Re: RI3D this year?
 

We at 4464 abandoned El Toro fairly early for just this reason. Looked very simple in the video, but tuning it was a real pain and it just wasn't as reliable as the overhead roller.

Re: RI3D this year?
 

In FRC and in industry, teams are presented with problems, variations of which have been solved many times over in the past. It's very difficult to solve these problems in a completely original way. It is an accepted and sensible practice to seek out and draw from existing solutions.

Ri3D is a set of open source solutions to a more specific problem to which your competitors also have free access. This situation doesn't break a market or an FRC competition, because the open source stuff isn't good enough to win the game. It's just the baseline. Better solutions are waiting to be identified, and it's also possible to execute the existing solutions better in many different ways. Plenty of room for innovation exists even in the presence of products that already work well.

Re: RI3D this year?
 

I'm seeing a lot of the same arguments that popped up in the last thread show up here again. While everyone is free to their opinions, a bit more of an open mind would be much appreciated.

One thing in particular strikes me as particularly overgeneralized and perhaps misunderstood-- when people are talking about Ri3D, it's very common to hear generalizations like "Many teams were just straight Ri3D clones," or "Teams don't learn as much because they have preexisting plans to work from"-- or "Teams would be much better off if they just did _____." I'd like to urge the people making comments along these lines to perhaps take a broader view of teams-- understand that the "stereotypical rookie" is just that-- a stereotype. Every team has a huge multitude of unique complexity to it based on the people involved, location, access to sponsors, etc. To presume that there is an objectively correct way for them to approach a problem (or that you or I, people who likely know very little of their full situation, can quickly identify that solution based on a few paragraphs of text and tell them whether they're learning enough or meeting the goals of FIRST), to me, is doing a great disservice to the problem(s) at hand.

It also strikes me as a little bit odd that people seem to be assuming that none of our hypothetical new teams are going to be trying anything new in terms of community interaction or resources. Do people really think that the previous two Ri3D competitions are a full representation of what groups can do with the challenge? I can think of several different things teams could do during and after the three days that haven't been done by existing teams (at least publicly).

Lastly, a couple of things for the people who think that Robot in 3 Days isn't as useful of a resource as it could be, or are on the fence about it:

What sort of content do you think would be most beneficial for Ri3D teams to release (during or after the three days)?

If you think there are too many "Ri3D clones" out there, what do you think Ri3D teams can do (other than completely stop the competition) to mitigate this effect?

What do you not see Ri3D teams doing that you wish they would do?

Overall, what would you like to see changed about how Ri3D teams approach the challenge?

PS: There's nothing about Robot in Three Days that says only professional engineers can compete...

Re: RI3D this year?
 

I'd rather see more Ri3D clones than the usual amount of motionless bricks at competition.

Re: RI3D this year?
 

I'd prefer it be deeper in the build season (or after). But for the same reasons that we don't want our teams to talk robots during the first phase (game analysis) I'd rather my students not get their ideas from Ri3D. I don't think it's good for the sport...

Re: RI3D this year?
 

I like RI3D, and certainly hope that there will be some teams doing something like that this year. However, echoing some of the thoughts that peopled have stated, it can be annoying if you think of a great idea, and then figure out that RI3D did it. You don't want to seem like an unoriginal copy cat.

Re: RI3D this year?
 

As a team, we study the Ri3D robots. But we don't study them as robots per se, we study their approaches to the game and their strategies.

Re: RI3D this year?
 

More information is always a good thing, and coming from talented mentors and engineers all over the country is even better. My only gripe is that in general the Ri3D and BuildBlitz teams all focused on the glamorous tasks instead of presenting the MCC or support/utility robot designs.

Nearly every year we come to the point where hundreds of teams would have done much better designing for the support tasks.

Re: RI3D this year?
 

I agree completely. I personally would love to see one of the Ri3D teams solely focus on the MCC or other support tasks, and have clear documentation on the process by which they determined why this would be advantageous for any team. The majority of teams will always be better off building robots like these instead of complex ones that are designed for the game's "primary" (for lack of a better word) objectives.

Re: RI3D this year?
 

Here's the thing about RI3D. They show you concepts, but teams still have to do the hard part - making it work! You can't just arbitrarily slap a catapult together and expect it to meet your performance requirements on the first try. It still takes good problem solving skills and creative thinking to take a concept presented in the RI3D machines and making it work for you.

Nick

Re: RI3D this year?
 

Reading complaints about Ri3D I can hear Joe Walsh singing “I can't complain but sometimes I still do” in the background. It’s surprising that the community doesn’t complain about pictures/threads about drivetrain ideas, how to build bumpers, pneumatics, calculating power using multiple motors or countless other items in White Papers. It only seems to be concerned about sharing ideas on how to obtain and score the game piece(s) somehow as being an unfair competitive advantage or stifling creativity. I can only say “Life's been good to me so far” and personally think Ri3D is a case of “Coopertition®. Founded on the concept and philosophy that teams can and should help and cooperate with each other even as they complete. Rather than taken as a case of “I'm lazy but it takes all my time”.

Re: RI3D this year?
 

This:
Even copying the Ri3D guys can be a challenge for mechanically disadvantaged teams. A suggestion that building a competent non-flashy robot is a good strategy would be a move in the right direction.

Re: RI3D this year?
 

There were zero Ri3D / BB bots on Einstein last year.

Each robot on Einstein came from a process developed by and for that team. Some of those processes might have involved looking at, and evaluating, Ri3D and BB designs and ideas.

It worked for them, and it was all pretty inspiring to me.

Re: RI3D this year?
 

There are three things you do not bring up on a date: Religion, Politics, Exes.

There are now three thing you do not bring up on a date with an FRC member: Mentor vs Student Build, How drive teams are selected, and Ri3D opinions.

The first two have been around awhile and have merit to be debated but sometimes I feel that the last one makes for some interesting gripes that I shall highlight:

Teams just copy their idea instead of designing their own:
If you are upset about this why not go to those teams, who are most likely less fortunate then yours, and offer them use of your facilities, mentors, or even to sit in on your strategy sessions. I think most teams who just straight copy a design (whether Ri3D or a previous robot from a similar game) have less resources, thus they can't spend as much time developing a design or strategy as they need a lot of time to actually build the machine.

It makes for less inspired students:
I feel this one is a double edged sword, I know most of the original Ri3D crew since I am from Florida, and they are nearly all alumni how cool is that to students to know that these people went from having to pour blood, sweat and tears for 6 weeks can now build a similar product in 3 days? It shows that you can become a skilled engineer at a young age to many students who only have mentors 20 years older then them.

Now the bad part is that in terms of inspiring for the here and now I can see where people come from, thinking up a weird unique idea then seeing it work is one of the most inspiring things when on an engineering project and these builds can prevent said ideas from happening, on the other hand when you are a low resource team like described above you may not have the ability to pull of said design and it may prevent you from thinking about something unique even if you have the resources to pull it off down the line.

It wasn't that bad with only one group but now there are too many
This one mostly comes from the idea that it is limiting the number of unique robots that are at a competition, thus making it less exciting. I can honestly say if you took a black and white picture of every robot in Florida, with no numbers or logos, I could tell you which team it came from with about a 90% accuracy. The more of these that people "copy" the more unique robots appear, due to combining aspects of each one. I feel like down the line if we still only had the original crew, that this would be a problem since designs would be severely limited in a challenging game. (As an aside there is still only 1 game where i felt more then half the field looked the same and that was 2010)

It is not allowing teams to fail
This is one that is not said to much publicly but I have had it discussed with me in private. You can learn a lot from failure, it teaches you more then victory. I feel people who make this argument are what people describe as middle of the road teams, teams who are consistently good enough to be in eliminations but are rarely the alliance captain, the reason for this complaint is it makes the middle of the pack bigger thus teams are more likely to miss eliminations due to a plethora of similar teams. That being said I both agree and disagree with the first reasoning for wanting teams to fail. Yes it allows for growth when you are almost embarrassed to see your robot on the field and never want to be in that position again, but for the other members of your alliance, as it has been said time and time again, I would rather have a Ri3D clone then someone who doesn't function on an alliance.


These are just the arguments I remember off the top of my head, if more of them come out the wood works I will respond further :D

Re: RI3D this year?
 

Aspects from all of the Ri3D robots can be used to move through the build process quicker by knowing what works and doesn't work. The idea that people shouldn't be able to be inspired by ideas created by other teams in unreasonable. They proved that a catapult was a good IDEA and could work if done right. They also proved the over the top intake would also work. Cheesy poofs had a variation the over the top intake that worked much better then the originals because they innovated the design to make a more superior robot.