Re: Easiest ways to succeed at competition
 

Cheer

Sure, good teams pick on potential and great teams pick on consistency, but surprised teams pick on recognizability. So does the media. Having a colored robot, a great t-shirt design, or a cool mascot can improve your image, sure, but these things can take time, money, and/or thought. Yelling doesn't. This strategy may not get you to finals or an award, but if you consider yourself successful if you just make elims or end up on the local news, this isn't a bad way to go.
(This also extends to dancing.)

Re: Easiest ways to succeed at competition
 

Drivers should be driving during build season. If not a robot, any R/C vehicles would help. Even certain video games are good practice. I like The Cheesy Poofs' driver selection process, and they always seem to do well.

Re: Easiest ways to succeed at competition
 

I believe one of the easiest ways to succeed at competition is to scout. Even if your team don't have 6 scouts, a few dedicated students can take notes on the different teams they see compete. Those notes are often invaluable.

Scouting doesn't just have to be for creating a pick list. The data collected while scouting can help teams to know what strategies can be effective in certain matches. It's always better to go into a match strategy meeting knowing what you're talking about, and being backed with data, than just going in blind.

Good scouting and good strategy can turn an iffy, or okay robot into a #1 seed, or even the Regional/District winner.

And of course always scout your own robot. It's easy to get stuck in the mind frame of "this what we wanted to do," and not, "this is what we can do." If you scout your own team, you will get hard data that you can not argue with. You will get a sense of what your robot can actually do.

Re: Easiest ways to succeed at competition
 

We had that happen in our match... a robot drove across the center line and drove on our robot, and basically sat on our arm. They came to us later and told us their coach said "Just use the auto, what's the worst that could happen?" Even though the coder wasn't confident in it yet.

Re: Easiest ways to succeed at competition
 

To be fair that 43/45 team was 973, the team they won a championship with in 2011.

Re: Easiest ways to succeed at competition
 

#1 sleep

When you don't sleep, your ideas are incoherent, you're more stressed out, you're less willing to solve problems, and you're probably going to get sick. Being tired hurts EVERYTHING you do.

#2 Don't change your robot

The build season is only six weeks long, so once you unbag your robot at your first competition, there really isn't much you can change. That 15 pound intake that you wish you could remake, well you just can't do it. It's not like over the course of four competitions you could replace your top functions twice over. If you don't change your robot, it will not be surpassed by the other robots that are also not being altered.

Re: Easiest ways to succeed at competition
 

Challenge accepted.

So, you mean making vision processing work and adding a climber between competitions is a bad idea?

But seriously, if your team has had trouble in the past with making practice matches or inspection, don't change your robot at competition! Last year, my team added a can grabber between Quals and Elims (or playoffs, or whatever they were last year) and it was definitely not worth the time and effort it took to do in time. If you're not 100% sure you can add it before practice matches, don't do it.

Re: Easiest ways to succeed at competition
 

Would you consider removing our entire arm mechanism and taking it home mid-Saturday a significant change? I mean, we did prove nothing but a box on wheels can play this game.

In all seriousness, my contribution is to make friends. Lots of them. Being a new driver, my favorite match was the one where we got along best with our two other alliance partners. There was one scout from another team that I would see often and he would ask how we were doing. Friends are great. Friendly people are great. Make friends.

Re: Easiest ways to succeed at competition
 

Follow Mr Miyagi's advice and seek balance, not success.

Re: Easiest ways to succeed at competition
 

I thought that was only 2012?

Re: Easiest ways to succeed at competition
 

I can definitely understand minor tweaks and fixes, but I would agree that making big changes at competition is stressful for all involved. If you have to do it because your robot just isn't functioning the way it needs to, that's one thing. If your robot is working and now you're being tempted to add that one more little feature, resist the urge. This is where things start to get crazy.

We didn't have our auto modes working properly when we started quals at GTRC. Students worked on it every spare minute they could outside of our matches. There were many opportunities that we could have deployed the very latest and hoped for the best. But we all decided, as a group, that since the drive team was doing well with what they had, we were not going to risk screwing up, crashing the software, or other "oops" mistakes by deploying code without first fully testing it on the practice field. Did we lose some potential auto points because of this? Yes, definitely. But the software students, the drive team students, and the mentors were all much more relaxed and less stressed, knowing that "it'll be ready when it's ready".

Re: Easiest ways to succeed at competition
 

For the drive team know the ABCD'S
A- must do Auto at least 10 points
B- must get the Breach if you do all 5 that is 50 points + 1RP
C- Must Challenge/Climb do not leave points on the field this leads to Capture.
D- learn to play some Defense.
S- Shoot be realistic. We are doing 3 low goals and hope to do 5 at DCMP this is a must if you want to be a alliance captain and prepare to do a capture.

Just some ideas

Re: Easiest ways to succeed at competition
 

TechnoKats 2006 (Aim High) did just that over the course of only three competitions.

The robot as built, and as run at the first Regional, had a very consistent but slow turreted catapult using vision targeting. It was completely outgunned by rapid-fire wheeled shooters.

During the first couple of hours at the second Regional, the catapult was replaced by a wheeled shooter, still on the turret. It was fast, but the fast-spinning wheel had enough vibration to make the aim unsteady.

During the first couple of hours at Championship, the turret was removed and a more stable wheel assembly was affixed directly to the chassis. It was harder to aim (the entire robot had to be turned) and the vision sensing was never quite retweaked to let autonomous give consistent results.

But it was continuous improvement, and it was pretty much what you said couldn't be done.

On the other hand, it will be surpassed by the teams that do alter their robots to be better. The TechnoKats Lunacy robot went undefeated at its first event. It was edged out in the finals at the second. It was merely adequate at the Championship.


So don't be afraid to redo a failed design. Just make sure you have the capability of actually redoing it.