Re: 900's Championship Cheesecaking Chronicles
 

We tried REALLY hard to convince teams of this in Palmetto. Zero takers as I recall... maybe one or two but mostly teams didn't want to drive forward for some easy points. We didn't force easy code on them... we did ask though.

Re: 900's Championship Cheesecaking Chronicles
 

But that involves assuring the complete cooperation of your alliance, which is always next to impossible. Much more efficient to just do everything yourself, especially in qualification matches, when you have little time to liaise with your partners.

Re: 900's Championship Cheesecaking Chronicles
 

I'm not Al, but I was part of the group that inspected them immediately prior to Einstein, so I think I can shed some light on these questions.

First, there is no rule against building mechanisms or combining mechanisms while at a competition - and a robot is, after all, just a collection of mechanisms.

Q&A 429 states:
Per this Q&A, their reinspection only included the elements present on the "harpoon bot" - any elements previously on their robot that were left in their pit were not included for weight purposes.

As for cost,

Given the wording (emphasis above mine), I think we can take the cost aspect and treat it the same as the weight - elements not included in the robot inspection were not included in the BOM.

I can't speak to the total cost of everything - I never saw the original BOM, just the final BOM before Einstein. For weight, however, the final robot was just about 120lbs - there was no way that plus whatever they had previously was under 120.

Re: 900's Championship Cheesecaking Chronicles
 

This was my first year getting to know FRC and seeing what it was all about so my understanding of past years may be a bit foggy. I've talked with countless teams at several events this year and have heard stories from all sides. I can understand where you're coming from with a distaste for teams being told to sit on the sideline. I remember one team in particular I worked with struggled early on. It was heartbreaking to see how down the team was about being told to stay out of the way during qualification rounds. It was also very gratifying to see the difference in their faces as we fixed issues they were having and had them climbing the charts and being a larger part of their team's success.

But, that's apples to oranges. None of the teams in this thread feel pushed aside. In fact, it's strange to me to suggest a can burglar staying out of the way the rest of the match isn't an integral part of the team. The consensus agrees the most important part of this year's strategy was the can race. If we agree this is true, the most important part of a team's success is the robot grabbing the cans. Even if they're idle the rest of the match, they play the most important role on the team. How is this fundamentally different than a robot with the sole purpose to go disrupt the other team's strong robot? The amount of time being active doesn't change the importance of a robot nor that team's role in decision making. Why are we acting as if it does?

I think we're losing something in all of this debate. FRC isn't about robots. You can gather the purpose behind FIRST from Dean's promos. It's about inspiring the next generation to find a higher purpose than idolizing shooting a ball through a net. Too many of us forget there's more to being an engineer than putting together an amazing machine. The soft skills some of these kids are showing are just as incredible as the machines they put together. Are we really preparing them for the real world if we penalize using soft skills to collaborate? We're quick to credit 1114 for designing half the robot. We're slow to recognize 900 for putting together a base that could accept that robot and stepping out of an engineer's comfort zone to work with peers. We're ignoring the team was able to successfully network with their peers, their competition, and staff to come together towards a common goal. Isn't developing those skills a key component to what FIRST is about?

One of the teams I worked with this past weekend was a second pick at their regional. If you look at the three teams, it's not difficult to see which robots were handling the event. Their robot wasn't a strong robot at the competition. But, that's not all there is to the event. They worked with their alliance to develop a strategy that won. At worlds, they weren't frustrated about that experience. They were proud of their banner and one of the more solid teams I worked with. When obstacles came into their path, they were telling their mentor how they were going to move forward. They maintained relationships with the teams from their regional and used these relationships to help get through their current obstacle. With this, they spread their network to include other teams all while showing poise that left me in awe. Their networking skills helped them be selected to elimination rounds at worlds. They're leaving multiple events with new friends and new resources they can use to build their knowledge and excitement. Isn't that at the core of what FIRST is all about?

Re: 900's Championship Cheesecaking Chronicles
 

Reading back to the ramps thread....
______________________________________

Al Skierkiewicz
Broadcast Eng/Chief Robot Inspector
AKA: Big Al WFFA 2005
FRC #0111 (WildStang)
Team Role: Engineer Join Date: Jun 2001
Rookie Year: 1996
Location: Wheeling, IL
Posts: 10,327


Re: Ramps

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I guess this is really an issue that revolves around the one rule that is absent this season and that is the sizing rule. In an indirect way, it also involves what we inspect as ROBOT. This season, there is no size restriction other than Transport Configuration. We have to inspect everything but it must fit inside the Transport Configuration at some point. (Which by the way is the configuration that all robots must be in when moving from pit to field and back.) If your robot is an unlimited size, it still needs to be one and only one, ROBOT. Teams that choose to have a separate part of the robot that is either passive or active, must still show that there is only one robot (See R1 below) on the field for each team. While others are trying to point to a specific rule, we must consider that the manual is something that needs to be taken as a whole. Some sections speak to robot size, some to position, some to starting position but overall everyone of them speak about THE ROBOT. As a small sample...

R1 A Team must submit their ROBOT for Inspection. The ROBOT must be built by the FRC Team to perform specific tasks when competing in RECYCLE RUSH. The ROBOT must include all of the basic systems required to be an active participant in the game – power, communications, control, and movement. The ROBOT implementation must obviously follow a design approach intended to play RECYCLE RUSH (e.g. a box of unassembled parts placed on the FIELD, or a ROBOT designed to play a different game does not satisfy this definition).

or

R3 The ROBOT must satisfy the following size constraints:
A. during a MATCH, the ROBOT height may not exceed 78 in.
B. the ROBOT must be able to be arranged into a TRANSPORT CONFIGURATION with dimensions which do not exceed 28
in. wide, 42 in. long, and 78 in. tall.

Please note that these use the singular rather than "a" showing a clear intention that each team build and use just one robot. I believe that tethers, whether containing power or simply passive ropes, satisfies the one robot of unlimited size.
__________________
Good Luck All. Learn something new, everyday!
Al
WB9UVJ
www.wildstang.org
________________________

I don't have issues or an issue with what happened in the end (as I knew when the GDC re-evaluated that Q&A answer and made the rules changes they did that is was bound to happen that many would end up competing w/ much that were not what they actually originally designed and built during build season, but what others actually designed later, but am still attempting to understand how we go from building THE ROBOT (and ENTERING ONLY 1 ROBOT in competition)...to competing with a completely different robot on Einstein Field in less than 3 days and still be in compliance w/ said rules as listed above and not violate either the weight or max. cost issues. (Unless THE ROBOT entered was completely disassembled into the COTS condition pre-assembly...It was still a robot (and the new ROBOT is also a robot), albeit maybe not a working robot at the time. Whatever mass is left assembled, should have counted toward total weight in my opinion is all).

Theoretically then, each match could be (if reinspected between every match of course), played with a completely different robot by each team...Soon, the pit spaces will need to each be enlarged to accomodate a whole hardware store of COTS parts & raw materials each.

And Each Team, will also need a place to park their personal machine shop trailer next to their pit also. We'll look like NASCAR soon enough!


___________

BTW...Congrat's to ALL the participants of a great Championships...Especially to the WINNERS / FINALISTS! And all the Award winners too.

Re: 900's Championship Cheesecaking Chronicles
 

If the GDC wants to encourage such cooperation, they need to make the incentive strong enough. Getting 3 teams to cooperate for the same number of points that a single human player can score with one noodle is not a strong incentive. The incentives in the 2014 game were more in line with what's needed. But most importantly, the message from the GDC that the game will require interrobot actions needs to come in September so the teams can work together PRIOR to build season.

Re: 900's Championship Cheesecaking Chronicles
 

I'm the lady from NI! I was so glad to be able to help your team out. Pro-tip: All of the CSA's (orange hats) have flash drives with the software on them. And if they don't, spare parts sometimes has them as well!

Re: 900's Championship Cheesecaking Chronicles
 

Thank you again! 900 has had a busy year with NI and everyone there has been great to work with. I hope we can keep up the collaboration and can help with future beta testing if we ever need to.

Re: 900's Championship Cheesecaking Chronicles
 

I personally thought this was a brilliant albeit risky strategy based on the situation. I really liked how jokingly one of the students on 1114 told me it was a T-Shirt cannon they were building in that pit despite how obvious it was that they were building a high speed can burglar with tools going at warp speed :)

I am happy to see North Carolina teams compete on Einstein since it is such a rare occurrence. I have never seen such a crazy tactic in 13 years of FRC. NC sent a record 9 teams to Championships this year so I am ecstatic that one of them was team 900! This is a classic example of thinking outside of the box and using real engineering tools to complete a challenge like many of us practicing engineers on this forum find every day at work. Just like 900, you come up with a solution nobody knew existed or that nobody would dare try. Crazy ideas really do make the best solutions.

Thanks to team 900, our own team 3506 YETI had an amazing season because they shared a strategy with us that worked again and again.

Congratulations to ALL of the division winners 148, 1114, 1923, and 900!

-Robbie