Re: Robot in 3 Days : Feedback
 

I was personally inspired by the RI3D project. I think they set a very lofty goal for themselves and achieved it. This was a very risky endeavor, yet they did it anyway and the FRC community benefited from it greatly.

Although my team is a veteran team, the new students often don't really have much to contribute and they stay quiet during design discussions. However, this year, they we referencing the RI3D videos and stating how things can be improved over what they saw.

At MSC, you saw many of the ideas presented during RI3D on really competitive robots. MSC is always really competitive, but the field was much, much deeper this year and I think RI3D had something to do with that.

I look forward to what RI3D and others come up with this year.

Re: Robot in 3 Days : Feedback
 

It's nice that the COTS parts allow a team to avoid, for example, buying the expensive tools to hob their own gears. In reality through COTS engineers stand on the shoulders of their peers to reach lofty goals faster.

COTS does have the downside of making people think they can't do better and that I do not agree with. There are often specific usage cases where better is possible. Still I don't personally think FIRST can achieve their goal without COTS. After all they provide the National Instruments control systems COTS. I can't see FIRST saying they'll provide no control system and expecting the result to fully comply with their engineering standards.

In the early days of Team 11 I bootstrapped their programming by basically writing all the code myself. There were no programming classes offered to the students. There was no time during build system to make it work otherwise. In 1998 I wrote part of the code. Had 1 computer donated to the school with no network. Today I do not write *any* of the code that runs a Team 11 robot and I often do not even look at the finished product. I trust the students and their student mentors to deliver and only involve myself in the rare moments I think a serious problem is developing and I can help. I can't say that providing my skills in programming COTS did not end up with the results we desired it just bought the time required (yes I view myself as a component of a process).

The only time I get concerned is when 'this is how we always did this' overrides good clean sense.
COTS ideas and products can make your team very comfortable and keep them from evolving but that's an internal issue.

Re: Robot in 3 Days : Feedback
 

Here is the benefit I see from this: these guys go out and prototype things for everyone to see and view. It is completely open source. We can see what ideas they tried and what didn't work (like using a KOP wheel) why should everybody have to fail at the same idea and waste everyone's time, when these guys will go out and prove an even better design.

For veteran teams, we know that prototyping is critical. But for a young rookie team, they might not think of the prototyping phase as high of a priority. This resource does the prototyping for them, and everyone for that matter. I do not see it as unfair or cheating because it is out there for everyone to learn from.

I think some people are mad because they do not like that they had less of an absolute domination over rookie teams this year. They also might against the Ri3d because it was not a resource they had as a rookie, so why should anyone else get it. I am certainly not pointing a finger at anybody, but if these are the reasons for your objection, FIRST is not the organization for you.

Just my 2 cents. or 3.

Re: Robot in 3 Days : Feedback
 

I don't think anyone is mad, or even close to that upset.

Re: Robot in 3 Days : Feedback
 

I'm afraid I would have to strenuously disagree with this statement. Very few high school teams had the machining capability or knowledge to design effect components. If the objective of FIRST is to become widespread, then making it easier for teams to enter the sport is very desirable. Our rookie team in 1998, in the era of 'small parts' spent more time trying to create effective gearboxes to do what we needed that we did actually working on robot design. Back then, just getting a robot that drove well was a large accomplishment.

Re: Robot in 3 Days : Feedback
 

I have not seen anything that supports that conclusion, in this thread or out of it.

Re: Robot in 3 Days : Feedback
 

Hey I miss the days of removing the carpet with the wheels welded to the drill motor outputs :ahh: and the soon to be former RC car speed control meltdowns. Even the coupler we used in 1998 was something I drew in EasyCAD and we sent off to be made outside the team because there was no chance of doing work like that in the school shop. Even then it was painfully apparent that with a schedule this short there were just things we had no time to do.

I agree the goal here is to educate. Sometimes the education is priorities and compromise. Ultimately we all hope to be good enough to have the tools and the process to knock out everything within that deadline. FIRST can not get there all-at-once when the rest of the world only sees the robot as a whole and is funding toward that goal. So I suspect we all be forever in a state of yearly expansion of capability which, with commitment, is manageable.

Re: Robot in 3 Days : Feedback
 

Why do I imagine Mike Walker hovering over Dan and Andrew sleeping in their beds yelling "8 hours has gone by, you slept through the majority of week 2!"

Re: Robot in 3 Days : Feedback
 

...What? Am I reading this wrong, or is the implication that the only value you think people see in having easy, workable CotS solutions for teams with limited means is that it allows "great teams" to pick better robots for eliminations?

Because, if so, that's a pretty lousy/insulting thing to say. Do you think that teams that rely on workable CotS parts to field a functional robot can't be "great teams?" Or that those teams somehow ought not to be able to field a good robot? I hope not.

Re: Robot in 3 Days : Feedback
 

This is not true. I feel as if you probably weren't too involved with FIRST back when teams ordered parts from the small parts catalog. Back then, you could have a team capable of designing an extremely successful robot, but unable to do so because they don't have the manufacturing capability. More veteran teams with good manufacturing abilities would be able to manufacture stuff from stock material, where rookies and smaller teams wouldn't be able to acquire that 26 tooth aluminum sprocket. (I think it was 71 who made their own nylon sprockets so they wouldn't waste the limited number of small parts sprockets on low power applications).

Re: Robot in 3 Days : Feedback
 

This discussion seems to be getting more and more negative when it is supposed to provide feedback to RI3D so why don't we try and keep it filled with feedback about RI3D not about people using COTS components.

Personally I very much enjoyed watching and learning things from robot in three days. I saw many teams with effective shooters and I think that they helped to make that happen. One thing that would be nice that was mentioned perviously would be more videos posted to youtube because i loved watching their videos but their weren't enough of them for my tastes.

Re: Robot in 3 Days : Feedback
 

I didn't mean to take away anything from this thread I just heard the complaining/ saying release the robot later so people just don't go buy cots solutions then build the RI3D. So I decided to turn the tables and throw an unpopular opinion out there. Please give the RI3D crew the utmost credit for this project as it is one of the most useful things to happen in support of teams during the FIRST build season. I know most of the guys personally and was very thrilled to see this happen last year. :]

Re: Robot in 3 Days : Feedback
 

I see a lot of people in this thread who are looking solely at the middle-high tiers of teams in FRC. But Ri3D isn't primarily about those teams. At least the way I see it, the main goal of Ri3D is to provide a resource for the lower tier, teams who normally would have little to nothing more than a drivetrain, to be more competitive. Honestly, going to a competition and seeing this robot that you made which can't even score point being crushed by these sophisticated robots is not very fun. But thanks to Ri3D, so many of the teams who normally would be in this situation are now be able to contribute significant amounts of points to their alliance, and the competition becomes an amazing experience for all the students. I honestly think that Ri3D nearly doubled the amount of inspiration that FRC produces because of this, and in the end isn't inspiration the goal that we all strive for?

Thank your, Ri3D, for all that you do. Just remember to keep the end goal of inspiration in mind with every decision that you make.

Re: Robot in 3 Days : Feedback
 

We prototyped those 4 types of shooter this year (skeet shooter, nerf style flicker, circular shooter and linear shooter) despite having seen Ri3D. We ended up going with a linear shooter not because it was what Ri3D did, but because it was easiest to get working well.

I don't think Ri3D squelches creativity. I think it helps frame the conversation. Knowing from Ri3D that 3 cycles or more per match is very possible definitely changed the strategy conversation. If anything, it made us less likely to build a Ri3D type bot. I'd argue that it provides direction and clarity after kickoff, something that all tiers of teams desperately want.

Oh, yeah, and I like how it eliminates some of the nasty surprises about the game piece that appear to only crop up after the final robot has been built. For example, it shed a lot of light into how consistently frisbees could be shot.

Re: Robot in 3 Days : Feedback
 

Agree with all of it. Good idea on the countdown clock.
For us last year, a relatively experienced team with a small number of metors, RI3D helped us decide to change our direction after week 1. We were struggling with trying for the 30 pt climb and dumping the colored discs (like a lot of other teams).

We had ruled out shooting accurately early on during our brainstorming and thought climbing wouldn't be a problem. And so with released video from RI3D and discussions with other local teams, we decided to change our effort and direction to shooting and a 10 point climb, which worked better than what we were trying to do.

If we had more time and resources, we *may* have been able to stay that course witht the 30 pt climb but the clock was ticking!!

So thank you RI3D for helping us and other teams to focus our efforts in a more productive direction.