Re: The missing feature: A common thread
 

I don't think this has been said yet but if it has it's worth repeating.... I believe a lot of succes that powerhouse teams have comes from the amount of dedication from the mentors and students. They don't just have afew dedicatate mentors and students... All of their mentors and students are extremely dedicated

Re: The missing feature: A common thread
 

I just wanted to correct something that was ssaid earlier about the key to last year being a roller claw. The real trick wasn't just a roller claw. It was a roller claw with a pnuematic release. The part everyone but the best missed was that the pnuematic release allowed faster and more accurate placement of the tubes.

Look at the best robots, they all had it.
33, 254, 148 etc...

Re: The missing feature: A common thread
 

I dunno... I'm unconvinced that a roller claw was the killer feature in 2011.

Look at 1503. Single jointed arm, no rolling of the tubes, no floor pickup, and they still won 2 regionals and their division at CMP. IIRC that robot had 5 motors (4 drive, 1 to control the arm pivot), and a pneumatically-operated claw. It is easily the best FRC robot I've seen in terms of success vs simplicity. How did they do it? Their drivers were FLAWLESS.

As its been said before. Having drivers with loads of stick time is the most important thing; in order to achieve that, you either have to have sufficient resources to build a carbon-copy practice bot, so they can get the stick time in between ship and the competitions, or you have to be FAST enough that they have that stick time before it goes in the bag.

Re: The missing feature: A common thread
 

I think both of these posts reinforce a point, something that I've been pushing 1551 more and more towards as time has gone by: build a protobot. Not a full competition bot, but something slammed together with plywood and vice grips and so forth that satisfies these basic criteria:

a. The drive train must match the drive train on the robot.
b. The basic functionality of the upper mechanical system must be mocked appropriately -- it must have the correct number of motors wired the correct way with the correct sensors, but doesn't actually have to accomplish any of the actual tasks. (Maybe it doesn't open as wide as it should, or lift as high as it should, or what-have-you...)
c. It must be done incredibly fast -- like, as soon as you settled on your design, you should have a protobot together and handed to your programmers.

Essentially, you want a "test bench" that mimics the actual robot functionality, and you want to give it to the programmers just about as fast as you can.

...and in the mean time you have a drive train that you built in the off-season that is awfully darn close to (or tweaked so it's exactly like) the competition drive train, so that your drivers can practice just maneuvering until they've got upper mechanical functionality to play with.

Mind you, I'm not saying that this is what the powerhouse teams do, but I am saying that this is something that any team should be able to do, that will get them closer to "great" than they currently are.

Re: The missing feature: A common thread
 

I think as well as what's been mentioned, what's popping up even more now is experience. I recall hearing about Einstein back in 2010, though I don' tquite know the valididty of the statement, that most of the reoccuring teams on Einstein maintain the exact same drive team each time they're there, within a 4 year period provided. Thus, one thing that could propel a team would be having a driver who knows the 'bot they're using and have competition pressure experience to draw upon.

Re: The missing feature: A common thread
 

I will address this from my team's point of view.

In our 6 year run we only repeated our base driver in 2010-11, our operator was the same in 2008-9, and our human player in 2007 was our 2006 operator. Other than that the only consitant drive team member during that run was our drive coach who has been the same since she took over the job in 2004.

On my team you have to earn the the job every year by beating out everyone else in tryouts. We find that the competition to get the job works well as a motivator even though we would like to have multi-year drivers.

We did have the same driver set for the four seasons from 1996-99 however, one of whom is a mentor on our team now. In 1998 they were so good we were accused of having adults off stage controlling the robot. FIRST requested our drivers to show up early on Saturday at Nationals as it was called back then to prove they were driving. After catching a bouncing ball on the fly that fell off the tower FIRST apologized to us and let our team continue to compete and secured the #1 seed at Nationals that year. The funniest part of this story is that the drivers involved only found this out last year. At the time the adult mentors on the team told them it was being filmed for a local station, and it only came out last year no one every told them.

Re: The missing feature: A common thread
 

One thing we do, after the first week or so of figuring out the game, is we are not afraid to use cardboard and random pieces of wood to make prototypes. Many pieces are still made of wood up to a couple of weeks before ship date. We have made a fauxbot out of wood, with wheels to get an idea of how things will fit. Not everything needs to be metal, prototype your hearts out with whatever you have.