What was there before AndyMark?
 

During the NYC Regional, I was talking to Andy Baker, and throughout those three days, I had made friends with him and his team (Team 3940 cybertooth). I learned that AndyMark started in the early 2000's, but what I forgot to ask was what was there before. Was it just like every team for themselves, or was there an old AndyMark type store?

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

I remember reading that teams HAD to get their stuff from Small Parts Inc. aka Amazon Supply..


But mostly teams machined a lot and the average robot wasn't as good as they are today

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

Up until shortly before Andymark started (2003 I believe,) FRC was much more closed off in terms of allowed materials. Teams were given a budget from smallparts.com, rather than the blanket $4k budget of today. As a result, teams were much more reliant on mechanical components of the kit of parts than they are today. Even so, there was little/nothing special built for FRC. The "kit transmissions" were retrofitted drill transmissions, for example. If you wanted shifting transmissions or anything of that nature, you built it yourself.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

IFI was around before AndyMark IIRC.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

but IFI was really small...like AndyMark when it started

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

It was before my time as well. From what I understand part of the reason CD grew was because people were coming here to exchange ideas, photos and design techniques. Papers like this were made and teams survived with the COTS parts they could find. There were no FIRST dedicated vendors and the robots were generally simpler.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

I was there! Not quite.

Small Parts became non-required in the very late 1990s/early 2000s, when they simply could not keep up with the number of teams. Simultaneously, the "prohibited materials" list grew very short. (Would you believe.... Titanium was once explicitly banned?) The "had to" was before my time actually on a team, I admit, but I remember seeing the Small Parts booth at a couple of events.

Anyways, before AndyMark, all teams got a 2-speed shifting transmission in the kit, or rather two of 'em. Two drill motor transmissions with motors, to be exact. And yes, teams did have to machine a lot to do anything. Many of the dominating teams today got their start back then, or before, and can remember that. (The kit frame was simply huge aluminum extrusion, cut to length. No joke.) IFI did provide a controller... but no robot parts.

Then came 2005. No drill motors in the kit, but 2 extra CIMs were allowed for the first time. Add in the IFI-provided Kitbot, and the Kitbot Transmission (1-speed, roughly the equivalent of the Toughbox), which as I recall was a joint effort between AndyMark and a couple other folks, and then you get AndyMark joining in with their Gen1 shifters...

The FRC world would never be the same.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

I know that Skyway wheels use to be the official provider of wheels for FIRST.

http://www.skywaywheels.com/

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

IFI indeed predates AndyMark; I recall they started supplying the control system around 2000, while AndyMark launched in late 2004 for the 2005 season. However, IFI kept to control system bits until 2005 when it started supplying the kitbot. Optional sheetmetal wheels arrived in 2006 and other bits were added over time, but they didn't really drop the bomb that is VEXpro until late 2012 for the 2013 season.

I wasn't around for the Small Parts era, but I was around for one season before what I term the modern era of kitbots and significant off-the-shelf parts. In 2004, the "kit" drivetrain were those drill gearboxes, some bearing blocks, 2"x4" aluminum extrusion, and some other odd gears that we never quite figured out. It took my rookie team (1293) about five and a half weeks to drive, and there were quite a few teams that weren't even that lucky.

Basically, before you had companies like AndyMark you had to make or modify from scratch a LOT more than you do today. If you didn't have access to a proper machine shop to make your gears/plates/hubs/what-have-you, contending on any real level was a pipe dream.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

If I recall, teams could only purchase materials from Small Parts, and were limited to a very short list of other allowed materials up through the 2002 season. For example, you could not purchase gears from any source other than Small Parts. In 2003, the short "materials allowed" list became a modest "materials prohibited" list.

Before AndyMark, teams had to actually THINK and design and fabricate things. Teams such as 716 and 45 published whitepapers on how to make shifting transmissions. Teams intricately studied the details of each other's designs, rather than waking up and blindly asking dumb questions like "how many wheels does your robot have?"

It was a very different era, and some elements of it are certainly missed. As limited as it was, I do miss the old Small Parts and their old catalog. It may have been very over priced, and I probably didn't buy much, but they had some neat unique items.

Now back to the modern day, what I can't figure out, is you can essentially buy a very competitive robot, with the right combination of parts, but a very large percentage of teams still produce very poor robots, many of which are incapable of assisting their alliance or scoring any points at all. What gives?

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

There's no essentially. Justin Foss often brags that 558's robots (which won 2 districts this year) are made almost exclusively from COTS parts. There's a reason any time I need to find something on McMaster that's who I ask first.

I have theories to answer your question but this is neither the time nor the place.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

I still have a small parts catalog from the 2000 season somewhere. Have to dig it out to remember just how limited it was. Back then we kludged a robot. Today we lead an engineering design build project. What a change.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

I swear, if another person comes to our robot and asks "How many/what type of wheels does your robot have" without even trying to look at the poster we have hanging in the front of our pit or our robot itself, I'm going to go crazy. You bring up an excellent point about the COTS vs. old style stuff. Wildstang used to build the coolest things ever (swerve, arms, swerve modules that went up and down in 04....), and it seems that these sort of super complicated well engineered parts aren't becoming more common.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

We can try and remember when andymark was started or we can look it up on the website.

http://www.andymark.com/aboutus.asp

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

I think quite the opposite, there are so many teams doing so many cool things that you can longer just point to Wildstang as being the only cool one!

JVN had a great point in this thread.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

Interesting picture
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/25316

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

Ahh- the dark ages... I remember installing servos to drill gearboxes and boasting about having "two speed" transmissions! Back then you really had to be innovative in your designs to even make things work. Taking a motor spinning at 20kRPM and somehow getting it down to a speed and torque that could be used was often the pinnacle of your machine's design, especially if your team was short on mentors. My rookie year doing FIRST I remember our team U-bolted drill motors to our frame and used chains to drive our wheels- we had no idea what "side load" meant and paid the price throwing chains every match ::ouch::

Things are much easier now. With just a little money you can log onto VEX or AM, find what you need in the gear ratio of your choice and in a couple days you've got a mechanism running. Sometimes I really do think things are too easy these days. The sort of problem solving and creative thought that used to go into designing a gearbox for a mechanism is somewhat lost.

Any Canadians on here remember Canada First? (Canadian spinoff of FIRST before they crossed the border)

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

I remember hearing about it, often in a negative light. 188 spent a few years in that competition before becoming the first FRC team in Canada in 1998. (See here for details.)

On the bright side, test-driving Woburn's 1997 robot was a major factor in getting me to join the team.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

Yup, "negative" would be accurate- that thread pretty much covers all the bases. I don't believe they were affiliated with FIRST at all. Unfortunately for Canadian teams who couldn't afford to travel to the states, it was all there was back then and although it wasn't nearly as well-run or set up as FIRST, it did serve to inspire and motivate many youth in its day.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

At first, there was nothing.

And then Andy said: let there be decent COTS parts for FIRST!

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

And somehow we still got the 2007 KOP transmissions...

(They were from BB)

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

Spend some time around a rookie team with no money or mentors, and it will cease to be a mystery. Honestly, I think a lot of people here would do well to expand their horizons in that way - at best, the "I can't understand how people can do badly at FIRST" culture is unproductive, and at worst it serves to drive people away from this community who stand to benefit from it most.

Moreover, you can't buy entire manipulators, you can't buy any of it pre-assembled, you can't buy the knowledge to make the whole system work; there's always going to be some amount of design and machining involved, no matter how COTS-oriented your design process is. Step back for a second and think about the amount of institutionalized knowledge that goes into putting a working robot on a FRC field; imagine stripping all that away, and starting from scratch. The reality for many FRC teams is that they have a collection of students who have never done any engineering, teachers who have never built robots, and no clear idea of what they're getting into. They often also have extremely limited budgets, and likely could not afford a completely COTS robot (have you looked at VexPro's prices?) even if they had the know-how to put one together. Does it seem so mysterious now?

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

Having been a mentor through some of the dark days before cots rules were loosened and kit bot created I can say those items have elevated play in ways I can't even begin to describe.

In 2003-2004 my first years as a mentor the question of whether or not we had partners that could move every match was a valid concern because lots of teams tried crazy things in their drives that just wouldn't work. Robots would throw chains from missaligned axles regularly it was a world of difference.

Once teams could "drive out of the box" and spend 6 weeks developing a mechanism the quality of robots go signifcantly better and you had far fewer concerns about heather your partner could move, and started figuring out how you could work together.

Also to respond to the questions about IFI getting into COTS, they made and distributed the original JVN/Copioli kitbot in 2005. To the best of my knowledge that started them selling COTS parts on the mechanical side.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

We all make mistakes ;)

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

Bosch Drill transmissions with servo gear changes.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

That's what gives. Every team can't just buy a very competitive robot, only some can.

I am assuming you are being sarcastic here, but either way, it is kind of offensive.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

My son joined the TechnoKats in 2003. From my point of view, there was never a time before AndyMark.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

This assertion that a "competitive" robot somehow costs thousands of dollars is, frankly, ridiculous.

You get a drivebase in the KoP which is covered by a cost you HAVE to pay, total cost, $0. This year alone that will give you at least 11 points in auton. Yet I consistently see teams not earning even that. Heck, strap a chair on top and it's a viable inbounder. Not the most glamorous role but certainly needed and a hot commodity. Total cost, $40 if you buy a REALLY nice chair.

Look at 558 for an example of simple, mostly COTS bot that doesn't cost a ton.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

We spend a lot of time designing and perfecting our omni-wheels.

We started using Knex wheels as the rollers:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/16984

Those were replaced with plastic rollers:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/17047

The two layers of carbon fiber (legalized in 2004) were eventually replaced with a single sheet of aluminum and plastic rollers replaced with rubber...and then we switched to AndyMark.

We used the Bosch drill transmissions in 2003 and 2004, Nothing But Dewalts (3 speeds!) from 2005 to 2007. I can remember rebuilding the Bosch transmissions every 2-3 matches at IRI in 2003. We had a horrible time with those.

Our frames were 80/20 for our first two years, a modified IFI kit frame in 2005, and in 2006 we designed our first sheet metal chassis.

Mike Trapp of Waterjet Cutting of Indiana began helping us in 2004 so we had the advantage of getting custom aluminum sprockets and gears cut for us.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

The primary reason that teams have difficulty "doing" FRC is that they design beyond their abilities. And they should.

When teams (and individuals) push the envelope, they are bound to fail, but hopefully they learn. It would be a great shame if many teams that are "struggling" stopped doing so and simply became "support" teams for those who can really "play the game".

FRC is a game of mentors. The best teams are guided by mentors who know how to balance on the knife edge of pushing the envelope and achieving success.

As for the "days before AM", I remember the challenges of just getting a drive system working in the days of Small Parts, extruded aluminum and a single 4' x 8' sheet of 1/2" plywood.

- Mr. Van
Coach, Robodox

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

I started in 2001. At the time I think Small Parts inc. was still the 'prefered' supplier. It's a little foggy, but I think you could buy from other suppliers as long as something equivalent was in SPI. Naturally, at the time, our corner of the woods didn't have anything like a Home Depot nearby. I think we had just gotten a Walmart. It was pretty rough.

Robots were a great deal more reliant on the KOP, but there was also a lot of interesting things in there that don't show up anymore. All your motors came in the kit, and lot of them had associated gearboxes and power transmission parts. Getting spares for KOP items was tough and teams traded a great deal (not using your FP motors? We'll trade you our window motors for them...). A big part of success was figuring out how to utilize the KOP and SPI catalog to maximum effect.

I've rewatched match videos from the early 2000s recently and I'll agree with JVN. Robots were slower, clumsy and the games ended up being dominated by some game breaking strategy. In 2002 95 had a 8fps robot and that was fast (two wheel drive with corner skids!). A 15+fps robot back then would have been thought impossible (and, with 30 amp breakers and a 60 amp main it'd have been challenging at best).

There were also lot of scissor lifts. Like, a lot of them. I have no idea why.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

I think the better question is why they've disappeared. They can be a very elegant and simple solution.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

I respectfully disagree with this mindset.

[rant]
The most inspiration-creating thing for any team that I have seen has always been success on the competition field. However, you did not reference "inspiration", you were talking about "learning", so I will talk about that instead.

In my time in FRC, the lion's share the big learning moments that I have had have come from continuous iterations on designs, not from spectacular fails. Sure, I learned things from these failures, and some of them were certainly necessary for my advancement. However, I should not strive to fail just for the learning opportunity, but rather take my small failures in stride as I incrementally build up my knowledge.

I see no difference for FRC teams.

Many, many teams build beyond their abilities. They often do not realize that their robot will not perform successfully until after their first qualification match. They struggle through competition, do not get selected for elims, then pack up and go home. Maybe when they get back, they look at their robot, and learn a small handful of things about why the design failed.

Then there are the teams that, from day 1 of build, choose less aggressive designs. These teams build robots to play these unglorifying "support" roles that everyone seems to look down upon, but which nevertheless are crucial for successful alliances. These teams may actually get a chance to test out their designs in week 5, and when these designs fail for an unexpected reason, the team still has a week to work out the bugs. These are the teams go to competitions, win more matches than they lose, and get picked for elims. The kids walk away proud that they were successful, and they have probably learned more than the average team, because they had dozens of small failures along the way, each of which required a unique solution.

Why in the world do so many people think that the first team I described is better off than the second? The teams that build "support" robots will still work to tweak, iterate, improve, and practice with these designs, just like any other team. The "chair" as an inbounding device (love it) is not an endpoint, but a starting point. Most teams never even reach their starting point because they strive too hard for the complicated designs.

(Clearly, not all teams fall into one of the above two categories, I illustrate these because I think that the sole difference between the two is the mindset of the leaders on the teams)

[/rant]

I would be surprised if my team didn't build "support role" type robots for the next 2 years, and maybe longer. I'd like to see someone try to tell any one of my kids that they were less inspired or that they learned less this year than the students on other teams who actually built shooters. They will probably laugh right in this person's face.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

I started with 234 in 2001, and that was in the transition between very limited materials and only Small Parts, to being able to use a part from any supplier as long as you could get it from small parts, to more open, to where we are today.

I think one of the major breakthru's was when Andy Baker posted drawings of his/team 45's gearboxes. That was a big event because nobody was sharing designs before that. Then Andy and Mark started selling some things, and IFI started selling more things, and it has taken off.

I do think it is interesting that we were so excited to be able to buy gearboxes, then shifting gearboxes, 2 motor and 3 motor versions, etc. and we have done that for several seasons.

And then for 2014 we built our own again.

Circle of Life. :)

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

I feel as FIRST has evolved over the last 20 or so years, teams have started to converge on similar designs. Back in the day, (really before 2010) I don't feel teams had a lot of experience building and designing different mechanisms. So they built what ever they thought would be the best for their situation. So you would get a lot of not so optimal designs for different arms or lifters, weird drives, and crazy mechanisms.

However, as FIRST has gotten older, teams have started to understand which type of mechanisms are the best. For example, if we had another game with inner tubes, almost every single team would have a elevator with a roller claw on the end. Why? Because this design was shown to be the most optimal in the past so why should a team try anything different. FIRST has transitioned from building something that works to building the most optimal design for the situation, and this is why designs have started to converge.

Shame, cause I loved the craziness of the older mechanisms, but great because the level of competitiveness has increased. I have no clue what is better or more inspiring, but this is a great topic for its own thread.

The 07 KOP transmissions were great gearboxes, save for a manufacturing defect. The carrier plates were not properly heat treated. Once the problem was identified, banebots went above and beyond to provide teams with replacement carrier plates in time for the first week of regionals.



I don't know how much it cost banebots to solve that problem, but the experience left me with a very high impression of the commitment to customers. Anyone can run into a manufacturing glitch when scaling up production. Banebots set a great example of how to deal with it.



I stumbled upon our old Bosch drill motors from our 04 drivetrain the other day. It reminded me to be amazed by how the FRC COTS industry has grown over the past decade.



Jason

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

I participated in FIRST way back from 1999 to 2001, then went off to college and became an engineer. Last year I came back. Wow. What a difference.

When I participated teams lived or died based on their chassis. I was lucky enough to be part of a team that could get something welded from a sponsor, other teams had to make do with wood or even fiberglass. The "best" teams had 80/20 chassis that let them do whatever they wanted. Drive trains where the other killer. Everything else was secondary to making sure your chassis and drive train were solid. These days you get that in the box.

SmallParts was king. The robots were far more mechanical-focused back then, with no autonomous period. The best motors were drill motors and the van door motor, and teams had to be cautioned against using set screws because they inevitably slipped. Keyways were a rarity since the motors themselves weren't keyed. The idea of buying a gearbox pre-made for everything was completely alien.

Are things better than they were before? Yes and no. I think something is lost when you can literally buy an entire robot and spend a few days assembling everything. But that's offset by the fact that raising the floor also raises the ceiling. Instead of starting with nothing teams can start with a kit bot, and IMO that offers a lot of possibility. We're a much more technologically advanced community now, with programming and automation taking a bigger role than before. The barrier to entry is far lower, and anything that exposes more students to FRC is a good thing.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

I don't know where people are getting this, unless by "entire robot" they mean "something that drives" and not much else.

Not that "something that drives" can't be an extremely productive part of an alliance, of course, but it certainly doesn't trivialize FRC (or even come close).

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

This is really true. I feel the same way. We no longer have wacky weird (but effective) designs. There's no longer weird stuff, like ball drives, swerve pods that go up and down, and other strange grabbers from team 47.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

How much of that is COTS availability, and how much of that is the game? I love the heck out of 111's lifting swerve of 2004, but when was the last time there was a game application that called for it?

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

Really? Really?!?

Articulating drive trains with various omni-directional, mecanum, and traction wheels are all the rage. 148 has a sideways drive that is activated entirely by inertia this year. 971 was experimenting with friction clutch gearboxes. There is no shortage of new and interesting software algorithms like CheesyDrive. There's been swerve drives with CIM motors inside wheels. We've had fans and ball magnets on robots, and some teams even used massive spinning weights to make their robots turn faster. Teams are 3D printing drive wheels and gearboxes.

We are in a golden age of innovation in FRC and robots today are way better than they've ever been before.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

Reading this topic, it's painfully obvious that most of the frequent posters on this board are completely unable to look beyond the top 10-20% of FRC teams. Again.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

Really?

The ironic part about your post is that it is in a thread started about COTS parts. COTS parts have done almost nothing for the top 10% of teams compared to what it has done for the middle 80%.

I remember the "good old days" when hardly anyone moved at a week one regional. It was painful. That is why Woodie Flowers, along with IFI, started a committee to fix the problem in 2004. I was fortunate enough to be asked to be on that committee. The #1 priority: NO Circle bots. If you don't know, it was a robot that only drove in circles. Without rehashing all the details, here are the highlights:

1. Got rid of the drill motors as primary drive motors. Replaced with 4 CIMS.

2. IFI lead designer of the Kit Chassis, making all the parts in their facility in Greenville, TX.

3. I was the lead designer of the gearbox, while I was still at FANUC Robotics.

4. I suggested bringing in the newly formed AndyMark to manufacture some of the hex shafts and gears as IFI was not experienced at that yet and the FANUC suppliers were way too expensive.

5. The majority of the operational stuff was handled between IFI, AM, and FIRST but I burned a favor with the FANUC operations manual department to make the instruction and assembly guide for the gearbox.

This single committee has changed the face of the FRC competition field more than any single entity, in my opinion.

The COTS movement, started by AM, has made it so the elite level teams (the 10% you say the majority concentrate on) had to up their game to stay on top of the pack. The biggest benefactors have been the middle 80% of teams. The teams that had the will, but not the way. The COTs movement gave them the way.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

Sorry, do you want teams that should be focusing on reliably achieving the game challenge to be innovating? Yeah that's a recipe for success right there.

Look at what COTs have done for the normal team:

- They can drive
- They aren't locked into whatever gear ratio they happened to guess when they initially made a gearbox (IF they could make one and didn't have to hack together some drill gearbox)
- Costs have come way down
- Innovations from top teams are actually available to them (shifting transmissions were a black art before AM, god help you about swerve drives)


What has COTS really done for teams like 118, 254, and 67? What do they have available that they couldn't have done before? (If someone from those teams could chime in here that'd be GREAT)

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

In my mind this was the single best thing to happen in FIRST to improve the level of play. After this happened you didn't need a machine shop to actually build a robot that wouldn't throw chains and have other reliability and drive issues. This allowed everyone to focus on contributing to the alliance rather than just moving.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

It's given them a much larger selection of great alliance partners.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that was in response to people complaining about COTS parts trivializing the design challenges of FIRST ("buying a robot," etc), not in response to people (correctly) saying that COTS parts are a very good thing and have greatly improved FIRST.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

If the statement was about the bottom 10%-20% of teams I have a really unpopular response for them: Maybe FRC isn't for you. There might be benefit in going to a different program with lower costs (FTC,VEX) while you build up the resources needed to compete in FRC. This includes mentorship, community, machining, and monetary resources.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

I wouldn't jump straight to brag, but we are proud of what we are able to accomplish within our resources. FRC558 works from a decent sized build area with only a hand tools, drill press, band saw, belt sander, and drum sander. Building within a teams real resources is one of the hardest things for a team to learn to do. We operate under a couple of mottos on the design side of the team:

"Steal from the best, design the rest" (draw inspiration from what you've seen work and integrate with your design)
"Why build what you can buy?" (within reason)

There is plenty of innovation to be had with COTS parts. Part integration and using products for things they were not originally intended are found on machines every year, if you just take the time to look and talk to teams about it.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

I have been around as a mentor since 2000 and I can tell you that things are so much better now and way more competitive now at every level. Every team has the ability to focus on innovative design concepts, rather simple reliability. As mentioned previously most matches were won or lost by counting how many robots were stuck driving in a circle.

In my opinion the current KOP rules more closely simulates the real world of engineering anyway. I worked as a designer in the food & packaging industries for many years. Most of the designs in our industry were a collection of COTS parts that were custom packaged for our design task. Truly custom design was only performed on about 25% of the overall production line and about half of that was outsourced.

In my industry if your boss found you spending hours designing an unproven custom gearbox when you could have purchased it from a catalog in 10 minutes, you would have a lot of explaining to do. Why not use your time to create innovative overall designs rather than solving problems that have already been solved. Its a valid question.

Its important for the kids to understand how a gearbox works, but they do not need to design it from scratch to have the full engineering experience.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

Yes, that's an entire robot. It has a chassis, drive train, can pass inspection, and play in the competition. And nowhere in my post did I say that doing so "trivializes" FRC, particularly since in the very next sentence I talk about how having the fundamentals of a robot provided in the kit are a good thing since raising the floor also raises the ceiling. My team particularly benefits from the KOP. We don't have a lot of equipment, mostly hand power tools, so being able to start with the chassis is ideal for us.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

Then what exactly is "lost?" What benefit was there to a competition where most teams struggle to get something that moves?

Also, I have a hard time construing something that's not at all designed to play the specific game an "entire" robot.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

Small Parts Catalog from 1996 with the winning robot from Ramp N Roll.
Some day I will tell you how this machine was involved in the creation of the term "Gracious Professionalism"

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

The benefit was the experience of building the chassis and drive train, of having the students innovate and work with what they were given. Of having built something completely from scratch. Now that innovation has shifted to the manipulators and autonomous mode, with the upper echelon teams also being free to develop their drive trains and chassis. I really don't see what you're arguing about. All I said was "something" was lost when they transitioned towards a more COTS oriented foundation, and that whatever was lost was offset by what was gained with respect to opening up the game to more teams.

A team can purchase everything necessary to create a robot (including elements specifically designed for the individual competition, especially Aerial Assist) and assemble it. I suppose we can argue about whether or not using AndyMark's bumper kits count as assembly, but I put that on the same level as having to cut the frame to the right size.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

I don't think the vast majority of teams are capable of making gearboxes from scratch, so I find it hard to lament the "loss" of this particular challenge.

Students still have to innovate and work with what they're given. What they're given now is strictly better, as far as I can tell, than what they were given in the past.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

Judging from the issues some teams have with bumpers... Nothing is trivial.:)

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

As I recall, before AndyMark, there was darkness, weeping, and gnashing of teeth.

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

No Ed, you're confusing BC (Before COTS) with After Aerial Assist. :P

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

I think that was me. ;)

Re: What was there before AndyMark?
 

You had a gearbox; the drill motors were attached to them.

But you're right, things are better for teams now then they were in the past.