Originally Posted by pfreivald (Post 1371163)

I think this season taught us that by and large, the Ri3D robots could play the game, but were not optimal designs. I think that's wonderful both in terms of raising the floor and in terms of inspiring better design.

Originally Posted by Paul T. (Post 1371168)

at first i thought Ri3D and build blitz were going to lead us towards the vex mentality of "the six bar is the best robot and we'll copy because we simply cant beat it" but i'm starting to come around and here's why:

1. They allow teams with very limited technical skill a chance to be competitive. i knew a good team that went with a boom done design because all the advanced mechanical team members left.

2. They are not the best designs available. There simply a start, unlike in vex with the NZ designs, you can design a better robot.

3. Most teams that choose them will not end up in the top 20%. (have you seen one dominate a competition yet?)

4. In the words of our drive coach " I love the Ri3d designs, without knowing anything about the team, i know the robots shooting sweet spot and how good the intake is." there's a strategic advantage you give up by copying. Teams have to normally scout to determine how to beat you where if you have a Ri3D design its pretty easy

just some food for thought.

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli (Post 1370985)

I suppose my opinion has been fully formed now that my team's season's over. I've been to two competitions, watched many others, and must have seen hundreds of robots by now. A lot of robots look similar to each other, and a lot of teams have "clones" of Ri3D and build blitz robots, but all of these teams went through a journey to build their robots, and I'm sure that along the way these teams had to iterate their designs. I don't think it's possible to put together a Ri3D/BB "clone" without learning something or having to iterate a part of the design to match your resources.

Not all robots that look like the 3 day projects copied them. Plenty of high performing teams look similar to the 3 day projects, but most likely they prototyped many different mechanisms and through iteration developed their current robot. This may have been the most successful year my team has had, and also one of the most complicated robots we've ever built, but if you strip away the catcher walls, it looks like an 8020 and versaframe version of a team JVN build. (For Reference). I met with an old mentor of mine, and I showed him our robot. His first response was "You guys copied the robot in 3 days, didn't you?". I explained that while our intake and catapult look very similar, the amount of prototyping, designing, and engineering that went into those systems took more than 3 days. I was actually inspired by 2012 over-the-bumper intakes when I first sketched up what would end up becoming the intake on our robot. We did use the "choo choo" mechanism that Aren Hill came up with, but we must have gone through at least 7 iterations of the darned thing before we finally developed one that worked with our system.

I think these 3 day builds have done a great job in helping teams get started and have certainly reduced the number of robots incapable of manipulating the game pieces. Not every robot can manipulate game pieces well, but that's solved by iterating and improving designs, which falls onto teams. It's not necessarily a bad thing that robots look alike. Sure, there's a creativity award, but I think every team wants to field a robot that works, and when there are 6 different concepts that are already presented, it's much easier to do that than starting from scratch.

Originally Posted by pfreivald (Post 1371163)

I think this season taught us that by and large, the Ri3D robots could play the game, but were not optimal designs. I think that's wonderful both in terms of raising the floor and in terms of inspiring better design.

Originally Posted by BBray_T1296 (Post 1370962)

I liked the Choo-choo mechanism. Unless teams like us were looking at Simbotics 2008 robot (or people who worked on it ahem Aren), I doubt that many teams would have stumbled across this great mechanism.

Originally Posted by Katie_UPS (Post 1371306)

On the other hand it turned me off to watch adults play a "kid's" game. Its not really inspiring to watch an MLB player hit a home run on a little league field.

Originally Posted by Paul T. (Post 1371168)

at first i thought Ri3D and build blitz were going to lead us towards the vex mentality of "the six bar is the best robot and we'll copy because we simply cant beat it" but i'm starting to come around and here's why:

1. They allow teams with very limited technical skill a chance to be competitive. i knew a good team that went with a boom done design because all the advanced mechanical team members left.

2. They are not the best designs available. There simply a start, unlike in vex with the NZ designs, you can design a better robot.

3. Most teams that choose them will not end up in the top 20%. (have you seen one dominate a competition yet?)

4. In the words of our drive coach " I love the Ri3d designs, without knowing anything about the team, i know the robots shooting sweet spot and how good the intake is." there's a strategic advantage you give up by copying. Teams have to normally scout to determine how to beat you where if you have a Ri3D design its pretty easy

just some food for thought.

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV (Post 1371314)

This is just ridiculous, to call FRC a "kid's" game is extremely disrespectful. We do this for the students but the reason so many of the great mentors we have in FRC do it is because it's not a "kids" game. It's an extremely hard engineering challenge that we give to students. The challenge keeps a whole lot of very bright people coming back year after year to work right along side students to find a good solution and very rarely do any of them find the "correct" solution. If it were easy a whole lot of people wouldn't come back every year.