POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I think we've seen some fantastic discussion in the Six Week Build Season thread that Mr. Bill started: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hreadid=139373

I like data. I thought a poll as a supplement to that thread would be nice.

What do you think? Should we change the nature of the Build Season?

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I'm not seeing a poll option.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

You should create an option for 'Study the problem further'.

Cause my vote for 'Tools down after a certain date' ignores that I'd still like teams to have FRC style robots of some sort to learn with year round.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I voted "keep it just like it is" but I'd support having more unbag time (~6hrs every week) as was suggested here.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I wonder how representative this poll could be among all teams? My guess is that teams that build a practice bot now will be over represented...just because the teams that put in a lot of extra time doing stuff like that, also happen to put in extra time on CD.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I put it at least 40+ hours a week kickoff through championships, probably still will if bag day was to be taken away.

The true benefit I see to getting rid of bag/pause build day is the cost savings to my team. We will no longer need to build 2 robots, HUGE cost savings to a team with the resources we have, our sponsors would definitely love us more as we wouldn't be begging as much for quick turn around and such as well.

The added benefit should be an increase in competitiveness as now every team will have a practice robot. A well driven "lower-tier" robot will beat a poorly driven "upper-tier" robot ever single time. I cannot count how many times I have seen this posted in these forums "the thing that pushed our team over the edge was when we started building a practice bot"

There are lots of things that go into the elite teams being elite but the single greatest thing that those teams have is stick time. You look at the teams that are on Einstein nearly every year and the one thing they will all have in common is at least 3X more drive time than other teams.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

The third option is not enforceable.

I voted remove all restrictions, but giving 6hr/week unbag would be a good compromise. Especially so for those poor regional teams who get NO unbag time. :eek: :eek: :eek:

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

The third option is just as enforceable as many other rules we have within this competition. There are myriad ways to cheat, but the ethos of the competition keep people in bounds.

FRC relies on the honor system already.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

If this were to be the case, we could keep the playing field level for teams who have to ship their robots to competitions by allowing them to displace their unbag hours from the weeks their robot will be shipping to earlier (or later) weeks in the season.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

No fourth option "Increase build season from 6 weeks to 8 weeks"?

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

That isn't an option. You cannot shift the competition season to the right 2 weeks and you cannot shift kickoff to the left 2 weeks.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

If build season doesnt move back to Winter Break in December, then your suggestion might as well be part of the getting rid of the 6 week build season.
According to the schedule, Week 1/2 and Week 1 events would be playing already.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

Sure, but it creates a huge gray area.

Is CAD part of "tools down"? Is it illegal to design a COTS mechanism to bring to an event to assemble there?

What about driver practice? I think it's reasonable to assume that practicing driving base with an old robot is okay, but what about modifying your 2008 mechanism to practice operating your 2014 robot?

Unless you deincentivize winning (#2Champz), teams are going to toe the line as closely as they can, which would be against the spirit of creating a rule like this.


Aside from the gray area, this also removes what I think is one of the best teaching opportunities for teams (which, John, I'm sure you'll agree with). Practice robots and unbag are one of the best times to learn from your mistakes and iterate.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

Move both ways. A week back into December and delay the competitions by 1 week.

Is there some reason we can't delay the competitions at all?

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

Neither of those proposals is a good solution.

FIRST has openly stated they will not expand into May, because AP testing (and finals for some schools).

They are never going to move left into December, because absolutely nothing gets done the last 1-2 weeks of December in the professional world. Tons of suppliers are closed. People are on vacation. If they're not on vacation, they want to be with their families. This is a total nonstarter.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

Then make it even longer and move further back into December or beyond the AP finals.

As I pointed out elsewhere my commitments to FIRST start back in September and do not really end until May anyway.

Actually since FIRST commits to filling the orders for the KOP before December there should already be parts available when the KOP is delivered. Plus there's nothing at all stopping anyone from stockpiling earlier. Surely it pays to watch AndyMark's site on Tuesday for the deals and there are usually only 4 Tuesdays a month.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I agree with this suggestion as well.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

Any option 3 people like to voice their reasoning?

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

Already did:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...42&postcount=3

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

Let's not forget that the reason that District teams get unbag time at all is because they don't get the Thursday of a regional to work on their robot. District teams only get unbag time the week before the district event that they are participating in.

I would be in favor of allowing all teams to get unbag time each week with the District teams getting extra time before each event to compensate for the extra day that teams participating in Regionals get on Thursdays.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

+1

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I am surprised that nobody has suggested a 4 week, or shorter, build season. It would increase the gap between good and bad teams and have little or no effect on the quality of robots In the elimination rounds at championships. It's a win win for everybody. The average team gets less burnt out, while elite teams get easier wins at district and regional events, and more time to test, compare, and improve designs after reveals before 2champs. Also 4 is a pretty number.

Whether build season is made longer, shorter, or eliminated all together nothing will change. Bad teams will still be bad and good teams will still be good.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I thought about mentioning the 4 week build season. It's actually what we aspire to every year. If we are on track to have the robot together by the end of week 4, then we have time to program it, tweak it, and practice with it for several days before putting it in the bag. When it works, this has been a good thing for us. We've actually spent most of practice day at many regionals, practicing with the robot. Instead of working on it all day.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I agree, but I personally believe that removing access restrictions to the robots will make the FRC better.......Much Better
There is considerable supporting data supporting this position:

Lets start with what we know:
Most of the teams in the FRC lack the ability to play the game well.
This year's median team contribution per match was about 18 points.
This is a capped stack of 3 totes. So HALF of the teams are worse than this.



Only 16% of the league could reliably do a 6 stack, and only 3% could reliably do 2 stacks.
If our ultimate goal is to make robotics into a spectator sport, this is not a recipe for success.
This trend is pretty much the same every year, regardless of the game. Most of the teams in the FRC lack any real ability to play the game every year.
This would indicate that either the challenge is too hard, there is not enough time, or both.

Next if we look at team capability growth through the season, we can see a clear trend of how teams improve the more they use their robots.



From this you can see that average capablity doubles when teams attend their second event, and more than triples with the third.
What this clearly reflects is what we all already know: Teams get better if they spend time using their robots.....much better.
Given the fact that teams only get 20-30 minutes of on field time at each event, the data would indicate that a little more access would go a long way toward improving overall on-field capability of the teams and would make FRC a much better spectator sport.

Lastly, lets explore the statement that the best teams will always probably win regardless of the constraints. The data also supports the fact that this is almost certainly true.
Adding the capability growth graph of the FRCTop25 teams to the chart we get this:



This elite group of teams have an average capability at their opening event which is better than the entire league average after 5 events.
They are simply way, way better than the vast majority of teams.
Nothing which FIRST HQ could do in terms of rules or additional constraints could possibly affect this gap.

So in summary, what do we know from the data:
1. Most FRC teams are pretty bad
2. Most FRC teams clearly improve if they spend more time using their robots.
3. It does not take a lot of additional access time to make teams get several times better on average.
4. The best teams are way better than everyone else
5. Additional constraints will do nothing to close the gap between the leaders and the rest.

So, in summary,
- Robot access restrictions do not hold back the small number of very good teams.
- Robot access restrictions hurt the vast majority of the teams
- Removing robot access restrictions will have the biggest positive impact on the weakest teams.

FIRST Management.....Wake Up....your own rule set is your own greatest liability.
Continuing to do something just because this is how it has always been done is not a good enough reason.
Einstein said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
The average ability of FRC teams will never change as long as these access restriction rules remain in place.
Many people fear change.....but I thought FIRST wanted to change the world.
This is not the changing the world, this is changing one simple rule.......give us back our robots please!!!!

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

Interesting analysis, Jim.

Question...when you look at the teams that only play at one regional, vs two or more, how do those 1 regional teams stack up?

Again, you can build a robot in 3 days. You can also take all the time available up to competition day, and not finish a robot. I'd like to know how you could change rules in a way that would affect teams' work habits, to give a better outcome?

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I am not really understanding the recent topics on trying to increase 'fairness' across FRC.

FIRST ROBOTICS COMPETITION. Each year there is a game with certain goals or objectives. There are restrictions, regulations, deadlines, penalties, etc. that are laid out at Kick-off and then amended through the build season.

What I fail to understand is how placing or removing restrictions on this COMPETITION will somehow level the playing field. No matter how FIRST adjusts the COMPETITION, teams will adapt. Strong and well financed teams will still rise to the top. I just don't see how any new restrictions have ever stopped the top-end teams.

This is a COMPETITION. The rules are laid out. FIRST allows for many ways to advance beyond the District or Regional format as well as reward teams that do not advance beyond their event. I know I am going to get a lot of negative feedback - but in a competition there is no such thing as 'fair'. One of my greatest pet peeves is when adults state that something is 'not fair'.

Here are some of the most common arguments to increase 'fairness' in FRC:
1. Take away the Practice Bot. High end teams will then realign their talent and resources to better prepare their competition robot.

2. Tools down date. High end teams will... "See above".

3. Take away bag and tag - The high resource teams will then find an event to compete in early - and then attend a late season event. This will allow these teams to compete and adjust for their later events. The lower resource teams will not have this advantage (as they do not now) - so nothing really changes.

4. Limit monetary sponsors - okay, there are ways around this as well. Instead of increasing the build portion, teams will just spend even more money on tools.

The only way for FIRST to make this "fair" is to create a season where all teams compete on the same dates. Costs will rise beyond anyone's comprehension. The logistics would ruin FIRST as it is now. Most teams would fold before the season even starts because the cost for attending an event in this format would be monumental.

No matter the limitations increased or decreased, the high resource teams will find a way - I just don't truly understand this unreal ideal of 'fairness' in a competitive format such as FIRST.

The whole idea of a competition is to compete - to best your adversaries. I just fail to see how any adjustment could level the playing field for all teams.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

A number of teams do that already (33 comes to mind)

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

This whole debate needs to shift to a discussion about how we can encourage a spirit of continuous improvement amongst all teams in the FRC.
Continuous improvement is the essence of how the top teams operate and is the essence of how Engineering works in the real world.
Teaching anything else does a dis-service to our participants.
Today, only the well resourced team can really do continuous improvement, everyone else is pretty much screwed.

From the 2nd graph in my post above:
Teams who only play one event have only a slightly lower average performance in their first event than team who plan to play 2 event (3pts avg).
I attribute this to the "give up factor". Teams who only plan to attend one event do not put much effort into trying to fix and improve their machines at the event.
Many teams in this situation know that they are not a likely contender and thus are just waiting for it to end.
We have all seen this: teams who refuse help that they clearly need.
This does not really happen when team plan to play a 2nd event: they use the time they have to keep the situation from happening a 2nd time, and as such see positive benefit in the first tournament, and a doubling of ability by the second.

The 6 week build period is a myth. It is a sales gimmick used by FIRST to try to ally fears about overwork to new joining teams.
FIRST is not a 45 day program, it never has been.
It is a 113 day program, and for many of us, it is a 365 day program.
Anyone who is even moderately serious about achieving any success in this sport must admit this and act accordingly.

If it were up to me, I would abolish all practices regarding when we can do anything. The positives far outweigh the negatives.
There are very few practices like this in any other machine sport. I participate in many things other than FRC....FIRST is the only organization who thinks it is good to take my creations away from me.
Since no one else does this, we in FRC are either smarter than everyone else, or stupider than everyone else. (You decide).

I find it paradoxical that this rule is not consistent even within the FIRST programs: Small robots are much easier to change and copy than large robots, but there are no restrictions on the FLL and FTC machines.
If restricting change to a specific time window is some sort of FIRST core principle, then why is it not universal throughout their own programs?

These machine access rules are really just an extrapolation of a rule which was arbitrarily put in place in a failed attempt to force fairness in the league over 20 years ago.
This rule instead is the reason for the greatest inequalities in the league.
Time is our most precious resource, and by severely restricting time, FIRST gives massive advantage to those with money, experience and resources, and eliminates most avenues of recovery for those without.
Since it has been in place longer than most of our members have been alive, many people believe that the "rule of 6 weeks" is some sort of fundamental principle, but it is not.
It is an obsolete rule which continues to hold us all down and most people, even the people at HQ, have long forgotten why it was put there in the first place.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

:) this makes me smile :)

We actually hate playing early/late, but sometimes this is unavoidable given other priorities.
It is hard to keep team momentum with such a large gap.

I prefer to play week 1 for two reasons:
1. Playing week one eliminates all excuses...you cannot put off anything until after bag day, you absolutely must be ready on time, and there is no recovery for anything you let slip. It is really hard, but it is worth it.
2. Playing week one is when you have the greatest advantage if you are done, and if you are right. 20 years of data support this....most teams do not know how to play yet on week one and most teams are not actually done building yet. If you are ready on both counts, you have a huge competitive advantage. This erodes pretty quickly in the following 2 weeks.

Our second choice is usually about:
1. A location I can get our sponsors, families, and fans to easily (aka, close to home)
2. An event with good teams attending. We do not want to play softball events, we want to be ready for States by playing with and against great teams.

So, going back to some of my points from earlier posts:
Even if all access restrictions were removed, the best strategy for the best teams will still be to be done early, play early, and win early.
Even without bag day, my season development schedule would not change.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

Where do you see anything about people proposing this as an idea to "level" the playing field?

To level the playing field requires pushing the top teams down while pulling the bottom teams up. Nobody is claiming the top teams can be pushed down, by any means FIRST could use (see Jim's incredibly insightful, eloquent, and accurate comments on this, in this thread).

By eliminating bag day you DO have a chance to bring the bottom up.

People can argue all they want about whether they need FIRST to save them from themselves or not (the only argument I have heard, other than that the international teams benefit more than they do now, but disproportionately less than North American teams would under a no bag day rule set), but Jim showed us all the data. There is convincing proof that teams will get better if they have more access to their robots.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I've been told many times that FRC isn't about the robots, the robots are there as a tool. But with the shift to make FRC more viewer friendly and to bring in more outside people, has that thinking also shifted?

I love the graphs, they really support the thesis that the more you play the better you get.

That is why I love the districts. For the "same money" you get a lot more play time in two different events along with a chance to do another design, build iteration.

As far as the second robot goes, I've always said the three "legs" are Mechanical Design/Build, Computer Code, Driver Skills. Because of the way the 6 weeks falls out, the last two really don't get a chance to be fully developed. The second robot really gives drive team a chance at lots more stick time to hone their skills before stepping across the white line.

I've also seen teams use the second robot as a PR tool. "Look what we built, now come see us in action at Event A and Event B". Which may help with the new FRC push to get new spectators.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

The six week build season is an arbitrary but useful way promote time management and engineering creativity. After build season robots already start becoming more alike. Are we so focused on competitiveness that we want everyone driving the "best" solution to the problem?

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

Thoughts from a long time but periodically absent poster ...

FIRST is a program with a challenge too hard, a calendar too short, a team too large and a budget too small. - Dr. Woodie Flowers

"FIRST isn't fair!" - Dr. Woodie Flowers

Just a reminder of what we all should be thinking about: I know we all want to beat "that team", the one that always seems to have a robot built by the finest engineering firm on the planet, driven by the greatest Indy driver equivalents of all time, the team with the mentors who think it's all about them and not the students, etc. But in reality the only ones we need to beat is ourselves. Team 811 has had some shining moments, when the planets aligned and everything fell our way ... and some less-than-stellar moments when we really shot ourselves in the foot. Longer Build Seasons or open bag times won't change those realities.

As many have stated, there will be teams that figure out ways around any restrictions put in place (such as "tools down"). And teams will find ways of screwing up even if there was a 52 week Build Season. That's one of the life lessons we hope our students learn!

That said, I agree that an infinite build time will result in all robots looking the same; this is one of the reasons that I tend to dislike RI3D. What could FIRST do to avoid this Attack Of The Clones? Maybe "post Bag Day" work sessions must be fully documented, with mandatory CAD descriptions detailing how and why Team XYZ decided to fully scrap their original 6-week creation and replace it with a carbon copy of the Week 1 winner? (I know this would be a nightmare for the judges, but let's face it, real world companies like defense contractors have to put up with that kind of stuff.)

Anyway, I'm voting to "Leave Things As They Are", if for no other reason than it makes it easier to compare the 2016 teams to their 2006 (for example) counterparts. And also to prevent the inevitable FIRST alumni from sitting on their rockers on the front porch moaning that "When I was on the team, we had real challenges, none of this 'never stop building' nonsense." ("Back then we had to cut the aluminum with our teeth, and wind the motor armatures by hand!" ;) )


Thanks for listening, everybody, and here's to a great season!

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

Thanks for taking the time to explain your view of FRC. I'm still pondering the mission of FRC...

I think maybe that's why the rules are as they are? It is not easy to change large robots, and continuous improvement for many FRC teams would be prohibitively expensive and time consuming. If you get it way wrong the first time, you pretty much have to start over. Since I am not convinced that having every team build a top notch robot is the point of FRC, the existing rules make sense to me.

As far as making FRC into a sport that the public will want to watch in droves...I am not so sure about it being a reasonable goal. I also do some drag racing, and I've seen how to get folks interested in watching the sport--it's called Street Outlaws. The robot equivalent is Battlebots, but it would need a lot more soap opera content to get folks really into it.

Culture change is a difficult thing.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

It's not about every team building a top notch robot, I don't care if you're 254 or 5xxx. Building a robot blindly is only half of the engineering process. The other half is testing your original design, learning why it isn't perfect, and re-engineering/redesigning/rebuilding it to make a closer approximation to the perfect solution. Sure, you can do a lot of this in your shop if you have the resources at home, but never as well on a real field with 5 other robots.

By having more access to your robot between your first and second competition (I realize not every team competes twice), your students can learn how to solve problems much better than building a robot blindly and never improving it. The end result is not only better robots, but most importantly, better students.

I think we're getting caught up in the "let's make all teams more competitive" argument and missing the "let's make all teams more inspiring" argument.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

It is a problem when about 50% of people doing something (as of the time of this post) see a problem of some kind with this:
http://www.btsquarepeg.com/about/productivity-triangle/

We can see from this post:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...6&postcount=24

Quality is directly impacted by the extra time and experience that students right now have to get over the course of 2 expensive competitions. Those competitions are driving participation cost.

We know that we are not completely out of bounds because FIRST does get enough return in the end to have a spectacle that attracts sponsors and spectators. However we also know that there's an additional hidden cost in the practice bots so many think need to exist for a variety of reasons:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hreadid=139391

So what we may have here is a triangle where the cost is definitely impacted by the shortening of time and the quality is impacted by the shortening of time and it is definitely a linked system.

So the thing is: outside of FIRST I've worked 1,000 hours of time over 8 hours in about the last 10 months at my job. As a people leader (it's part of my job role) I have noted points of dissatisfaction about this work from about 50% of my direct reports. That drives the risk they will be less dedicated, act against policy or outright leave. These people I am working with are on top of their fields. They make medical doctor kind of money and the demand for their skills is very high. So as a people leader it's not wise to ignore such a large concern as it does not drive value to my organization. It's not wise to loose dedicated and extremely talented people from your team to your competitor.

Unless those numbers change a lot via participation in the poll maybe it's time FIRST study this more. Personally I feel there's a glass ceiling at work here. You can see success but you are blocked from it because of factors you don't consider and are not better controlling. A vast majority of teams are building the same robot or something similar for more than 6 weeks so that's not a real deadline at all. That is driving up the cost to everyone. Even then the first 2 competitions for a team teach them a lot and they demonstrate it in their delivery quality. We can say we want to maintain the status quo, but we can't be honest saying it because we don't have a 6 week build season with so many practice bots.

PS: A goat for a family in need costs like $120.
http://www.heifer.org/gift-catalog/a...FdgYgQodLo4KOA
That $1,000 control system is 5 goats and some smaller critters.
I hate to Steve Jobs this: but you could save entire villages with that sort of money.
I am intentionally ignoring it's a terrible idea to send animals to a place that won't support them in favor of the idea these people will be smart enough to send them to places where the animals make a positive difference.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

Software and drive practice are able to improve without spending money. Software improvements can be written at home and tested maybe once or twice a week in between competitions or in the time before your only one. Drivers could practice some between too but neither task requires any more time than anyone wants to spend. Both would help a team at competition.

If you have to start over but can't build a complete robot than you can practice defense and fund raise without being automatically out because you learned your manipulator wasn't any good too late.

FRC matches are fun to watch for uninformed spectators when something is going on. I don't think anyone will televise a strait FRC event featuring just matches. But we will get people looking longer when more robots are moving and completing meaningful tasks.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

This is absolutely true, and I think that this alone would help improve the overall level of competition at FRC events by allowing all teams to spend more time building on the competition bot. Teams with low resources could be brought up. Teams with a high amount of resources remain unaffected. This alone would help to bring up the overall level of competitiveness in FRC.

Just based on observations at competition events, there seems to be a very different work culture in the pits between teams that play at a highly competitive level and those that do not. Just look at which teams are in the pits until they close every night, and which teams go to dinner as soon as the last match for the day ends? Do you think this translates to work ethic during the build season as well? Teams that compete at a high level just seem to be more organized in their build operation. They work harder. They work smarter. They put in the time it takes to build a kick-butt robot. They don't just settle for something that will barely pass inspection. They only settle for doing the best they possibly can. Just like nearly everything else in life (school, work, hobbies, interpersonal relationships), you are more successful, and excel more at those things that you dedicate the most time to.

Here's a fact: Many teams failed initial inspection due to their failure to follow the very clear rules regarding the display of team numbers on the robot. What does that tell you about a team, and their drive for success and excellence in FRC?

FISRT has a huge challenge: How do you inspire students and teams to compete at the highest level possible?

I think the implementation of rule changes to help all teams compete at a higher level is crucial. Success inspires excellence.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I doubt that giving teams more time to work on their robot will inspire them to work more hours.

I participated in NURC during it's run from 2007 to 2013. The build season was from 1 November till the competition in mid June. Many teams did not get their robot done and in the water before the competition, several teams spend most of the competition building their robots. The teams that did well (like ours) used their time wisely, and spent at least a month testing and improving.

You can build an FRC robot in three days.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

The key thing is giving teams access to their robot AFTER they compete.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I like the quotes from Woody, and think those quotes would still hold true without a stop-build day.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

These are just two teeny nuggets of Woodie's incredible, sometimes multi-faceted, and profound wisdom. And I agree - I think they apply to both sides in this discussion.

...and because echoes are cool, I'd like to ask this question:

What is definitively lost by giving teams the opportunity (but again, NOT the obligation) to continue building until their first competition and on throughout the FIRST season?

I've been kicking this around since yesterday. I have reached no conclusions.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

Is that a topic for another thread?

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

It couldn't be more about this thread. Getting rid of the 6 week build then bag inherently gives teams access to their robot after their first event assuming they compete at more than one.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I agree with Jim, and the others that believe there should be no bag day.
I am not saying this so the top teams get better, Jim already showed they can outperform the vast majority of teams.
I am saying this so the vast majority of teams can get their robot functioning the way they intended them to. So they can enjoy playing the game and fully contribute at the events. It breaks my heart to see great robots, creative robots sit idle in matches because the kids were not afforded the time to finish them. Scrap that, not finish, get them working to actually play the game the way they envisioned. Yes there would be teams would take on more and still fall short in the end, but that would be their choice.

Teams would spend less time on building a duplicate practice robot, this would allow them to fine tune the robot that will actually be competing. THis would help elevate all the robots at the competitions and make the events more exciting. Of course teams could still choose to have two robots for additional drivers practice and development.

With no bag day, there would be no set reveal day, which would mean no beginning of copy cat day. Everyone could focus on what their robot was intended to do, not on what someone elses robot can do one time for a release video.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

It is unlikely that FIRST would institute a 'Tools Down' policy-- every year, there is a snowstorm or some other uncontrollable event in some part of the world that teams aren't prepared for that shows the need to have at a minimum a withholding allowance.

I answered #2 because I think its benefits (more cost savings and practice time for teams overall will elevate the program as a whole) to me outweigh issues of burnout. Some of us meet every day, but a lot of teams don't. FTC and Vex work this way, and I don't see why FRC can't too. I am always surprised how much improvement I see out of FTC teams at later competitions versus their first event.

The new "thing that winning teams do" would likely be rebuilding whole robots after viewing early week events (as required, anyway). It happens now somewhat with the practice bot system, but total rebuilds would occur to a greater degree than they do now. Many teams would need to adopt the paradigm that the robot that they built over 6+ weeks might need to be completely overhauled in order to adapt to the competition if they want to win (as a captain/first pick, anyway).

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

A question that I think is worth asking:

If we were starting FRC from scratch today, only with 3000 teams (including many international) and >100 events, would we still have a "bag" day?

-CF

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

Jim,

This post by me contains a lot of snippets from your two long posts, not because your arguments are the only ones I disagreed with, but because you did a good job of presenting the strong case for the side of this discussion that I disagree with.

Everyone,

In this thread [EDIT] and the related ones [/EDIT] what I see over, and over again is: Robot, Robot, Robot, Robot, Win, Win, Compete, Compete, Robot, Robot Compete, Win, Win, Robot, Compete, Win, ...

Sprinkled among those sentiments are the occasional mentions of the reasons Dean, and the other folks we respect founded the program.

Additionally, while I can't see into the hearts of anyone else, I get a sense that most of the folks who want a longer build season, want it because it strengthens only the on-the-field, crown-a-game-winner part of the program; and that their main motivation isn't using that part of the program to strengthen the entire program.

Blake

I think it would be more precise to say that you think removing access restrictions would make one part of the total FIRST FRC program better. Would that be correct? If I'm mistaken please let me know - I don't want to put my words into your mouth.
I'm pretty sure that making robotics into a spectator sport is explicitly not FIRST's primary goal. Sure, moving in that direction is certainly a tool FIRST uses, but I'm pretty sure that it's only a means and not an end. As such, it should only be allowed to support the true goals of the program. Investing in making FIRST a spectator sport should be justified by whether, and how much it contributes to FIRST's primary mission, minus its costs and/or any direct or indirect harm it does to that primary mission.
I think your point about teams becoming better able to play the game if they spend time with their robots is 100% correct, if you are talking about the time they spend at competitions. That is absolutely not the same thing as talking about spending an extra week or so of build-season time with their robots. Adding another week to the build season would have some effect, but actually being at a competition is a "forcing function" that simply does not exist earlier in the current process.
According to FIRST, the "best" teams are the ones that earn the Chairman's awards and the Engineering Inspiration awards. The teams that win on the field are congratulated and their accomplishments are celebrated, but I don't think FIRST says they are the best teams. Are you suggesting that FIRST/we abandon or change that attitude?
I think FIRST (still) does; and I think that FIRST is using a competition and other tools to accomplish that. However, using/including competitions is different from *being* competitions.
Agreed
Anyone who has used CD for a while knows this sentiment, and knows both the mistakes and the truths it embodies. FIRST is a multi-faceted program that uses competitions. Neither FIRST as a whole, nor the FRC part of FIRST *is* a competition. Regardless of its somewhat unfortunate title, FRC includes a competition, but it most definitely was not created to crown on-the-field winners.
Dang, I was hoping it would shift to being a discussion about how we can encourage continuous inspiration. ;)
I personally would act to make the 6 week build period into reality, because I wouldn't want to over-emphasize the robot. Other people would probably act differently.
I thought we were talking about a program that measures success by counting the numbers of newly inspired students, and didn't realize that were talking about machine sports.
I would be surprised if Woodie would agree with that statement, but you might be right.
Yes
Jim - This conclusion was my take-away from the data in your posts also. Hence my comment about the differences between build time before a competition, and the effects of actually being at a competition.
Probably.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

People shouldn't have to support an arbitrary, unnecessary, wasteful rule to avoid the accusation that we don't get what FIRST is really about.

Removing access does cost teams money. It does reduce quality of competition.

The stop build rule doesn't give us a benefit. Consider: there is absolutely nothing that we can do now, with a build deadline in place, that we wouldn't be able to do just as well with no stop build deadline. Want to do outreach in March? Great - do it.

Furthermore, having a longer build season would make it easier to do outreach in January and February. A longer season gives you more flexibility to spread things around, so it would be less of a big deal to take days off in Jan/Feb for non-robot activity.

We're talking about a rule change that FIRST can make for zero cost that can help a lot of teams.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

A) You may call me on the carpet when you show me all the posts in this thread that express something/anything along the lines of

• "My team needs extra time in the build season to introduce more students to the fun of STEM and FIRST, regardless of whether we win.", or
• "My team needs more time in the build season because we spend so much time helping other teams get ready for their competitions.", or
• any sentiments along those lines.

Until that happens I'll stand by my comments about this thread generally containing an over-emphasis on the robots, and on winning the on-the-field competition.

Painting with a broad brush, this thread resembles a tail trying to wag the dog. That expression isn't 100% applicable, but I think it is in the ballpark.

I wrote about it more plainly than others, but I'm not the only person who has noticed it.

B) I'll repeat my general assertion that I don't think Dean, Woodie, and many others would agree with sentiments such as characterizing the rule as "arbitrary, unnecessary", and "wasteful".

C) Competition-Creep, if it encourages individuals and teams to divert too many resources and/or too much attention away from the primary focus of the programs, harms FIRST. How much or how many is too much or many is certainly open to debate. I approach the subject with an assumption that 6 weeks is long enough for any team to build a fine robot that they can enjoy competing with. If my assumption is correct, then I think we have bigger fish to fry than worrying about whether six weeks is long enough to build uber-robots.

If anything, I think the right thing to do is to figure out how to create a true 44 day build season, and how to make all teams successful during it. That's my 2 cents, and for better or worse, it's the opposite of what is in most posts in the thread.

Blake

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

A) Well since this thread spawned from another topic may I call you out on my posts in that topic to this effect?
Other topic

Item 1 (and my first relevant post to these 2 topics BTW):
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...9&postcount=57

Item 1:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...1&postcount=78

Item 1:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...8&postcount=81

Item 1:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...8&postcount=87

Item 2:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...&postcount=113

B) They may not agree with the tone but it's hard to argue that building a second robot when 14% of your teams can't, over this rule, is not wasteful and doesn't exclude that 14%.

Where did I get 14%? From here, which also spawned from that original topic:
Yet another topic

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...0&postcount=89

In fairness there are several strong feelings being expressed in all 3 topics so I am not surprised by page 10 no one can remember what happened on page 4.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

Well, no, to a large extent I don't think you can. I wrote about this thread, not about your posts in that other thread. But you are right that it's easier to lose sight of the original question/sentiments the longer a thread is used. [EDIT] I have to eat my words somewhat here. I went back and double-checked. My impression had been strongly colored by what has been written in the other closely-related thread(s). So, to a certain techelpbb *can* call me out. :eek: :mad: :) [/EDIT]

If two to three days is enough time for a well-prepared group to build a successful-on-the-field, fun-to-use robot; how on earth does the current 44 day build season (or one that was a true 44-day build season) keep any team from building two, or three, or 44/3 = 14 robots????

Blake

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I pointed this out in the other topic and one of the posts I linked above touches on it:
http://blog.idonethis.com/two-pizza-team/

I alone can build a robot with the FRC parts in my barn in less than 1 day.
Then again I have significant automation experience, deep knowledge of my tools, control over my shop and I would be answering to - well - me. I also won't make a unique website. Write a thorough business plan. Do any community outreach. Give me 10 days for that - all by myself. Heck I can create a LLC in NJ with a website in 24 hours and with what I have now be in business in <45 days complete with IRS information for that business. How? I bought all the FRC droppings off eBay. I hit the Andy Mark Tuesday 'Deals of the Day'. I've been a: FRC-mentor, CSA, FTAA, small parts, FTC-Judge, FLL-Judge. Little by little...step by step...I've made this possible. Just my professional robotics experience alone would not be enough.

Now put 75-125 students in a room who don't have intimate knowledge of: their shop, their tools, each other, the history, have to interact with the school, a control system that doesn't mirror their PC programming experience (if they have any), limited knowledge of control theory, limited funding, limited business experience....

Heck I can see a school that gets otherwise high marks for 'No Child Left Behind' not finishing a robot at all in 45 days. That's the whole point for me at least. What the schools are teaching - does not cut it. Worse no teams are more impacted than the new teams. At least after a few years with some luck most people figure out they can literally buy themselves extra time with the practice robot.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I'll bite.

A longer total time to build will allow our team to better include mentors and students who, for any reason can't show up 3, 4, 5 times a week to help build. If we meet less often over a longer period costs to individuals can be spread out making it more likely that someone can contribute at more meetings. Some people can't show up to meetings 3 or 4 week days for good reasons and it can be hard to keep up with everyone else when you spend a third or fourth the time with them. And inspiration is certainly more effective in person. If we meet less days a week then, over an entire (longer) build, that person will have had more of an affect on the team and vise versa.

To the second point. Maybe people would if it were more practical now? You'll see "Drewbotics #5812" in my signature. They are a rookie team south of us and we are working with them to get them ready for build. The way engineers are distributed about this city they have few options for mentors and will be relying on us for a lot of engineering and FIRST specific help. I wish I could help them more but there is only so much I can do from 45min away (no traffic actually 2hrs on a week day). If I could participate in a higher percentage of their meetings I could have a much bigger impact on that team. Even if I were closer I need to spend a significant amount of time with my own still. If we had alternating schedules that weren't as rigorous on a week to week basis...

My final point that wasn't mentioned is students seem to get more motivated when build season is on. There's a since of agency that doesn't exist otherwise and people tend to be slightly more motivated. This time is thus a great time to teach a student (especially the more complex/hard stuff) except you have less time for that because the robot needs to work.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

Go through the build-process once per month (August, September, October, November, December, ...) for those 75-125 students in a herd or in small groups. Re-use a single modest collection of parts and scrap lumber each month to keep costs down. Re-use past games if you need sample problems to solve.

Ask a mature team to help if your group needs a dose of wisdom.

Then use the results of your preparation/practice/training to build one or two prototypes, followed by a good-enough robot, during the 44-day build season.

After a year or two, use the parts you have accumulated to keep a driver-practice robot on-hand all 365 days of the year.

The bottom line remains that time exists, before each build season begins, to prepare the students, and that enough time exists to put that preparation to good use.

Neither the length of the build season, nor current bagging rules, prevent building second robots, or building a decent primary one with time to spare.

Blake

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

This ignores the point still. A new team without direct involvement from a more veteran team is not going to have the payload to be serious with the criteria you have set.

Sure FRC11 bootstrapped FRC193 this way. They are all experienced people with access to our entire shop. So of course they got moving and serious very quickly.

Now try this in reality: where you may have funding for limited play, limited robots and it may not be possible or practical for other teams to help because they are also burnt out.

We are both very experienced - FIRST is now 20+ years old - what do you actually think stops more teams from forming? What made MAR possible in the first place?

Money and commitment. Anything that increases the cost and complicates the commitment hurts expansion. Heck my friend: look at how many posts in 3 topics have been made to defend a -FAKE- 6 week deadline that 90% of the participants have argued they do, or would, buy there way around.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

WAT?!?! Are you serious? How is that not a second robot?

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

All good.

I understand the motivation that comes with being in "build season"; and definitely I applaud your willingness to go across town to help the other group (I have done a little of that myself, and it can be very draining)

You and I are not disagreeing. The point of my post was that this thread is dominated by posts very different from the one you just wrote.

If you were to ask me for a suggestion for how to improve what your team can accomplish during the build season, I would suggest chatting up MrForbes or JVN/Copioli, or .... to find out what their not-so-secret sauces are.

I, personally, would not suggest petitioning FIRST to lengthen the build season or eliminate the bagging policy. The length might appear to be a stumbling block, but it really isn't.

Blake

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I agree. That would be a second robot(s). And it would have been created without a single modification of the current build season / bagging rules. That's my point. Those rules don't prevent second robots.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I think this is a great argument for a strict 6 week build season. I've seen what often happens with a soft or too far away deadline--there is no sense of urgency, and things just don't get done. The bag day deadline makes me push hard to get our team moving right away, and keep moving, because I know we have to have something looking and working like a robot by the end of week 4, if we want to do well at the competition.

I don't expect to be able to teach students many complex things during build. Sometimes it happens...but there is all school year for this to learning take place. It is difficult to get motivated sufficiently without the hectic bag day deadline. But is removing that deadline going to help? If you lengthen the build time so you can spend time teaching new complex material, you also remove the urgency that is needed to motivate this learning. It sounds to me like Catch 22.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

Using forum posts, we might be stuck with talking past each other.

I suspect that in a face to face conversation we would agree that there is more than one way to skin this cat.

Blake

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I know that as well and I presented one solution right here:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...&postcount=149

Literally remove the boundary of it being an activity in a school which is closed several months of the year (liability insurance reasons). Remove the obligation on the other people who only want to budget for the 6 weeks+ they can manage (since I do honor any help they can offer). Open the door to year round - literal vocational style education - and then the 6 week build issue is almost no issue.

There will already be practice robots because in order for what I have presented in the linked post to work, and be relevant to FRC, you must achieve that. Course you do so at the expense of basically becoming a makerspace or vocational school.

In this case - wouldn't it just more transparent that this is one way to pull this off? Instead of pretending with 6 weeks, an average high school education and the cost of entrance you will be a contender? I lived that pain when I founded Team 8/11 with Bill McGowan. Can't we just be honest? The stress alone that this passive duplicity drives is unnecessary.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

So clearly there are differences of opinion in the room. Good.

I think we are all after the same ultimate goal, but some of us seem to think that there are vastly different ways to inspire young people. Perhaps this is true. I have spent decades of my life working with young people, and while this does not give me all the answers, it does provide a lot of insight into what works and what does not.

The accusation above by Blake seems to indicate that wanting to run a fun and exciting robotics competition is somehow not in the spirit of FIRST, and that somehow prioritizing a few operational things like enabling a better environment for continuous improvement is somehow not inspirational. Meh.

The mission of FIRST is stated to be: "to transform our culture by creating a world where young people dream of becoming science and technology leaders."

Great. We all agree on this goal.
So as a "technology leader" myself, I guess I should internalize this goal a bit and turn it into: "How can I get lots of young people to want to be like me?" As leaders and mentors, this is really the question isn't it?

The key point of the mission statement are the words "transform our culture". This implies something huge. Not big, huge. Not the small potatoes stuff of impacting merely thousands of people that we have all been carefully doing for the past 20+ years, but impacting MILLIONS of people. Cultural transformation will not happen at anything less than this kind of scale.

We all know that other organizations have been able to pull off major cultural changes in the past: Sports leagues, political campaigns, consumer groups, religions, and many more. It can be done, but we in FIRST haven't actually pulled it off yet.

My personal view of how to do this is to follow the sports model. Dean himself spoke of exactly this on the recent RoboLeague program, so this is nothing new. Why do sports work to attract and inspire? Three big hooks that sports have going for them is that sports are fun to play, fun to watch, and excellence in sports is very inspiring to the young. The hallmark of a truly successful sport that has transformative ability is if the population of fans and spectators is larger than the population of participants. We are certainly not there yet in Robotics......not even close.

So this is the heart of the matter. If we are following a sports model (and we most certainly are at FIRSTinMichigan), and we want to reach a transformative level of impact, then we must put some much needed attention on "fun to watch" and "inspiring the pursuit of excellence". These two things go hand in hand. Better performing robots are more fun to watch, and better performing robots are more inspiring to the public. Allowing more of this will only help all of us better reach outsiders.

Blake you corrupt my message. It is certainly not all about win, win, win, robot, robot, robot. It is about inspiring more success by allowing more success.

My students are inspired by teams like 1114, 254, 971, 148 and their kind. These are the rock stars of robotics. Our team meets all year round, not because of me, but because my students beg me to allow them the chance to try to be as good as those they are inspired by. My students will never stop working while there is still a chance to improve. To me, this is the essence of inspiration, and for them excellence is a way of life. Their passion is what inspires me to keep doing this year after year. If there were millions like them, then we would really have the cultural transformation Dean speaks of. But this will never happen if we tell everyone to stop after 45 days.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

Bad robots that cannot play the game are neither inspirational nor educational to build and to watch...but continuing to improve a bad robot and turning it into a good robot is one of the coolest opportunities available to teams in FRC.

The cycle of:
"Hmm, my robot can't do X" ->
"I have an idea! Let's try Y" ->
"No, that didn't work, but in the process I learned something that makes me think we should try Z" ->
"Hey! Z works pretty well! Our robot just did X on the field!"

...is the single most rewarding, inspiring, educational, confidence-building, team bond-strengthening, burnout-alleviating, sleep deprivation-justifying, life-altering aspect of the program that is available to all FRC participants to experience. The more of this that happens, the better. The greater the number and difficulty of X, the better. The greater the despair before you find your Z, the better.

(I challenge anyone who has experienced this as a student on an FRC team to disagree, regardless of where you sit on "competitiveness")

These cycles happen all the time, from prototyping, to CAD, to manufacturing, to developing software in your school gymnasium, to going to a week 0 scrimmage, to showing up at your first practice match at your first (or only) official event.

Currently a large portion of the available opportunity to experience these moments are not available to all teams because of the bagging day. Took too long to assemble your robots? Sorry programming students! No inspiration for you. Hastily bagged a bunch of parts because it's almost midnight (even though your regional is 2 weeks away)? That's okay, we'll spend 1/3 of our $5000 regional finishing building the thing, and spend the rest of the event paying several hundred dollars per match so the kids can learn how to drive it. Disappointed by your performance at your first event? Hope you spent thousands on a practice robot so you have a chance of making effective improvements before the next one!

Depriving any student of the opportunity to experience as many and as significant of these "A-Ha!" moments as possible limits the opportunity to make a real, lasting impact on FRC participants. The fact that more "A-Ha"s leads to more good robots, which leads to a more spectator-friendly and interesting on-field product is a great thing, but you don't need to start with that line of reasoning in order to arrive at the same conclusion. Crowning a winner is nice and all, and it's fun to hold a plastic trophy, but even after 15 years I enjoy watching my effective robot play the game far more than I enjoy blue banners.

Open robot access will result in more opportunities for more "A-Ha!" moments for more participants. Not all teams will benefit, but many will. Open robot access + multiple plays for all via districts + better local access to practice facilities? Now THAT'S what we should really be shooting for :)

TL;DR:
Putting artificial obstacles in the way of FRC's magical process in the name of:
* Tradition
* Helping adults with poor time management skills
* An elevator pitch about "six weeks"
* Teaching some sort of life lesson about "deadlines" (which is exactly what your first competition would become)
* Fairness
* Or any other reason you can think of

...runs contrary to the most fundamental, grassroots aspect of the program.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

So what? The argument that the FRC culture needs to cling to the founders' original intent gets weaker every year. A generation has gone by since then! As participants in this program, we have the privilege of defining and redefining the culture as we see fit. Please remember Dean's speech at the 2013 championship where he expressed deep regret about the program still being a "best kept secret" and called for urgent and fundamental changes to the program. "If it's really that good... and if it's having the kind of impact on all of you that I know it is... the numbers should be bigger!"

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

Ouch! Next time I'll leave out complimenting you for presenting a strong argument to back up your thesis.

I did my best to quote your message, and supply contrasting opinions without taking what you wrote out of context.

I guess that we both have our blind spots.

Sincere wishes for the best of luck to you in whatever set of rules FIRST decides to carry into the future.

Blake

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

Most people here would agree they like to compete in robotics competitions and win them with there robot.


This isn't the science fair. As Jim Zondag has shown, For the most part teams are not actually all that good. How am I supposed to use a robot to inspire students when the average robot last season was only able to put up 6-10 points? Why is it that when i go to introduce someone to FIRST i have to go videos of Einstein or heavily edited reveal videos of top teams performing at their best to even stand a chance of getting someone to say " That looks cool, where can i see this"?



It would make the robot better. Which just so happens to be the device both FIRST and I want to use in order to inspire students, gather sponsors, and change culture. So yes, you are correct.

idd argue its a pretty big part of it.

Sorry but if i decide to build a robot (Something that has to be done for R and C parts of FRC to happen) and it performs soo well people actually want to watch it, i am going to use it for more than "supporting the true goals of the program".

This is your opinion. I am reasonably sure a large part of the community does not share it. Personally, I design a robot to win the competition by any means necessary only restricted by the rules and the resources I have or can obtain. If doing so results in a robot that just so happens to be interesting to watch ( it generally does) than im fine with that.


Are you saying that driving practice on a 2nd robot dosnt improve a teams ability to play the game?

Then why do we have a multi tired succeed to advance system where trophies and banners are handed out with words like "Winner" put on it? Or that ever present C in FRC. You can argue the significance of the competition in the program but you cannot deny the First Robotics Competition is a Competition. After all it is the "varsity sport of the mind" and ive never heard of a sport that dosn't crown 1 or more champions.

Im going to stop here. My point is that most of us are here to build robots. We do it for a variety of reasons including: its fun, we like to compete, and to inspire others. I don't walk into a build space thinking " how can I build a robot that accomplishes the goals of FIRST without using it for anything else". I do however try to lead students to design a robot that can complete a task in the best way possible and by doing so may accomplish some side objectives.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I think both sides see time management challenges associated with both and neither has a negative effect powerful enough to be a major detriment to FRC. But one has potential to greatly increase how effective a team is at whatever they want to focus on by giving them more time to do it.

I don't think the urgency of the build takes a major hit because of how I would compare it to an off season project. An off season robot can start from June and stop at January. That's a whopping 7 months. But if you are building one just for training (like a t-shirt cannon) ie not for an off season competition, you don't have anything to lose if you don't finish it. In build season, if you don't finish you won't do well at competition.

Basically the build season will still have urgency because you have something to gain or loose by not being on time unlike an off season t-shirt cannon or vision testing rig.

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I can think of a way to move beyond the postulating in this thread. Why not try one of the alternatives being presented and actually evaluate the results? Seems to me this is consistent with the changes in rules and practices that take place from time to time in FRC anyways. Don't like the results, modify or go back to the original rule set. Nothing proposed is likely to destroy FRC (IMHO).

Re: POLL: Six Week Build Season
 

I voted for no change. While it is pointless to think that FIRST could level the playing field when the first rule of FRC competition is that "if it isn't forbidden, it's allowed." (I'm excluding the core values and mission of FIRST here, and focusing on the competition part.) Some of the inequalities can, however be mitigated, and should be. Bagging the robot dates back to when teams were required to ship robots to each event, and from event to event. Requiring the same "stop build day" reduced the inequalities between teams in early vs late regionals and between those located near and far from their regional. The "hands off" rules still help equalize between teams near and far from their regional. (In the interest of full disclosure, we're located about an hour drive from Bayou and "day trip" the tournament.) After so many years in the "hands off but development may continue" mode, going to a "tools down" rule would likely be ignored or seriously circumvented by many teams, and could prove to be a "gateway vice" to ignoring other rules. As a co-worker of mine once told me "the first rule of leadership is to never give an order that won't be followed."

Removing the stop build altogether would not be unreasonable, but we've used it to impose additional build discipline. For 2014 Aerial Assist, we built a prototype robot, "Woody" (guess what his skeleton was made of) and a competition robot, "Buzz". We bagged Buzz, but continued to develop code, driver skill, and maintenance procedures on "Woody" at a pace more relaxed than late build season, more similar to early build season. Last year, we built what were supposed to be twins, with "Atlas" being the guinea pig and construction on "Peabody" running about a week behind until the beginning of week six. We completed Peabody, ran some test suites, pulled the "rake" (which turned out to be different between the two robots) to be part of our withholding allowance, and bagged. Atlas was then primarily the "practice" robot. The mechanical and wiring team was then "hands off" of Peabody apart from maintenance, repairs, and quickly-installed upgrades. The programming team had a few "extra" sessions where they came in to tweak and tune code, but they knew they had to leave a stable bit of code for the next drive practice session. This discipline worked very well for us. Of course, if build season ended at CMP, we'd work out another discipline.
"Maintenance Windows" - yuck! Each team would be filling out dozens of forms and chucking dozens of tags into the landfill. Another of the great things about building a practice robot is that it is also a demo robot; you can have your drivers drive at demos and you only need to consume one tag and complete one tag form per event you participate in.