Picking is not fair
 

The picking is not fair, but you know what, right from day one Woodie and Dean expressed this game will not be fair. FIRST is not only teaching about robotics, they are teaching about life. there are so many things that aren't fair. I know from watching so many greart teams not getting picked. I know I've been frustrated myself with not getting picked back in 2000. I agree with all teams that picking doesn't necessarily do your machine and team justice, but it's just another element of the game. Good luck to all at the Mini's and c-yall next season......try to keep the cut-throat posts to a minimum, it gives FIRST a bad name.

I can understand how not getting picked can be.

We were incredibly lucky to be in the elimination rounds for both our regional events (VCU and Chesapeake) and in Archimedes division. We picked our alliance at VCU and were picked by the #1 seed at Chesapeake.

Here is the odd one... at Naitionals we were in 9th place. Our best match (no surprise here) was when we were teamed with WildStang. We had the 6th largest QP at all of nationals (all fields). It was also Wildstang's best match score. Needless to say, we would have been happy to have partnered with WildStang, but they picked the #8 seed instead. Clearly they made a good choice.

My take-away from all this is that the marketing of your team to other teams is vital to the process. It isn't the only thing, but it can't be ignored unless you are certain you will be in the top 8.

Plan ahead for how you will promote your robot and it's capabilities and your team to other teams.

Personal relationships between teams have a lot to do with tie breakers in selecting a team to pick. I know Wildstang works that way and so do we. Also being from the same area helps, you are more familiar with how the team works.

I second that. We based our decisions greatly on who we were familiar with. The top picks on our list were people we'd played with before, and were from our area. Since we'd seen some of them at several different regionals, we were familiar with their capabilities. That's why we picked 47 in the finals. They're a local team, we'd played with them earlier in the weekend, and we liked their team members. Sure, there are others we could've picked, but reasons like that brought them to the top of our list.

Yeah...as a member of the team wildstang chose we were thrilled (I think we were seeded 7th, not 8th by the way) ... I don't exactly remember how your autonomous mode was, but I know wildstang liked ours. We never had a chance to play with them before that, but had seen them at the Great Lakes Regional...

Let's see...as the teams who didn't get chosen. I noticed this a lot in our team, we were scared of picking a tall alliance even if they hadn't tipped before, just because of the possibility. That could have been part of the reason tall bots (such as 226) didn't get picked. Just a thought...

Still, on the original topic, the videos were very impressive =)

I apologize if I did come off sounding harsh in my initial post.

Really, I do think it is very cool that the robot could pull that much... What I didn't really like was how the title implied that this thread was targeted solely at the teams that did pick you guys... kinda like a "we're better than you" attitude... That's what I didn't like... If I were still on the team I wouldn't want us associated with a "better than you" attitude. I don't want a bad rep to form about the team, I still care about it. Sorry that I came off a bit harsh.

The title of this post was ment to be an attention getter nothing else. Personally I do not think that anybody else but you Jeremy, took it that way.

kinda like a "we're better than you" attitude... That's what I didn't like... If I were still on the team I wouldn't want us associated with a "better than you" attitude. I don't want a bad rep to form about the team, I still care about it. Sorry that I came off a bit harsh.

Personally I think your giving our team much more of a bad rep than what I am, as other people have posted in such a manner.

Hey Jeremy, ever hear do the saying "If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all?" or did your mother forget to teach you that? So yes you did sound harsh in your initial post, and yes I did take offense to it.

You could have left it at that. I gave you an apology.


I will not lower myself to personal insults. If you look back at the posts, I have never personally attacked you. You may have interpreted it as that, but my posts were generalized.

If you wish to conduct yourself in such an uncivilized manner, then so be it. Everyone has their own opinions. That's what makes up a discussion. When personal insults come into play, it is no longer a discussion.

Next time you wish to insult me, PM me.

Guys... cool it... let's just drop it. Don't turn this thread into (yet another) argument.

Yup. The original topic of this thread is about the 93 robot, and the process of picking partners in the finals for the FIRST robotics competition. If you guys aren't willing to touch on those topics and instead comment on each other's comments, then you can make use of other ways, such as PM system, e-mail, phone, AIM, etc.

This thread is a good thread, if you guys are willing to step back a little bit, and let other have some room to say what they think about the picking process post their thoughts. Otherwise this discussion is just a waste of everyone's time. I would like to see the "insults" stop at once.


Mean while, just like a lot of people saying, the picking process depends on a lot of luck, and lots of work at the competition. Since you don't get to play with every team, teams are most likely going to pick teams they played with who did really well. That's one of the easiest way to select teams you want to choose.

Then Scouting is a big part of it too. Teams with organized scout team usually know what robots are good out there. Because they are people too, they will tend to recommend teams they know, or they saw in a really good match. Teams with good scouting teams never use advertisements from other teams to choose the robot as much as their data.

Then after that there is a lot of PR work. Teams tends to choose their friends, and people they have a clear memory of.

When the team rep go up the field, they have a sheet with them, and a list of teams. When that list runs out, the team rep are pressured to choose on the field without knowing who's good and who isn't, then they choose base on their impression on the teams.

So, that's what an organized team would do, for people who don't usually work with that part of the competition.

This year is paticularly hard because robots doesn't have any special components that could do something cool, other than stacking bins (and they turns out to be not very effective). The rest of the things to look for is drive system, drivers' skills, and match results. So, basically all the teams have a fairly equal chance to get picked, if they have a decent drive train that moves well.

So, if you didn't get picked... Don't think too much about it. All you can do is do your best work on the robot, do the best at the competition, try to seed high, and hope for the best. As long as you did that, you have nothing to regret about. This is especially true at the Championship event, with only 8 alliances get to play in finals in a division of 80 teams. That's about 30% of teams who get to advance, which is very harsh.

It is frustrating to all the teams who don't get to play, not just your team. At the end, I hope you had fun at the competition as much as every of those teams did. Because at the end, it wouldn't matter at much how much you win, because it will always be an experience remaining in your mind, and it's up to you to choose how you want to remember the experience. You can choose to feel bad about it, or remember the best part only.

Hopefully 20 years later when you think about this, you will think "oh yeah, that was lots of fun!"...

To turn this back into a productive thread...


Thread on Truck Pulling more importantly here.

Perhaps there should be a Truck Pulling competition at IRI? Fastest time out of 3 to pull a truck 100 feet wins?

here's a little bit of info that I'm sure you all can use. Your robots aren't bad, that's not why we don't pick you. It's that your robot doesn't work with the strategy we want. here's an example.

At the Championship we were #1 in Galileo after about our 3rd match and I don't think that we ever dropped out of first. WE knew by about 3:30 on friday that we'd be picking the next day. So did a lot of other teams. For those of you that have never been in a high-ranking position, it's fun but it is tough. We had about 1 team every five minutes approaching us about being picked. We gave everyone adequete time to sell their robot to us and then made no promises. This was only on friday. On saturday, all of our alliance partners that we were paired with visted us, saying how great we worked together, as well as every robot, even a couple in the top 8. When you are in a position to pick any robot that you want, it's tough, because you have to hope you make the right choice. I know that there were some good teams that we didn't pick, but it's not your fault. I believe that we had our first choice in the first round and our 1st or second choice in the 2nd round. Were there robots that we overlooked, yes. Are we happy with the choices we made, yes.

SO just remember, teams that are in a position to pick have to make didfficult choices. Sometimes because of poor scouting, or underestimating a robot's abilities, we forget a robot that shouldn't have been forgotten. And for team that say, we can pull 1000 lbs and have this much torque and this much speed and can do everything that you want us to, just remember it's what you do in your matches that count. Hope that some of you can understand the position that the top 8 seeds are in, it's a tough choice, and we're only trying to do what we can to win.

Scouting is Key
 

While experience is one of the primary factors, for Cybersonics scouting plays a critical role in how we select alliance partners. At every event we divide up all the teams and assign scouts to cover them (usually 3 or 4 teams/scout). Each scout has the responsibility to interview their teams early on to determine their advertised capabilities and to keep track of their robot and driver performance, problems, and how they work with others throughout the event. We also have scouts who watch every match to keep track of autonomous performance, who can push whom, etc.

We also have our mentors and more experienced students try to keep track of all teams to start with and as the event progresses they focus on the top performing teams. That doesn't necessarily mean just the top seeds, because as many have noted, there are always some very good teams who get mired in low seeds because of luck, poor alliances, etc.

As one of these mentors, I can say that key traits I look for, besides their performance on the field, are how the team works together and their "gracious professionalism". For example, does the whole team pull together all the time, or are the drivers in their own world and the rest of the team off socializing?

All of this info is reported in a scouting meeting at the end of each day. This meeting is also a chance for everyone to comment on teams who caught their eye, who were not their responsibility. This human based scouting system has worked well for us, and was especially effective this year. It really helped us identify strong performances from some teams who were new to us, and to note usually strong teams who were struggling.

For example, at Annapolis, team 614 showed some really good work in their qualification matches (our chief scout dubbed them "spunky"). I and others talked to them in their pits and though some of them were pretty worried about poor scores, they never blamed their alliance partners for their results and kept giving it their best.

Even though I don't think we had worked with them before Annapolis and they seeded out of the top 20, we recommended 614 to team 25 and were picked as our partner for the finals. They did a great job and with 25 almost made up for our robot failure in the semis. You can be sure they will be on our list of known strong teams now.

One last point if I may, is that last minute advertising by teams who haven't made and effort up until then has no bearing on our decision making. The time to make alliances is all through practice and qualifiying - not just when you know who the top 8 are.