Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

I am wondering if people feel that the three day build videos are affecting the variety of designs we are seeing this year and if yes, do they feel this is a benefit or a disadvantage to the overall health of the program?

What say you?

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

If not for the RI3D teams, my team (we are rookies) would have had no idea what to do for this year's game. I mean, our best idea was modeling one of the bots shown in the game animation.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

They definitely are, but I think the nature of this year's game leads to fewer dramatic departures in the mechanism desing than many previous games. I think the same convergance of design likely would have happened anyway.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

I think they definitely had an effect on lots of teams robots. When you look at teams that are using El Toro they refer to it exactly as that. In my opinion I don't like tbis very much. Student should be the ones that are working on the design and not rely on the three day builds to do it for them. I was the only one on my team to watch the robot in 3 day builds and we were able to come up with a different solution to the game. Then again there is only so many ways to build a robot for this game. How you do it though, like a catapult for example, should be based off of student design.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

I agree with this. I think the over the bumper pickup would have been a pretty common design even without the 3 day build bots, and I wasn't surprised to see some of the 3 day bots go that route. The choo choo is really the only thing I'm seeing more of than I would have expected to see without the 3 day builds.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

I know at least one team that certainly came up with an El Toro design before Ri3D posted it, and they still call it that simply because it ensures everyone will know what they're talking about. It seems to be happening a lot: in addition to offering rookie guidance and prototyping insight, the 72hours-ers have offered up a communal vocabulary. At least for that, I thank them.* "It's like a [JVN catapult]" saves a whole lot of hand waving.


*Personally, I thank them for other things as well, but that debate will continue to attack dead horses.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

One of the hardest things for mid-tier teams to do at a regional or championship, is to distinguish themselves from the pack for alliance consideration. By following a Ri3Ds robot, the team is forced to blend in with all of the other similar robots. They disadvantage themselves.

But Ri3Ds doesn't necessarily detract from the ability to engineer. Take a look at 148 this year. While in concept it is similar to "BoomDone"'s robot, the process of reengineering and iterating the design is a System Engineer's dream come true. There is no doubt that they can (and will) distinguish themselves.

Why reinvent the wheel when you can build a better one?

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

I agree that you would have seen a lot of convergence due to the game challenge, but there are definitely a few design features that are more common than they would have been without Ri3D/Build Blitz.

1. El Toro style intakes

2. Motor driven arm-apults

3. Optimizing for the "Aren Hill Sweet Spot"

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Read my signature.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Little known fact, I invented parabolas. :rolleyes:

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Read this quote several times before making another argument against the 72 hour builds.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

This. "Roller intake over the bumpers into catapult" is a design that would be commonplace anyway. The only possible effect I see (aside from El Toro) is that Simbot SS forks/clones would have probably been somewhat more commonplace.

Anyway, this thread works as a good followup to this thread

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

And choo choo linkages! :)

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

To 7th graders everywhere: #blamearen

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

From Indianna University:
"Copycats pave the way to problem-solving success"

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

I can't speak for other teams' seasons, but even though our robot looks very similar to a build blitz robot, we actually did all of our proof-of-concept and prototyping independently. We did look at the Ri3D and build blitz for proof of concept, but we put all of our ideas to the test and wound up going with the ones we found were most effective and efficient to build. We did turn to build blitz for inspiration on our launching mechanism, but that may be the only thing we outright designed based off of the 3 day projects.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

From what I saw at week-0 events this past weekend, there is still plenty of variety in robot design!

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

A lot of teams seem to have the horizontal intake system, like RI3D 1.0

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

I think they are too. Our team started with a vacuum pickup mechanism. We got soo far that it was installed on the practice robot before we realized it didn’t work in any way shape of form. We quickly decided to switch to el toros after seeing how well they worked even in comparison to the jvn top roller concept.

As for rookie teams it is huge. At the 2013 champs we were paired with several Ri3D bots which allowed us to quickly develop a game plan knowing there exact capabilities.
This year with 5 Ri3D bots i see 2 roads:
The rookie : improve slightly but mostly copy these championship worthy robots.
The veteran : use Ri3d as a prototyping done for you. This was our approach as the pickup we had on just did not work and we were way too late in realizing this to prototype a new intake.

Ri3D also helps with concept development. To quickly see that a pneumatic puncher does not work allowed us to totally throw out that concept on day 1. The same is true with spatula pickup and slingshots.

Scouting: our pit scouting sheet will simply have a list of the mechanisms on each Ri3d robot (and a blank to write down mechanisms not used on a Ri3d) making scouting much simpler.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Variety is dead, long live variety!

But seriously, there were more moving, functional robots at our week zero than I remember in any previous year. I partially credit Ri3D/BB for that.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Affecting? Sure. Negatively so? I'm not sure.

I admit the first thing I do when games are announced is think back to what teams have done in the past to manipulate similar objects. I know the other mentors do the same thing. But let's be honest, a lot of teams don't have that kind of experience. The quick builds allow teams to gain access to SOME level of historical knowledge in the form of all the experienced mentors building robots.

I think it's a "good" thing from an inspirational view point. Teams have something to guide them.

However, I don't think it's a good thing from an audience standpoint. When 80% of the robots look similar it takes away from the spectacle and people start to think we had to build to that spec. Idk, I'm still a little torn on this one tbh.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Several thoughts.
1. 3 day robots inspire both new and veteran teams to get ideas. At the very least, a starting point in which to create their own robot and features.
2. Its a good thing. How many teams actually spend an adequate amount of time during the last week to test, make revisions, practice, program, and make the bot pretty? There's a good amount of teams that still cram during the last week to finish. If anything, the 3 day robots help lessen the no. of teams stuck in that position.
3. I think the most important reason for doing this is more than just providing ideas to teams. It highlights companies, the leaders in FIRST, and great designers of past to showcase their skills and create a relationship with their audience.
People always talk about mentoring and doing outreach. What better way to do this than the 3 day robot idea?

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

The videos definitely helped many teams come up with ideas.

We here at Martin Van Buren high school have two teams, one is the girls (4789) and the others is the boys(3053). Our girls team is on there second year and still a bit of a rookie team although we aid them with help and support.

The girls team will be using a mere image of three day robot but it's not to be ashamed of.

I do agree that most teams would have came up with the same pick-up mechanism.

But the three day robot helped the boys team too. We decided to try and come up with a completely different idea and we are doing great too.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

I think that the Ri3D projects are a good thing. There is the obvious reason that it helps inspire/provide a starting point for younger or rookie teams.

There is the less-obvious reason that it gives me an idea of what sort of robots we might be playing with and against during the season. That sparks different design avenues for cooperative and defensive features or objectives that I probably wouldn't have come up with had I been working on an island.

It also lets me know what designs are likely to become common and thus I can figure out which concepts my team comes up with are likely to be innovative and/or different enough to catch people's attention.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

One day, I hope that my team will be a RI3D team.










-Zombies are jealous of our smartness. That is why they eat our brains.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Anyone can look at the teams who have posted pictures of their robot this year and say that the Ri3D ventures have absolutely influenced many robots this year. I have also seen several people say that because of this, Ri3D should be discouraged.

By looking at these robots, you can tell many designs were inspired by 1114 of 2008. Should 1114 be admonished for this as well? The only difference between deriving inspiration from 1114 and Ri3D is time. Does that make it any different?

There is nothing wrong with this, in my opinion. Teams aren't forced to follow a mould. If a team determines that another robot design is the best choice, they can do it. If they don't, they can come up with something else.

No need to reinvent the wheel.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

The way I see it, all the designs you see from Ri3d and other teams, you will have to beat. Now if you do that by optimizing their designs or by coming up with something else is completely up to your team.

As others have said, before Ri3d, designs were just influence by previous designs with similar games. All Ri3d does is make it easier for rookie teams who were not around for those similar games.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

I along with many of the students on our team have been shocked by the commonality of the machines this year but also thrilled that ours is seemingly very different. By the end of the first weekend we had our concepts prototyped, partially integrated and working in the carcass of last year's practice bot which left us mostly immune from the effects of Ri3D. The result is a machine which looks quite different from everything else I've seen posted on CD thus far.

It is my strong belief that teams are taking "the easy way out" and mimicking Ri3D which I feel does not foster creativity or innovation as well as being left on one's own to brainstorm and design. Even some very strong teams have shown up with extremely complicated mechanisms and processes to pickup and shoot the ball which just seem incongruent with their usual solutions.

On the other hand though, I have always maintained that a good idea today is better than a great idea tomorrow because with a little time to tweak and tune, the good design can often be made to be great. In this sense I can see the merit in taking someone's design and improving upon it however, this year I think there were much better ways to pull off the game tasks which simply have not been explored by most teams.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

So far I have seen a lot of teams use concepts from the 3 day builds either to to justify their own designs or as inspiration for better ones. I have seen very few straight up copies. Seems like every el toro mechanism is superior than the original.

Plus there are a ton of "1114 '08" style bots but so far every version I have seen is radically different. The only similarity is a roller claw at the end of a puncher. Seems like every bot has a different take on geometry and degrees of freedom. The mechanisms for the puncher have changed a lot for the longer shot distances. I feel this is analogues to cars. A lot of cars of piston internal combustion engines in the front but there is a huge variety.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

While I believe that the Ri3D teams definitely affected the designs this season, I don't think it made a huge impact- I think many teams would logically arrive on these designs themselves after a few days of sketches and prototypes. What Ri3D did was prove that these designs can work, and that they can be competitive- from there teams are free to expand and improve the basic systems to infinity and beyond.

Also, I think Ri3D has a very positive impact on the level of gameplay for the younger, less experienced teams or teams with less resources. Where they may struggle to get a functional design together otherwise, now they have some ideas that they can play with that they know will work and allow them to be at least somewhat competitive, which is a boost for everyone else in FIRST when they get one of these teams as an alliance partner.

All that being said, I do feel like this year lacks much of the design creativity that I've seen in the past. I remember years when I would walk around the pits and have to stare at a robot for a few minutes before I figured it out, and times when I see a bot and think "wow, I never would have thought to do it like that." It just seems to take some of the fun and discovery out of it.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

I don't know. We mostly ignored the 3 day builds.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

I love the notion that every team that otherwise struggles has a leg-up on creating something that can contribute positively to the game. Having had years where we could do nothing but play defense, I can state without equivocation that it is more inspiring to have a robot that can truly play the game--for kids, mentors, sponsors, guests, everyone.

But we're also going to see a lot of Ri3D-clone robots *fail* during competition, because they were flawed in implementation/modification. Cloning Ri3D robots is easy for engineers--it's a non-trivial exercise for your average group of high school students and non-engineer mentors.

Furthermore, the Ri3D robots are limited. The motor-driven catapults have a comparatively short range, the choo-choo allows for only a single shot, and el toro intakes don't spit the ball out well. Unless modified in less-than-obvious-to-those-non-engineer ways, these mechanisms will not make a robot stand out when playing Aerial Assist.

I'm looking forward to a higher floor and the usual incredibly high ceiling this year.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

By the time anyone from our team watched the videos we were already deep into our design, so it didn't affect us that much. That being said, we eneded up having some of the same aspects of design.

Personally I like the entertainment since I know how hard it is, but I'd rather have our students come up with a design by themselves. To me it deepens the expirience.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Maybe someday we’ll learn how to stop sippin on dat Haterate and ask where the ideas shown in Ri3D reveal videos came from. It may be like the old TV show Connections, where James Burke demonstrated how various discoveries, scientific achievements, and historical world events were built from one another successively in an interconnected way to bring about particular aspects of modern technology.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

So far, I've actually been a little surprised at the amount of robot variety I've seen so far. Maybe it will be different once I'm at an event, but I think more teams were willing to break away from Ri3D-style mechanisms than last year. Granted, last year's challenge was limiting in terms of what mechanisms would be effective, but we didn't see the strategic or design variety I was hoping for. This year has been better, in my estimation.

However, I still stand by my belief that Ri3D/Build Blitz could better serve the FRC community if they delay their builds and/or releases until at least mid-way through week one of the build season. It would allow for more open-ended brainstorming, prototyping, and strategy discussion, without the heavily credentialed influence of these projects. Strategically, the designs arrived at by most of the builds were very similar. There was a ton of influence put on shooting into the high goal and ground loading, without much placed on catching, easily catchable truss shots, passing, human loading, the one point goal, defense, or goaltending. Only O-Ryon really differed in this respect, and they're one of the least emulated teams. Unsurprisingly, a vast majority of robots seem to have these same focuses. And many of the varied designs I've seen come from the teams who arrived at different strategy conclusions and then stuck to their guns. I don't think a three of four day delay before the start of these projects would significantly comprimise the postive impacts they have, but it could help mitigate what I view as negative ones.

I do give credit to the teams for better documentation of their strategy, game analysis, and design process than the first year. Especially to the Build Blitz teams with their blog updates. Regardless of what happens with these projects, I'd love to see more in the way of this. Plenty of teams are working during these projects and can't follow live, so the more of these processes that can be archived and presented to teams, the better. Hopefully these teams can show more than just the results, but the rationale, iteration, and debate that helped them arrive at their conclusions (both strategically and mechanically).

You might want to tell that to 2530.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

That might be because several of the people involved in 72-hour builds this year are people I've long considered to be some of the best FRC strategizers. Karthik may not be that inclined when it comes to operating the machinery, but when it comes to picking apart an FRC game to develop the optimal strategy, I can think of only a few people with a similar talent level.

My assumption is simple: They all arrived at similar strategies, because the strategies they arrived at are all reasonably close to the optimum strategy (caveat: at least for a team with limited design/build/test time).

To play Aerial Assist effectively, a team must have a simple, reliable, robust, effective drivetrain. If you can't move, you can't generate ASSISTs.

Next thing you need is to be able to acquire and pass a ball with low-kinetic energy efficiently. With this automatically comes the ability to score low goals, but the primary reason this is the next priority is the ability to minimize the time it takes for you to generate an ASSIST.

Once they can do that, the next logical place to go to earn points is to shoot HIGH GOALs, which automatically comes with the ability to shoot over the TRUSS.

After that, you can worry about CATCHing, and detuning a HIGH GOAL shot to make it easier to CATCH when thrown over the TRUSS instead of into the GOAL.

It should come as no surprise that each of the 72 hour teams prioritized the things an Aerial Assist robot can do in more or less that order.

Back to the original topic? I think 72 hour builds are affecting the landscape, but I think the effect is mostly positive, and it doesn't really stifle design variety THAT much. The best teams will look at the 72 hour builds as a quick benchmark for the kind of robot they need to be able to beat, and weak teams get a working design they can emulate until they gain enough resources to be able to beat it by making their own design from scratch.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

I personally viewed all robot in 3 day groups as what the "worst" robots will be! They all released alot of info about there mechanisms, so it would be easy to copy them for most rookies and teams. It was OUR job to be better than the 5 robot in 3 days. We have 1 or 2 similiar mechanisms. We knew many pickups would be the same so we built ALOT of horizontal pickups in order to perfect it. Our baseline that we knew we had to better than was the 5 robot in 3 days

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

@Racer26

Several of the assumptions you make in your post, which parallel some of the decisions made by the Ri3D/BB teams, are not entirely true. While there are a certain degree of truth to them, to see what these builds did and use them as supporting logic for those assumptions is risky.

For instance, "acquire and pass" are not the same thing, nor does either equate directly to being able to score in the one point goal. There are plenty of robots with ground acquisition systems that stow the ball in such a way it is not trivial to pass using the same mechanism. Most of the Ri3D/Build Blitz teams are examples of this, as their eventual storage/launching mechanisms do not permit a clean release of the ball back to the intake mechanism. One can make similar arguments about several of your other points.

More so, you're viewing the conversation backwards. You're using the finished design as evidence of the "optimal strategy," when in reality strategy should drive design. To again use Karthik as an example, look at the priority list that the Build Blitz team he participated in came up with. Team Copioli's final product doesn't really reflect that list particularly well, as its lowest prority (high goal) is more emphasized than a few of the higher priority items (catching and receiving from the human player). Beyond that, as Karthik has repeatedly pointed out during his presentations, being able to accomplish a task is not as valuable as being able to accomplish a task well. A lot of these 3 day bots ended up being closer to machines that are "5/10" at several different functions, rather than "10/10" at only a few.

I understand the value in showing methods to complete several different game functions, rather than focusing on one or two, during a quick build project. I don't even necessarily disagree with it. But don't attempt to use that to justify their strategy decisions for a team with limited resources.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

I could agree that an acquiring mechanism does not necessarily allow for passing or low goal-ing, but show me a robot that can pass, but not score in the low goal, and I'll eat my hat.

I stand by my view that acquiring and passing a BALL ought to be priority number two, behind drive, for the reasons stated (also, you can't score a ball if you can't acquire it first). Its certainly possible to build an intake that DOES allow for easy passing. I know 4343's intake does that, along with dozens of others I've now seen pictures/video of. (and referencing Karthik's Effective FIRST Strategies seminars? Multi-purpose mechanisms that are simple and effective are a Good Thing.)

I can certainly see how TeamJVN's ball positioning doesn't allow for easy passing by reversing the intake. I'm pretty sure TeamCopioli's would do low goal/pass via reversing the intake action though, despite them not showing it in the video. BoomDone's El Toro's folded in touch the ball, and should be able to push a ball back out lightly. O-RYON can reverse its wheels. Ri3D 1.0 should be able to push a ball back out of its intake.

Any robot that can pass a ball out over its bumper, ought to be able to score in the low goal. I don't know that TeamCopioli could do this, but they can probably drive up to a low goal, spew it out onto the floor between them and the goal, and shove it in. A box bot can shove a ball into the low goal just due to the bumper geometry. I'll concede that any robot might not be able to do it well, but I would guess that TeamCopioli could do a decent job of it.

I think what really happened, though, is that they discovered when they started building and prototyping, just how easy scoring high is. TeamCopioli prioritized it that low, simply because they knew that scoring in the low goal has 70% of the scoring potential and thought it was significantly easier to do.

Shooting high? There is a large sweet spot (which Aren found on TeamJVN's build, but most teams would eventually figure out that there exists an optimum shot parabola, IMO), so shot location accuracy isn't terribly important. Shot alignment isn't terribly important, owing to the goal being the whole width of the field essentially, and getting a consistent shot trajectory from your shooter seems to be a fairly easy task this year. Those three things put together make it reasonably easy to get a shot that is REALLY forgiving on where you shoot it from and what direction you aim it in, which has the added bonus of making it difficult to defend against.

I'll agree that the 72 hour bots all collectively are closer to 5/10 jacks of all trades than 10/10 one task specialists, but I suspect that's probably a good thing in terms of their effect on design diversity. If a 72 hour build showed off a 10/10 anything, it starts to give away too much of the challenge.

I also stand by my assessment that the 5 72-hour builds that were completed (along with scores of 6-week bots completed) all converge on a similar strategy in their design, because that strategy they converge on is close to being the optimal strategy. Why else would they converge to that strategy?

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Check out the Robonauts 118. They have a punch-launching mechanism, and it is AWESOME. One of the RI3D teams tried it and trashed it, so any working punching mech is a strike against them.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Also, don't forget that they have different goals than the typical FIRST team. They didn't build robots to compete and win matches. They built robots to show teams the design process, provide examples of successful mechanisms and sell their product. I think everyone would agree that the long 10 point shot is more entertaining and flashy than a passing robot robot that just scores in the 1 point goal (just look at all the reveal videos; there is a ton more shooting than passing). Their decision to build a 10 point shooter instead of a better passing robot fit their goals.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

They scraped a number of ideas simply based on the fact that they were working under time constraints and felt they might take too long to develop all the way through, not necessarily because they weren't the best answer.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Ehh...

Good point. I think that because of the RI3D's influence on many robots, there won't be too many other punchers.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Several teams come to mind with working punch-launchers (118, and 488 for sure).

They're certainly an effective way to play this game, but they're not the only way.

It should have been known (by vets who were around then, anyway) that 1114's Simbot SS (which was built to play 2008's game Overdrive) was proof that a ball of this style could be launched with something of that nature.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

I only know about this year. I'm a rookie, but I have learned a lot. Personally, I wanted to use a punching mechanism, but the RI3D video made my team back out of that idea. It would have been awesome to use our HUGE pneumatic cylinders to send that ball flying. I'll probably try it over the summertime anyways.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

I am the lead student designer for my team and I modelled our shooter off of a 2008 design and our catapult looks nothing like what we modelled it off of. In the Suffield Shakedown almost every robot looked like twins. The few that stood out had huge targets on their backs. My team was able to create mostly a great design that in no way was like the RI3D robots. I believe the RI3D is a mockery of FIRST and ruins the original intentions of the FIRST program. RI3D makes students believe that they can just copy designs and do little thinking. RI3D really shouldn't make videos showing, in detail, how every function works so the teams that do copy have some kind of figuring out to do.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Too many clones = loss of innovation

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Did they influence robot designs? Definitely.

The jury's still out on whether this is a good thing or not.

Personally, I think saying it makes "a mockery of FIRST" is a very strong and combative statement.

I'll be interested more in discussing this after the season is over.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Huh. I think these are some very strong words. Personally, I think that having almost half of the teams at a regional unable to score a single point in a game is more of a mockery of FIRST than Ri3D will every be. We're not really selling ourselves as a sport for the mind if there is no competition on the field, are we?

I bet if we had Ri3D in 2011, we may have had more exciting elimination matches than these: http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2011ga

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

How exactly are the three-day-build programs a mockery of FIRST? If anything, the sponsors and suppliers that are participating are intensifying the challenge, and giving teams that might not have the resources or time to prototype as extensively as they want to, the ability to take bits and pieces of things that they know work and tweak it to fit what they want. I know my students did that with some of our prototype ideas.

What's so different from looking to the three-day-build robots vs. looking at old games' robots? For example, how many people this year went immediately to 2008 design ideas? They're a great jumping-off-point to work forward from.

This post sums it up really well. A quote right from the FIRST founder's mouth in an interview about innovation.
(The full interview with FedEx can be found here).

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: If you don't like the idea, then don't watch - but it does offer a lot of help to those who do.

I used to avoid the ri3d like the plague because some members of my team go straight to that and don't even bother trying to think of our own design. And then we found out we had $0.00 at our disposal this year so ri3d look really good. I like the 3 day builds and think there great for rookie teams and poorly funded teams

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Ri3D is great for helping designs. Obviously we weren't going to copy them directly but we took some design and parts aspects and built our robot around it.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

At 4464, we're using a roller-arm to capture the ball. We did not choose this because of Ri3D or BuildBlitz - the idea was a fairly obvious one, and was proposed independently. That many teams are using this exact same solution is unsurprising, as it is a very good one.

We are going to see a lot of design convergence this year, and I think that's more a property of the game than anything else; aside from a dedicated goalie-bot, there is not a great diversity of differing design constraints based on robot goals. The vast majority of robots will pick up the ball and launch the ball. There are only so many ways to do this, and some of the really obvious ones are really good.

I will say that posting complete CADs of finished robots is a bit much - I think Ri3D is a very good resource, but it should not solve the problem fully for a team to the point where they only need to manufacture and code. I would like, in the future, to see it decrease in scope to something closer to what it was last year (though this is unlikely since it proved this year to be a supremely useful marketing tool for FRC suppliers).

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

So far, my context for answering the original question is limited to the following: my team's build season (including watching videos from 2010 and 2008, as well as Ri3D); the scrimmage we attended last weekend; the local teams we interact with; and the posted pics and videos of teams on CD. Outside my team, I've seen a lot of circumstantial evidence that Ri3D/blitz influenced design, but I haven't seen one robot that straight-up copied their favorite. It's been a hodge-podge, with ideas like the choo-choo showing up on a mini-SS, for instance. Other ideas, like the all-omni drive, I haven't seen at all. My own team went in a completely different direction, but we cribbed the idea from our past experience and some prototype videos from other teams. Even so, I'm sure our robot doesn't much resemble it's inspirations (Ninjineers, shout out to you).

Honestly, I think that three things are true in this case. One, most or all of the teams that show up with Toro Sticks (or any of the other mechanisms) will either do a worse (75%) or better (25%) job of implementing them than the originals, with almost none being exact copies. Two, I'd personally rather say "there goes another Ri3D" than "there goes another box that rolls". And three, this fits the FIRST mission just fine, though in an evolved form.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Whoa. I know 2011 was a snorefest when weak teams played, but how did that QF4 happen?! QF4 = #3 alliance in red v #6 alliance in blue. How did the #3 alliance manage just 12 points in their best match together? The #1 alliance definitely steamrolled those elims. Nobody was even going to get close.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

That's not even the worst part, just look at all of the qualification matches where either one or both alliances had 0 points. I'm glad Ri3D exists, if only to make matches with no score be a rare occurrence. RI3D has significantly raised the competitive level in our region from years like 2011 and 2012. These projects continue to help teams field robots and learn more about engineering, especially in a region where many teams have little to no engineering mentor support.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

I wish this were true but teams in the past have failed to replicate perfectly good designs that were available to them that should have made the game competitive.

We didn't need Ri3d that year because we had "FIRST Behind the Design" from 2007 showing the best designed robots for fast aquisition and placement of tubes and most teams failed to utilize this information.

I would love to see a bunch of Ri3D based robots, but there always seems to be a reason* that the best designs when made available aren't used.

* Usually teams thinking "we can do better on our own", not having the facilities or money to build/purchase the components necessary.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Way too many teams get caught up trying to build something cool that they really don't have the resources for.

This is especially true of drivetrains. Most teams are probably best served by simply building the kitbot drive base and focussing all of their effort on the game specific robot parts.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Well, we wanted to make the one with the boot, but use a vacuum device instead of a plunger, to add on to my earlier post.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Love it!

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Ri3D is a mixed bag for me.

What is very aggravating about Ri3D is that too many things they put out are big distractions for my team. For the last 2 years we have fragmented into multiple "competing" designs because someone saw "ooh! shiny!" on a Ri3D bot. This year it didn't happen for our intake because I wound up leading the intake and we had an effective design already. We even had time to make 2 extra spares by the end of Week 3. But man did it take forever to get to a final concept on the compound launchers (which aren't clones of Ri3D anyways) due to the distraction.

If my team couldn't come up with an effective solution to a specific game element on our own, I would probably welcome Ri3D (e.g. bridge lowering in 2012). Yet these last two years the team overall has been semi-derailed by the flash the Ri3D Advertising Blitz puts out.

Maybe I shouldn't complain. We did have a 90% bot at the Week 0 scrimmage (no effective catcher at that point), and we finalized a 2-ball autonomous prior to bag. Yet who knows how much better it would have been with more focus.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Exiting the idea phase is tricky to go into prototyping and going from prototyping to honing down to the final(ish) idea is challenging as well. Every year we have someone way too attached to their idea but unwilling develop it in CAD or prototyping.

I think this is a challenge no matter what. In addition to RI3D, we had a lot of concepts from 2008. We were referencing a bunch of team 1114, 16, 27, 118 and etc. We got stuck on a 1114 concept before realizing the puncher was too resource intensive for our machining.

We did limit the exposure to mostly the final video, which I think came out on tuesday? By then the bulk of our intial brainstorm is done, and most students know the rulebook.

However after that our issues transitioning to a final design is our fault. I would not blame RI3D for having a wall full of ideas and concepts. Some ideas had to die in the prototype phase, we could not invest enough resources to make El Toro work there is just not enough students and mentors to go around. Same with the boom done style launcher, quite a few people wanted it and we had to cut it because there was not enough time. Yeah, that was not a popular decision but we can't have the team split to make two poorly made launchers.

There will always be a time where too many ideas will bog down the team. We had a design spec, a time line and a priority list to hone down the clutter. there are several design we never got to try that I wished we had time for but I to put them on the chopping block and move on.

Does Robot in Three Days Promote Healthy Competition?
 

A few mentors, team members, and I were discussing this yesterday as we were watching some live streams of week one competitions. What we quickly noticed was that nearly every robot was implementing some kind of module (ball intake, ball launcher, etc.) that had already been proven to work on one of the RI3D robots.

The amount of robots waving around motorized airport ground crew directing sticks or lowering a wheely bar over top of the ball to collect it was what troubled us the most. How some teams didn't execute the designs as well as other teams is beside the point, what matters is that a ton of robots this year look, or at least operate, much in the same way. And I think RI3D is partially to blame.

I'm not saying that teams couldn't have arrived at such designs on their own. I'm saying that watching a video of a working robot three days after the start of build season, seeing what worked and what didn't, and then implementing variations of what they saw working onto their own robot was probably something that happened a lot this season.

Our team is partially guilty of this too. For about two weeks, we toyed with the idea of having a spinning wheel intake. When we found that it was going to be too heavy for our robot, we went for a lighter forklift-esque design. And so far in our practice sessions, the design has worked very well for us.

I don't think the Robot in Three Days Event really promotes healthy competition or a true creative process for teams. With how much more popular the event has become this year, thousands of teams probably saw the videos, and even if their final robot didn't use anything that they saw in the videos, it probably gave them plenty of good ideas. Ideas that should have been generated from within the team through discussion and experimentation.

At the same time, I think the event is really fun to watch, and it is interesting to see what the teams can throw together in just a few days. One of our mentors thought that they could still do the event, just not show the footage until after the end of build season. He also suggested that they could wait until the last three days of the build season, rather than starting on the first day.

But that's just what I think, and I really want to hear what some other teams have to say. What's your opinion of the RI3D thing?

Re: Does Robot in Three Days Promote Healthy Competition?
 

And in previous years, for which there is copious amounts of documentation, video, photos, etc....

Let's face it--there are only so many ways to efficiently and effectively intake a ball, and it comes down to what type of roller, scoop, or grabber you want to use.

Given how week one has been shaping up so far, I'd say that we have a long, long way to go before we start worrying that the quick-build projects are having some huge impact on the game.

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Creativity is overrated.

One of the things I've learned from seven years of engineering school and five summers of internships is that engineering is not about creativity. It's about making stuff that works. Don't get me wrong. Creativity is great. I love seeing clever mechanical designs no one else thought of. I enjoy watching teams push the envelope and bring harebrained ideas into the mainstream (e.g, mecanum wheels were almost unheard of in robotics until two FRC teams introduced them in 2005).

But in engineering, if something simple, something obvious, something completely tedious and boring and "been-there-done-that" gets the job done - you should probably use that. Not always. But usually.

Instead, as JVN wrote elegantly, all of us are copying other ideas. The trick is to refine, combine, and synthesize ideas to create something better. After the 3-day build was over, I remember someone commenting, "Not bad. They got the pace about right, but they stopped 6 weeks too early." As many people in this thread already said, many of the ideas are already in the minds of the experienced mentors and historically astute students - Ri3D helps put them out in the open, and jump-starts the iterative refinement free-for-all.

Second, remember that there are several scales on which this innovation and design happens. One is the robot concept. But generally, that happens during only a few days of build season. The rest of the season requires just as much innovation and design and clever thinking, but you don't see it from the stands.
As someone who's been watching FRC for quite some time, yes, this year has somewhat less visible design variance than past years. However, this has been true in past games as well - look at 2010 (Breakaway), where nearly all robots were little flat rectangles with kickers on the front. But the design variation inside the little boxes was still impressive. If you take the time to look under the hood, you'll notice a surprising amount of variation this year, too.

Finally, despite the cruched schedule, Ri3D/BB is a superb model of the FRC design process. How many teams would benefit from following the strategize/prototype/design/build/iterate process that the Ri3D teams described? We get a peek into how some really great minds think about this process. And we ought to copy that!

Re: Are the three day builds affecting designs?
 

Are they affecting designs? Absolutely. But it seems like many people are jumping to conclusions, conclusions which are overly-broad and seem to disregard the fact that FIRST is made up of a lot of different teams, each with wildly varying design processes and resources.

On as basic level, it's easy to say that these robots are influencing designs. It's probably impossible to see one of those videos and not say to yourself "wow, I wonder if I should just build that exact robot except better." Or, perhaps you say to yourself "wow, I should build that robot's collector and that other robot's shooter and that third robot's drivetrain."

But does that necessarily mean teams are "copying?" Yes and no. And this is why it's important to realize that teams have wildly varying levels of resources and experience. Obviously the following is also generalizing, and there are always exceptions, but I prefer to think of it in terms of different "tiers" of teams:

Low-Tier (low resources, low experience, mostly newer teams)
-These are the teams that are probably "copying" the Ri3D robots. But is that necessarily a bad thing? These are teams that lack the confidence and/or resources to build something "original," and, more often than not, end up with a drivetrain and little else. Being able to copy/draw inspiration from these Ri3D robots is the difference between driving around for 2.5 minutes and playing the game.

Mid-Tier (some mix of resources and experience)
-These are the teams this question is probably aimed at. Now, I'm sure some of these teams will replace an actual design process with a Ri3D clone, even if it's probably within their resources to put more effort into the design process. But not putting huge effort into the design process isn't necessarily a bad thing - if you save a week and some amount of money on early prototyping (by skipping part or most of that phase of the design process by copying a Ri3D robot) you now get to spend that extra week and money refining a design that you know works. And the end result is certainly a different experience, but it's equally (possibly more) valuable and is virtually guaranteed to produce a higher-quality robot.

Top-tier (lots of experience, lots of resources)
-These are teams that are going all-out on their design process no matter what happens. If they arrive at the same design that one of the Ri3D robots did, so be it. At the very least it'll be a much higher-quality finish (given, you know, an extra 6+ weeks of R&D).


At the end of the day, there are two ways to categorize the possible effects: "inspiration" (you know, the whole point of FIRST - what are students getting out of this) and "competition"

Inspiration: students are getting exposed to more designs earlier in the design process. In the case of the low-tier teams they are getting incredibly valuable experience, and in the case of the high-tier teams it doesn't matter. In the case of some mid-tier teams you may see that these Ri3D robots reduce the students' exposure to the early (brainstorming, early prototyping) design process, but it's made up for by increased exposure to iterative design. And, of course, it has limited effect on the top-tier teams.

Competition: Top-tier is unaffected as always. Some mid-tier teams are unaffected, some mid-tier teams end up with a higher-quality robot. Low-tier teams have clones but I'd rather have 4 clones on the field than 2 clones and 2 robots that do nothing but drive around.


tldr: The benefits aren't enormous, but they're there. And I really can't find a compelling downside. It makes FIRST more competitive and, at worst, shifts the learning experience of FIRST towards iterative design.