Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

Fear not, for their students and mentors now are with 4509, another high school in their area!

from that picture, you can see a beautiful robot, but if you look closely, you can see that it's simple and not made from expensive materials. Every team can be effective.

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

If your goal is to level the playing field, i don't think this would achieve that. i see no "stop build" day resulting in upper/elite teams making MORE gains than lower teams in that extra time.

If your goal is to give the lower teams more time to avoid being a box on wheels and/or going from box on wheels to mildly competitive(even though this means the performance gap widens) then this could work. I could see that this goal would also be tied to avoiding losing rookie/new teams, which I certainly agree is a worthy goal. However, IMO this goal is already achievable by kitbot + WPILibrary + chiefdelphi + 30 lb allowance. If teams can't get a kitbot plus one working mechanism together then FIRST probably needs to do a better job telling rookies to just get on CD and ask for a design to try.

To give you a better idea of where my argument comes from: my team is very small, and so poor that I had to seriously consider whether I could afford putting in these last 2 cents:

-we've never had a practice bot, but we're trying to put one together right now (out of free spare parts)

-I don't think trying to make everything "fair" is a worthy goal.

-I DO support anything attempting to "level the playing field" by bringing up the lower teams. Anything which does this by limiting the upper teams I very strongly dislike. I'm not sure I would be doing this if not for the inspiration of what elite teams are doing.

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

1771 has not really been disbanded. The team number still belongs to North Gwinnett High school. The team has not been able to find a dedicated teacher sponsor since the previous sponsor moved to Lanier High school after 2010 (and has started rookie team 4509 this year). In 2011 and 2012, the team had a different teacher sponsor each year, and neither sponsor was a sponsor in anything but name. This year, no sponsor stepped up, and the administration doesn't seem keen on doing anything anytime soon. It is possible that something may happen in the future, but there are currently no known plans.

In the meantime, At least one North Gwinnett student is helping out 4509, as am I, in a limited role. A 1771 alumni is also helping out with programming in between his college classes. 4509 has examined several of 1771's frames from past years, and based their frame design on those (all done by a student in Inventor), so expect 4509's frame to look similar to a 1771 frame.

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

You say "plywood" like it was a concession to not having money. Plywood was a choice we made every year that determined that was the best material for our design and manufacturing resources.

Additionally, the plywoods we used, baltic birch and okoume were far from inexpensive. This leads to an important point that cost of raw material, (sheet, tube, plate, whatever) is such a small expense in relation to the motors and and control system, that once you've been around for a few years and have a supply of these items, building a second robot is fairly trivial. This is especially true when the majority of the components are being cut by a sponsor.

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

My two cents for what it is worth...
I have been a mentor on a few teams and know how the stop build day affects some of the smaller teams with limited resources and I am curious how many teams out there have difficulties with their robot a day or two before bag it and tag it day. From personal experience, I know that the teams that have I been associated with in this situation sometimes suffered the consequences at their regional because they spent the whole Thursday practice day trying to right their robot and then end up working the bugs out and learning how to operate it during the Qualifying matches on Friday. By the time Saturday comes around and the bugs are worked out, the robots are some of the best out there but by then it is too late as the robot slips into a low ranking that no one notices that they are performing as well as they are...

I have noticed that the teams that are fortunate enough to be able to compete at multiple regionals tend to do much better at their 2nd or third regionals because they had a chance to work their bugs out and the teams that do not have this luxury end up struggling...

Two teams that I have been involved with have Midterm finals during the 6 week build season and we chose not to allow the students to work on the robot during that week as they really need to focus on what is important- their school studies. This tends to make it even harder to make the stop build day but we do abide by it and usually pay the price for being behind the eight ball at the competition but if anything the FRC competitions seem to be a lesson in overcoming adversity more than anything else for some teams...

I understand the importance of deadlines and having worked on a number of years on Engineering projects over the years have found that in the "real world" projects slip due to a number of reasons. In a "US First Perfect World" they are not allowed to slip which makes me wonder if any of Dean's projects ever slip at DEKA.

One additional thought is that if teams were allowed to work on their robot right up until their competitions, (much like a race car team does) the quality of the robots would most likely be better.

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

I agree with this 100%. FRC should show a more realistic view of the engineering process with brainstorming, designing, planning, prototyping etc. getting more than a week or two before the need to "just build it" takes over.

There should definitely be a deadline for stopping build otherwise teams will dawdle. But why not a 12 week build? Six is nuts and takes a lot of my personal time and frankly too much of my work time away. Many of us smaller teams do not have the mentor resources to spread the pain, either.

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

I'm sorry, but this can't possibly be more wrong. Yes, six weeks is a short period. Yes, more time would be wonderful. But where's the challenge in that? If you execute it correctly, six weeks can easily fit the full engineering process. You just have to set deadlines AND STICK TO THEM.
As well, there is no restriction on what you do during off season to solve the "engineering process" problem. There are many things that generally don't change season to season. You know that your robot will have to drive. You know that, given FIRST history, there will be some sort of object to manipulate. So prototype and research whatever you can in the off season, and get an accelerated start when season comes around.

As for your statement "Six is nuts and takes a lot of my personal time", why would 12 weeks take any less time? If anything, I'd expect it would take about double the amount of time...

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

Quite frankly, it'll now take 12 weeks of your personal time and work time.
Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill time allotted.
Murphy's Corollary to Parkinson's Law: And then some.

For many years, this is actually what the rule was, or pretty close to it. Well, sort of. The amount of extra parts was unlimited for at least some of the time. Didn't stop some teams from bringing in raw material and completely rebuilding (or in some cases building) their robots. Is what they finished with on ship date what they brought to competition? Yes. Is it what they started competing with? No... because stuff was added. Stuff that showed up in raw material form.

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

6 weeks X 10 hours per week with students = 60 hours total.

Less than one work week where I live. Hardly time for a full engineering cycle (maybe we're just slow in Silicon Valley). Sure, this does not include the extra time mentors spend on our own, but this is the time we have to teach and mentor the kids. I guess if we told our students to forget their homework (who needs AP Calc or Physics anyway), skip sports and other activities we could have them for more time, but we chose not to.

We do a LOT of prep in the off season. But outside the drive base (which may or may not be the same YoY) there is only so much you can really do. And the kids tend to burn out from the build season and are a lot less interested in off-season work since they know what is coming.

So I guess the fact that we have a competition robot in the bag, and a practice robot within 4 hours of being ready run means we don't know how to MAKE SCHEDULES AND STICK TO THEM, huh?

After 25 years of developing products and running teams, I'm pretty well versed as to when proper design does not fit the schedule. Yeah, we made our schedule, but it did not represent good engineering practices by any means. You can't do that in 60 hours.

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

10 hours a week? The last six days of build, we put in 100...

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

I fully agree. 60 hours is nowhere near enough. How do you manage to schedule so little time? Do you meet only during school or something? Many teams I know put in almost ten hours on Saturday alone.

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

Lets be honest, A six week build is not reality, it's reality TV. Similar to the Biker Build Off. To say that the schedule is what makes this challanging and valuable is not fully accurate IMO. If I was 16 years old and thought my Engineering carreer would be like working with my hair on fire for the next 30 years, I might rethink some decisions.

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

True fact of truth: If the build season was any longer, the CyberCards would be minus one mentor.
That wouldn't be good, since 1-1=0.

The six-week build isn't meant to be real, it's meant to simulate real. It's meant to create urgency, it's meant to create challenge, it's meant to create fun. Think of what we learn - prioritizing, scheduling, time management, streamlining - that are all functions of the six-week build.

I don't think any robotics student member thinks that a build season is just like work any more than doing page 365, problems 10-24 Even is just like being a mathematician.

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

As a 16 year old who has been working with his hair on fire for the past 7 weeks, I'm glad the build season isn't longer. At first glance, one would say "Hey, look, we have more time to accomplish the same task, it'll be easier on us", however they forget about the rest of the teams. The ones who will use every last minute given to them to make sure their robots are near perfect in performance and their drivers have had as much practice time as possible. While you do the same thing as last year in more time, they'll do more things than last year in the same amount of time you do what you normally do. The entire metagame would change to teams who worked at a slower and easier pace during the longer build season, and teams who had a robot finished in 6 weeks, have had 6 more weeks to practice and iterate, and then the time between bag and tag and competition to work with their practice bot.

I know if I had to go through a longer build season, I'd want to use every second of it to get the most competitive advantage I can. I also know that if build season were longer, I probably wouldn't be in FRC, because working with my hair on fire for 6 weeks is bad enough, working longer with my hair on fire to keep up with the competition is worse. I'm a kid in high school. I can learn to juggle schoolwork and robotics for the first 6 weeks of the year. But when it starts getting longer, my time becomes thinner and thinner, something I can't work with.


TL;DR - A longer build season will just mean more time working your butt off to stay competitive.

Re: Is Bag and Tag Necessary?
 

We don't set our goal as victory at all cost. We know from the start to win you need to have a durable machine that does it all. 10, 12 weeks won't make us into that team right now. We set goals and try to fulfill them as close to 100% as possible. This year our goals were a 10 point hang an accurate shooter with targeting and speed control and a direct drive Mecanum chassis all assembled into a durable, dependable package. We have achieved this at 90% and are happy with the results. There are certainly kids in the group that don't understand gyro programming, encoders and accelerometers. G-Code , solidworks or manual machining, powder coating, anodizing or waterjet cutting, material selection and fabrication, welding , forming , etc. etc. etc. My goal as the only manufacturing mentor on our team is to share knowledge from real life experience. This is like teaching calc II in 6 weeks and giving the kids one test. All in all it's still great fun and fulfilling to most involved, however great things can be made better.