Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

:ahh: This is the exact opposite of our programming team. We not only have Mentors teaching students, but we have experienced students teaching students. The kids that are in our programming team are much greatly inspired and even all of the freshman have been able to make a significant contribution to the code without any prior experience!

The goal is not to have a working robot, it is to have the STUDENTS build a working robot and a Mentor is one of the tools that they use to get to that goal.

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

I'm glad your team chooses to operate in a way that works for your team. Don't conflate what is best for your team with what is best for every team.

Feel free to search the archives for thousands of posts on the subject matter. It's been discussed to death.

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

:deadhorse:

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

I think it is important to point out that FRC is not a competition about it is not about which mentor team can build a better bot. The mission statement of FIRST is: "Our mission is to show students of every age that science, technology, and problem-solving are not only fun and rewarding, but are proven paths to successful careers and a bright future for us all." - www.usfirst.org

Keyword: students

Not only that, but this is a competition for High School students. If mentors do a majority of the building, then what is the point of the competition? One could hire NASA engineers to build them a better robot and they would crush the group of high school kids that built their bot themselves. While it is important for Mentors to help, they SHOULD only be there for teaching purposes, no matter the skill of your team.

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

(Trust me, I used to be in the same camp as you, being upset about mentor "over-involvement." Then, I actually talked to a few people from "powerhouse" teams and saw the impact they have on the students. You should try it. It really is eye-opening, and this is coming from a student who's never been on a team with an annual budget over $7,000.)

Once again, this topic has been discussed to death, but the prevailing argument is typically this: what works for your team is a unique solution that is not fully duplicated by any other teams. Other teams have found different solutions that all achieve the goal of inspiring students, all by varying levels of mentor involvement. However, the common goal is almost always achieved: The students are inspired. If the students are being inspired, who are we to be telling them they're being inspired wrong?

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

FRC: FIRST Robotics Competition.

It's a competition. There is no rule that says we cannot have a team of 300 of the brightest engineers build our robot for us. Team 254 inspires students by winning and being better than 99% of everybody else. That's their call to make, and not ours to discuss or criticize.

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

Please read the actual mission statement, located at http://www.usfirst.org/aboutus/vision, and then refocus your statement. I'll spare you the trouble of going to the link. (Hint: You should have clicked the link at the end of that statement on the front page that you quoted.)

Emphasis mine.

Now that we've established that FIRST's mission is accomplished by mentor-based programs, we can show that this is not necessarily a competition of high school students, but a competition of partnerships between high school students and adult (college/professional) mentors, and therefore your entire premise falls apart, save for one thing: the whole "engineer bot beats up on student bot" premise, which has already been taken care of on the field by the beatings going the other way as well as the mentioned way.

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

You inspire your way. I'll inspire my way.

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

I knew we'd find a way to squeeze this issue into the build season this year. Good job!

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

Just because a team has 300 engineers doesn't mean they are the best robot. Sometimes simplicity is the best.

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

"Our mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership." - The actual mission statement.

FIRST was founded on the basis of a partnership between mentors, students, and sponsors. How each team chooses to integrate those groups is their prerogative, and as long as they're inspiring students and letting those kids see in themselves something they hadn't before? It is nobody else's business how they choose to run.

Done, done, and done. :deadhorse:

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

*sigh*

Let me first say that everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

That being said, I do think that the goal of FIRST is not to win at Nationals or even build really good robots. Rather, it is to educate students about STEM, give them some hands-on practice, and encourage cooperation and good sportsmanship.

This goal can be achieved with mentors. It can also be achieved without mentors.

Mentors seem to make a team more likely to win. But that isn't the goal of FIRST! If mentors are capable of helping students learn, though, then they may be invaluable in achieving the real goal of FIRST. This is the true value of mentors.

Just as long as the mentors don't do all the work while the students play Ping-Pong in the corner, which is defeating the whole purpose of FIRST. But I don't see that happen very often.

Dang. We're still beating this dead horse?

:deadhorse:

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

If tech firms were 100% run by teenagers, 99% of them would fail within their first 6 weeks. The world markets are too competitive and unforgiving.

:deadhorse:

Here I thought this thread was revived to discuss possible merits of Cheesy Vision for this year's game. There seem to be a couple...

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

Can a mod just delete this thread? It has gone completely off track of the original intent.

I've been out of the FRC game for awhile. I didn't even know this website existed until a week ago through an old friend.

Anyways. Mentor involvement is crucial for learning in general. Very few student are capable of teaching themselves everything. That being said, it irks me that a mentor of 254 made this post, and not a student. Take a look at other code releases. Having looked through the threads, I found another code release that was posted by a student whose first year in FRC was last year, and that code could honestly have a paper written about it and publish it in a peer review journal. It's not anything to look into, it just gets under my skin coming from a team that had 2 mentors, both of which were teachers and not engineers, and less than 10 students.

The only way to explicitely prove if a team has there mentors do everything would be to do a build season without mentors, and each team given the same budget. But that is never going to happen, mostly for liability reasons I'd assume.

That being said, CheesyVision was an innovative, but extremely elementary, solution to a problem. Anyone with a basic understanding of computer vision could sit down and write it.

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

I agree with either locking this thread, or moving all of this discussion to a new thread and deleting the posts that have been added in the past day. This thread is about Cheesy Vision, not a place to argue about mentors vs students.

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

This thread should be locked. The discussion about mentors v students should be maintained just as a point of reference for the inevitable future discussions.

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

QFT.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

This thread has been split from the CheesyVision thread.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

This discussion has been beaten to death over the years, but I think it's still a good thing to bring it up occasionally, and for everyone to take a few moments of introspection to understand how it is they work with their team, and how it could be better.

Personally, I don't care how other teams are run, so long as one thing happens: the students are inspired. The only success that matters out there, in my mind, is the percentage of students from a team that go on to major in something relevant and related to their job on the team. If a team has this happening at near 100%, then they don't need to change a thing. If, on the other hand, they find they are driving away kids, then something needs to change.

I can't count the number of students I've seen who have left our team when they graduate and are on a completely different career path than they imagined when they started high school. That's all the success you need.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

I'm going to disagree again If a student designs parts all their years on the team and decides they don't like it and instead go into theatre arts I don't consider this a failing. In fact, I consider this a success. Yeah, we need engineers and it's a great profession for some folks. But if the only thing a student gets out of 4 years on the team is a list of things they don't want to do I'm happy with that. Mission Accomplished, they still have a better understanding of what it takes to be an engineer and hopefully some better problem solving skills.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Strongly agree. An experience that allows you to discover what you don't like is just as valuable as one that allows you to discover what you do like.

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

This isn't a tech firm, it's a non-profit robotics competition. Many of these teams have low to minimal mentor involvement, and they do perfectly fine. There's a certain extent of mentor involvement that both works well and allows the students to enjoy themselves and be inspired. There's a difference between helping a struggling team and taking over from the students.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Hey look! Another one of these threads. Is this like an annual gag or something?

In all seriousness though, you run your team how you want to, and we'll run our team how we want to. If you want to imitate our processes, we'd be glad to have a friendly discussion of how/what we do, but I am SO sick and tired of the "Mentor Build Robot" threads. My team doesn't do it, and I don't care if your team does.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

I would think a student like this would have found a different path or position on the team... Why would they keep doing something they don't like for 4 years?. Someone who goes on to major in theatre arts may have spent their time in the team preparing the chairman's presentation (which is basically a short skit acted out by 2-3 people in front of judges), doing pit presentations to judges (similar in some respects to improv), or working on things like the Safety animation, chairman's video, or a season release video (directing, editing footage, writing scripts, etc). There is certainly room on an FRC team for someone who wants to go into theatre arts. This isn't all about the robot, the robot is just the vehicle you use to create the inspiration and environment to help the kids succeed.

Frankly, if I had a student that spent their entire fine with the team doing robot build activities and then decided she wanted to go into theatre, I would feel like I failed that student. It's not my job to turn every student into an engineer. Rather, it's my job to show them the options and nurture their interests so they can be successful in their career path. Honestly, there are very few career paths out there that can't have a start with a well organised FIRST team.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

What if that student enjoyed building and machining but it wasn't what they wanted to do with their life. They did it on the team because they enjoyed doing it and probably wouldn't get to do much it later on. Would that make a difference in your opinion?

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

I'm not trying to tell anyone how to feel but I don't think you should feel that way. Part of being a complete person is having a multifaceted personality and many passions. Some of the students I work with are not driven to become engineers. They join our team because the passion of other students and our passions as mentors is infectious and that is what drives them. Talented and driven people like to work with other talented and driven people. I'm just as proud of the liberal arts majors as I am of the material science majors that I've helped to inspire.

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

The point was that for sustainability reasons each individual team should be run like a small tech firm. I agree that the philosophy doesn't mean the mentors make all decisions and do all of the work*. Mentors are definitely needed at the critical decisions in order to prevent a single group of students from dictating or ruining every other students' experience in a season. Sometimes this has to happen forcefully, depending on the culture of the community & the students in a given season.

The level of how much involvement is an art - we certainly have been overly-involved in the past - but as a team gains experience they'll find the right balance for themselves.

*Except leading the fundraising team ... I have yet to meet a student who successfully solicits a large business for fundraising without significant mentor involvement...

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Who said they didn't like it? Or maybe they liked doing it because they connected with a mentor or another student there. Or because they were there because the alternative was being at home that was bad for them. If they were happy and learning something about engineering or about themselves I'd view this as a success. Could they have gotten more out of the program? Maybe. But maybe what they needed out of it was just social interaction.

This isn't a hypothetical situation, I've had multiple students over the years who were at robotics because it was either there or be at home alone while their parents worked. One that sticks out in my mind clearly had 0 interest in building robots. He thought they were cool, but he just wanted somewhere to interact with people. He'd help build or wire if we asked him to. But you could tell his heart just wasn't in it. But he was the first to every meeting and one of the last to leave every meeting. He WANTED to be there. But it wasn't the robot he was interested in. I don't feel like I failed him at all. I don't know where he ended up (I moved across the country the next year). But I at least hope he got something out of the program, and I know that being there made him happier. Definitely not a failure.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

This is such a tough subject because there isn't really any "right" answer... It is very true that each team has to have its own way of operating due to the personalities, capabilities, needs, etc. of its own students and mentors.... It is also true that team that attempt to really maximize the amount of decision-making power and construction hours their kids have are at a major competitive disadvantage when facing teams where the mentors hold the balance of power.
Philosophically, I do believe that it is ideal for each team to find it's own balance. However, in many ways, that undermines the spirit of competition. Really: who is competing against whom?

I suspect that, if FIRST wants to continue to hold "Championships" and if the community keeps hailing "elite" teams, FIRST is going to have to give some guidance as to an appropriate balance.

However, there will always need to be a some freedom for teams to do things for themselves. Our team is a great example: Last year, we were loaded with upper-classmen - students with three years of FRC under their belts. This year, we have very few upper-classmen and our leadership team is dominated by sophomores. Last year, our mentors stepped back a lot more and let the upper-classmen have much more "say" in the process. We let them make the mistakes they needed to make, etc. This year, the kids require much more direct guidance.

I do believe that, in order to inspire the kids, they really do need to be involved in the building and design process. They can't be spectators. AT the same time, mentors are important because they bring education, experience and specific expertise to the table to which the students would not otherwise have access. The mentors must also play a major role in the process.

I have been to Championships once... While wandering about the pits of all the "elite" teams and those often accused of having "mentor-built" robots, I noticed one thing very consistently: There were always students working on the robots. Sometimes they were working hand-in-hand with mentors. Sometimes mentors were simply supervising. Sometimes the kids were working, basically, on their own. I see nothing but good in all of these models. I would be concerned if, I were to wander into a pit and see three or four mentors actively working - and no students to be found. I just haven't seen this.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

I started similar thread before defending powerhouse teams, and it got out of hand, but here's my input before this thread gets closed:

I personally believe that a sign of a strong team with fewer resources than powerhouse teams is one that gets encouraged by being outperformed at a competition. I see that as motivation for a team to do more fundraising, more projects, more outreach (if we're also talking chairman's), and more involvement overall, from students, parents, mentors, and sponsors.

In the six years I've been in FRC, I see powerhouse teams as something to emulate, rather than feel inferior to. And all these six years have been on 701, and by being encouraged by defeat instead of discouraged, I've seen my team become better and better.The team didn't get its first blue banner until its 13th year, and in that same season we followed that first banner with two more. Plus, in that same season, we were accused of being mentor built when the reality was that our robot was built by students only. I think that shows how far inspiration can go if you define and implement your priorities, and improve little by little. None of that would have happened if we had any doubts about ourselves as a team.

Powerhouse teams don't happen overnight. They had to work to that level too, regardless of who is involved.

This reminds me of a Confucius quote: "By three ways we may learn wisdom: first is by reflection, which is noblest; second by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience , which is the bitterest."

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

No, your goal is to have the students build a working robot. The goal of FIRST is to inspire students. I say this having spent 4 years (as a student) on a team well known for being almost entirely student driven. It worked well for us, and I got a lot out of the program, but if other teams find that they can maximize inspiration in other ways, then more power to them. If you have mentors on your team capable of teaching programming to the level that your students can do all of it, you're very lucky.

A side note, of the teams you would consider "mentor built," competitive ones are extremely rare. Yes there are the perennial powerhouses, whose philosophies you may not agree with, but they are a tiny fraction of "mentor built" teams. Not only that, but the students do far more than you would expect on most of them. When I think mentor robot, I don't think powerhouse. I think dad-robot built by under-qualified adults unwilling to give students the reins, and unable to teach new skills.

Nobody complains about them because they don't often win. If you're truly looking to rescue students from the terrors of mentorship, don't try to rescue them from engineers from whom they may learn something.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Very well written.

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

I agree that mentors are needed to be present at some of the major decisions, but not all. We at programming have a single mentor, and he does only a little more than we need him to. We do all of our own programming, and even teach the freshman programmers what they need to know before the season starts, based on the last year's code and WPILib API. However, they do not need to be "forceful" in any way. The students should be allowed to make their own mistakes to the extent possible, as in a tech firm, to continue the analogy. Even if one group is in charge of the others, this is not as much of a problem as you make it out to be in most situations. As long as nothing that would horribly harm the team is prevented, the students should have as much free reign as possible.

"As a team gains experience they'll find the right balance for themselves" rubs me the wrong way. If the team is largely mentor-run, the students will not be able to make the decision about what balance they want. That just seems.... wrong...

Our team actually has almost zero mentor involvement in regards to fundraising, etc. We have a large "marketing" team that is competent enough to make their own decisions to benefit the team appropriately. They have successfully funded the majority of the team's cash needs for the past few years, with little mentor involvement.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

When I was a younger I used to get really defensive when people said, "There's no way high school kids built that robot by themselves."

Now I say, "That's the point!!!"

Thank you to all those mentors that taught me how to robot. I can only hope to pay it forward. And thank you, to the other mentors (adult and student) that pay it forward too.

Re: Team 254 Presents: CheesyVision
 

Don't you students forget that us mentors might actually *like* building robots. Most of us are also volunteers. It's easy to keep volunteer mentors around when they get to do things that they enjoy. I pencil-whip problems and model things in CAD all freakin' day, and I really enjoy going to robotics and making parts, it's a great change of pace. Coaching would hold less appeal for me if I couldn't work with my students in the hands-on part of FRC (as well as designing).

Alternatively, it is in-arguably inspiring to watch someone do what they're really good at. One of 95's coaches is a guy who owns his own CNC machining company. Our students are always enthralled watching him program, setup, and run our CNC mill. Suddenly their creativity spikes because they can see what is possible.

Was that sub-team setup by students or mentors or both?

Often times successful efforts that are now student-run were initiated by a group of students AND mentors.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

I understand this issue, but I don't know a fix for it. I've tried reaching out to a few other teams in my area to spread around more knowledge, but a lot of the time it goes unanswered.

The teams with the attitude of "Hey! Help us build a robot!" tend to attract more mentors than those that stay silent, and those of us (mentors) who are looking to teach kids about designing/building/testing are going to find the vocal teams first. I'm in Phoenix AZ. If anyone in the area wants input or help with their design just send me a message! I like helping teams make competitive robots, but I can't help if I don't know who/where you are.

It's not a factor of winning/losing for me; I just want to pass on knowledge to students and build neat things. Naturally, I'll be working the most with a team that is looking for that kind of support.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

I normally stay far away from these threads, but I thought I'd say this once:

FIRST is about inspiration. There are many ways to be inspired. Inspiration means different things to different people. Consider these situations:

• Students build a robot by themselves, or with limited mentor guidance. Their success (by their definition) and the knowledge of what they were able to achieve (personally able to achieve, due to limited mentor involvement), inspires them to go into STEM.
  
  
• Students build a robot with some mentor guidance. Their success (by their definition) and the knowledge of what they were able to achieve (and possibly the knowledge of what they could be able to achieve, by seeing what their mentors know), inspires them to go into STEM.
  
  
• Students build a robot with mentor guidance. Their success (by their definition) and the knowledge of what they were able to achieve (and possibly the knowledge of what they could be able to achieve, by seeing what their mentors know), inspires them to go into STEM.
  
  
• Students on any type of team go to competition and see other teams compete, some with more mentor involvement that may have great success. They return with the knowledge of what is possible (and possibly try to use it to change their team), and are inspired to go into STEM.
  
  
• Students on any type of team go to competition and see other teams compete, some with less mentor involvement. They return with the knowledge of what is possible (and possibly try to use it to change their team), and are inspired to go into STEM.

As a student, I find all of these scenarios inspiring in their own way, and personally do not see how any of these scenarios could be considered the "wrong" way to inspire. Some people will find one scenario more inspiring to them than another, and other vice versa.

To me, if a team inspires their students, they are successful. How they decide to achieve their inspiration depends on the team, and could range from very little to a lot of mentor involvement.

Until one method has been shown to not inspire students to pursue STEM, I believe that teams with a high level of mentor involvement are just as relevant to the mission of FIRST as those with little or no mentor involvement. Which direction a team chooses to go is completely their own decision, and should not be pushed as the one "right" way to do FRC.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Frankly, I'm there to try to inspire the students, not babysit someone who just doesn't want to go home. If someone's on the team but has no interest in the robot, then I put in the effort to find out what interests them, then figure out what they can do with the team that both fulfills their interests and shows them potential career opportunities they may not have been aware of. As I said before, it's not all about the robot. There are a hundred things students can be doing with a team other than working on the robot, and they can lead to true inspiration and life-long career paths. It just takes more effort to make that a reality for ALL of the students on a team.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

I was wondering what was up with the cold opening.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

QFT. Our team was started in 2001 as a partnership with BP, and it was 8 years before we won a regional. 8 years! That's when the 3000's teams were entering the fray. I see a lot of rookie teams getting discouraged, but sometimes all it takes is dedication, and years of experience to know what works and what doesn't.

I've been following this thread for a while, and thought I might give a student's perspective - especially meant for those who think that a good robot can't be built by students. Competitive robot =/= mentor built.

On my team, I have first-hand experience that the robot is fabricated by students. That does not, by any means mean our mentors are not involved. It's a joint effort to brainstorm, innovate, and design this vehicle. It's not designed by a sponsor or anything either; we cut every part and drill every hole by hand in our shop.

A lot of what makes teams good is a passion to improve and prove yourself. Our programming subteam doesn't have a mentor who is actually a programmer, let alone in LabView. We have some build mentors who help guide the functions and logic necessary, but when it comes to actually coding the robot, it's all on the students - thankfully, they are very self-motivated, working on code all the time, pretty much for fun. (One decided to make our current team website from scratch over the summer a year ago, and another programmer made an FRC statistics site, http://bbqfrc.x10host.com.) We've managed to win 5 Innovation in Control awards in the past three years, and really all I can attribute that to is the persistence of our programming team.

When we go to competition, we see teams with other robots, often times better than ours, but we never think - "Man, I wish ____ built or robot for us too." We take that and challenge ourselves to build a robot that can compete at the same level as those powerhouse teams, and we're getting there, thanks to the hard work of generations of mentors and students on our team. As a side note, I have worked personally with students from teams that routinely get accused of the "50+ mentor built robot syndrome" - they are just as knowledgeable, and I'm sure they were "inspired," since it seems we like to throw that word around a lot when talking about this subject.

In the end, I think that if a team wants to get better, they'll find a way to bring themselves up, rather than complain about what other teams have and don't have. It might take time, but it's worth the wait to build this program. Besides that, every student and on every team may be "inspired" in a different way from the other. There isn't much one can do about the teams whose programs you may not necessarily agree with, but the fact is you will have to live with it and move on.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Must be nice... I had to be there to babysit because I wasn't going to send them to homes where they'd gotten robbed at gun point the night before*. If they wanted to be there I'd try to find things that interested them. If I couldn't find anything I'd let them do what they wanted as long as it didn't disturb anyone else. Besides, you never know what's going to spark an interest. I had way too many students and not enough mentors to sit and focus on each one, if you've got enough mentors to focus on each student then count your blessings. But don't preach at those who aren't lucky enough to be in that situation.

Remember that not all kids are capable of telling you what they want to do. No matter how much you ask it sometimes boils down to finding just being lucky enough to find it. This was a student who we could BARELY get to talk, let alone tell us what he wanted to be doing.


*I wish this was an exaggeration. It happened... multiple times.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Ah, here's the Chief Delphi that I know and love. Oh how I have missed you.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

My experience as a student could be somewhat similar. I was a freshmen on the team and our only programmer a senior was graduating. By the end of my freshmen year I knew someone had to take over as the programmer but it didn't take long to realize that no one really wanted to do it because they had other interests. I decided to fill the role as the programmer and began to work on different projects learning to code and I hated it. It was so confusing to me but I knew that we needed it and that our robots both land and underwater would perform a far deal lower than if I didn't do it so I stuck with it. So I continued to do programming and hated it for about 2 years. However most of my hate was the result of not understanding it and not having a solid background of the basics. Once it started coming more naturally, I love programming now. I love all the things you can do with it and can't imagine not doing it. Had I just begun it my senior year, I probably would have hated it still and not went into a computer science major.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

On a rather unrelated note I would like to remind some of the senior CD users of a quote from the FAQ section here:


Emphasis Mine.

I don't believe anything offensive was said in this thread. I know they're just dots, but sometimes I feel as though this forum is not accepting enough to newcomers with questions or opinions on previously discussed topics.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Oh no! My magic internet points!

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

When members of the self appointed senior brain-trust neg rep bomb a new member, they heavily discourage the person from trying to understand the community and potentially grow because of future interactions with the community. I'm sure needlessly being a knob over a discussion topic just to get one's jollies off may seem harmless to some, but it's really unnecessary, damaging, and pathetic.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Just as an aside: If a new member is being a prick, then are we sure they're even trying to understand the community?

Yes, there's a reason I'm asking. No, I won't go any further into the matter.

And, for the record, I have never given out a single neg rep. Neutral, yes, on a couple of occasions. Negative, nope (not that I haven't wanted to... but usually by the time I get around to going for it 47 other people have done so already).

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

I'd agree with you if this was an open and shut case of a troll screwing around. As far as I know this is someone who has been in the program for a fraction of the time compared to a likely member of the rep-bombing cabal (or you or myself) and lacks perspective on what this program means. I learn something new about FIRST or get a new perspective on the programs almost every single day. I have not always had this perspective and at one time held opinions similar to ZackAlfakir.

I really don't understand why people with their actual name and team number attached to them choose to troll the board, and I find it even more bizarre that more senior members of the board take time out of their day to passively or actively dish back any level of vitriol to an opinion they disagree with.

I really don't want to touch this anymore either, since a) it's not necessarily on-topic and b) no one is really going to take any of this into account after we all break out the Competition Season Controversy Bingo cards in a couple weeks and any perceived slight that gets broadcasted onto the forums receives the predictable responses.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

The funny thing is there was a thread recently about why we don't use reddit more. The use of negative reputation in this thread is similar to the qualms many people have about the downvote feature on reddit.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

In the past, I mentored a team where the teacher leading the team didn't want the mentors to do anything other than ensure the students didn't hurt themselves with the power tools. We were admonished for telling some of the students that they needed to read the rules after they suggested strategies or mechanisms that we knew would be ruled illegal. It was okay with her that many of the student leaders spent half their time at the build meetings sleeping or playing computer games. I don't think that the students learned very much, nor were they inspired. We were basically babysitters. That was no fun so I moved on to another team where the students actually listen when given advice. It is gratifying to see a student using some tool technique that I taught them the previous week. It is now worth it to me to drive about 18-20 miles one way (3 times as far as for the other team).


It is very tempting to leave a copy of this picture on my Boss' desk.

In my opinion, I find it really frustrating to walk by a pit and see students standing there while the mentors do all the work. It is also frustrating to see teams videos of them working and you see more mentors working on the robot than students, or a Chairmans video with 1 student shown the whole time and about 15-20 different mentors.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Why is it frustrating?
Is it because you think in this "mentor-based competition" that maybe someone with mentors is at an advantage?

Oh wow...sounds like maybe they want you to use mentors?

Also, I've seen plenty of terrible "mentor built" robots, and plenty of awesome "student built" robots...whatever those even mean to you.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Exactly, this is what ZackAlfakir and I were talking about. It is all well and good if the students are being "inspired" by the success of the mentors, but it is important that they learn what they are doing, which they can only do by actually doing it. As in a Chairman's video with only one student shown vs a large amount of mentors, the achievements recorded there should not reflect the work of the mentors but rather what the students have achieved.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

This mission of this program is to inspire students to pursue an education or career in STEM, it is not to teach them. Teaching already happens in school; teaching happens during the process of inspiration; it is a byproduct of this program, but it is not one of the goals.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Just a real-quick note on the red dots thing - it's not just the 'senior brain trust' handing out the red dots here. I got some for my post in this thread with just the caption 'No' or 'Wrong' from people who apparently disagree with me.

Considering this is an opinion discussion, that's basically the equivalent of reaching across the table and slapping the person you're debating, instead of actually responding to their point.

FWIW, I use red very sparingly - people outright breaking forum rules, rudeness, trolling hard, or just generally being the antithesis of the community. If I don't agree with a post, I'll neutral it with some sort of comment/question as a way to take my individual thought to a PM with them if they so choose.

That said, I'll speak again to the initial point of this thread:

The following is actually from the 'Quest for Einstein' thread, but I think it works here.

When I was a student, 1923 did not have consistent mentors. At all. Some of us were proud of that. (I'll chalk that up to being young and stupid - I was administrating our rookie FRC team at 14 without any help.) We spent every build season in varying states of 'oh god we're lost', and never fielded competitive robots.

Not only were we terrible, but it was absolutely exhausting as a student leader, to have to teach my fellow students everything and then also have to work with the school's roadblocks, and advocate for us to the community and our sponsors. I don't recommend complete student leadership to absolutely anyone, not even my worst enemy. I'd end build season sick, exhausted, and usually alienated from my teammates since I so frequently had to be the 'bad guy' (I could take a tangent on to why this also applies to first-year university students coming back to mentor their old team, but I'm sure a thread will come up on that later.)

We finally fielded a consistent mentor who not only taught us the basics of FRC, but brought in connections from other industries who could teach us about the things even they didn't know. Some of the students from the original few years were upset that we even had an adult working with the team. They were mad. Why is this adult taking our work away from us? How come we don't get to run everything anymore?

It took one of the kickoff speeches many years ago (I think it was Dave?) to remind them why this was a good thing. I couldn't tell you what year it was, or even find a transcript, but the line that hit me was something like this. "There are teams who are proud they don't have engineers on your team. Guess what? You've failed. That's not the point of this." He went on, but he was completely right.

Having someone to teach, to advocate, to bring legitimacy to your organization is not a bad thing. Without mentors, are you really doing FIRST? For Inspiration & Recognition of Science & Technology?

How are you, a student with basically the same knowledge base, inspiring someone to go into the career path they choose - are you lending them your industry experience? No. Giving them advice on university & internships? I sure hope not, you haven't been through it. You need some sort of partnership, even if it's just a little bit. Mentors are more than just Wiring101 teachers. There should be a connection there, helping foster something new in the students throughout the FIRST process.

1923 has reached a really comfortable balance now, where a team of several mentors works alongside our co-captains to get things done. It's brought us greater success in all the goals we set, and it's made for a really great relationship between mentors and students.

As an example, let's say we want to approach a new company for sponsorship.

1. Our Finance Co-Captain comes up with the idea and starts to write a presentation.
2. Our advisor reaches out to the company with the initial communication, to set up a time to meet. (The letter she sends is one that was collaborated on by students and mentors to make sure it's attention-getting and effective.)
3. I take a look through the presentation to make sure that it's all correct, that our branding is consistent, and spend the time practicing with the student(s) that will be meeting.
4. Students who are interested will join our Finance Co-Captain on that presentation to demo the robot, answer questions, and represent the team
5. At least one or two mentors accompanies them, to lend credibility to the organization.

It's about a partnership. The balance is something the team decides on as a whole, to make sure we run efficiently and meet our goals. There are some roles that are a better fit for adults than students, and that's okay.

Another example we're working through right now - we're having a programming problem, and I want it fixed yesterday so our drivers can practice. One of our mentors knows how to fix it, so am I just going to let the students flounder around the issue and waste precious build season time? Of course not - that doesn't help anyone. We fix the issue immediately, and then the mentor who knew the solution spends the time to teach the students how he got around it (after the robot's functional, because ain't nobody got time for that right now).

If that doesn't work for your team, then that's fine. I can speak to the fact that it works for our team because I know that the next time an issue like that comes around, I'll have at least 5 programming students who can go "Oh! I know! Mr. P taught me how to fix that".

It's about balance. My team's balance is not your team's balance, and that's okay.
Our team decided on how we run things as a group, and everyone agrees to it. We're all happy with it. It works for us.

Above all, teams should do what works for them, and not worry about what other teams are doing.

TLDR: 1) 1923's philosophy, which works pretty well for us. 2) How another team inspires their students is not anyone else's business.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

How is it that you know what the students did vs. what the mentors did on that team? If you're not on the team, you don't know them or what they do. Maybe interviews with their mentors were the point of the video, to show how proud those people were of what their students could accomplish. Then again, I'm only guessing, because it's not my team and I don't know the answer.

My best advice on this topic, as always, is to stay in your own lane & worry about your own team. You can't possibly have everything figured out to the point where you have free time to pick apart other teams.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

This interview with Dean Kamen might help make a point that some have brought up in this thread: FIRST is not in the business of education.

If your team values the educational aspect of the program (as i'm sure most teams do) that's great! But whether or not other teams, in your opinion, value it as much as you do is not something that FIRST seems to be concerned with.

It's not just well and good that students are being inspired, it's the whole dang point.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

This is one of the silliest posts I've read on here. Just because a student pursues something outside of STEM doesn't mean a mentor didn't inspire them. Also, you make it sounds like a student going into what they are passionate about is a bad thing. I'd rather have a kid go into what they love and learn from robotics that engineering isn't what they want rather than go in, try, fail, be miserable, and quit.

Not all of us go into engineering, but we recognize the role of STEM in society and earn a greater level of respect for it through this program.

Signed - a former captain, mentor, team founder, Econ/Prelaw major. :P

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

I don't think that's what he meant. It was referring to the student spending their time doing a task on the team that didn't align with what they wanted to do after high school. If they wanted to go into theater then they could have helped with chariman's award scripts or the like.

I agree however that it is a bit silly. As I said earlier, just because a student majors in Theater doesn't mean they didn't want to work with tools and build robots while they were on the team.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

This is a very dangerous line especially for someone like me who didn't pursue a degree in STEM but was active on a team for three years and has helped run a team from the ground up for the past five years all primarily in the mechanical portions of the robot.

Every student can benefit from being in FIRST in more ways than just getting them into a STEM major. Even just being an outlet to gain confidence, make friends, and learn what team work is really about is more than enough reasons for me to stay involved with students. For some students just being there and showing an interest in them leaves more of an impact than sending them off to college for a degree in STEM.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Please read my above post. Jon's statement is being taken way out of context.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

But why does that student have to be shown the door to awards?

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

We've done something similar with our coding this year. In order to get driver practice going as early as possible, we had a compiled "mentor code" jar and an associated script on the roboRIO that would let us swap in code one of the mentors wrote for driver practice, then go back to the student written code while the programming team was working. This way, we could easily drive the robot when needed so the drive team could be successful, while still allowing the programming team to tackle and overcome the challenge of doing the work themselves (with mentor assistance, of course).

In another incident, we were having a horrible time two years ago getting the built in PID controller to control our arm and stop oscillating. After several hours of banging our heads against the wall, I stepped in and wrote a quick controller we could use instead, and that would be much more intuitive for the students to tune. Then when the programming team had to be hands off the robot for a bit, I spent a solid half hour teaching them with a white board how the controller works and how I came up with it. Like you said, sometimes you just need to get things working, as a team, and worry about the education portion of things a little later.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

They don't. But he is not saying that a student not majoring in STEM is a failure. He's saying that he feels that if a student spent their time doing something on the team instead of doing something that could have benefited them more because that's what they were planning on doing after high school e feels he has failed that student.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

OK, I admit it, last night I commandeered the band saw and the cordless drill for a few minutes.

I'm lucky, the students let me work on the robot every now and then. So I keep coming back year after year.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Missed the entire point of my post. I'm not saying that students who leave a team to pursue non-STEM careers are bad. I'm not saying that STEM is for everyone. I'm not saying that the only inspiration that can happen on a team is STEM related. I'm not saying that non-technical individuals can only help with awards.

What I'm saying is that FIRST teams are about more than just the robot. As mentors, it's not our job to try to railroad students into STEM careers or focus solely on the build aspects of the team. You need to take the time to get to know your students, recognize what their passions are and what they enjoy, and then spend your effort to try to tailor the program for each and every one of them.

The whole point of FIRST is that we have a culture where kids are bombarded with actors, athletes, and music stars. That's what they see, that's what they know about the adult world, and thus that's what many of them aspire to. A FIRST team has the ability to show them something else. We can show them professional engineers solving problems. We can show them a finance master running the books for an annual budget worth more than the cost of the first car they'll drive. We can show them a marketing genius that reveals a whole world of calculated branding that has been right in front of them their entire lives. And a whole lot more.

If a kid joins the team, great. If they want to work on the robot, great. But if they find it's not really what they want to do, help them do something else that they can be passionate about, and help them understand where that activity can lead them in the future. With everything a team can do and work on, it's so much more than just the robot.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Like Akash, I'm probably in the minority in that I'm one of those alumni whose FIRST experience had no impact on their career choice-- I've always known I wanted to be a mechanical engineer. (Actually that's not quite true; at six I wanted to be a bus driver and at seven I wanted to be a great white shark.) I didn't fully realize until college, however, that mechanical engineering is a huge field. It's been called the "liberal arts of engineering" because of the variety of subjects it contains beneath its umbrella. I'll admit to a little bit of panic when my university asked me to pick between a couple different specialties.

I was able to look back on my my experience working alongside my FRC mentors to figure out what kind of mechanical engineer I want to be. It was easy to figure out: I want to be a mechanical engineer that does the kinds of things that my mentors could do. I want to be a mechanical engineer that:
-- does work that makes a positive impact on the world
-- can communicate technical and nontechnical ideas to a diverse team of people who all think in a different way than I do
-- can have working relationships with people outside my peer group
-- can also lead a team of my peers

This is how FIRST's inspiration mechanism worked in my life. It was a process that moved so slowly, I couldn't see it happening until I reached a point where I could look retrospectively back at it. Maybe it's happening in the background of your life, too-- but it requires you to make decisions that allow it to happen.

Using choice-of-major as a success metric for inspiration is short-sighted. Real life is much more nuanced and interesting than that.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

I didn't imply this is what he said. I said that it doesn't make the mentor a failure.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

I don't have a problem with mentors helping students. You could bring every NASA engineer as far as I'm concerned. My problem is with NASA or other large corporations supplying the manufacturing time and materials for some of these robots. I wrote a letter last year to First expressing my thoughts about these $1,000,000 robots. If the rules were changed so that all materials and manufacturing time were included in the cost of the robot, that would level the playing field for all teams. Time to eliminate the free ride from major sponsors.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

If you know a team that has a 20:1 mentor-to-student ratio, you should give me their contact information right now. Recruiting mentors is one of the hardest things for teams to do well. Right now, my team is at about 1:4 mentor-to-student ratio, and we are the envy of many nearby teams. I even know teams that have a 1:20 ratio. So if there is a team out there that is 400 times better at recruiting mentors, they are clearly doing a much better job at running their program than any team I know, and I would like to learn everything I can about why they are so successful.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

You don't need NASA to have insane machining resources. In fact, there are plenty of teams who have better free machining sponsors who have a ton more machines at their disposal. I see many of them squander those resources on poor robot designs anyway. If you want, I will gladly help you find your own machining resources.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Is this :deadhorse: happening again?

What works for your team works for you.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

You want to create a rule preventing sponsors from donating material and manufacturing to a not for profit program? The partnership between sponsors and FIRST/teams is the lifeblood of this program. Cutting down and/or eliminating their involvement is quickest way to turn a world class program into an old school science fair.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

There's always BEST Robotics for those who want zero mentor involvement and a level budget of $0 for all teams. It's a fun enough competition for the kids and they can learn from their mistakes rather than from mentor guidance.

Let me recommend that those who think that robotics competitions should be run that way check out BEST, and stop suggesting that FRC should be run that way.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

It's a competition. Level playing fields only exist literally, not metaphorically.

If there is a single competition out there with a level playing field I'd love to see it. In every high-level competition the playing field is uneven. Sports teams have different budgets to recruit players; racing teams have different budgets for testing, consumables, and driver salary; Olympians from different countries have different levels of coaching skill and training facilities; companies have different budgets, resources, and facilities for developing their products. Life is not even, and FRC is a good object lesson for this.

If you are unhappy with your team's resource level, do whatever you can to improve it. A given team's situation can be improved, which is a superior alternative to bringing down other teams' capabilities with rules.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

I distinctly remember when you were new to the boards, and the perspective you had. After being away for a couple of years I was very happy to see you are now a regular and productive poster. It was interesting to see the evolution there. Now that we are in the same region please introduce yourself at the Virginia Regional.

The issue is you cannot learn engineering through FRC, and the goal is not to learn to be an engineer, or to learn to solder, or to program, or any of these other skill. The goal is to inspire students. Along the way every one, mentors included will learn new skills, and new tricks, but that is a small benefit tacked on to the inspiration. The inspiration is the key, I have worked on teams that built their entire robot out of home depot parts, and on teams with more than 1 mentor per student. I have been on teams with no funding, and on teams with 6 figure annual budgets. I have worked in a build area with access to tens of millions of dollars worth of machining equipment, and in a garden shed. At this point I have seen the full range of team styles in FRC, and I can't say that any style is better than any other. As long as the students are enjoying themselves, and they are inspired then the team is doing it right.


I don't understand this. The ability for teams to receive in kind donations from sponsors is one of the highlights of the program. We could set the budget for actual cost of all items to $X,XXX but all that would do is limit teams, and stifle creativity. There are a dozen other competitions out there with this type of model. FRC is different because of the big corporate sponsorships they are what makes the competition what it is.

My first FRC exposure was 2004, and my first season was 2005. I after seeing championships those two years, I was incredibly jealous of 254. They were a NASA team, in Silicon Valley, their robots look incredibly professional. They were powder coated, and they had a spare at home to practice with. How could we ever compete with a team like that? It took a couple of years before I really understood that there is nothing that special about their robots, or their fabrication process. I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. They are simple, they just work. I cannot recall ever seeing a feature on one of their bots that would not have been fabricated anywhere else in the country. There was no reason other teams couldn't build the same level of machine in the same time frame with resources available in their area. This is the case for 99% of the top robots in FRC.

There is (or rather was) a secret sauce to being one of the top teams in FRC, but it has nothing to do with specific sponsors donating time or materials. However Karthik presents every year at championships on how you do it, and 1114 (and other teams) have posted it right on their website. Timelines, how to analyze a game, its all there.

On a slight tangent, when did NASA teams become a negative thing? There are a ton of NASA teams, covering the full range of competitive levels, and budgets. I recently ran into this with local mentors, and have seen it on here.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

I think I would prefer to rearrange my sock drawer than watch a "competition" with a "level playing field" imposed on it. Mediocrity is boring.

(PS: I am pretty sure you meant that in a "I'll believe it when I see it" sense and not in the "Let me get my popcorn" sense)

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Indeed! I hope my intent is clear given the context and tone of my post.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

If you don't like peanut butter don't eat it, don't try and stop everyone else from eating it.
If you don't like First don't do it. Also don't eat First.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Can we please stop with the "dead horse" emoticons and generally cynicism towards these topics? I'm please most of this thread has been productive and insightful, and I fully realize that this topic has been discussed ad naseum before. However, just because its something that has been discussed before doesn't mean that all FRC participants have had a chance to engage in the discussion, or even absorb previous ones. If you're going to dead horse, at least reference some particular discussions from the past (and preferably, highlight particularly insightful posts), rather than simply being dismissive of the concerns presented by those you don't agree with. Regardless of the consensus on Chief Delphi, this is still a contentious issue for many FRC participants. Being dismissive towards a minority opinion is not the proper way to handle it (on or off of Chief Delphi).

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Five years ago, our club started the fall out in debt about $4,000, no shop and only a couple of sponsors. The leadership of the club (I arrived the following year) realized that the long term sustainability of the club was in grave jeopardy. Some folks looked at the "privileged" clubs with jealously/disdain. However, most of our leaders instead looked at them as examples. What do we need to do in order to replicate their successes? How can we get what they've got?

This started a fundamental change in how our club operates. Outreach became a vital part of our club's activities. We'll show off our robot to pretty much anybody at pretty much any time. We march in parades. We visit local tech companies. We go to elementary schools. We talk to the Chamber of Commerce and School Board. We know just how important our FIRST program is in our community and we make it our mission to make sure that the rest of the community knows it, too! We then ask for help. Sometimes we get help. Sometimes we don't. We always offer to come back, though.... We write letters to friends, community leaders, family members and so on. We make sure that everybody knows just how expensive it is to run a good club... And it is amazing how generous the community can be.

We now operate on a budget of well over $100K. We serve over 100 kids (but only charge $50 to participate for the year)... We have plenty of money for training materials, extra robots, etc. We have the monetary capacity to do anything we want to do in order to compete at the highest levels. It wasn't that hard: it just took patience, a little time and a little work.

Instead of being envious of teams that benefit from generous sponsors, go out and get them yourself. We look at our team as a small business. If our business is going to thrive, we need to maintain a strong and steady cash flow. That money is not just going to come to us. Rather, we need to actively seek it out.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

I feel that one of the duties of a mentors is to provide perspective for the students while making their career choices. One of our students was saying last week that she wanted to go work for Google or Apple so she could "do cool things" and be able to have her own patents. I asked if she had considered entrepreneurship and described two friends who's startups (different companies) were purchased by a large competitor and would several Mega$ make up for working for a company no one has ever hear of. I also set her straight about who gets most of the financial benefits from a patent one is awarded when working as an employee. She still wants to go into the STEM field but now has a different and more accurate perspective. Can you students do this for each other?


Every time that I have personally heard someone say the phrase "the mentors built their robot" about one of our local powerhouse teams, the people saying it were jealous that they did not have the same resources yet they were not willing to work to get those resources. They were also wrong. I have spoken to all of our local powerhouse teams and in every case there were students who knew details that only the person doing the work could know.


Life is not fair. What is wrong with the students learning to deal with unfairness in a creative and constructive way?

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Except this year, there are bumps and noodles. Metaphorically, and literally.:ahh:

Sorry, I know, not helpful - but we need a little comic relief in here. There are some great insights so far though.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Metaphorical noodle might be a good band name... :D

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

I totally agree with your post. It is the same path that we think we are currently on.

I will say that this last sentiment though, isn't one that I am particularly fond of. My first year on the team I was very frustrated at how suggestions like "just go out and get sponsorship" and "it only takes a little time and a little work" were not at all helpful. The specifics of the 'how' and the 'what' it takes to secure multi-thousands dollar sponsorships are often very challenging. Some people are in much better positions to get in touch with generous corporations than others.

For us anyway, it took a lot of time and a lot of work. And "just going out to get sponsors" failed for a long time until we refined our approach, and we are no where near 100K, but are still comfortable financially.
For instance, all my high school team needed to do to get a couple thousand was to roll up to the school board and give a full presentation, robot demo, Q&A, and student testimonial. If it were that easy for my current team last year we would still be swimming in green :D

All of that said, there are currently tons of companies that make getting money as simple as filling out a grant application and maybe giving a presentation or two. And I cannot express how truly grateful I am to those organizations. Opening your doors to all teams is magnificently generous.




Sorry, that's probably a long rant to basically say that I agree with absolutely everything else in your post. I don't mean to derail the conversation!

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

OOOHHH! Life isn't fair I'm told. How many of you squawking that sentiment have access to a sponsor with CNC equipment? Consider yourself lucky. And I'm willing to make a large wager most teams don't. We had one once. But with the economy as it is, they couldn't support us any longer. So we adapted to what we have. And then there is the lack of machine shops. Kansas City use to have shops scattered throughout the city. Not any more. Most of that work has moved to Mexico or China. I started working in a machine shop back in 1974. I have seen and experienced the change. And I don't see NASA building a shop here anytime soon.

Getting back to the rules, for the Robot:

4.4 Budget Constraints
R9 The total cost of all items on the ROBOT shall not exceed $4000 USD. All costs are to be determined as explained in Section
4.4: Budget Constraints. Exceptions are as follows:
A. individual COTS items that are less than $1 USD each and
B. KOP items

R11 The BOM cost of each non-KOP item must be calculated based on the unit fair market value for the material and/or labor,
except for labor provided by Team members (including sponsor employees who are members of the team), members of other
Teams, event provided Machine Shops and shipping.

How many Squawkers here could build a robot for less than $4000 if they had to count CNC machining time at $100+ per hour and all materials? (Programming and run time for just 1 or 2 parts would be even more costly.) Very few in my estimation. I don't care if you continue to use your machine shop sponser, you just need to count it in your budget.

Do they have rules in other sports to even the playing field? Yes they do! Ever heard of "salary caps"? NASCAR has a host of rules to keep the cars alike. Do I need to go on?

So there you have it. Life is either the 'haves' or the 'have nots'. The 'haves' never want to change the rules because they would lose their advantage. Seems to work out the same in First.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

My team doesn't.

Guess what? We get by without it, and we keep on pushing for machining sponsors around us throughout the year. So far, no luck - but that doesn't mean we don't push really dang hard every year.

Life's not fair. Good things come to those who bust their butts and work for it. Does that always get you what you want? Certainly not, but at least you're better for having tried. I'd rather see continuous effort towards improvement (with minimal results) than keyboard-warrior complaints about what others have.

It's the same-old we see in this community every time a discussion like this comes up - raise the floor, don't lower the ceiling.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

This was posted in one of the previous threads on the subject of handicapping teams: https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonB...geron_djvu.txt

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

I wish we had a CNC machine or sponsor. But we don't. In fact, we don't really have any machining sponsors to whom we send our parts - we really just cut everything out in our own shop in order to build our robot. And it's not even an actual machine shop - it's a space we rent out of a strip mall in which we've moved all our equipment into that we've gathered over the history of our team. And that's completely fine with us.

I understand your point, but I'd rather not see a rule change because without a doubt, those robots that do look absolutely beautiful, whether they were made by 50+ engineers or not, are like works of art and I'd hate to see them disappear because they're so inspiring to me.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

There is a quote something along the lines of, "there are no victims, only volunteers".

Go get some CNC sponsors if you want, or pay per hour for waterjet (we've done it), or get some machines in house (fundraise or get them donated), etc... etc...

Don't ask others to be limited because they put in the work to gain access to more resources than you have.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

I'd love to get to a point where the robot was designed fully in CAD and a sponsor made all the parts. As it is, almost all of our parts are made in-house by the team. We did some CNC in our second and third years, but moved away from it because it was an all-mentor effort. We felt the team got more out of the program doing the work themselves, and none of us were really up to the task of teaching CAD so they could do it themselves. We've since been gradually increasing our student CAD capabilities, mostly through our 3D printer's. We might start having students sending designs to be CNC'd next year it so.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Our group of "squawkers" won a World Championship in 2008 without access to a sponsor with CNC equipment.

Since then we've gone out and acquired a fantastic sheet metal sponsor. The performance of our robots hasn't changed, just the process that we go through to build them.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Well, apparently I'm a squawker, and my team makes virtually all of our parts in-house. Occasionally I'll make a part in my garage. We have no in-kind machining sponsors, CNC or otherwise. We never have, and we probably never will.

5 years ago we worked out of a classroom. Currently we are working in a high school vocational shop with manual and CNC mills and lathes, a CNC plasma cutter, numerous shop tools, TIG and MIG welding, and a supply section of fasteners, pneumatic parts, sheet metal, extrusions, and so on. We have built a strong relationship with the vocational school that's been years in the making.

And you are correct in that many sports have rules to keep certain aspects even enough to be interesting. However, there are still many ways in which those sports are very un-even. There are still power-houses in every sort of competition I can think of. Does it stop the underdogs from winning? Absolutely not. Should the best be cut down so that others may rise? Absolutely not. Should the best teams follow the rules? Absolutely yes.

The rules say a "fair market value" not a "fair one-off prototyping value." The intent of the rule is to account for the cost of an item as if it were mass-produced. This, actually, helps level the playing field! For example, my team has use of a CNC plasma cutter, other teams' sponsors have CNC waterjet tables. These machines can be used to make VERY similar parts, but the water jet is MUCH more expensive to run. Does that mean that the water jet team has to account for 10x the cost of a part that is nearly the same as what we made with a CNC plasma cutter because their sponsor only has a waterjet? No. They bill a 'fair market value' for their parts, as do we.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

mentorDon:

Have you:
Had students make presentations to the school board?
Had students make presentations at your local rotary?
Had students make presentations at your chamber of commerce?
Call these guys: http://www.kcnext.com/
Is there a local community or technical college with a machine shop?
Have you tried your school's PTA?
Made presentations to potential incoming freshman?
Reached out to your students' parents for support?

These things are generally easy to set up - and adults in tech fields *love* to listen to high school kids who are excited about building robots.
A tax-deductible give of $2000 is generally nothing to a business, but a huge boost to a robotics team. Just call them and make a presentation. Yes, request monetary help, but do the presentation whether help is promised or not - you are more than likely going to make contacts who can help through their work. I'm not saying its easy, but there are opportunities in Kansas City. You just have to make your team known to the right people.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

When I was starting out in FRC I had a conversation with a couple very well known mentors. The discussion focused around gaining resources and how resources can make a difference. The biggest surprise for me at the time came from one of these mentors telling me that no matter how hard some teams work, they simply cannot attain the same resources as others. This is simply true in many areas of the US, as you have stated. However, machining resources don't make good robots. They make the process easier, and the designs perhaps a little more complex, but the fundamental strategies and robot designs don't have to be. There are plenty of teams whose biggest resource is the PEOPLE. Good people, motivated people, and people who want to learn are the ones who make good robots. You can have a small budget and minimal resources, and still build a very competitive machine. You don't have to have the same machining resources at your disposal, or the engineering experience (although it helps more than machines), but you can still learn as much as possible from the best out there and become great yourself.

Word of advice though, when you do want people to hear you out on a very valid point, try not calling them squawkers or other names. With a more subtle tone in your posts, your point would have come across much better. Like I said, your point of view is very valid in the sense that not all teams can achieve the same level of resources because of their area and whatnot. I don't think cutting others off from their resources works either though.

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

I'm looking at pictures of your 2008 robot on your teams website. Did you make those nice angle cuts in the main arm with a file? Or perhaps you used a CNC waterjet or a CNC plasma cutter? Nice try.

http://www.simbotics.org/media/photo...-regional/2166

Re: Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies
 

Many teams have in house CNC equipment.