Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

This survey is to see how good you are at figuring out your complete date and to get a consensus of when other teams plan on completeing their robot. Please feel free to follow up with your success dates.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

We plan to finish early. Murphy's law therefore dictates that we will be drilling holes in the chassis to make the weight limit at the end of the first day of Regionals.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

We would expect our bot to be done by Week 5, but usually its about a day or two before shipping and then the ever-famous "all nite programmin' n driva trainin'" is done.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

Dreamland: Week 4.
Realistically: Week 5
If something screws up: Week 6

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

Our build schedule always say that we would finish something by week for, and have week 5-6 for debugging and practice, but well, we never make the deadline. Good thing we still got Thursday.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

Which something always does... at least twice. I'm having to go with last minute changes... :D

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

Complete!?! You guys actually finish? "It ain't over till the fat lady sings!" I haven't heard any music yet. That sound you hear is a student on the mechanical team trying to get out of the shipping crate you closed too early.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

To the extent that FIRST is about building robots, it's about building robots. Not about having built them.

Our 2004 robot was "complete" for competition on the last day of the Championship.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

:D I think that we finally perfected our robot the day after the off-season competition bash at the beach

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

What's this about 5:00am on the ship date? Its not over until the truck comes to pick it up - more like 4-5pm on the ship date!

Actually, were usually not done until the second or last day of nationals - at least for the last two years I have participated in FIRST.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

We usually finish up about a week before ship, maybe a little closer...most of the time though we have a working base and sometimes a prototype for the rest of the bot so that our drivers can work on getting used to how it handles.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

We plan to be completely done with everything except programming on the 16th of February.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

Suprisingly enough... our robot was finished 3 weeks into the the season and another 1 week was used to figure out all of the problems and fix them. We used the rest of the time to do driver practice as well as strategy work....


GO 1403!!!

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

What's your secret? We always have "strict" deadlines, and we work as hard as we can to meet them, but if the robot is driving at midnight the day before shipping, we feel lucky. Somehow we always seem to fall behind. Does your team have any kind of an organizational structure? Timelines? Do you pick simple, solid designs? Is it lucky team dynamics? Honestly though, if you have any advice, our team could use it. Thanks!

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

I would feel disappointed to finish that early. Finishing at week 3 or 4 would be like you did not challenge yourself enough. driver practice and strategy work is definitely a good thing, but you may have been able to do more with your machine.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

Our team is organized, but it all depends on the season, game, and what types of things we are trying to do in the game. Like, last year, we tried to do everything except the bar. We try to get our robot done before PlayDate in DC, which is at the National Building Museum. Fun!

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

Their robot was mostly built out of wood, and it was made extremely simple. I can see how they finished it that early. They sure had an excellent rookie year.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

Finish... what an interesting concept. I'm still hoping to do that to our 2003 bot. :)

I selected week 5 because I think my team might be able to do that this year, we'll just have to be a bit more organized. Although I don't think a robot is ever really finished per se, there's always room for improvement.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

I sort of disagree there. I feel that getting the basic robot done as soon as possible is very important. The earlier you finish, the more comfortable your drivers can get with the robot and you can also tweak it a little. Last year for us, the programmers didn't really get the robot until Chesapeake and our drivers didn't get to drive a fully functioning machine until Drexel really. I feel that this really hurt our performance on the field.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

I firmly believe that an elite level FIRST robot can be completed in 4 weeks. I don't think the fact that a team finished within that timeline is the indicator of a team who hasn't challenged themselves. I think it's a better indicator of the following two things.

- A well oiled "machine" -- To finish a robot that quickly requires a lot of subteams working independently, followed by these teams seamlessly integrating their work.
- A firm understanding of the importance of driver training. -- There's no better way to gain a leg up on the competition than by having well practiced drivers. Especially during the first few weeks of the regional season, practiced drivers with an adequate robot tend to beat unpracticed drivers with a superior robot.

This is why I recommend that all teams try and finish their robot within a four week time frame. It encourages team work, and puts you a team in position where they've maximized their chance of winning.

I've detailed a lot of these thoughts in a workshop that I gave to local teams in Ontario. It can be found on this page. It's in the "Running A Team" presentation.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

Theory 1:
We finish at the end of week four and have a week to debug and practice driving.

Theory 2:
We get a rolling chassis together around 6am the day of the UTC Scrimmage Saturday before shipping and debug between then and the ship date.

Theory 3:
We discovery we are either way overweight or aren't playing the game right at the scrimmage and do a panic redesign in the last 48-96 hours.

This is a good case for plan for the best prepare for the worst. I have not had a competition Thursday at which I didn't have a panic of figuring out how to fix what broke so i go in with that mindset. I would like to have a clam practice day this year but I doubt its in the cards.

Remember when you say a good robot is never finished one fundamental rule for engineers:
"Better is the worst enemy of good enough."
Sometimes you just have to move on even though you know you didn't have the optimal solution.

Pete

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

We hope the key word hope to have the robot done it time for the Nasa Goddard play day in D.C. if they having it again. But realisticly i think we will be programing it on our way up to the play day like we did last year.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

Our team should be about done by week six, if all goes right (which it probably won't). So either week six or as the truck pulls up to the school. But just out of curiosity, is it easier for teams that do machining on-site to get the work done? What are your opinions?

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

My team is shooting for sometime late Sunday. No we will be still putting the final touches on as it goes into the box. Thats how it all ways is and will continue to be. It makes for an interesting last week.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

our team is lucky enough to have some onsite machines to use and we find it much eaiser to use them in our build area then to have to send out the parts to get done or have to drive somewhere else to get the work done.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

if we lucky were done at 5 or maybe 4 we try to have a drivetrain running on 1 week :ahh: but if not we just mainly coast by just in time.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

Am I the only one looking forward to that? Bring on the dangerously high levels of caffeine!

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

Time to bump up this rather old topic. The Robot is essentially done, and autonomous is good shape, I was looking forward to the all-nighter :( Of course we still have to tweak the numbers, which may take a while. Anyways, how did your predictions turn out?

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

We are still working on the robot :-( as always... We still have to perfect the drive system (we decided on a change...) as well as get our tetra-handler working. Autonomous... now that's another nightmare... At least the arm works very well.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

We packed up the robot tonight as we do not have school on Monday.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

so, i think my team has to be put into a slightly different category as far as when we are finished. Our team was not able to start until 1 week into the build season due to school starting dates. We are completely done fabrication, except for a few minor tweeks. (*crap, i just remembered something we didn't have*) Oh well. Anyway, the team has just finally turned the (mostly) completed bot over to the autonomous, and controls team. We are in the process of picking drivers, who will probably get no more than 10 minutes of drive train on the finished bot before shipping. No worries, we have last year's bot for them to practice on. Anyway, it's half way through week 6 and we're almost there (though that's really week 5 for us ;)) Well good luck teams, and hopefully we will all be able to compete at our best!

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

this is gonna be our 4th year like this, not finshing the robot week a head before the shipping date. Our driver won't get too much pratice drive now. i guessing monday afternooon. dam our school janitors, why can't they be more kindaful and let us stay their longer in school like until 8 or 9 pm night on a starurday.:( we had to leafve at like 2:30 pm.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

we just finneshed fixing all the problems we found at the scrimmage. looks good for 2 more days of autonimous testing and driver practice.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

Oh right, a robot, I knew my team should have done something over the last six weeks.

Just kidding, we are not quite done and there is only one day left, we still have some problems, and it is not fully assembled or welded yet, but whatever we do not finish we can just fix during the competitions. I am a little more worried than I was last year though, but I know we can finish

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

Little bit of last minute tweaking likely, but our build's finished

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

Well I though this year was going to be different and we were going to be done early, well i guessed wrong. Today our meeting starts at 9:am and ends when the robot and tools are in their crates. I think it will be a long long long long day.And I have a feeling the pizza place will have to make a few deliveries, and the gas station across the street will be busy throughout the day

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

Robot's done, human controlled controls are completely debugged and working (right... ;)), and autonomous scripting is working. I'm going in today to fine tune autonomous and fix any "programming problems," such as motor failure, which occure while the drivers are practicing, but other than that...

Yeah! Last day and we're done! :D:D:D:D

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

Week 4 (I really don't know; lost track of time and reality a while ago): DONE PROGRAMMING. :cool:

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

we finished earlier tonight but we still need to let the drivers practice.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

wow this topic is nearly 3 years old...

our robot is done, we just have to build the twin final versions.

Re: Survey - When do you expect to have your robot complete?
 

We have been driving for a week, remote control hybrid is awesome. First mechanism went on last saturday, second mechanism is going on this week. We are having a second chassis constructed to allow for changes made while putting together the first robot. Locations etc. were modified and the new chassis will have supports exactly where needed. The programers have a bag full of additional sensors they want mounted. We will swap everything over when the new chassis is done. I checked, at the first regional. I wish I could have said at the Championship. There are always little improvements that can be done right up to the time we crate up the robot to go back home. Still have to decorate and finish the bumpers (just bare plywood for now).