My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

I'm not sure how this opinion will be received by the community, but I have to get this off my chest.

I have a lot of respect for the people doing the 72 hour build marathons after kickoff: they are all experienced FIRSTers and engineers, well known and admired in the FIRST community.

However, I think that the build marathons are detracting from the creativity and challenge of the FRC competition.

• The marathons are probably going to stifle the creative process. If teams choose to watch they can easily be locked on an idea and be unable to shake it from their mind.
  Showing 5 working robots after 72 hours is going to probably cover most bases in terms of basic ideas for the 2014 season. This will rob teams of the sense of accomplishment which comes with brainstorming and deciding on your own robot.
• An obvious retort to the above point would be "just don't watch the marathons or look at their results", but we all know it will be hard to avoid. Also, there is a dillema here: these are robots built by professional FIRSTers, are you really not going to try and learn from them when you have the chance?
  

Catch 22 here:

• if you watch or look at the robots, your creative process is disrupted and you will probably lose some (if not most) of your pride in your creation.
• If you don't watch or look at robots (assuming that's even possible while still browsing CD and Facebook), you are putting yourself at a possible disadvantage when compared to other teams.

In the end, the only real solution (in my mind) is not to have these marathons exist at all, but I don't really see how that can be achieved without the marathoners themselves bowing out... :(

FRC is for kids, can't we keep it that way?

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

I suggest this post be merged with this thread, which holds the same discussion and responses to it.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hreadid=122661

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

I struggle with this. On one hand, 90% of engineering is using ideas and designs that other have created to solve a problem. However, the other 10% is inspired designs, being creative/unique to push the design envelope.

In a commercial industry, there's production environments and research environments. Production tends toward conservative approaches - i.e. using established methods and avoiding risk because you need to get a product out the door.
But there's also research and development. This is where new ideas are tested -- where radical designs are allowed, where failure isn't always bad thing, because it increases knowledge.

What is the point of FIRST? I think it's both, but Ri3D pushes toward the former.

One thing I guess I'd add to spur discussion: would people's opinions change if someone released "FLL Robot in 24 hours"? Is there a reason the answers should be different?

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

How many teams built Ri3D hangers? I can't name a single one off the top of my head, but I suppose there were a few. While I would not be surprised if Ri3D style shooters were the most common in FRC 2013, I bet the bucket alliance had the largest percentage of hoppers and the most common hanger was either a pair of pistons or the inverted ramp camp.

Even if teams aren't coming up with novel concepts on their own, they are still stealing from the best and inventing the rest. Wholesale copying is extremely rare, and does it really matter? If the teams that are building exact replicas are inspired, who are we to say "You're being inspired all wrong?!"

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

While I agree that the build marathons may give teams tunnel vision I don't think they should go away. The goal of FIRST is to inspire and what inspires many is success. I know my time as a student were more inspired by the great memories achieved from competition but that may be just me. I don't think one needs to reinvent the wheel every year to achieve inspiration. Otherwise we may need to get rid of COTS parts so we can be inspired by designing them ourselves.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

Yeah. I think that there can be some changes made to the RI3D. It should be at least 3Days after kickoff (I don't know whether they get the game earlier or at the same time as us). That way, those ideas will come later, after most teams should be done/finishing brainstorming. Also, their robots are quite minimal. However, we developed a little of out linear shooter idea from what they did. We just redesigned it a bit.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

I am glad that Leav had enough guts to start this thread. I thought about starting this same thread, but decided against it because I was afraid of the reaction. Let’s try to keep this discussion on topic and not turn into another one of those closed thread because they got too heated.

I hope that some well-respected FIRSTers like JVN, Karthik, Andy Baker, Joe J. will reply in this thread as well. These are men that are inspiring to me and would love to know their side of the story.

Background on me: I am a 12+ year member of FIRST who started as a high school student and am now a Technology Teacher that runs a FIRST Robotics team. I love FIRST and no matter what happens I am “hooked” for life. I love the program and what it does for young people.

This is the main idea that I struggle with with Ri3D and BuildBlidz.

Q: As an educator, what is my overall goal for students?

A: I want students to come out of my classes being problem solvers. The content is important yes, but I want them to be able to use the content that I share to solve life’s issues. They will probably never encounter the exact problem that I gave them in class. However, I want them to be able to take the situations and content that I give in class to solve any problem that comes at them.


Q: Does Ri3D and BuildBlidz allow students to be problem solvers with the challenges ahead of them?

A: Maybe not. Once students see an idea that is functioning well (especially when it is built by well-respected people in FIRST), it is hard to get them out of it. Add on that there are now 5 different robots being built, they are able to “pick” the robot design that they like the best.

Engineering, by definition is, “the work of designing and creating large structures (such as roads and bridges) or new products or systems by using scientific methods” (Source). Are these builds taking the designing our of FIRST?

Q: Should we just ignore the builds?

A: See Leav’s comments on this:

Q: Are we creating problem solvers or fabricators?

A: Looking at these builds, I could see that we are creating more fabricators than problem solvers. We are showing students how to pick a part “off of the shelf” and follow instructions on how to build it. In my opinion, this does not have as much problem solving experiences as make something “from scratch.”

Q: Are fabricator skills important?

A: Absolutely. The skills of how to use tools and machines are very important. They will stay with them forever.

Q: What am I saying?

A: I am not sure. I am struggling that we may be going too extreme with “elevating the playing field” and are now “leveling the playing field.” While doing this, our students may not be learning the same problem solving skills that they used to in FIRST.

I love all of you and I would love to have your input on this internal struggle that I am having. Personally, I love these builds and I am not asking them to go away. I am just trying to analyze the situation and help my student's learning.

Matt

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

Maybe they should have picked the last 3 days of build season (do not start until Feb 16th and have the same stop build deadline as everyone else).

Although I bet FIRST likes having the Robot in 3 Days because it unveils potential game rules flaws and workarounds that would require a rules update.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

I don't understand, who would this benefit?

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

Akash, what I don't understand is this: who benefits from the current model of the build marathons?

I can see rookies benefiting, but I think rookies have been doing fine since before these marathons.

And I won't shy away from saying this: AndyMark and VEX definitely stand to benefit commercially by demonstrating how to build successful robots with parts available from their stores.

Satrke, I really agree with this and I think this is mostly what has been bothering me with these builds. For me the off-season is the time to learn from other people and the build season the time to work on you own and tackle the problem as a team.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

I think I saw less rookies with just drive bases this year than I have before so I don't think rookies as a whole were all that better before Ri3D.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

I don't think anyone is oblivious to the fact that this is an awesome way to market their products. I, in fact, like that this is a way to show off to teams how to use COTS parts. There are a TON of teams who don't even know about all of the COTS items available to them. Maybe I like the free market and capitalism, but I don't see anything negative about this.

As for rookies "doing fine," why is it a bad thing to want to raise the level of competition in the process of marketing a product? Should we, instead, maintain the status quo? [Edit] Also, I saw a few weak veterans do well this year due to what they learned from Ri3D. It isn't just about the rookies. Ri3D affected teams at almost each level. Rookie teams and weak veterans got ideas of how to tackle the task or gained confidence and reassurance in their own ideas, while mid-level teams had a great baseline achievement to evaluate the performance of their own robots against. [/Edit]

In the end, I don't see it as a huge deal. I pretty much stated my opinion in this post, but I will re-evaluate after this season is over.

I think of it in the sense that you can really only control what actions your own team takes. Rather than asking for the resource to go away, make a plan of how to react to the videos and incorporate all of this information into your own build process.

Past those points, feel free to discuss via PM, since I don't have much more to add to the discussion. I want to just wait and see how it all works out.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

These build marathons are great in my opinion.

First of all, it's obviously beneficial to rookie teams. For new teams, it's hard to go through the design process completely, and for many just making a robot is an accomplishment.

But, for more experienced teams it is still a great resource. After watching the Robot in 3 Days final video last year, we really got hit with inspiration. We incorporated some of their features of a linear shooter, but in the end made a robot that looks nothing like theirs. We took what they had made and built off of it, ending up with a completely unique product that everyone felt proud of.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

It would be silly if a team said "we don't look at old designs because it stifles our creativity." In an era where often times the game has an element that's similar to the past (tubes in 2011/2007, foam ball in 2012/2006, etc.) there's a plethora of examples of manipulator mechanisms (in addition to the drive trains and electrical techniques) that teams look to for design ideas. Innovation will not move as quickly if teams are continuously reinventing the wheel rather than using the intellectual property that they have at their disposal. I feel like the Ri3D/Build Blitz projects are similar in that they set a base line where teams can build from and actually encourage creativity and innovation.

Additionally, even non-rookie teams stand to benefit significantly from second hand prototyping. Are you home designing and want to know if something will work, but you don't have your shop on hand? Ask one of five teams that is more than willing to do some testing for you. Remember how excited teams got when the Ri3D team showed that accurate full field shooting was a possibility?

Finally, I think a major element of these Build Blitz type projects is understanding how to approach strategy. I've seen a number of teams that either don't value strategy or don't know how to derive a strategy, and having a number of methods to observe will help these students understand the game that happens in those first three days.

Overall I think the 72-hour build projects benefit the community.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

This + let's be honest, was it really groundbreaking to teams that a wheel could be used to shoot something into a goal? No. But Ri3D's prototypes allowed a lot of new teams to work out the details of a shooter more quickly. Not all teams have the funds to buy things to prototype with, and rookies especially don't always have an inventory of old parts to use and work with.

Okay I'm done now lol.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

Agreed. This plus all of the items that teams post on Chief Delphi that get used by other teams. The skid plates in 2012, Spectrum's two wheeled versa planetary & banebots shooter, and the passive angled hangers took off after a few teams posted their prototypes and were some of the most popular mechanisms in 2013.

To say that the three day robot challenges are stifling innovation is crazy. Team's have a big enough problem already with tunnel vision where they pick a robot concept, vote, and use it through the off-season even when it doesn't work.

Team's are in FRC for various reasons, if your team is in it to be innovative and foster creativity go right ahead this is good! If you are trying to field a competitive robot every year, Ri3D is there to help you cross the bump to field a competitive robot on a small scale. I love this.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

I'll offer my two cents as a former member of young team. Keep in mind as a prelude that I have only known of FIRST's existence for 2 years. This will be a hindrance on my overall experience with the program, but it will also allow me to offer perspective as a part of a rookie team.

At the start of the 2012 season (my team's rookie year), none of our members or mentors had any FIRST experience whatsoever. Our shop consisted of a table saw, band saw, drill press, lathe and some hand tools. I say this to show we had plenty of tools to build a quality robot. We attempted to construct a design that could shoot and manipulate the bridge. Neither of these mechanisms ended up working by competition. So we went through the games with a chunk of metal on a drive train that was less than perfect to say the least. As a part of the drive team, I would have to tell our alliance partners that all we could do was move and get out of the way and maybe help go for a double balance if one of them could lower the bridge. We could not play defense that year because of the stupid bump, and we couldn't help offensively either. Basically, we would drive to the corner and wait for the match to end most of the time. Needless to say, we ended up 58th in the competition. It was still cool to see all the robots, but the competing itself was far less than enjoyable.

Fast forward to the 2013 season. We all have 1 year of experience under our belt and I came across ri3d. We watched them build a strong shooter design and we mimicked it with success. At competition, we could accurately score in the two point goal anywhere from 8 to 16 times in a match. Furthermore, we also added some plywood to block disks. This time, when asked what could do by alliance partners, we had something to say. Competition was substantially more fun. We were seeded 19th (up nearly 40 slots!) and got picked by the number 1 alliance as their 3rd pick.

So what does this mean? Well, the point could be made that we would have had this success simply due to the year of experience. However, the fact that we were still crunched for time (finishing the building on bag day) suggests that without the immediate inspiration, we could not have finished in time. So my point is this, ri3d helped us build a better robot which in turn, made competition more fun. This enjoyment is what will drive students to pursue science and engineering. For this reason I think ri3d is a great thing. Obviously, FIRST was a popular and fun for lots of people before ri3d, but I think a fair point can be made that the project has made the experience better for more teams.

I want to say that I don't think those of you with lots of experience are wrong in what you have said, in fact I hold your thoughts with incredibly high regard. However, I fear sometimes as time increases between the present and when someone started, some sight of just how hard it can be to field a functioning robot for a young team is lost.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

Everyone benefits. You get to see some ideas that others are trying out that maybe you had dismissed or do not have the resources to try out (only so many hours in the day right?)

How is this different from teams referencing past robots from previous seasons and gaining inspiration for their current robot? Let's be honest, very few teams are re-inventing the wheel here. We're all developing something from another idea, another concept, it's (almost) all been done before by someone. Instead of segregating everyone into their own team silo's, technology now allows our community to collaborate and share ideas throughout our teams' design processes - in real time. I love how this is changing the build season and can't wait to see what everyone comes up with.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

Let me share a little about how we experienced Mentors know exactly how hard it is to build something with little experience...

Roll the clock back to 2003 to MY rookie year. We didn't have predesigned and prefrabricated kitbots. We didn't have AndyMark, nor Vexpro to order gearboxes from. We needed to do all of that ourselves still within 6 weeks. So we do understand just how hard it is. I think that having these premade frames, gearboxes and such allow us to focus on the creativity in meeting the challenge and less on the fabrication of components. So yes we do know and do understand just how hard it is.


Now back to the thread itself. I find that these RI3D challenges do take away from each teams individual experience in meeting the challenge.
I saw a great number of "copycat" machines last season. Where's the creativity and thinking outside the box in that?

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

To be perfectly honest, the only teams that built exact copies of the RI3D shooter (as in, linear shooter with 2 cims and 2 pneumatic wheels) were teams that definitely would not have been able to come up with their own workable solution. Every other team I saw that was inspired by it used elements of the design and then prototyped on their own, changing it when they felt they could make improvements to it.

No one gets this outraged when teams in 2012 copy ideas from 2006, or when teams in 2011 copy ideas from 2007. Is RI3D really different?

You guys talk about "stifling the creative process", but all these "creative" robots you saw low resource teams building instead of RI3D variants didn't work. Teams that know how to pull off creative still did it anyway, and teams that didn't had a starting point to work off of. I really just don't understand how anyone could think RI3D made 2013 worse.

The thing that also gets me is that people are commenting about how *other* teams copied the RI3D. How exactly does anyone have the authority to say how much of the experience was taken away from these teams? We say "live and let live" when it comes to mentor involvement, but when it's RI3D stuff suddenly we're all experts on how other teams run...

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

Dean Kamen, 2006 Kickoff Speech:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=41564

Most teams do not have access to a Joe Johnson, or a Mark Koors, or a Paul Copioli. I think this perfectly fulfills Dean's vision of putting the superstars out to a much wider audience in an interactive way that is friendly and appealing and accessible like sports.

How many times have you heard someone say "there isn't enough time to do CAD in a 6 week build season"?. I'm pretty sure JVN is going to do CAD in a 3 day build season. How about, "I can't build X without a CNC"? Dan Richardson did.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

We picked a team at our first regional that was a Ri3d, but with a better pneumatic hanger.

These kids were a new team, they weren't good last year, but they were STOKED to be scoring this season.

Ri3d and others might be distracting to midlevel teams (Top teams certainly will value the data provided, and objectively integrate it with their own testing and ideas to achieve a better product), but to the really struggling teams (especially without mentors) they are incredibly helpful. I said this elsewhere, but it's naive of us to assume that all teams should follow the ideal design process. For some, it's copy or nothing. Ideally, after having a fun season, they are motivated to learn and grow and move up. Certainly they are more likely to do this after doing a ri3d than a kitbot with nothing else.

The benefit to these teams is huge, you're talking about kids who possibly would have hated the program instead having a fun and inspirational season. The downside of some teams being distracted by designs that they can't help but copy is negligible in comparison.

Also, as this programs grows and hits the scale we're all dreaming of, more and more things like this are going to happen. It's unavoidable, and should be embraced as part of the future.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

Yes you may have seen allot of copy cats, but were they all identical replicas? No... The Ri3D design was one of a few that I could think of to throw a Frisbee with a stable flight path, or load effectively from the feeder stations. I know my team used some design concepts in our design but we made changes unique to us and only us. I don't see Ri3D style marathons as bad for the FRC community, I see it as an improvement of overall game play.

I agree with this.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

As a fan of FIRST who just wants to watch matches, see which strategies and robots win, I'm super excited to get to see finished robots in just a handful of days. As someone who has to work with students on my team, it does bring some additional challenges. While I may have enough experience and confidence (or stupidity) to deviate from these legendary FIRST mentors' strategies and designs, I think that is pretty hard for a 16 year old high school student to do. As Matt Stark mentioned, I'd prefer to let students think for themselves for a little bit first before getting too much tunnel vision. Last night, a student jokingly asked me if we should even meet during the first three days of buildseason.

Last year, the original Ri3D built a robot that would have been competitive at every regional and may have won a couple events, but probably wouldn't have faired too well at the championship (tall cyclers usually had trouble getting the nod over short cyclers unless they had a secondary feature). One of my concerns is, what if one of these five robots stumble on 'the design'. For example, the minibot ramp in 2011, 469's 2010 ball return, 1114's 2008 puncher claw, 67's 2012 utility arm (even if a team doesn't copy the arm, I'm sure they would build a wide robot). I prefer not to watch events (let alone the championship) where the winner is who could implement the same design better. Given the experience and talent of those building the robots and the competitive environment, I wouldn't be shocked if one of them built the dominate design of that year.

One possible compromise that I would prefer (but may not be best for all those involved) would be to still build a robot in 3 days, but not share anything until a week or so into build season. How cool would it be if each team created a professional quality hour documentary on their three days and then we had a unveiling week with one team showing their video a day. We all loved 148's unveiling videos, but what if it was an hour long and featured interviews that detailed their design thoughts and process? Teams would still have time to think for themselves, while these robots built in three days could still provide significant help for those inexperienced teams that are behind and really need the help. Plus, the documentaries would probably be more inspiring and cool than some youtube clips. The videos probably would be one of the first things I'd show to a potential mentor.

While there are certainly some valid concerns and downsides to these completed robots shortly after buildseason, I do think the benefit outweighs the negative.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

Most things in life are "what you make of it", and I don't see these projects being taken on by the community as something you can spin to be a holistically negative endeavor when it comes to developing the program locally (the teams) and globally (the events).

Unfortunately I can't call up JVN and ask him his opinion on butterfly/nonadrive vs. octocanum/jumpdrive vs. standard six wheel, etc., but then again, neither can essentially any other of the nearly 2800 teams in FRC. I know these boards are populated by people who either have incredible FRC experience, are intelligent professional engineering resources for FRC, or both. How many of the nearly 2800 teams can say that? How many of the defunct or disbanded teams could have said that? I don't think it's a stretch to say that having a wealth of human resources on an FRC team is uncommon.

How are these projects any different than me reading a presentation on 33's 8 wheel drive or poking around through someone's STEP file or referencing 610's kickoff process to build one for a team I'm on? This community has grown through intelligent, experienced people freely sharing their ideas with the community as a whole, and other intelligent, experienced people using them as a jumping-off point to improve upon the original idea.

The fascinating thing about Ri3D last year was that not only did they put together an incredibly competitive concept in a short amount of time, but they gave teams the opportunity to use what these experienced FIRSTers knowledge to use however they want. Believe it or not, not every team in the world is or should be exactly like yours, and that's for better or worse. Some teams are 6 passionate rookie kids and a teacher way over his head. Others are a legion of 80 kids, a dozen literal rocket scientists mentoring, and years of experience and discipline that mirror a real small engineering firm. Ri3D can properly serve those teams and anyone in the middle of the spectrum. Some teams don't have the bandwidth or experience to know how to prototype or design yet. Some teams like to check out the competition down the road as a barometer.

I don't know how having 5 possibly radically different designs might affect competition this year, but last year you saw some Ri3D "clones" (that couldn't be true clones because Ri3D wouldn't have passed an FRC inspection), some teams use it as a "jumping-off point" like any other resource, or some teams not seemingly incorporate its influence at all. To me, Ri3D is just a step above the bucket hopper, the hooded shooter, the roller claw, the soccer ball roller, the Lunacy "vomit mode", the Overdrive "hurdling"... you get it.

Ri3D is something that improved the community at the expense of no one but the people who paid money and lost sleep time to make it happen, and for that I'm grateful.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

How do you host a (very valuable) library of robot CAD that teams can reference while also saying that students shouldn't have access to Ri3D or the BlitzBuild? Your signature even says: "Your one stop shop for robot design ideas and solutions!", but the above post seems to indicate you think it is bad for FIRST to have students see other people's design ideas and solutions?

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

I am now in year 10 as a coach, and year 13 as a teacher. My approach to robotics has evolved along with my teaching techniques, and I believe both have evolved for the betterment of my students. I know that both my classes and team 1339 are producing much better quality work (and better-prepared young adults) than they used to. The following are my current thoughts on the subject of this thread.

1) Experientially, I have found that students are much more prone to avoiding research, rather than pursuing it. I actively encourage mine to make a habit of looking for existing solutions to problems concurrent to brainstorming. I knew students who, when presented with Ri3D last year, simply didn't take the time to watch the process, and in so doing missed out on obvious solutions to problems they were having with their robot, much to their ongoing frustration and later regret.

2) While 1339 ate up Ri3D last year, we did not directly implement any of their robot's elements, other than the in-line shooter, which was in the works anyway and used very different parts throughout. We also pursued a pure climber until it became apparent it would not get us where we wanted to be.

3) I observed only one robot at the Colorado Regional that appeared to be influenced by Ri3D. It was still significantly different in materials and design; more like Samsung to an iPhone, perhaps.

4) I did, however, observe that rookie teams and historically weaker teams came to competition with fully functional robots. The several people I asked told me that Ri3D was inspirational, because it showed them that the task of launching frisbees was not impossible.

To conclude, I just don't think that fears about FRC turning into an assembly line of clones are realistic, as evident in both the actual robots in competition last year, and in my (obviously subjective) observations of high-school behavior and thinking.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

There's probably enough distiniction to allow Matt some leeway here. I see a big difference between adapting from the past to solve a new problem, and having someone tell you how to solve the current problem.

Edit: Interesting to note that the kickoff broadcast of 2011 kept the GDC's minibot designs in a black box. It would make sense that they would not present both the problem and the solution in the same kick-off broadcast.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

Since I got involved in April 2013 as a mentor, I’ve been drinking from a fire hose, and I acutely feel the overwhelming nature of “trying to catch up”. Fortunately, our team has a few existing mentors with a longer history in FRC, and I’ve found troves of information in various team websites, Chief Delphi threads, etc. I’d like to say THANK YOU to all of you that contribute this content. Know that it is being read and appreciated by us newbies. I thought I’d comment on this thread, as I have worked with other programs that “got it wrong” and I wanted to encourage you all by pointing out that my fresh set of eyes still sees FRC as “getting it right.”

Maturing Programs
Assuming people enter FRC at a constant level, and the level of robot sophistication grows each year, the gap between a rookie and an “average competitive robot” will continue to grow. I see a few ways to address this.
• Design the rules or game to handicap the top end
• Find ways to accelerate the learning curve of the bottom end
• De-emphasize the competitive side of it (everyone gets a trophy mentality)

If you implement option #1 poorly, top tier teams will feel stifled, get bored, and eventually leave. These established teams are the bedrock that the FRC community is built on, and they not only build great robots, they are active in their communities, support rookie teams, etc.

As an aside, I was a part of Formula Hybrid racing competition in college. In 2009, the program organizers attempted to level the playing field without prior notification to anyone before championship. Imagine showing up to FRC regionals after build season, and finding the inspectors were allowing robots up to 200lbs, just to allow more teams to compete. The organizers even tried to rewrite the scoring metrics mid-competition to provide more points for fuel economy, because they didn’t like that our fuel-inefficient vehicle was poised to win. Ultimately, we did win easily after protesting the rule re-write, but it was a pretty bitter experience for a team of 30 students who essentially did a cost-benefit analysis, and emphasized “race car” over “hybrid”. I’d rather be a part of a program that constantly brings rookies up, than artificially holds the level of competition down. For any that are curious, this was Texas A&M in 2009.

FRC addresses these issues in a much better way. The nature of the 6 week competition and new challenge each year already limits the innovation (via time constraints) that can be applied specifically to that challenge, but it does so in a fair and fun way. It still allows year-long innovation, but at a gamble that it might not directly apply next year, and with the stipulation that it must be freely shared. The resources in the community, the increasing availability of COTS solutions, and the emphasis within the community of helping rookies address point #2. And finally, I think the myriad of non-robot, rookie, and regional awards are great and address #3, as they are highly valued and are many are less affected by the increasing robot sophistication. They give young teams an easier way to “win”, without devaluing the importance and goal of winning world championships in robot competition.

I believe that Ri3D and BuildBlitz will fix #2 for young teams that want to watch them, and potentially make it worse for teams that don’t. I think this is the primary source of discord. Some rookie teams see it as a way for them to be competitive faster. Other established teams that have remained marginally competitive, while allowing the design/build/strategy to be formulated entirely by the students with few outside resources, might see this as accelerating the maturity of the “average robot”. This may threaten their ability to continue on in the manner they like (and the manner that might be working for them and their students), while still remaining competitive.

Impact on Students
I feel the arguments both for and against allowing the FRC competition to mature come from differing opinions on what is most inspirational/educational for the students. Some argue that a higher profile competition, featuring well-built and visually impressive robots will inspire students and the public more readily... as student teams think "wow, I was a part of building something this impressive, regardless of how much external help I got". Others argue that regardless of the final product, student teams will be more inspired by thinking "I designed and built this robot all by myself... even though it did not seem to be competitive, I'm proud I accomplished it alone." This is complicated by the fact that it might vary for different groups, and there really isn’t a “right answer”.

I think it is important to recognize the maturing competition for what it is, and accept it as a natural progression instead of fighting it. Some of the initial design and creativity might come externally, and your ability to create parts better than COTS solutions in 2002 may no longer provide the edge it once did. However, there are still ways for your team to innovate and differentiate themselves from the other 3000 teams that watched the same video. If the competition starts to get stale, the game designers can always just “break the mold”, by altering the game enough that it makes previous strategies or COTS parts less applicable, and forces a bit of a knowledge reset for both new and experienced teams. Or perhaps, more awards are created that emphasize engineering creativity, with points docked for designs that are copied with little iteration. Ri3D and BuildBlitz might change FRC in the short-term, but I don’t see them as damaging it in the long term.

Finally, everyone is making great points, and I agree it is important to constantly think about how changes in the nature of FRC impact what we are trying to achieve with our students. However, I think framing the discussion in the terms of “how do I continue to emphasize the importance of original design with my students, despite the abundance of resources available at kickoff” vs. “how do I stop the proliferation of these resources”, would help a lot.

I too am conflicted, as I see these resources as being very helpful to get me up to speed more quickly, and potentially give our newer team a taste of early success. However, we also have to walk a line to make sure enough is being contributed by the students that they feel proud that it is “their robot” and “their design”, and not simply a copy of someone else’s design. For this year, I think that regardless of the source, our students will be thrilled to field a competitive robot that their hands were touching for 6 weeks, and that is driven by two of them. Maybe I’m wrong, and next year we’ll have to better manage the incoming information so the students are more bought in, but for this year, I’m pretty psyched to have so much information available in the first three days.

Thanks!
Steven

Great discussion here... A few additional thoughts:

Nothing is perfect. The key question I ask myself is: does R3iD/Buildbitzs help inspire students to like STEM from a big picture perspective?

My thought process is as follows:

1. For new teams, the benefit is clear. They can enjoy the fun of being in the competition sooner and contribute to their alliance partners more and learn more in the process.

2. For teams with a few years of experience, their job will be harder than last year because competition level will be raised and they will need to think more to "stand out from the crowd" and come up with a more capable/effective design. But I have no doubts that these teams will adapt and find a new way to do just that. Case in point: the games are getting harder every year, but teams manage to overcome new challenges.

3. For veterans teams, I see this is as a good thing. Competitions will be more fun with stronger participation level overall. Their job will be harder too as they will no longer be able to dominate a match easily. More strategic thinking, need to be more versatile and better scouting, driving and in game adjustments. All fun things for veteran teams to enjoy.

Competition is a powerful motivator for growth. Our team, 610, have our share of intense battles over the years... :-) The net result? Our students have learned to come up with better solutions, persevere through tough times and most importantly develop a stronger passion for STEM.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

Greetings,

RI3D's is a tool. A tool can be used by different folks in various ways. It can even not be used at all. Please, get with your team now and talk about how you want to use this tool. Many teams found this tool useful last year. Please, use,or don't use, this tool as you see fit. Leave the rest of the teams alone to use it as they wish.

FIRST isn't about kids solving issues. If that's what you want, there are several STEM programs out there that require kids do all the work.This is what FIRST is about: teams using the tools they have in different ways to inspire kids while solving a problem. Let teams use all the tools they want.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

+1000000

Ri3D shouldn't cause any problems for any teams, because it is not necessary that the students use their own design, so long as they have the opportunity to. If the students think that they should use Ri3D because they will be more successful and have a better, more inspirational season, than by all means let them. But if they think they have a better design (or good improvements to the Ri3D bots), then that is great for them. Whatever best achieves the goal of FIRST (the inspiration and recognition of science and technology). I feel the problem comes in when the students are forced to do one or the other. Using a design that the team doesn't want to is possibly one of the biggest turn offs in FRC. Also, there is a problem if teams don't go through a proper design process in order to make this decision, and instead automatically default to using someone else's idea (teams who don't have the resources to do anything competitive besides a Ri3D bot are exempt from this rule).

Also, I can't see what good Ri3D would be if it was released later in the season. In fact, I think the main reason that it is 3 days is because they want to get it out to teams as fast as possible. If somebody who wants to delay Ri3D can explain in more detail what purpose it would serve, that would be greatly appreciated.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

This reminds me of a short story I read way back when...

Whats wrong with raising the bar? With all these new COTs items coming out lately and all these RI3Ds starting up, I feel as if you'd have to live under a rock to not be able to score.

Robot in Three Days can be used however you want to use it - As an inspiration, a guide, a strategy-check, or totally ignored. Leave it to the individual teams. Like someone said earlier, seeing a team go from just barely driving around in '12 to hanging, shooting, and getting picked in elims in '13 using RI3D concepts must be an awesome feeling for the students on that team.

I don't see what it hurts.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

A new thought crossed my mind when reading this very interesting thread which is how many people can watch Lebron James, Albert Pujols, or Peyton Manning and become sports MVP's? Yes they might mimic them to better themselves, but it is very hard to become Carbon Copies of players that strong. This is not to say that FRC teams are not awesome, but many of these marathon teams and mentors have been around since the 90's. Of course they are going to know more designs and build techniques that many teams (my own included) will not know. This should only raise the level of the competition, which I hope will be a positive. I would rather see 500 Ri3D bots in FRC than 250 kbos robots that are dump bots and 250 kitbot chassis that might have a passive hang or maybe they add pool noodles to their robot.

My final thought on this was that last year during build season I was inspired by Ri3D. Not necessarily because of their robot, but because two students on our team decided to watch over twenty hours of the build. In my view they accomplished their goal right then and there because they had inspired two students with an interest in what the Ri3D team was doing.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

FIRST'S MISSION STATEMENT
"To inspire young people to be science and technology leaders." I find nothing more inspiring then watching FIRST superstars design and build a robot. It makes me think, if they can do that, then why shouldn't I be able to do that one day?

"By engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills." Although JVN, Copioli, and the Ri3D team may not be direct team mentors, they are most definitely teaching those who watch their videos science, engineering and technology skills, and making it exciting while they do it.

"That inspire innovation." After watching Ri3D last year, the first thought in my mind was, what can I do that would make this even better? What can I do to innovate this design and incorporate it into my team's design so we can be a stronger competitor?

"And that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership." 2012 was my first year where I saw freshman really step up during design discussion. Listening to someone who had never been to a FIRST competition speak passionately about designs they had thought of because of Ri3D really warmed my heart up. Never before had I seen 1st years speak with such confidence, communicate their ideas so well, and really step up; showing leadership.


FIRST's mission isn't to help promote different unique designs, its to do exactly what Ri3D did last year. I say, keep it up 72 hour build projects; you're doing just fine.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

So, there are three main issues that the OP brings up:

I find this idea insulting. Especially in FIRST, and even more so for veteran teams. Lock-in is something that happens regardless of outside research-- in brainstorming, my team likes to call it "group-think," and it's important to get rid of and avoid as much as possible. But blaming Ri3D for causing lock-in (especially before we even see the effects in 2013) is premature and probably not even correct in the first place. When you get a group together, people tend to gravitate towards certain ideas based on a variety of factors-- the charisma of the person who suggested it, the actual validity of the idea, whether they've had enough coffee to actually analyze the idea or not, etc. If a team is being stifled because of watching a video or three, there's probably a lot of group-think going on already.

Solution: Try assigning a creative or wacky student/mentor to suggest random ideas that are absolutely ridiculous and have little chance of working out-- the "duck-tape and hydraulics" solutions that are just flat out bad ideas. This stirs things up and lets other people bring out their ideas, which means you have more ideas and therefore a higher chance of getting a few good ideas. (We learned this technique from one of our sponsors, Skyline Exhibits, which was kind enough to bring in their "Research, Design, and Innovation" director to teach us their techniques. This was part of the process that lead to Windscape, which is a really freaking cool product.) OR This isn't a problem because the team is already pretty good at assimilating ideas and brainstorming (which I hope is the case if it's a veteran team).

These are two very separate issues, so I'm going to address them individually.

1: "Knowing five different types of robots is going to cover most of the general robot types"

This is not an issue. It gives everyone a tool that teams have been using for years: archetyping (at least that's what my team calls it). One of the parts of strategic analysis of a game is looking at what other people are going to do-- I seem to remember Karthik mentioning that the two main reasons that 1114 chose to climb instead of picking up discs were that they wanted the design experience and that they were confident that good third level climbers were going to be rare after game analysis. This helps teams that haven't traditionally considered what other teams are going to build as part of their strategy process add it in in a fairly easy to understand manner. I frankly don't see any negatives to this.

Solution: None needed, this is a good thing.

2: "Knowing the archetypes robs teams of the sense of accomplishment in brainstorming and deciding their own robot"

I literally rewrote this section a dozen times, but I think that knowing the archetypes and designing a robot based around the five robots we'll have in 3 days may actually be a plus for teams that have little experience with strategy in FIRST-- for some teams even coming up with reasonable solutions is a challenge, so having the option to analyze and look at real, practical solutions is a huge plus towards understanding how real engineering works. I would be happy for any new team to even have a chance to look at and analyze proven options for building a robot-- that seems like a very solid way to introduce new students to strategic thinking.

This is something that also falls into the "non-issue" category. Maybe I'm wrong, but my assumption is that two kinds of people will be watching Ri3D: those that desperately need help with their design and strategy, and those that want a peek into what competition season will look like. For the former, it is hugely beneficially to see our very own "FIRST rock-stars" working through the same problem-- they would likely not see anything like that level of expertise until at the earliest competition season. I have yet to hear a new team complain about Ri3D. For the former, Ri3D is more of an interesting background thing useful for research and developing competition strategy than it is something that will detract for the team's own ideas. While certainly it will have an effect, it's more likely to just help the team analyze what will be unique at competition and what they can do to stand out.

In conclusion, don't think any of these are issues that can solely be solved by getting rid of Ri3D or BB-- most of the issues are only so in very specific cases of new teams or teams without strong leadership, which are going to have problems anyways. And even for these teams, 3-day competitions are probably a boon, because they're likely guide them towards more reasonable solutions and therefore more time to refine those solutions.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

This effect, especially, was huge for team 4464 last season. Our robot (minus the kitbot base) was made almost entirely with donated materials and scrap we could pick up from local shops. No way could we afford to spend on parts for prototypes that had any chance of not panning out; many of the parts from our first prototype shooter ended up on the final thing, and we purchased them knowing this would be the case and would not have purchased them otherwise. This would not have been possible without Ri3D.

Would it have been nicer, in an ideal world, to have been able to prototype more systems than a Ri3D-esque linear shooter (complete with AndyMark pneumatic wheels)? Yes, of course; but the world is not ideal. I don't think anyone could look at our robot from last year (a tall full-court shooter) and claim that it was a carbon-copy of the Ri3D robot or that our creative process was stifled, but Ri3D was a massively helpful resource in making fundamental design choices early on by removing many of the unknowns that we simply could not afford to figure out ourselves.

It's also worth noting that 449 prototyped a very large number of potential systems, most of which had nothing at all to do with the Ri3D design.

I would be wary of this line of thinking. I think one of the biggest potential pitfalls of FIRST is allowing it to become a proxy competition for professional engineers. I was not "inspired" when I was a student by watching mentors design and build a robot, I was inspired (and gained a very large amount of incredibly useful experience) by doing it, along with my other team members. I would not have participated had it been otherwise, nor do I think, if it had been that way and I had participated, that it would have been nearly as beneficial.

My philosophy as a mentor (which I have cribbed largely from 449's senior mentor, to whom I am greatly indebted) is that my ideal job is to ask questions to get students thinking along the right lines, and to show them things they do not yet know. It is not to design and build the robot; I am a facilitator, not an agent, of that. Of course this is not always the practical reality; I will not shy away from getting hands-on if I think it is necessary, but I will try my hardest to never lose sight of the ideal.

I agree fully that Ri3D is a fantastic resource and, in general, the more resources available to the students the better. I also think it's very important to be mindful of the line between offering the students resources and performing the task yourself.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

I completely agree. Students and mentors alike are all victims of settling on an idea and not wanting to change it. This happened before Ri3D, and I witnessed it first hand in 2012, on a subject completely unrelated to Ri3D. Attempting to blame Ri3D for something that already exists is absurd. It's like blaming a new gas company for creating high gas prices.

A team that falls victim to lock-in needs to sit down and talk about about it. It's not Ri3D or BB's fault that your team has an internal problem.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

I am actually reading about innovation in history in Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel"

He argues that we have an "heroic theory of invention" where influences of new inventions are ignored to favor the genius of the inventor.

To quote Jared Diamond:
"The hero (inventor) customarily credited with the invention followed previous inventors who had similar aims and had already produced designs, working models, or commercial successful models. Edison's famous "invention" of the incandescent light bulb on the night of October 21,1879, improved on many other incandescent light bulbs patented by other inventors between 1841 and 1878." Diamond, Jared (1999). guns, germs and steel: pg.245

He goes on to list numerous examples:
Watt's steam engine was influenced by Newcomen's. The Wright brothers were influenced by Otto Lilienthal and many others. Eli Whitney's cotton gin was an update of a several thousand year old device.

I think there is vast historic and modern evidence to argue that having more influences produces more and better innovations. I hear this a lot but could not determine the original author, "that innovation does not occur in vacuums."

Jared Diamond furthermore explains that all our innovations for writing required iteration of previous concepts. To create a written language from scratch is partially impossible without referencing previous languages. Even then, writing is a descendent of drawing and many symbols were derived from a simple drawing.

i think creativity and innovation are feed by necessity and predecessors. An idea by itself is weak, it lacks perspective and context for its ability to fill a necessity. With two ideas, now that can be compared, now one idea can be superior, necessity can be defined more clearly or even change. Thus more ideas cannot stifle creativity, even when most are not your own. Even inferior ideas can inspire greater ones.

One can have too many ideas and must either to cope with it or whittle it down to manageable pieces. One must have a means to compare ideas (QFD, prototypes, design spec and etc). I find my challenges are more related to honing my teams collective output into a singular vision.

If students can only perceive the 3 day robots and cannot envision new ideas. i am sorry but I don't think blocking influences will help them be more creative. It will make it worse. if making your students creative is a priority, than I think they must learn how to use their influences to inspire ideas of their own, no matter the source.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

^^^ +1 (We really could use a Like button here.)

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

I think that post, is about as well thought out as you can get on this subject. I've told my students numerous times that the best way to build better robots is to watch other robots and learn about them. Just like in sports you study what has worked for other teams in in the past and what your opponents are doing to get better. You innovate by building on the ideas and knowledge of others not by starting from nothing.

Thank Ri3D Challenge and Build Blitz for being the shoulders that all FRC teams can stand on this year.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

Are you +1ing the original post, or something else?

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

The "^^^" in his post are referring to the post right above his.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

As usual, a lot of good discussion on ChiefDelphi. Thanks for joining in.

To me many of the arguments echo past debates about 100's of other developments in FIRST: The Kitbot Chassis, Gamepad Controllers, Expanding Motor Choices, Leaving the Small Parts, Inc. Catalog, Team Cooperation to build "Twin" robots, The Business Models of companies like Banebots, AndyMark, VexPro, West Coast Robotics, Cross the Road Electronics...

In every one of these debates, I come down on the side of more capable robots, in particular, the side of helping the lower resourced teams put a robot on the field that can actually play the game. If we reach some future where we have nothing but 100's of capable, cool, cookie cutter robots that, despite their coolness & capabilities, are not inspiring kids, then I may change my mind, but at this point that future seems so remote that I am not losing any sleep over it.

I can't speak for any team other than BOOM DONE. but I believe a major focus for all the 72 hour build teams is to raise the level of competition for all by helping the low resourced teams (read more about BOOM DONE.'s motivation and goals here).

Helping raise the lower end of the capability spectrum helps everyone in my view. Certainly it will help the many would be Box of Rock teams, teams that end up with a robot that kinda sorta drives and does little else. And, there are still a LOT of teams in this category. This hurts everyone. It makes the games less interesting to watch and to play. It distorts the seeding system. It is no fun for anyone, least of all the teams that feel like they let a couple dozen alliance partners down.

Providing teams a window into the design process, including prototyping concepts (both successes and failures), discussions about what is hard and what is easy, etc. is going to be a very effective way to help raise the overall capability of FIRST robots.

Let me give a specific example. I recall Paul C. talking about tetras at a competition in 2005 where he said something like, "Picking up tetras is easy. Putting them down quickly, effectively & reliably, right where you want them? THAT's hard!" I think a lot of teams would benefit from hearing that when they still have time to do something about it.

There are more reasons for doing this but for me that is perhaps the biggest one.

Joe J.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

positive rep points is a just reward:)

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

My biggest challenge this year will be to minimize external distraction. At least few team members will watch YouTube and will comeback with half baked ideas, not understanding the engineering behind the design process and insisting on doing like "they" did. To add to some parents will come prepared with video loaded on iPad and try to challenge those who are practicing engineering best practices. Anyways this is my challenge and I have to learn to deal with it.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

Thanks. All these years and I'm still finding my way.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

Roy Plunkett invented Teflon by trying to make a better refrigerator. His experiment completely failed but he took samples of the material he made a found he made a material that achieved a different necessity.

Harry Coover tried to use cyanacrylates as a moldable polymer. It completely failed because its so sticky. However, he realized it was sticky enough to hold two materials together thus inventing superglue.

One can argue in hindsight that their original ideas were bad however these inventors were operating in the unknown. Their flawed ideas yielded a great invention.

Last year, I had a picture I took in 2011 of 1114's drivetrain that my students saw. We like the drivetrain but that is not what inspired my students. They liked how 1114 mounted their wheels and my students used that method to hold our shooter wheel. We never had an argument about if we should use our west coast drive versus 1114's drive. Frankly I don't think we could argue if one was superior. Time was precious, thus we picked west coast drive based on our collaboration with 766.

A lot of these examples require an idea to be prototype, to be experimented with. That consumes resources so not every idea can move forward. I disagree that a team should limit "distractions." The challenge is to condense a reservoir of ideas into working prototypes and functioning mechanisms. The process can get gruesome as ideas are dropped. Last year, we had two climber concepts but barely enough time to do one, so the other was cut. We tried two shooters; linear and curved, but our linear shooter lagged behind the curve shooter. We had to drop it to focus on a design that was working.

About 3/4 of our teams mentors are parents. A lot of parents want to help and have ideas, a key transition is to get parents to join as full-fledged mentors. Some will suggest ideas that don't appear to help but its a clue that they want to help. Also, I really try to cut the egos from ideas, some people get very attached to their ideas and that makes it difficult to have productive discussions. I wish I had resources to say "go build it, show us how great your idea is." That is just not practical. We do say, if your idea is to be pursued in prototyping, you are expected you to be part of the prototyping process. We want people to take ownership of their work.

The best thing I can suggest is to research and develop a formal design process. This will help manage the flow of ideas. My team uses one based on Ideo's method. I got it from a documentary I saw about them. We have a timeline that we try to adhere to, this year will be the strictest schedule yet, we can't afford to endlessly talk ideas. We also have a design spec, and ideas must address the design objectives. Some ideas will cause us to redefine our design spec but this should help you make people say more than, "they did it so it must be good." They will have to articulate their ideas.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

This is not my thinking. This is what FIRST says it's stated goals are: to inspire the next generation. How a team does this mission is entirely up to the individual team. If a team chooses to inspire by having professionals design and build the robot, that's entirely their choice. This is very similar to RI3D's. If a team uses it to inspire their students, more power to them. If a team chooses another path, that's just as valid. The only thing you should take away from this conversation about my "line of thinking" is that the all teams should have access to as many tools as they would like. What they do with them is entirely their choice.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

I was simply opining that I do not think it is nearly as inspiring or educational to watch a mentor build a robot as it is to do it yourself. I can state with absolute certainty that had I not had access to the hands-on problem-solving experience that my FRC team provided, I'd be much worse off. I understand that this may not have been the point of your post, but your claim that "FIRST is not about kids solving problems" is something I felt compelled to comment on, because I think that students solving problems is a very important part of what FIRST is about. It certainly was the most valuable thing I got out of the program.

As an illustrative anecdote: About a year and a half ago I began an internship at the university of Maryland, working in robotics. The professor informed me that I would not be added to the payroll until I was contributing deliverables to the research; that they do not pay students to learn. A week later I was on the payroll, almost entirely because of the hands-on engineering work experience and problem-solving skills I had gained through FIRST.

You mention that Ri3D's choice is to have engineers build the robots, in the context of teams choosing how best to inspire their students - in light of this, I think it is also worth noting that Ri3D is not a FIRST team. They are a group of independent engineers who feel that this is a good use of their time (for which I am very grateful, as I've already mentioned).

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

You misread my post. I was simply saying that Ri3D is a tool that a team can choose to use or not use.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

I read that part, and agreed with it totally; I even qualified my last response with a mention that I realize what I'm responding to was not the main thrust of what you were posting. It was an aside, albeit a lengthy one, on a subject you touched on that I feel very strongly about.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

When I heard there would be many more “televised robots” (i.e. Ri3D, Team Blitz) built this year I had the same initial concern as the OP – that FRC is for the kids and if we follow a trend of having “Professional FRC builders” that FRC may become a competition where everything is copied from the Pros. After a bit of thought I changed my mind. Most of the good points have been added already, but I wanted to share what changed my mind.

Finally, some competition!

One argument I have not yet seen is for the C in FRC - Competition. I would like to see 50 functional bots at the regional and have the ranking determined by teams could drive and score well and who had a good strategy. It would not be fun to watch the Denver Broncos play a local high school football team. Similarly it is not fun to watch a match where 3-4 robots can’t offer much activity. It is a lot of fun to see a close match where 2 points made at the buzzer determines the result.

Design Iteration

In the “real world” of engineering, design iteration is a must. Design, analyze, build, test, repeat. With a “go to” design shown online, less experienced teams could spend some time on driving and testing (which from my experience on such teams does not happen at all). While there is not time for major design iterations in 6 weeks it is a great practice to show a full design cycle including testing and proposing changes (even if they cannot be implemented before the regional).

Is Ri3D really different than years past?

I would argue that the concepts shown by RI3D last year would have come to light anyway and been utilized by most teams. I recall seeing numerous YouTube videos of collegiate Frisbee competitions with shooter designs and whitepapers, including the popular linear and curved shooter designs on CD. Ri3D was just a well documented summary of ideas mixed with years of “what works well in an FRC specific environment”. Think of it this way: without Ri3D do you really believe there would have been a big difference in the design concepts teams chose?

I share the concern that student learning and growth can be hampered by improper balance of “outside help”, be it from mentors, Ri3D, CD, etc. I would not want to see a team that bought and assembled a group of parts that were designed by a contracted professional engineering firm with no student or mentor involvement. I believe this is “doomsday scenario” the OP envisioned happening down the road. So long as the “outside help” limit themselves to 72 hours I don’t see that trend developing because there is a lot of fine tuning of the game specific mechanism that takes place and can’t be done in 72 hours. The nice thing I have noticed in FRC games is that there is always something more to learn to dig into (the hard part is restraining yourself IMO)

My biggest critique of Ri3D is that they should have gone back and explained in depth why they made certain choices (after they sleep) whether it be “this tweak has worked well for FRC because”, “you might want to experiment with disc compression vs. distance” or “a six wheeled drivetrain is better for FRC because …”. This allows everyone to learn their process and important FRC specific design concepts (more on this later).

“Doing FIRST right”

It has been noted numerous times that every participant and team in FRC is different and there is no single solution to “doing FIRST right”. From differences in resources, knowledge, experience and “how much help should mentors give”, teams have a variety of successful approaches toward achieving the FIRST mission. I have participated in or mentored a few collegiate engineering clubs and have mentored a few new engineering grads at work. On the issue of “how much do we show by example” I think it is important to note that: (remember this is my opinion on the subject)

• “Copying” or re-use of established design concepts is and old concept (For example: The concept of a differential dates back hundreds of years ). We don’t start with oval wheels every year to see if they might work better for a reason. We accept the fact that circular wheels are the way to go.
• I haven’t seen any major design concept in an FRC robot that did not come from somewhere else. It is very unlikely that you will see an identical copy of an FRC mechanism on a commercial product, since most are tailored to FRC. However, you will see the concepts (gearing, linear motion, etc) and implementations (2 stage gear reductions using spur gears, power transmission using belts, etc).
• All the mass produced COTS parts we buy come from established industries and are used for FRC the same as they are in industry (there are probably a few exceptions, let’s not be nitpicky).
• In industry we do not expect recent college grads to design spaceships from scratch on day one. We assign senior engineers to teach new hires and they show them “how to do X and why we do it that way”. Why should FRC be different? My real life example to any college seniors – How do you mount a fiber optic gyroscope such that it can withstand extreme thermal and pyrotechnic shock events without moving over a 20 year lifespan? I have never found that answer in a book. The answer is proprietary and cost thousands in the design/analysis/test/iterate cycle
• Learning by example works (it is the motto of my alma mater – Cal Poly SLO). That is why we have so many labs in science and engineering classes – to see what we read in textbooks in action. A well explained “super design” that is simply replicated by students can teach them a ton. I believe the students learn even more if they legitimately try to come up with their own solution and are then presented with a very elegant solution and the elegant pieces are explained to them in detail. Then they can really appreciate the creativity that went into the design.
• Students of all ages have a tolerance for failure. There is a point where everyone says “I am sick of failing at this and going to do something else”.

New to FRC

When I started FRC my professional background was in ultra high precision navigation systems like this . That season of FRC was a disaster because I had no idea what to expect or what worked well in FRC. I joined only a few weeks before the season and though resources like CD were plentiful I did not find them until near the end of the build season. We rebuilt the robot at the competition, barely passed inspection and were able to drive in a straight line and occasionally turn – that’s it. It was quite a disappointment and a number of kids did not return. Having a demonstrated working bot doing the current year’s game would have helped enormously to set expectations for the overall design.

Great topic and great feedback from all!

-matto-

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

billylo, Well stated!!!
I had intended to start this exact thread the day after kickoff and was adamantly opposed to Ri3D. However, after having read this entire thread I'm only mildly opposed to it. Some reasons:
You cannot "unsee" something--especially a design that piques your interest and especially one that you know that you can replicate. Yes, not all of the designs can be replicated by all teams, but one of the purposes of the Ri3D teams is to show you what you can do with their products and they tell you pretty much how to do it. This does stifle the creative process and anyone who says it doesn't, I think is kidding themselves. There is a plethora of threads on CD attesting to gains made by students going from the design process through final construction. A major part of that is prototyping, and the consequent iterations which evolve the final product. Short-cutting that by showing a great solution (or five) deprives teams of that learning opportunity. Yes, "they don't have to look if they don't want to see it". There will invariably be at least one or two team members who might look even with the admonition not to. Once they see it, do they remain silent as ideas are being proffered during strategy sessions? Remember, we're not talking about "borrowing" an idea from 1114, 359, 16, 2056 et.al. on drive systems or shooters or lifting mechanisms from previous years--we're talking about complete robot solutions to THIS year's problem. And finally, to those who say that you can't prototype your potential designs in 6 weeks--hogwash! Hundreds of Youtubes prove otherwise.

Having said all that, I do think we should have Ri3D! Here's why, it does enable rookies who would/could not field a working robot (more than a chassis) to be competitive and have a great first year experience. I remember being on a bus coming from Dean Kamen's home during the pre-kickoff party in 2000. A woman from the Midwest was sitting with me and said that she was the only mentor on their rookie team and she was a home economics teacher. I wished then that there was something available for rookie teams like them which would help level the playing field--now there is.
I agree with billylo in that competition will increase almost exponentially now. Most teams should be able to field at least a semi-competitive robot and separating the elite from the good and the good from the rookies will just be harder--as it should be. You will now HAVE to build a better mouse trap if you want to be a winner.

I think the compromise would be to hold off on unveiling the Ri3D for one week. That gives teams a legitimate amount of time to discuss strategies/designs without being influenced by obviously elite level teams. It still affords rookies (and anyone else) plenty of time to proceed with whatever level of assistance they wish to gain from viewing the builds.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

I'm adding my opinion to the discussion even though I haven't read all of the thread yet. Apologies if I am repeating someone else's comment but this is the only free time I have.

I'm conflicted about the Ri3D videos. However its really just part of the overall conflict in FIRST especially as a smaller team. As a science teacher with an engineering background I want my students to do their background research and start with some idea of the state of the art. Unique and innovative designs are great but with scarce resources in both money and time we don't want to reinvent the wheel or go down too many dead ends. This research should include seeing how others have solved similar problems up to and including other solutions to the current problem.

There is a risk of just copying but its the same risk as just letting a mentor design the robot.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

One thing that I feel is important is expanding the Ri3D idea. One robot in 3 days leads some students to see a solution and copy it. 4, 5, or 8 robots shows that there are different possible solutions and leads to discussions about pros and cons of each design.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

I fully agree. Watching a team of seasoned professionals with unlimited resources sets completely unrealistic expectations for the average 15 year old student at an unfunded public high school club. Let them compete at their own level and enjoy the experience.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

Most of the 3 day robots are made with cots parts and limited resources. A lot of these robots appear to well under the costs limits of a robot. A couple used the kit chassis. All of them used a chassis that would be analogues to the kit chassis. A few appear to be a couple hundred bucks more expensive but could easily scaled back to be cheaper.

if 15 year old me had finished a semester of wood shop, i think me and my high school friends could have built most of these robots, maybe cut a few corners but it would not be unrealistic. Probably would botch the boom done programming but if you raised the age to 18; Yeah I bet we could have done it. They would not look as nice, all the socket cap screw heads would have been stripped in the process, and probably we would have taken out a ceiling light in the room. Totally realistic.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

I can see the good and the bad in these projects. The real issue is not that they are there, but how each team uses the information in them. If they are used a short cut that is bad. If they are used to help rookie teams and actually gives even one rookie team (or veteran team for that matter) and idea or helps them through an issue that is great. However if the intent is to help rookie teams and teams with limited resources, they would be more helpful to those teams if they were build with a KIT Chassis.
Bottom line if they help inspire they are a success. But if even one team shows up to a competition with a copy of one of these, then they are a failure.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

So it'd be better if teams showed up with just a drivetrain and barely functioning end effectors than build a functioning robot(which, again, they physically built themselves) that they programmed themselves?

The point of these 72 hour builds is to raise the floor of competition, which is exactly what they are doing.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

This is exactly how I feel now. My friend and I came up with a conveyor-belt loader and slingshot design that worked in our mockups, but our robot this year is going to be a knockoff of the Boom Done and Andymark designs. I'd much rather have a student design that works poorly than a carbon copy that performs magnificently.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

We've been having some discussions on the whole Ri3D and BuildBlitz teams in another thread (link). There's a general consensus there that Ri3D and BB increase the overall level of play for FRC, but the question of how Ri3D and BB should change for next year remains.

Personally, I agree that I would rather have my team build a fully original design than copy another, but I don't want Ri3D and BB to go away. Rather, I'd like to see them wait until after the season to release CAD models and in-depth videos. They're incredible machines that I'd love to learn from, but perhaps after the season is over so the creativity of the robot design (though possibly similar) can be "owned" by the teams themselves.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

Then it seems like you have prioritized original design over competitive success, and that's fine. However, that means the BuildBlitz/Ri3d projects aren't for you. You don't have to watch them, but it seems like the rest of your team picked simple, elegant, and competitive.

I think these projects are great, as has been said a million times before - to help bring up the level of play for teams. Having been a student captain on a rookie team when there weren't projects like this, I can tell you right now we'd have been much more competitive, much earlier in our time as a team if we'd had things to base off of. Instead, it took us 3 years of being that laughable, non-performing, bottom-ranked robot to finally get close-up enough with other teams to get a better idea of how the good teams design & build. It wasn't inspirational at all. In fact, 1923 almost didn't get to continue beyond year 2 because of how poorly we were doing.

I'd much rather see Build Blitz/Ri3d copies than a field full of rookie boxbots that can't accomplish anything. The strong teams will still stand out, and the less-than-strong teams will get the leg up that they need.

If you disagree, then it's your choice not to watch the streams, and it's your choice to build something different. However, you don't need to campaign to take away an opportunity from other parts of the community that might want to use it.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

We have been paying close attention to the robot in three days project and our bot is quite similar to one of them. We have been feeling guilty about this.

BUT
recently we have started to re-engineer a number of systems to make them simpler, more efficient, and easier to build with the parts we have on hand. (Not willing to rely on order from AM or VexPro at this point in season.)

So in the end quite a bit of good engineering is being done, and that's the point. So we're feeling a lot better about the 3-day thing.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

It wasn't exactly a rant towards the Ri3D program as it was towards my team's rationale.

Not exactly, what they picked was "safe". I would understand copying an Ri3D robot if you're a first year rookie team, but our team has had two robotics competitions under its belt. If we are going to advance beyond our current position, we need to innovate beyond rescaling Ri3D designs to fit on our chassis. We've had plenty of innovative designs suggested within the team. The problem is that my team fears taking risks, so we take the "safe" route.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

In the most respectful way possible, I completely disagree.

Watching experienced FIRSTers and skilled mentors show ways to initially tackle a task and then blaming them for stealing creativity is kind of like saying: "I'm never going to be an inventor because so many things have already been invented".

Just look at some of the greatest inventions of mankind, basic concepts and ideas were taken, then added upon, revolutionizing the world.

Watching JVN's design shoot the ball from 15ft completely opened the idea to our team that shooting the ball from 20ft was not outside the realm of possibility, thus inspiring us to be more CREATIVE.

Thank you Ri3D and BuildBlitz!

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

For what it's worth, there's not a single thing wrong about copying a concept from any, or all of the RI3D Teams and/or BuildBlitz Teams. Heck, if someone wanted to, they could build a replica of any of those machines to a reasonable degree of accuracy, and I still don't see all that much of an issue with that.

The problem isn't copying someone's design, or 'finding' design inspiration from their results. The problem is copying those machines without learning from them, or trying to make something better, or more efficient or even just making it look cooler. There's a massive amount to be learned from reverse engineering someone's design, even if the completed CAD model is published - all the person copying the design has to do is ask 'why?'. Why did they use this? Why did they do that? Along the way, I'd wager that the person copying would learn a heck of a lot more than one would think.

When I first started in FRC, my team (816 at the time) was routinely in the bottom 25% of performers at almost every on-season event we went to. Initially, we seemed to have this unjustified ego about our design, or our method, believing that because it was something original, and not built by engineers, that our mediocre performance was some how validated. In those first few seasons, I learned a lot, but not a lot about how to do things the 'right way', more of how not to do things, or how not to handle myself.

Once I became an upperclassman and had both the respect and support required to 'try something different' I drew inspiration from machines that I'd seen that were successful in one way or another. I'd look through old robots, study old designs, and try to find something that I could 'borrow' for my own needs. In doing so, I limited the failure points of the design down to our execution, but not the overall concept. In 2008, and 2009, our machines were heavily inspired by those that we had seen in 2006 and 2007 and also machines found on the internet from 2002 and earlier. Both of those machines (2008 and 2009) were arguably the two most effective machines that the team had ever built until that time, and we always were quick to admit that 'all we did was take a bunch of things that worked for other people and re-purposed them'.

When I became a mentor on 816, I continued to teach students that there was nothing wrong in drawing inspiration from someone else's results, as long as you do something to make it better, or your own - and you learn from the experience in the process. The last two robots 816 built while I was still a mentor are perfect examples of this - the 2011 robot was heavily inspired by 1902 2007 and 148 in the same year and the 2012 machine was for all intents and purposes a 'copy' of 254 / 968 in 2006. By drawing inspiration from proven machines, it made it so much easier to focus on the problem at hand - successfully executing whatever we chose to do in the 6 week period of build season, and to inspire and learn during the process. I can only imagine what would have happened had we chosen to go it alone and do something 'different' as we had done in my first two years....

Anyway, back to the topic of RI3D and BuildBlitz - in the last two years, these have been an absolutely Amazing resource to reference as a baseline, especially considering how unique 2013's challenge was (historically) and how critical robot to robot interaction is going to be this year. Yes, these robots do cut down on some of the 'different' designs we see each year, but I would imagine that many of those 'different' designs are replaced by machines that are going to be much more likely to complete the game objective, and more than likely, inspirational.

I look at my old team, who essentially built an RI3D 'clone' in 2013 after some major leadership changes happened between the 12 and 13 seasons, and I honestly believe that it was the best decision they could have made. Their robot wasn't amazing, or super competitive, but it could score, it could drive well, and they obviously had faith in it. After seeing them make it to the finals, once on-season and once off-season, I can assure you that each student on that team was inspired in one way or another by that robot - even if it was just a copy of another.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

I'm not on your team, so I don't know that much about the exact situation, but have you ever tried looking at it from their point of view. You say that your team "fears taking risks," but maybe they see it as "building within our resources," or "keeping it simple," or "maximizing driving and tweaking time." Like I said, I'm don't know your team, so maybe you really do have the capacity to build some crazy awesome robot. But maybe your team thinks that they don't, and that's why they want to stick with something they know will work. I definitely believe that there are many veteran teams who don't have the capabilities to build more than a Ri3D/BB bot.

Re: My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...
 

My team's been around for 9 years with 18 events behind us- and we're still taking bits of pieces of things we like from Build Blitz & Ri3D concepts.

I think it's made our season go a lot smoother so far - we are NOT copying, but we've seen what's possible and are improving on it from there, where we might not have been able to do that in previous seasons & would have spent six weeks just getting to a point of 'eh, it's okay'.

Your mileage may vary, but I think teams are gaining a lot of help from this more than they're being stifled. The point isn't to have something to copy and create, and finish your build season early- it's to have a new jumping-off point that isn't 'oh god, how does this game even work?!' so you can spend the rest of your build season improving.