Bad Robots
 

So I apologize if this comes off sounding too judgmental or arrogant, but I have a question I've been wondering about for a while now.

My pre-rookie team and I went to a regional this weekend to go see the game played, and check out some of the robots. We were excited for some really innovative, great designs and fun gameplay. But when we got there, we found the reality to be a little different. In the qualifying matches we saw, most of the teams could not even pick up the ball well, let alone shoot, and the brief moments of good gameplay were provided by one good robot essentially playing the game by itself.

I guess my question is multifaceted, first - is this common in FIRST, in Aerial Assist, or was it just this regional in particular. Also, what is the build season like for teams who end up with a robot that just doesn't play the game well? Is it a lack of resources, a lack of time, or poor strategy? And most importantly, what can my rookie team do, before build season and during, to build a robot we're proud of and can play the game well?

Again, I'm truly sorry if this came off as offensive, but it was an issue that bugged many of my teammates as well, and we tried to phrase this in the most diplomatic way possible.

Re: Bad Robots
 

This is probably just the particular regional you went to, I've seen tons of action, but I'm out here in California. As for build season, usually a poor robot is the result of a design that was either too complex and had to be scrapped at the last minute or a design that has been changed too much. Lack of resources is also grounds for a less competitive robot, but I've seem some pretty great robots that were made out of garages. To prepare to build your own bot, I suggest you talk about what strategy you're trying to implement, what you want your robot to do, and then look at some existing designs from others teams for inspiration on how you could build your robot.

Re: Bad Robots
 

There are always teams that struggle. Even for "simple games," building a robot is a difficult task. Some regionals are worse than others. Some years are worse than others. Some teams bite off too much to chew. Some teams don't have enough guidance. Some teams are impacted by scenarios outside of their control (snow, for instance). There's no single "magic bullet" to solve this problem, or else it would have been solved a long time ago.

Re: Bad Robots
 

And Canada (of course). We still have snow up here.

Re: Bad Robots
 

The eliminations would have been far more inspiring. Unfortunately not every team has the resources (human, fiscal, or facilities) available to produce a top caliber robot. The reality of the situation is that building robots is very hard to do, and for many teams a success is just having something out on the field that functions.

Re: Bad Robots
 

Well from a team that had trouble last year building a robot (seniors 2 years ago left and did not teach anyone). For us it is really we had trouble trying to figure how to make anything. Robots that don't work will be in FIRST but its what makes FIRST special because that is when you will see teams that will run up to you guys and love to help you guys. What I have seen that a lack of resources, time and a poor strategy can all be factors in a poor performance.
What we learned this year is that a simple robot that can move can really get you far. We had a basic pickup system that worked 100% and we were able to move. This got us to Semi finals twice. So I guess try to keep it simple and efficient.
I recommend you to get in contact with your local FIRST team and see if you guys can start working together with them. You are also welcome to PM me and the Devastators would love to share all the knowledge we have with you guys. Also the CD is a wonderful place to learn. Trust me I came here last year and I've learned so much! Anyone here would love to help you guys.

Re: Bad Robots
 

You actually made some smart observations; ones that are pretty profound for a pre-rookie team.

It's semi-common in FIRST. I don't know what kind of robots you saw, but at an event of 65 teams, you'll find that more than 50% of them are "subpar".

It is also regional dependent. There are regions that have a stronger middle tier (Michigan, Cali, Canada) than others, and there are a lot of factors that play into this.

You hit the major factors. Some teams have poor strategies, they don't plan for the resources they have, and they don't respect the amount of time they have. Usually it's a combination of the first two that really get teams.

Before the season: You need to remove as many in-season variables as possible. Of course you don't know the game, but it's not difficult to start building simple robots, simple drive trains. Get a handle for the resources you have and how to best utilize them to build effective mechanisms.

During the season: Pick an effective strategy, and build as simple a mechanism as possible to achieve that strategy. Remember, your DT is your base; if it's not strong, you won't be strong, and rollers are king.

You're not being offensive. Some may lash out at you for being "insensitive," but it's the realities of the program. Kudos to you for seeing this and taking steps to ensure that your program achieves success.

- Sunny G.

Re: Bad Robots
 

I agree with MrTechCenter

Biggest advice I can give is to not try and do too much in your first year. Too many teams (veterans included) try and do too many things and end up not being able to do any one thing well. Focus on getting a strong working drivetrain If you go with a basic tank drive (also my recommendation), use at least 4 cims). Many teams are looked over in alliance selection if they have a poor drivetrain even if they have functioning other parts of their robot. After you have a working drivetrain, focus on getting one mechanism working for the current years game. Like this year, an arm to posses the ball and let go will make you extremely valuable to teams at regionals. Finally, seek out veteran teams who seem to know what they are doing if you need help (you are already ahead in that aspect). Good Luck!

Re: Bad Robots
 

This. This. And THIS.

Robots that can't play the game more than just defense? All too common. Robots with nonfunctional scoring mechanisms? All too common.
Robots that are too complex? See last two statements...

The three most important parts of an FRC robot are drivetrain, drivetrain, and drivetrain. (And bumpers, which protect the drivetrain.) Keep it simple and tough, then get one thing working in terms of handling the game piece (preferably acquisition) then get one other thing working on that (preferably getting it out of your robot!).

Re: Bad Robots
 

It's fairly common in FIRST, and varies regional to regional. The best advice I can give is to a team that wants to achieve the game goals is to look at Simbotics's website (simbotics.org) and look over their resources section. Their section on strategic design is invaluable to a startup team.

Also, be sure to look back at some old games and have a few people well versed on what types of mechanisms work well for manipulating certain types of game pieces. Even if the game piece isn't very similar to a past one, it still gives you some ideas to try to adapt to the new game piece.

Re: Bad Robots
 

1. Is this common in FIRST?
Its totally event dependent. you wont show up to Waterloo or Orlando finding too many toasters. In contrast, I remember watching the western Canadian regional a few years ago and finding a large portion of robots that could not handle the game piece.

2. Is this common in Aerial Assist?
Yes. this years game piece is more inconsistent, bigger, fragile and contested for than almost any other game piece in recent FRC history making it much harder to be an effective scoring robot on the field.

3. What is the build season like for teams who end up with a robot that just doesn't play the game well.
It all depends on when this is realized.
A. IF REALIZED EARLY:
Smart teams will change there design to fix the problem. Bad teams will just tell the drive team to deal with it.
B. IF REALIZED LATE:
Good teams will try to build a new system that they can switch out at there event or right before stop build day. Bad teams will just ignore/ deny the situation by lowering there standards for what is an acceptable robot.
C. IF THE TEAM HAS LIMITED RESOURCES:
Good teams will attempt to use programming/ strategy/ driver skill to compensate for unacceptable or inferior hardware.
4. What causes teams to be bad?
Usually a lack of resources or a failure in the design and planning process. If you take 1 thing away from your pre rookie experience it should be think before you act. Try to pull designs or design ideas form past games that used a similar game piece or field layout. A prime example is 67 (hot) and 971 (Spartan Robotics). They both evolved the 2008 world champs robot to make it work in this years game and preform better. 67 is currently 49-7 and 971 is 35-0. I highly suggest looking at some of karthik kanagasabapathy's recorded presentations on how to preform effective strategic analysis of a game and how to design an effective robot to play it.

Here are some recources:

2014 HOT tech notes by Adam Freeman:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2973?

2012 HOT tech notes by Adam Freeman:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2649?

Karthik Kanagasabapathy's 2013 show on design and strategy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smWy7FQ8jLE

Karthik Kanagasabapathy's 2011 show on design and strategy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Apk_X-maRf8

A CD thread on the weakest/ simplest robot that could make eliminations in 2013:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...=116732&page=2

Re: Bad Robots
 

I don't know who your coach is, but he/she definitely placed you on the best path for your team's rookie season by attending a regional before you begin.

As a team that has competed in the last two seasons - here is the advice I would slip you to help the process. (It definitely helped us)

1. Get a hold of your state's organizers and get them on board immediately with your team. We did this (here in MN we have a great FRC community) and rally them to your cause.

2. Contact your local Chamber of Commerce/Manufacturers association and ask if your team could present at their upcoming meetings or conferences. Contact your local paper and find a field reporter that would be willing to cover your endeavor. Invite your school's administration to the meeting(s). Polish the presentation, bring in state reps from FRC, and knock their socks off with stats and figures. And then ask them to help with mentoring, organization, and sponsorship.

3. Get your ducks in a row early. Starting as soon as possible get the funding in place. Apply for FRC first year sponsorships, organize a few fundraisers to get the cash in-flow moving.

4. Find a reseller/scrap yard/wholesaler that deals in all things industrial - it is a cheap way to gain structural material (like 8020 components).

5. Build a skateboard/drive deck/platform as soon as you can afford to and start planning your drive train asap. You most likely won't have access to 2015's new RoboRio - so having the CAD plans or a workable deck ready will be paramount. Just keep the FRC notes on pre-season build on hand.

6. Get the superfluous items off your list early (member sign up, logo, website, shirts, parent organization, etc.). Having this done will free up a lot of time during the build season.

7. Get in touch with well-established local teams (again, thank you 1816 and 3023) and ask for help.

8. Attend a pre-regional event.

9. Set the bar high and expect that your team will have a lot of failures during the build season - but strive for nothing short of the best.

10. If you need more help, please contact FRC 4607 if you need any other pointers... we are more than willing to help your team where we can - so many have done the same for us!

GOOD LUCK!

Re: Bad Robots
 

I will add one thing to "Chief Hedgehog's" great list: Set yourself the goal to complete your build in 30 days rather than 45...

(1) If you succeed you will have a solid two weeks to give your drivers practice time - you can never have too much practice time...or...
(2) You will have time to build a second robot for competition and use the first one to practice.

(3) If you fall a bit short, you still have time to finish

(4) You get the opportunity to see what parts of the robot don't work quite the way you planned, what items come out of adjustment easily, and what things require constant maintenance.

(5) This gives you the opportunity to show your robot off to your sponsors and community to get them excited and increases your financial viability for the following year.



As to the observation about the number of "bad robots" I tend to agree, and (without invoking a great deal of angry replies) I believe most of the "reasons" that are cited are just excuses. I inspected during week one in Palmetto, and was astounded by the number of teams who came with a robot that was far from finished, or marginally useful at best. The Andymark AM14U drivetrain was an awesome resource this year, which meant that any team could have a great driving base before they left kickoff (do all kickoff events have a robot quick-build session?). Even if that is all a team managed, they would have been useful to an alliance this year. Especially if they spent the rest of the build season practicing and devising strategies.

Re: Bad Robots
 

Most of these pitfalls can be addressed with understanding.
Before the season: Understand what your manufacturing, financial, and physical capabilities are (Possibly do a SWOT analysis). Address any weaknesses, or understand them.

During the season: Understand the challenge. Don't start off by 'building something', instead start off by breaking down the challenge and attacking those portions of the challenge that your team can handle. Set milestones and put expected dates to those milestones so that you KNOW where you are in your schedule.

Planning and an understanding of what you are capable of (and, more importantly, not capable of) will avoid most issues that create a 'bad robot'

BTW, your post is neither Judgmental nor offensive. It sounds like you are trying to avoid the pitfalls others have fallen into. That's what Chief Delphi is for.

Good luck to you.

Re: Bad Robots
 

I see your FTC team is based in the Capital Region, so you must have either attended the Greater DC regional or the Chesapeake regional.

In general, this region was especially hit hard this build season with close to 10 snow days and school closures. This is a significant factor when last year we had at most 1 snow day. So you can see how this drastically lowered the competition.

Combine that with the Capital region being a middle of the pack region when compared to competitiveness. We also have only 2 or so regional powerhouse teams, so we do not many extremely strong teams unless national powerhouse teams come to visit the region. (233 visited Chesapeake this year, 192 in 2012, 365, 79, etc). As a result, the competitions are normally middle of the pack, DC a little below average and Chesapeake a little above DC.

Hopefully moving to a district system will help improve competitiveness next year, however I feel that the competitive will actually go down next year. The capital region has always had a large amounts of MAR teams come down to boost our competitiveness, and districts will eliminate a lot of these teams.

So in short, you saw a middle of the pack regional which had an especially weak year. Other years, Chesapeake and DC are more competitive, but not by much.

Re: Bad Robots
 

So, this is important, yes, but I'd be careful not to go too far onto this side and forget to challenge yourself. I've seen many a team and leaders who have preferred to be complacent and not attempted to try to go the extra mile.

There's a line between 'not doing too much' and betraying the program by not challenging yourself. Toeing the aforementioned line is what teams of all levels struggle with.

- Sunny G.

Re: Bad Robots
 

Understanding the logic behind the Minimum Competitive Concept in conjunction with getting early practice building drivetrains in the off season (and driving the heck out of them) will put you off to a great start. Depending on your region, there are probably veteran teams in your area with old kit chassis that either went unused or are obsolete. Be sure to contact veteran teams in your area to see if you can have one (special shout out to 360 for doing just that). For a control system, even something as simple as a 4 channel RC airplane transmitter/reciever combo and some spare motor controllers (jaguars, talons, victors, etc.) is sufficient to replace a $500 cRIO/digital sidecar combo if your only goal is to drive around (though you'll still have to get a battery and an electrical distribution setup going). Our first "robot" did nothing other than trundle around at a very slow clip, but if you set up a basic obstacle course, you instantly have a Tank Drive 101 class for new drivers.

We used essentially this package right here. It won't get you programing practice, but it's a very low-cost start.

Re: Bad Robots
 

All of this is very true. My team has made better robots in our last two years than we have ever made before, and it is because we have done specific things very well. In 2013, we focused on getting a really consistent shot. We did it, and ended up with our first regional win ever(albeit as a second pick defensive bot). One of the first things we look at is drivetrains. In fact, it is a deciding factor in who even gets on our pick list and who doesn't. Very, VERY few weak drivetrains ever make it onto our picklists. A good, powerful tank drivetrain means that even if your bot isn't the best at playing offense, you may get picked for your strong defensive capabilities. Look at 5125 at midwest regional. Their entire robot was a simple kitbot drivetrain. However, it was done so well it could push almost every robot at the event. Even through there were still collecting and scoring robots still available, they were the first alliance's second pick and ended up winning the regional.

To answer OP's questions, it really does vary based on what regional you attend. There are some locations where most teams have great resources and can make great robots. Other locations may not have as many resources, possibly caused by a lack of students, mentorship, or sponsorship.

Re: Bad Robots
 

I DEFINITELY agree with hedgehog on the failure aspect. One of the things he didn't mention was the the main feature of our robot, namely a large shield, was actually making the best out of a bad situation. we had meant to make the robot climb the pyramid (the endgame last year) and get 30 points. after we failed at doing that, we decided to build a shield, making use of the existing mechanisms. It worked for us. (it also made a stylish way to show off our tshirt)

also, a corollary to failing, everything will break. We literally had no system on the robot NOT break by the end of last year, the omniwheels even fell apart, and the kit wheels are BALD (to the point where i'm surprised the DMV didn't say anything ;) )

Good luck next year, I hope you do well! You're already thinking like a veteran. just be prepared to work some late nights, and NEVER lose hope in yourself, your robot, and most importantly, your team!

Re: Bad Robots
 

Congrats you have experienced the great divide.

Re: Bad Robots
 

1) No, it's not. There are tons of toasters at those events. I can personally attest to there being a large number of toasters at Orlando as well as a large number of robots that would be better off as toasters. But that's not merely an Orlando phenomenon, building a robot is "hard". Now, how high a percentage of teams are toasters at any given event varies but usually there are a mere handful of robots that would not look at home heating bread.

2) This game is harder than the previous one and has vastly worse penalties for failure than the last couple. (2012, imho, was about as hard to effectively score based off folks ignoring the 1 and 2 point goals). This did NOT contribute heavily to the percentage of toasters on the field. The scoring system, however, exacerbated their effect from merely being an annoyance to actively hindering their partners' attempts to seed well.

3) Robots are "hard". By which I mean that teams bite off too much at once. The only way to be successful in FRC is to focus on what Andy Baker has deemed the 3 most important aspects of your robot. The Drivetrain, The Drivetrain, and The Drivetrain. Build on top of that. Meaning: Many teams neglect to focus on reliably moving their robot from point A to point B. The next thing to focus on is acquiring a game piece and reliably letting go of it. THEN you can focus on scoring it. Now, I'm sure 1114/118/254 don't follow this practice but they are exceptions. When you have multiple Einstein appearances you can do whatever you want.

4) Not recognizing limitations and resources. Not recognizing game strategies. Not understanding the impact that game actions have on outcomes and the impact outcomes has on rankings. Not understanding the metagame of the area (Ie, if you are in New England just assume that you will have at least a few matches wherein a team repeatedly rams you from across the field... build your bot accordingly).


Top thing for how not to be a toaster at your first event? Ask for help. CD is a great place to ask. Make friends with a local team that has some experience, they can provide experienced mentors who can give you guys a reality check as well as the common gotchas inherent in FRC (wait, we should zip tie our battery connectors?). Plus, they likely have a surplus of extra motors and such that might help with prototyping or spare parts.

Re: Bad Robots
 

This. So much this. You cannot emphasize this enough.

Our ball acquisition broke (in a crippling, multiple-hours-to-fix manner) partway through Greater DC this year, and we were selected by the winning alliance because we had a reliable, beefy drive and could push people around extremely well on defense. That our robot spent ~70% of the competition doing nothing at all with the ball was immaterial.

At Chesapeake, our drive stopped functioning effectively (for a number of reasons), and even though our manipulator was functional, we did terribly.

Re: Bad Robots
 

As mentioned before, kudos to you guys for getting out to an event as pre-rookies, that's a fantastic start already.

There has already been lots of high quality input given here, but there's one thing I would like to add to that I've learned from personal experience. That has to do with the design and build of mechanisms.

As has been mentioned many times above, building robots is hard. What you will find though, is that there are teams that have little trouble whipping together prototypes in a day or two that functions at or above par of most of those at competitions. Put together a full robot of prototype level mechanisms that work, and you're already above average.

So where's the challenge here? The challenge comes in actually building mechanisms that WORK. I remember back to my first year (2011), spending countless hours working on building a minibot and a deployment system. The prototypes I built were clunky, slow, and only sometimes worked - even though the task wasn't super complicated. I remember having an idea I was excited about on how to pick up tubes, but not having the slightest clue how to actually build it.

Picture in your head now - say you wanted to create something like a drive-train. Odds are you could picture something in your head, but wouldn't know where to start as far as actually designing it.

To cut to the chase, between now and kickoff of your very first FRC build season (WOO!), imagine stuff, then research how you build build the stuff you imagined (via Chief Delphi, mentors, other teams, etc.), design the stuff, and then build it!

Being a pre-rookie team, you probably don't have a stockpile of supplies kicking around to make stuff. Which brings me to another point - if you can work now at finding mentors, machine shop sponsors, metal/plastics sponsors, you will be in a good place come kickoff.

I would love to keep going, but my break is up! If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me a message. I would love to help y'all get started!

Re: Bad Robots
 

I was at Wisconsin this year, and 2 weeks later at Midwest. A lot of the same volunteers were there, and I asked one: "Was competition at Wisconsin much tougher?". The other person said: "At Wisconsin, for over 1/2 the teams it was not their first regional [for that year]." At Midwest, there were a lot of green teams.

One team at WI was so-so, but at Midwest, they dominated. Part of it was that their game play (the driver) had a game dominating strategy (and a bot that could execute).

Experience playing the game, and being able to make improvements (hold back) between regionals (once you see how the game is played) is huge.