditions were inconsistent between regionals? Hell, in Atlanta the lighting conditions changed with the number of clouds in the sky and this screwed up robots. Vision Targets should be lit if they're going to be featured.

So next year FIRST puts a Weather control device in the KOP and everything will be fine.

[martin417]

Several teams on Curie were able to track consistently with the camera, some scored in autonomous, notably 27 and 1771. It was a challenge, but it was possible... at least until 5:08 PM (when the sun went behind part of the dome).. then it wouldn't work at all.

[Nate Smith]

Once again, I will state that FIRST needs to look into something here. We are not the only school who has started out in FRC and not FTC or FLL. I did not set our team up, our sponsor rep did. We didn't even know what FRC was. All I am trying to say is that there are two different types of rookies in FRC. Rookies with prior robot experience in FTC and FLL, and complete newbies to the entire field of robotics. I think that is a fair statement, and not one which criticizes any teams that do have prior experience. It isn't their problem, it's something FIRST should look into.

I apologize that my post sounded like I am criticizing these teams. I found the facts about their history, and I applaud them for it. It is a deal with how FIRST is handling it, not them.

Unfortunately, once you decide to call an FTC team who transitions to FRC for the first time anything other than a rookie, you get into a whole mess of other "what ifs." Just a few that came to mind include:

A team who has competed in VRC (http://www.vexrobotics.com), but then jumps straight to FRC
A team who has previously competed in Botball (http://www.botball.org)
A team who has previously competed in BEST (http://www.bestinc.org/MVC/)
A team who has previously competed in NRC (http://www.nationalroboticschallenge.org/)This only includes other high school level competitions, and doesn't take into account other factors, such as an existing robotics curriculum at the school, or previous individual experience of any member of the team.

To look at it from a different angle, look at the sports world that FIRST is trying to some degree to emulate. I don't believe (and I may be wrong at this, as I don't really follow sports to this degree) that you would find any pro sports program who would say that a "rookie" player would only be considered one who had never touched the ball before in their life.

[synth3tk]

That's true. A rookie to the NBA may have played ball since middle school, but they still call him a "rookie" because he never played for the NBA in his life, yet he still played the game sometime before.

[EricH]

To look at it from a different angle, look at the sports world that FIRST is trying to some degree to emulate. I don't believe (and I may be wrong at this, as I don't really follow sports to this degree) that you would find any pro sports program who would say that a "rookie" player would only be considered one who had never touched the ball before in their life.
If any pro sports program did that, they'd probably be violating child labor laws...

To even get into the pro sports leagues, you have to be at least decent. That means you have to handle the game object a bit...

[FRC4ME]

If any pro sports program did that, they'd probably be violating child labor laws...

To even get into the pro sports leagues, you have to be at least decent. That means you have to handle the game object a bit...

True; I don't think anyone has ever picked up a basketball for the first time in his life and instantly been a star player ("hey, I think I have a knack for this!").

[Greg McKaskle]

I'm going to echo this.
If FIRST is going to provide teams with an expensive piece of technology and even more expensive controls designed to work with it, they should ensure that said technology should be not only possible, but plausible to work with at each and every event/venue.

The lighting was indeed challenging, but I don't think the clouds were that much of an issue. I was measuring the light level at various times during the day on Saturday. The light level measured at the front of the stands stayed within a factor of two of the spec level. I wasn't able to check on other days, where it may have had more impact. On the other hand, when the timeout was called on Einstein, the disco lights started going full tilt. Good thing teams weren't trying to calibrate their camera during their timeout.

I can't directly compare to previous years that used the camera, but levels were checked at the majority of the regional events, and only needed adjustments a few times to bring them into spec. That doesn't mean it was ideal, however. The dark curtain, the lack of conistency in the lighting in the background, and the spotlight positioning made it difficult for the camera to meter the light and get a good exposure. With the data and experience gained, I think the camera will be better utilized in coming years. Additionally, having a moving target being shot at from a moving platform with a slow projectile is more than just a vision problem. Personally I think the lead estimation and the lack of scoring benefit was the primary reason for the camera being underutilized.

While discussing the event lighting, I'll also mention that few teams took advantage of the lunch hour for measuring the field or calibrating the camera. At the three regionals where I assisted with this, three or four teams gave it a shot. In Atlanta, the red seats and pink target were close to each other in color, but they could be differentiated with a small change to the hue threshold. I don't know how many people asked the NI AIs, but only two teams asked me for help with vision. The vision sessions I presented were also not well attended. IMO, inconsistent lighting isn't the only issue.

Greg McKaskle

[MrForbes]

Greg--we gave up at our first regional....although Steve gave us a lot of help that Thursday at lunch, we didn't have time to get the camera working reliably, so we changed strategy and everything worked out ok.

[Alex Cormier]

The final 4 setup, show and all was LAME. Where did the 4 division champs robot parade go? Where did the big entrance for Dave go? Why were there so many speeches in between the matches? The big finish was merely a boring cable show.

[GoSparx]

The final 4 setup, show and all was LAME. Where did the 4 division champs robot parade go? Where did the big entrance for Dave go? Why were there so many speeches in between the matches? The big finish was merely a boring cable show.

Agreed. My best memory of FIRST Championships is Dave V. riding out in a car to ZZ Top's Sharp Dressed Man. Best ever.

[Lil' Lavery]

The lighting was indeed challenging, but I don't think the clouds were that much of an issue. I was measuring the light level at various times during the day on Saturday. The light level measured at the front of the stands stayed within a factor of two of the spec level. I wasn't able to check on other days, where it may have had more impact. On the other hand, when the timeout was called on Einstein, the disco lights started going full tilt. Good thing teams weren't trying to calibrate their camera during their timeout.

I can't directly compare to previous years that used the camera, but levels were checked at the majority of the regional events, and only needed adjustments a few times to bring them into spec. That doesn't mean it was ideal, however. The dark curtain, the lack of conistency in the lighting in the background, and the spotlight positioning made it difficult for the camera to meter the light and get a good exposure. With the data and experience gained, I think the camera will be better utilized in coming years. Additionally, having a moving target being shot at from a moving platform with a slow projectile is more than just a vision problem. Personally I think the lead estimation and the lack of scoring benefit was the primary reason for the camera being underutilized.

While discussing the event lighting, I'll also mention that few teams took advantage of the lunch hour for measuring the field or calibrating the camera. At the three regionals where I assisted with this, three or four teams gave it a shot. In Atlanta, the red seats and pink target were close to each other in color, but they could be differentiated with a small change to the hue threshold. I don't know how many people asked the NI AIs, but only two teams asked me for help with vision. The vision sessions I presented were also not well attended. IMO, inconsistent lighting isn't the only issue.

Greg McKaskle

Greg,

I certainly don't think I had intended that as a shot against the camera or technology or support that NI supplied this year. It was NOT intended that way.

I agree that the game challenge was the biggest cause of the camera being underused by teams, but I feel that has as much to do with the specific choice of target teams were asked to follow. Similar to the last time we had an unlit target (2005), there was minimal success by teams. However, with a backlit target in 2006 ans 2007, success was much more widespread. This is especially true in 2006, when the value of tracking the target was readily apparent and incredibly high.

[Greg McKaskle]

I certainly don't think I had intended that as a shot against the camera or technology or support that NI supplied this year. It was NOT intended that way.

I didn't take it that way. Sorry if my response was a bit negative. I was delighted to see so many videos of people tracking and playing with the stuff in their shops. I met with a number of students that went pretty deep and wrote their own code, so all in all, I think that the learning happened even if the game wasn't a great showcase for it.

Greg McKaskle