Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

I've seen a lot of speculation about whether people build second robots or not on here. I wanted to create a poll to see how many teams make second robots to practice after build season is over in order to test whatever.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

Friskie,

Our sister team 1188 tried to build a practice bot but had limited success. Should you add more finer divisions in your poll to handle this kind of situation?

team attempted to build practice bot but was not completed in time to use for this season?

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

So this was a huge step for 5254 this year. In 2015, 5254 didn't have a robot that functioned effectively until Tech Valley Eliminations.

After a great 2015 post-season, we made a goal of having two, complete working robots by the end of build season. As such, getting done early was the #1 priority. By finishing the first robot Week 3, we were able to test and tune and get two functioning robots by the end of build.

This allowed 5254 to seed top two at both our Regionals and earn another wildcard to the Championship event.

I noticed you're from 3003, who we've obviously competed with quite a bit. You guys almost always have great robots, and I think a practice robot would help you immensely. I think you could have had your batter shot and climber working earlier with a practice bot, and until NY goes to districts, I would recommend any team here that has the capability to build a practice bot.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

Even though we never drove with it after bag day, and scavenged it for parts after our first event, it was a great exercise to know how the bot was going to be laid out, and we were able to test the robot before we actually built it so the final bot wouldn't need any emergency changes.

Side note: 2014 and 2016 are the only years we have ever made a practice bot, and 2016 was the only year we got it driving because in 2014 we did not have a spare cRIO pneumatic module.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

We built two practice robots this year.

Between now and champs, we'll primarily do driver practice/auto modes with one, and iterate mechanisms on the other.

-Mike

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

Echoing Marccenter - we built a second robot, and it was a huge boost to practice driving before our first event. We learned the hard way to practice driving on *carpet*. But we also scavenged heavily for our first event and haven't had a working practice robot since.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

We will be doing this next year.

The hidden side of practice bots is that you get to have a lot more fun. We got to practice with a lot teams this year, and have played a lot more scrimmage matches then any event. Its a great way to make friends.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

The biggest benefit of doing this was that it let our now much larger team work in a much more hands on way this year. Everyone had something to work on all build season. After we bagged our comp bot it allowed our mechanical and electrical groups full access to one machine while the other was left open for programming or driver practice.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

Keep in mind this is a CD poll and in general is just taking data from "successful" teams.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

We've built two robots since 2011. They are built in parallel (at the same time). The practice robot is not painted and generally has limited light-weighting machining. Other than this, we try to make them identical.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

We built one robot didn't like the drive train, made new drive rails for the final bot, and made new drive rails for a practice bot. It was interesting to say the least.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

We built two different practice robots, it's been a long and exciting season.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

We built a practice robot that uses similar controls to our robot and similar function but looks entirely different and drives different. It's essentially just to test code, like we used it to figure out how to use two autos, then we also used it to work on vision tracking. It's not as good as our actual robot, but it's better than nothing.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

We built two nearly identical robots - differences ended up being in Victor 888 vs Victor SP motor controllers and locations/wiring. The real robot was based on the AM14U3 and the practice robot was based on the AM14U2 that we bought from an AndyMark Deal of the Day sale.

Building a practice robot is an essential part of our schedule/strategy. We bagged a robot that was physically complete but had virtually no software ready by Stop Build. We used the practice robot to debug the configuration of our pneumatic arm (up, down, and "floating"), do a bunch of software development work, autonomous testing, integrate the camera for vision processing, and many hours of drive team practice.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

To add to what Marc said, 1188 for the first time this year built a second robot. There were pro's and con's to the effort for sure. I look at it as another step towards having a more successful team.

Pros:

• Having the second robot allowed us some extra practice time before our first event.
• It allowed us to design a completely new intake / arm between our competitions.
• Making a matching robot was possible since we have almost 100% of our robot in CAD.

Cons:

• It was a pretty large distraction having two robots to build. It maxed out our resources and budget.
• Since we played week 1 & 3 the effects were greatly reduced.
• It is currently little more than a chassis at this point.

Overall I truly believe this is a requirement to compete at the highest levels of play. We may have jumped the gun by a year or two but we learned a lot. I suspect not a single robot on Einstein will not have a twin (or 2) floating around in a trailer or at the shop.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

5586 is a second-year team that made a practice bot this year. I'm not sure if I'd call us successful* team yet, but I'm here at CD trying to just that. ::safety::

*although we did make to worlds last season based on a rookie all star award

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

Team 1991 has for this year. Last year we attempted, but due to snow and school closings, it was only a swerve drive train with nothing else. However, this year we built a practice bot parallel to our competition bot. This allowed us to only make mistakes once.
Wiring them in parallel was the biggest help, especially with this being our team's first year with Java. The programmers didn't have to worry about differences.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

Team 2855 was close to building a practice robot this year, we got a second control system and set up a dummy board to practice programming on. We actually had two boards that were each used to program the robot in separate languages (LabVIEW and Java). This year was a transition year for us. We eventually used Java for the final robot but we kept the LabVIEW team (one senior) programming just in case.

This year has been our best year statistically since our rookie year. Also, this is the first year we've been active on CD.*
And, we won the Entrepreneurship Award this year**.

*Coincidence?

**We also have a random medal from 2009 that we have no idea how we got

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

Both this year and last year we built practice bots, but nothing really came of it. This year, we spent a lot of time on working on a climber, but nothing came of it (as you saw at Tech Valley). We also worked on attempting vision, and we got half of the system working, but not aiming and firing correctly. (That green ring is just a decoy.) This year, our practice bot was mainly used to get our code working sufficiently to even drive and shoot.

We fixed a lot of issues on our practice bot and spent practice day of our first regional adjusting our main bot with those fixes.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

2667 built a practice robot this season. It was finished with just enough time to remove our shooter to put on our competition robot for North Star. Our primary issue was that the robots were built in sequence instead of in parallel, and our process was drawn out too long during build season. We're hoping to transition to building two robots in parallel during the build season next year.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

tl;dr

The key to winning a competition is a capable robot and capable drivers.

Robots are capable when the design and fabrication processes used are good (arguably).

Drivers are capable when they have enough experience driving (altough some are naturally better than others). If your drivers show up at competition with less than about 20 hours of driving experience, you are at a disadvantage. If they have 100 hours, they can make up for a lot of 'bad' in a robot.

So, between bag day and competiton, what's your drve team doing? Sitting on their hands, or driving your practice robot?

I would be interested in knowing if any team that did not build a second robot has ever made it to Einstein. I'd be surprised if the number was much greater than zero.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

I think 610 is known for not building a practice robot? Was this the case when they won in 2013?

Given that 32 teams make Einstein now, I'd guess there are at least a few, if not more, that have made it to the big show with no practice robot.

-Mike

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

That is correct. They still do not build one.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

Does this include second and third picks? Because then I'd bet that number is a bit higher than zero.

Also poll results show the bias of active teams on CD vs the general FIRST population, because I wouldn't believe this percentage of teams across all of FIRST builds 2 bots.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

In 2015 we built two robots in sequence, but they were completed within a close timeframe of each other. We did not really decide which robot we would bag until the last week or two of build season.

This season we decided to not build a complete practise bot but pretty much possess an entire second robot+more in spares/parts. We spent a lot of time fine tuning our shooting mechanism during the build-season which used up a lot of CNC time, we built 3 different shooter designs with around 5 shooters built in total We mounted our shooter on a test bed which was the same dimensions as our chassis, to help our driver practise line the turret up for shots and also to help test and fine tune our vision tracking.

We are planning to build a practise robot next year.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

While lots of people seem to believe a practice bot is essential, we won our state championship (Michigan), and our division at champs last year (Carson), and we have never built an in-season practice bot.

We quite frankly don't have the budget for this, it's pushing our budget just to build one robot. We reuse and reduce when it comes to parts, and sometimes that causes us to end up with some sub-par bits and pieces, but we make it work.

Champs isn't just for the teams who have the money to build a practice bot, or who have large sponsors willing to offer up major time, money and facilities. All of our sponsors are local companies--a lot of local machine shops, and the businesses of parents from our team. We live in a small town, we don't have access to a major machining or working facility.

But, we do take pride in what we have. We have great partnerships with local people and companies, who helped chip in when we short of the money needed to go to champs last year. We have a good relationship with our community, we host a district competition here, and work to expose kids in our community to robotics and STEM. We are lucky to have access to a great local machine shop that lets us use their laser cutter and welder so that we can gain experience with custom fabrication.

So we're a team that took mecanums to Einstein...and we're practice-bot-less.

I think we're doing just fine.

If you're a team that can't build a practice bot for financial or other reasons, don't let it get you down. Anyone can make it to the top :)

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

We planned on making a second robot but we couldn't afford a second pair of sonic shifters so we ended up making a lessons learned robot. Basically we transferred our drive train and electrical components from our lessons learned robot to our competition robot once we made all of the changes that were necessary.

- Connor

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

I would be curious how many teams made practice bots in the top 50 of Zondaq's FRC Championship History. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/3133

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

Ya, we generally don't build a practice bot (as was the case in 2013), mainly due to the effort in manually machining two full robots. Needless to say, not having a practice bot has been annoying at times, but it certainly doesn't stop us from iterating and improving.

I will say that having a practice bot is really nice for testing and flushing out designs to see the weaknesses. We had to rush finishing our bot in 4 weeks so we could had the remaining 2 as practice/time to break the bot and improve designs.

We did make 2 bots in 2010 and just ran into a bunch of issues. Whenever we were making new autos, we found that whatever we did on the practice bot always required a lot of work to get working on the real bot (probably due our feedback integration). Additionally, we make lots of changes here and there on our real bot and it's really annoying to do that twice to truly have an identical replica. We still found the biggest issue was actually making two bots. It took us a week and a half to fully machine out bot this year, it's just unreasonable for us to spend a solid 3 or so weeks machining parts...

This year, we designed the backbone (the superstructure of the robot and the claw) of our robot to be easily removed (and lucky it was under 30lbs ;) ). This lets us do maintenance and upgrades of our bot without having to make a practice bot. If you look at our robot between GTRC and ONWA, we managed to get our high goal shooting nailed down (pretty huge change in performance) by working on the real claw for our bot. Kind of a nice balance between making a practice bot and not.

Tldr: We don't build a practice bot because it takes too long to machine for a replica that never is truly accurate to the real thing. Instead, we built our bot to be modular so we can iterate on certain parts within the withholding allowance.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

Count us among teams that build two non-identical robots. the first one had a few dimension and construction issues, and we've built 3-4 complete shooter assemblies by now between pre-bag and various withholding allowances.

The second bot was made better, and used what we learned on the first, but they are similar enough that the code transfers with few modifications between them. Electronics mounting is another story, and the practice robot only has a front bumper because our intake requires one.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

We have 2 bots that are VERY close. The competition bot though is so much better quality. The practice bot has never met Mr. Loctite and is always at the edge of flying apart. Has a ton of extra holes where we tried something, has 2nd hand motors, etc. It also has dents where we determined at what speed hitting the rock wall would actually launch us completely in the air landing with a scary sounding thud.

Poor thing is the abused older brother. The younger competition bot has new motors (just got all new drive motors), everything is loc-tited and only has the needed holes. :D

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

Our team tried to make a practice robot this year, but the process for us was very much so disconnected from the building of the actual robot. We intended to build the chassis to practice driving and also to get a head start on the coding. For us, quite possibly since it was the first time with a practice robot, it didn't exactly seem to have a significant impact on the quality of our coding advances or drive training. We seemed to fall behind on the main robot and ended up not adding any of the additional components to the practice robot for testing or any of those things. It may have been a personal thing for our team, and I can definitely see how having the second robot could be better in years to come as we get more experience with it. Some ways that I can see that it could have significantly helped us would be that we could have worked out our climbing mechanism (which was not used until our second competition), while working on other parts of our competition bot. It almost seems as though we forgot that we had another robot. It seems that the most difficult thing about having the second robot would be managing the time around it.

tl;dr Practice bots are a great idea in theory as long as efficient time management is present

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

Last year we built a second chassis from an old c-base kit and withheld our mechanism to get a practice robot on the cheap. It worked out really well, but we spent a lot of time during the first day of regionals putting our robot back together.

This year we built two identical robots, and it helped. But when I look at our bills, and I read through this thread, all I can think about is how *incredibly wasteful* all these duplicated robots are! I know the bag rules have been debated to death, but I hope something changes in future to let teams be competitive without having to double their budget.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

We called our practice robot "Bubbles." How that goes with our official robot name "Termite" I do not know.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

I'm surprised this percentage of teams active on CD build practice robots. CD is more skewed towards higher performing teams than I previously thought.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

We did last year, and initially we planned to build 2 robots this year, one unanodized and without leds that would be the practice robot. It would also be our first robot so we could see if there was anything to change. Then we didn't get some of our waterjet cut parts in, and had to re-order them. When we were about to get them in and riveted together, disaster struck:snow. Shipping companies as it turns out don't like several feet of snow. So we ended up with one robot, that was meant to be a practice bot... sniff... the lack of pretty pretty anodized metal is sad.... but it was the same robot, and we still had leds.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

We've built practice robots every year since 2013, and found that it has helped immensely in doing design iterations and driver practice.

This year, we built two identical chassis, frames, and intake mechanisms. However, we built only 1 shooter module that we would use our withholding allownace on. We did this so we would only have to tune one shooting mechanism, and we wouldn't have to waste time retuning the competition version when we unbagged the robot.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

I've never been on a team that made a practice robot. Do I want to, yes. Competing in FTC taught me what being able to iterate, practice, and program over the season can do. Problems for my team in SC is that our season is super front loaded, Week 1- 2 usually.

I'd personally like to know what the logistics are in building 2+ robots. Do you build them side by side, is it one is the prototype bot from early in build then the other the competition bot, and how early do you have to build them to get them done fast enough to have one ready for bag...

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

I can't speak for all teams, but on 910 we build our practice robot first and then the competition bot once we've built enough of the practice bot in order to make sure we haven't made any critical design errors. Certain parts are machined concurrently (mostly complicated pieces that require specific set ups on the mill) but for the most part we build one and then the other. This has largely been made possible by the increase in both size and skill of both our CAD and Project Management teams, as it allows us to remain more organized and make multiple prints quickly for the same part.

As for time frame, this is still something we are working on. Our plan every year is to have the practice robot done by the end of Week 3, then to spend the last two weeks churning out a competition bot while practicing and testing. However in reality we usually end up finishing the practice bot by sometime in Week 5 and spend about 5 days frantically working to put together a competition bot.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

I think the poll is missing an option for "we would if we could afford it!"

Logistics will depend on your team's capabilities. For us, both robots were based on KoP bases (one AM14U3, one AM14U2). We built and wired the two drivebases (no frame cutting, so they were big squares) the weekend after kickoff so that we could try driving them over obstacles, prototype some designs, and give the software teams something to play with. The results of the prototyping told us how to size and chamfer the frame perimeter as well as to go with pneumatic tires.

Once the design was locked down we fabricated the parts for both at once, but built them in sequence, so that while one drivebase was being retrofitted, the other one would still be available for software teams. We would then hand off the first finished robot to other teams (drive team, autonomous, control software, vision) while the fabrication team took back the second KOP chassis and converted it into the other robot.

The hope was that this build/swap/build sequence would have resulted in both working identical robots before bag and tag. This didn't quite happen of course so we bagged the first complete robot and finished the practice bot by the following weekend.

The practice bot is actually the better built of the two since we made all our mistakes on the first assembly, and the second assembly went much quicker as well.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

In the beginning the practice bot was built second almost an afterthought. For the last couple of years we have built the practice bot first. The comp bot is built from cadded plans and templating from the practice bot at the end of build season. The builder are developing their build skills on the practice bot. That allows the apprentice builders to actually put hands on a robot during build season. The cad model is 60-70% complete which I think is about ideal unless you have a set of Cad mentors that can really guide the students. This method add so much to the program goals, I think we would follow it even if bag and tag went away. We harvest parts off practice bot year to year to help with the cost.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

At 1648, we start building the practice robot first. However, as subsystems are "finalized", the competition pieces get built in the season. So for example, our drivetrain gets designed fairly early, so the competition version gets built at almost the same time as the practice version. We then continue to design from the chassis, getting to the frame and manipulators. The practice frame is built after the chassis, and there's usually a few modifications we make to the practice frame design before we fabricate it for the competition version.

The last items are the manipulators, since these go under constant iteration. For these mechanisms, we usually don't start fabricating the super structure or manipulator components until a week or 5 days before bag day, so that we can squeeze in as much iteration time as possible before we start fabricating competition pieces. The idea is to have continuous iteration while the competition robot gets built during the final week.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

We went with 2 practice bots this year. Not too much more expense and gave more students opportunities to work on them.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

Did all of 3 your robots have full control systems?

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

Yes they do, most of the time. We tear one of the 2 practice bots down for spare parts(KOP and COTS) before we compete somewhere. I forget if we are using the RoboRIO from our 2015 bot(s) or not however.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

2015 Comp Bot is mostly together (minus a few speed controllers that got replaced)

2015 Practice Bot got gutted for parts for one of the two practice robots.

All three 2016 robots have full control systems. It was a marginally extra cost this year that will level out for next year.

-Mike

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

A practice robot is a great way to keep a lot of students involved throughout and beyond build season, as we have learned. Through donations, contests, FIRST Choice, and remarkably little cash, we can run 3 separate control systems like 1678 and should the opportunity ever arise, we would build a third robot. I loved watching student engagement soar this year through a marginal expense when compared to a registration fee. I would *almost* recommend teams deciding between multiple events or multiple robots to pick the latter.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

Same here. Although our third base, a driving-trainer/defensive-play-practice-opponent, has a mix of new & old control components.

Our practice robot(s) have done wonders for the level of student engagement. With 114 kids, there's just no possible way all of them could get their hands on one robot if that's all we built. We would still build two+ machines even if there weren't bagging restrictions.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

Team 2502 Has built Practice Robots for the past three years (since 2014) and they are always built before the competition bot, and thus they are used for testing of systems, and game practice. Our practice bot always ends up different then the main robot as weight is not a concern, nor is strength, but it is always as close to a mirror of the main robot as possible.

Rebound rumble (2012) was the first year we (2502 Talon Robotics) built a practice robot. The rest of this statement is accurate.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

Did you mount the backbone/superstructure on something like a chassis from a previous year so you could drive it around and simulate it being on your "real" chassis?

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

It seems that most teams that do build practice robots make them fairly close to the competition one.

For those who build practice robots that are not close to identical to the competition one, what are the pros and cons for the practice robot being different? What are the major differences (other than cosmetics)? Would you continue to build practice robots that are different from the competition robot?

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

Ya, that's exactly what we do. We've just made an adapter that holds it in the same rough position as on our real bot.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

*2012... know your team history :D

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

So we have a fairly rookie team this year. There are only 2 students returning so we tried to make a T shirt robot to learn more about building a robot before season. We used last year's KoP to do it. We never finished it so we decided to use it as a practice robot. Currently, we are using rhino tracks for our competition robot. To move our shooter on our arm up and down, we have 2 dart linear actuators ran with cims, our practice robot has an entirely different type of shooter setup. Our little shooting basket that would be impossible to load during a match is ran by a window motor and a threaded rod basically. Our practice robot can't do defenses, can't shoot as accurate, and doesn't even look close to any robots you will see this year but we use it to test code . We have rookie programmers so we use it to figure out how to do things. Next year I'm hoping we can make an identical replica so we can practice driving and code. Most of our improvements we design in CAD so we don't really need a practice robot in that aspect.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

Team 4778 does build a practice bot, and it certainly helps.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

Funny story, so we made the practice bot after Build season ended, then before our first comp we realized that we didnt have enough spares, so we took the bot apart and brought it with us:D

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

2175 has built a fully functioning practice bot since 2014. (I'm unaware if we had tried to prior to then) This year we planned to do work on it in the four weeks leading up to our first event in regards to auto and shot aiming. But instead we spent about 3.5 weeks fixing crippling drive train weaknesses.

Had we not have had that robot, we likely would not be attending the championship this year. :ahh:

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

I'm glad this thread popped up. Recent performance and discussion with my team has led us to think about getting a second robot together starting next year for many of the reason discussed in this thread. We've never built more than robot in the past, but have discussed it.

Can anyone comment on the build and design process involved with two robots?

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

The way we do it is we have a core group of experienced builders working on the main comp bot so it is at its best possible condition, and the second robot is built by mostly less experienced members so they get a feel for tools, building, cutting etc. And if the second group runs into a problem they can ask for help and we will guide them but not do it for them.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

The way that we have done it the last few years is begin building the practice bot first. This way we can see major flaws early enough that we can fix them for the competition robot. We try to have the practice robot fully done by no later than 4.5 weeks, but the week 4 mark is the goal. This gives you enough time to work with the practice robot and see flaws and things to change and then assembly of the competition robot goes relatively quickly.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

This is our third year building a second robot.

For Ultimate Ascent, we built one wooden-framed and one aluminum-framed robot. We continued to learn from "Woody" (with a wood chassis) even after "Buzz" (all-metal) was in the bag.

For Recycle Rush, we built "twins". We continued to work on the "strafe wheel" of our H-drive system, and our pickup "rake" from bag to Bayou Regional, and again until CMP.

For Stronghold, we again build twin drive chassis, and worked on both our "pickup" and "launch" mechanisms within our 30 pound withholding allowance after bag day.

Re: Did you make a second robot? [POLL]
 

We build the practice robot, find things that are glaringly wrong, then fix them on the competition robot. The problems with the p-bot are either left alone, or fixed with excessive amounts of gussets, bolts, and tape. It's pretty easy to bend the entire practice bot chassis, and its shooter sags on one side. The competition bot has solutions to both issues. Both robots are mostly identical, but they aren't exactly the same. For the sake of programming, driver practice, and basic mechanism design, though, they are the same.