Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

Now I am not suggesting we implement this, I am not suggesting this is a superior system I am just curious as to how robotics teams would react to the following changes in bag and tag rules.

The bag is replaced with the following system.
You no longer have to physically put your robot in a bag instead you weigh the robot on the night that would normally be bag and tag and record that weight you also have a copy of the bill of materials for your robot. This would go into a sealed envelope night of bagging and would not be opened until a later point where I will specify.

You now can drive, and program your robot and use it in whatever way you want between bag night and your competition. HOWEVER the only parts you are allowed to add to the robot are COMPLETELY COTS parts to REPLACE a part. Adding parts that would cause you to adjust the bill of material however is not allowed. (I'm trying to create a state in which you can only repair your robot so stop build date is preserved but you have access to the robot).

When you get to competition your robot is weighed again, and the bill of materials in the envelope is taken and incorporated into inspection. Any changes in weight between bag and now that indicate your robot is heavier subtracts from your withholding allowance. Major deviations of weight on your robot flag you for further inspection. (Really really trying to create a safeguard system).

What I think or what I have tried to just create is a system where your robot is free to access during the downtime between bag and competition. In this time using your robot is done at your own risk, if you want programmers to try different auto on it you can go for it but if in auto program causes the robot to damage itself you cannot repair it. If you want drivers to take it out for a spin for a bit of practice by all means you can do that if the driver messes up and breaks something tough luck.

If this system were to be in effect (and I know its a lot to think about) what would you do with the extra time you have on your robot?

err

TL:DR If you had access to your robot in this time period after bag what would you be doing with it?

Personally I'd be going with outreach and photo shoots for web content because the robot is always a mess by the time we are done running it through competitions.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

I'd be measuring it to make an accurate practice robot that could be driven and tested and broken and repaired and generally abused without risking breakage of the competition robot. I'd use the measurements to fabricate new or improved mechanisms to be part of the withholding allowance.

I'd be powering it up only to use it as a programming testbed while the drivers got full access to the practice robot.

I'd be treating it as a fragile treasure until we had permission to do work on it (either during practice day or an access period prior to competition).




More likely, I'd actually be ignoring it and catching up on sleep and chores and family time.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

/thread

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

I'd keep it in a giant bag until competition to protect it.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

yeah real talk though didn't think the answer would be sniped that hard and that on point that quickly lol.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

The nice thing about bag and tag is that it helps teams avoid mistakes. When the robot is in the bag, everyone knows they can't work on it. If you take that physical barrier away, we'll have all sorts of teams that had someone (like a freshman not familiar with the rules) get to the shop early and do work without someone watching them to say stop.

Plus, you'll have variations in scale calibration - we'll likely get different readings for every single robot when we weigh at competition, which would be a nightmare to try and untangle.

As it is, you can already remove your robot from the bag for promotional opportunities, which pretty much covers what the OP would be doing. The only difference here is that you could also practice with it, which increases the chance of something breaking without giving you the chance to fix it.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

I think this is interesting because many teams don't ever have a 'practice robot' and once it's in the bag, there isn't any more practice or build. It's a resources-thing.

I think currently it's conceived as a really very fair idea that you can't make changes to the robot after it's in the bag. All teams have the same amount of time.

But Not Really, it doesn't work out that way. If your team has money and a practice bot and are driving it daily, breaking the weak-links, making changes to the practice-bot for weeks and then carrying in your thirty-pounds, the teams with more money, more labor (kids) and a practice robot have a huge advantage. And it gets bigger every week because those teams go to multiple regionals and make upgrades every week. Multiple regionals is also a luxury many teams don't have.

Currently our small-town team finds that the best way to compete is play an early regional so the practice-and-perfect advantage is smaller. But when we get to Championships, we're often really outclassed.

This suggestion is interesting because it would allow us to continue to drive the bot--and conceive of needed fixes--for the interim time.

There is also a big disadvantage to this plan. I haven't seen my own family for six weeks and my wife would really like me home a few nights. A 'stop build' day forces an end to my AWOL at home. If this were enacted, we would have more weeks of every-evening in the shop. I don't know how the teams with multiple robots and multiple regionals ever get their lives back to normal. They never stop building!

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

I hadn't thought about social media upkeep and web content upkeep as promotional but I suppose it is.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

Apparently this dead horse needs another beating, so here goes.

To the teams who are smart enough and well funded enough, the bag is nothing more than a nuisance. And a nuisance I could honestly do without. If FIRST's intent is to keep the current structure, I'd be quite happy with instead locking the robot in an unused room by itself, rather than putting it in a bag. The bag just makes transporting it dangerous and difficult.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

Yeah the horse is dead as can be but I'm more curious as to what people would do with it, I mean having an option is cool but seeing how different people take advantage of the situation is also cool. I've always wanted to pose this question in as neutral of a tone as possible cause generally the threads that talk about this get heated too quickly for this kind of question to be put out there.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

I think we should put the robot in a large crate, and ship it to a secure location where it is then transported and loaded into the venue for us.
:rolleyes:

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

I think we should have to strap rockets to our robot and send it to an undisclosed holding facility on the moon. Who's with me?

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

Only if we do it with Kerbal Space Program.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

Remember the TLDR here is not bagging is good or bad, the question is what would you do (if anything) if you had time with the robot per the specified situation.

We have the conversation about the pros and cons of bagging all the time and I know how to use google so that isn't what I am asking. I am asking for what you would do in this situation.

Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

I am!

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

I would rather keep the bag versus that. How do you make measurements of the robot when working on the 30 pounds that are unbagged?

Or, they could leave it in the bag until the night before competition, then we transport the robot to competition unbagged.

Just thinking.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

The biggest glaring flaw with is that now schrodingers cat may or may not be in the box working.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

I perfer Space Engineers.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

I was talking to a friend about something similar to this the other day, however, there are teams that make a practice bot that allows even more capabilities such as more prototyping and such. It would be nice to check measurements or fix broken electronics, and I do have a love/hate relationship with that bag. Even so, I don't feel that there is much difference, plus weighing and measuring and doing all those things will take even more time than placing into a bag and tying it up. Maybe if it was an option to do one or the other, that way it was a preference type of thing.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

With this said situation, I think our team would be doing almost only auto practice. We built our practice robot and competition robot "identical" again this year. Just like last year, they look exactly the same and everything is a duplicate of the other, but they still aren't the same. They are close enough in the aspect of driving in teleop but in autonomous are just enough off. Basically, doing auto practice would make our autonomous codes a whole lot more precise.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

I'm in :D. (There's going to be those 5 rockets that fail and destroy those teams work entirely)

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

I like the idea of putting the robot in a bag, that way top teams won't steal our designs :D

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

Someone remind me again, what is the purpose of bagging the robot?

If it's leveling out the playing field, it doesn't do that at all, because now only the teams rich enough are going to be able to buy/build a second robot to iterate, improve, and get better before their first event. If it's leveling out the playing season, again it doesn't do that either, because with second robots, teams are still increasing their level of ability as the season goes on, and quite often, the really wealthy teams will schedule extra regionals just to work out all the kinks. If it's to put a hard stop on the build season, NOPE, not doing that either. My team (mostly freshman this year) was running behind schedule, so we've barely started our second robot, which means that we're going to be busy building straight through until our first event.

I used to think it had a purpose on my former team which was always strapped for cash, but now that I'm with a team with a little bit more money to spend, it really does nothing beneficial to any teams. Furthermore, I can't think of one instance in industry where some management organization is going to tell you "nope, hands off; you can't get better anymore".

Someone please show me the light of way.
I know this is not what this thread was intended for, so my apologies if we deviate course a little bit here.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

I take it that your first robot is your competition bot and your second bot is your practice robot?

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

Yep. Wasn't the plan, but about middle of week six, we realized that "learning from our first robot to make a really great second robot" was no longer a feasible plan. At this point, we're going to swap out some of the more egregious parts during the 6hrs and unload day at our first event.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

Similar to my post, I agree with this completely.

This isn't correct.

I design trucks and when we ship the sales group their first demo trucks, we have to stop writing change orders on that model. We'll plan upgrades and improvements, but the body panels, the interior panels, the COTS things need to be ordered. So no upgrades are allowed.

I've designed radios, elevators, train parts, pumps, many other things. This is how it's worked for me every time. If you have a functional, safe design, even if it can be improved, it has to go into production at some point. You release the prints and they order the first production-run worth...sometimes hundreds of parts.

This is part of the real world of engineering. Every design can be improved after it's first conceived and tried, but mostly you'll be doing that after production has started and orders are being fulfilled. Many times that doesn't even happen--you have new projects by then...what was good enough to release is good enough to sell.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

Fair points.

What you're leaving out is that these improvements are in fact noted, designed for, and the next version update (for a car, the next model year), they will be implemented. The only reason why they aren't implemented immediately is because the design has to go through rigorous testing in house and by third parties to ensure user safety, and they need to make thousands of identical parts to ensure quality. I see no such safety testing requirements in FIRST. Additionally, no one in FIRST is mass producing their robots, like a company does. Heck, some teams don't even put their designs into a CAD! RARELY if ever will a prototype, an early-off, or even a Test Trial part be 1:1 to production.

Maybe the original Design Engineers aren't involved in this optimization process, but people like myself (Industrial Engineers) certainly are figuring out how to squeeze just 10% more awesomeness out of the object in question. My job is never really over, until we all agree that it is not financially beneficial to make anymore improvements.

AND, much of this optimization is done on the supplier side of things, so the assembly company might not know exactly how many little-bitty changes were made before final parts are shipped for testing. They're not going to hold every suppliers hand; they've got a whole car to design, assemble, and sell.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

Just went back and reread your post. Yeah, we are pretty much in agreement with everything. Idk; maybe someone else will sweep in with the answer.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

Or we use a box that meets the constraints for the robot, and it wooden so if it was open you would notice if it was.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

It is all about money, bagging = more practice robots = more money

PROOF 35$ dodge ball

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

Great question. I personally would love to have some extra practice time, seeing as we pretty much finished the robot ON bag day. There aren't any plans to add anything substantial as of now. It would be nice though to be able to show off the robot to the different schools that make up our team without worrying about what the manual considers "brief" unbagging.

I guess there's always our Access Period.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

Oh gosh...TEST ALL THE CODE!!!
I am (somehow?) doing most of the programming this year, and it's my first year doing this.
The robot spent way too long in the design phase, and consequently wasn't built until late in build season.
Thus, we have no auton. And basic drive code that someone wrote before we had a robot, and therefore needs tweaks. (Okay, technically we HAVE auton, but our encoders are broken and therefore...no auton).
Writing vision recognition would also be a plus. Testing camera view and feed.
Driver practice would be key.
We also shorted our robot on bag night, so replacing those electronics (we shorted it at 11:56 pm...) would be key.
Overall, our team is pretty low-budget, and we don't have a practice bot. It would be a great opportunity for us to work some more on general practice and testing (two things that really tend to get neglected on our team during build season, but that are crucial in the end).

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

what if they made a rule- NO PRACTICE BOTS!!!!! Our little team has a hard enough time affording and building one bot. How we've done so well against teams that have such a ridiculous advantage is amazing (depending on the year anyways- this is my first year, last year our team bombed, but many years have done quite well)

I think it's good to make everyone take some time off. I just saw my kid has a C in geometry- which he finds laughably easy. not cool. He's been obviously blowing off study time for robot and musical (which of course have to be the same 8 week-ish period since we do early districts).

Maybe there should be more restrictions, like not being able to spend more then 30 hours per week on the bot?? I don't know.

But some restrictions to help smaller teams with less funds would be nice. Bag or no bag.

If we did have more time with the bot, that sure would be nice. Lots of stuff we never got to test!!!! thankfully we do go to 2 districts, which is probably why we often manage to do well.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

Why bring the top down if you can bring the bottom up?

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

so people can feel better

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

100% Agree that FIRST should just do away with bag day. Elimination would level the playing field in more than 1 way. I agree that teams that can afford multiple bots and multiple regionals are at an extreme advantage. No bag day would mean that teams would need no reason to have multiple bots, except for this year maybe when extended practice might grind robots into dust, but that is another issue.

It might also level out the playing field throughout the season. If you are a one robot, one regional team, it isn't worth it to go to a late season event currently. Many of the teams there are at a 2nd or 3rd event. Kinks have been worked out, parts changed, etc. No bag day would mean that a week 5 one robot team could redesign an entire robot after week one.

I can also see an argument for a bag AFTER your first event. this sets all kinds of interesting tradeoffs. If you are a superpower team and you put your bot out there in week one, your design can be taken and reverse engineered and tweaked. Maybe someone now makes a robot that is better than yours and meets you in week 5. Or do you wait for events later in the season to see what is going to happen and lengthen your build season? Of course, you couldn't lie to prospective mentors and spouses that "It's only six weeks..."

People need to stop worrying about people feeling better about themselves and start learning how to become a high resource team.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

The more restrictions you lift, the bigger advantage you give to teams with the most resources - especially smart engineers. Sure, teams that struggle would have better robots than they do now. However, those teams that dominate now would have much better robots. It would unlevel the playing field, if anything....

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

just bee yourself

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

One thing I think it would change for sure would be it would throw cold water on reveal- video season.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

Welcome to FRC!

A couple of things:
A part of FIRST is engaging with the community in order to bring in funds... Being in a small town is a disadvantage in a lot of ways, but in Palymra, you do have access to some healthy corporations. Your team should reach out to them and seek sponsorship. I don't see Dechert Dynamics Corporation listed as a sponsor for you - a machining firm base in your town of population 8,000. They would be a wonderfully natural fit for you - if not in terms of cash, likely in terms of access to some very good equipment and/or mentors.

Another part of FIRST is spreading the inspiration. I don't know how many kids your team has, but see if you get get close to 25 or 30 active members. This provides the manpower to build an additional bot. The local high school has about 1,000 kids and has solid academics - surely there are at least 30 with nerd-like tendencies?

A major part of developing a strong program is building the foundation with kids, sponsors, and mentors. The vast majority of programs can do just that.... It takes work, but a lot of businesses love giving money to robotics programs - especially local tech, engineering and machining firms that look at us as training grounds for their future employees.

As for the C- in geometry. Yes, the kids need to learn balance. Our kids don't do the spring theater production. Good high schools have many great opportunities and it is not possible to do them all. Kids have to make choices. (We lost a lot of kids to marching band the last couple of years.)

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

High performing team /=/ high resource team. There are socioeconomic factors that stop some teams from having as many resources at the top tier. However, you can often perform as well as them just strategically using what you have.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

You can build an entire new robot out of cots components from VEX. You'd see a bunch of elite team copies with this method.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

Thats true but I dunno how many teams would be fly with waiting 6 weeks to try and adapt to another design with however much time they have between their "tag" day and their competition. Even with a mirror match of two vex copies wouldn't it boil down to a skill matchup?

Also I fear this thread is going to be derailed by the more heated debate soon.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

The only problem I see with this is that there is a 6 week build season for a reason and extending it gives some teams more of an advantage for driver practice and ability to alter their robot. You'd be seeing more 5-7 competition week robots at champs most likely. I can also see regionals being moved out farther in competition season so they have more time to change things and perfect their robot. If they could figure out a way to make this fair, I think that it would be a great idea. FIRST is changing a lot currently, maybe the bag day rule will sometime be changed. I just hope it's for the better.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

I don't follow your logic at all.

It gives ALL teams the advantage of more driver practice, vs now where some have it and others don't. I don't see any problems.

Why would regional/district events change their dates? It has nothing to do with robots bagged/unbagged and everything to do with location availability. Assuming events don't change, all week 5-7 teams will be better than they currently are now, and all week 1-2 teams could build/practice on their comp. bot straight through to their competition, making them better too. Everyone wins, and the field is more fair than it currently is now, where well-to-do teams have the sizable advantage. Teams that do week 1 events are still going to do them for the same reason they do them now; they are more ready than everyone else.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

I don't know what we'd do, but maybe we'll find out this coming week. We finally built a practice robot. We spent hardly anything on it, maybe $100? a few extra (kit) drive belts, and a couple extra hubs to put rollers on shafts. We used last year's chassis, with this year's modifications. We only have one electronics assembly, so it's part of our withholding.

I think the plan right now is for driver practice and autonomous testing. After our first regional, we'll probably use it do develop the new mechanisms we discover we need, and fix the design problems we find.

But I don't really like "fuzzy" rules like this proposal. Putting the whole thing in a box and getting rid of it was pretty nice, it was out of sight and out of mind until the competitions.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

I'm understanding a little more of what you're trying to say and why this would be a good system. Thanks for the clarification :) Something else to consider is how fair the regional is going to be at a 5th week regional when there is a robot who is playing on an actual field for the first time going against a robot that has been to 1 or 2 other regionals that year. Is there any way to get around that issue?

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

My understanding of why we have bag day is to make it even for the teams that have to ship their robots halfway around the world to compete. Those teams don't have to worry about getting a practice bot from their local facilities to competition, but they do have to get their competition bot there. So to make it fair, FIRST says everybody has to stop working on what they're bringing to competition and the international teams aren't screwed because they don't live in 'murica or one of the few other countries with regionals.

Re: Taking the Bag out of Bag Day
 

I'm not sure who told you that. There are some other assumptions made such as practice bot that not all teams have, including ours. We never had one.
As a much younger mentor back in the day when we first got started in 1999, I was told about the FIRST challenge of building a robot in 6 weeks (plus 3 days actually) and it being the hardest fun we ever will experience.
It all changed when withholding allowances were allowed for whatever reasons over the years.
Our program, efforts and setup was created and built over the years based on that premise. We also cant change much because the robot spends all of its time away from home vs the time it was here to create it until mid-May.
Bag/tag made it an extra burden on our program because FIRST provides way less support than they used to because most teams simply drive it to an event.

I understand that many robots and teams get better because they have more time to iterate, especially after a previous event. Quite frankly, I dont know how teams can do it after all the sacrificial time and effort is spent during the official build season. I like Jim's reasoning of the Out of Sight/Out of Mind deal where your mind and body can take a break.

Any changes to Bag/Tag will fundamentally add to the changes of how we view the official Build Season. It'll be interesting to watch it all unfold in the years to come on how they deal with this, if any.
This would further our disadvantages being from Hawaii. But like most teams, we try our best to adjust to whatever changes are made, and hope to still be competitive. Interesting thread though..