Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

One of the aspects of FIRST that many people have a difficult time grasping and eventually accepting is that the FIRST competition is not fair. We don't try to hide this fact, we have always been very open about it.

There are many reasons why the FIRST competition (the games on the field) are not fair. Teams are not evenly matched. Some teams have vast resources and experience, other have little or none of either.

I believe it was necessary for FIRST to be created this way back in 1992. There were only 32 teams, there was only one competition held, so not much could be done to have teams compete on an equal footing.

As FIRST grew there were only a few regionals, and eventually the 1st national event - still small by todays standards. Any team that had the funds could attend the Nationals (at WDW no less) every year if they wanted.

Now that we are hovering around 1000 teams, with many regionals, some becoming super-regionals, and with 300 teams able to attend the Championship, is it time for FIRST to take steps toward making the competitions more fair?

This issue comes up almost every year. People float ideas for different divisions - big teams, small teams, rookie teams, divisions based on funding, years of experience, 100% student built vs mentor designed and built....

Another issue that comes up every year is "FIRST is about inspiration" vs "FIRST is a competition". Big teams with complex and professionally manufactured robots contend that little teams with plywood robots are inspired by the super-robots, even if the little team is trampled by them on the playfield, and has no chance of placing well on their own merits, much less winning the Championship.

Over the years I have mentored small teams, and I have watched the students enthusiasm drop on their 1st day of their 1st regional, when they realize they have little chance of placing well, and no chance of winning the event. We have all sat in the bleachers as one by one other teams are picked for the playoffs, and I know how dis-heartened the students feel when the last team is picked, and we are left out.

FIRST has taken some steps to keep the smaller teams in the mix. The alliance system, pairing teams at random, gives weak teams the chance to be on the winning side of some matches.

At the same time, as FIRST has grown, winning a regional has taken on more importance than getting a nice plastic trophy, it is also an open door to attend the Championship. Saying that FIRST games are all about inspiration isn't the whole story anymore, if the big successful teams get to attend the Championship every year, and the smaller struggling teams don't.

So I'm wondering, have we grown big enough yet, do we have enough teams and regionals now, to take some steps toward making FIRST fair, like other sporting events? Ways to allow teams to compete on their own level, where they have a reasonable hope that, if they do well, if they try hard and work hard, they could win of their own accord?

I don't expect anything to change this year, but I'm interested in hearing other peoples ideas on the subject of how FIRST could be improved to make the competitions more fair. Please treat this thread as a brainstorming session, and hold your wet blankets and buckets of naysayer-cold water at bay. Let the ideas be presented without shooting them down, and lets see where the ideas might led us?

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

The simplest (doesn't require whole new divisions), although cleary not ideal, way would be to make a championships for the bottom 25% (or some other amount) ranking teams or some idea like that. It would work, but not very well.

Maybe a division at championships where you can only compete if you haven't won a regional (or bigger) in 2-3 years? This would replace one of the four divisions. This seems better, but still not ideal.

If they truly try to fix this problem, it would take some serious work and thought.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Cromat,

That only works if your definition of fairness is "equal chance to get to Champs, sort of." Probably the better definition to move toword would be "equal chance to build a good robot."

It's a very very complicated issue. Teams with more members will inevitably have better odds than teams with few members. Teams with better shops will inevitably have better ability to do more with less materials than other teams. Teams with more money will still be able to iterate through more designs than other teams.

So basically, what you're trying to do is find an optimized solution that maximizes fairness and creative potential, and minimizes draconian rules. Now if someone can actually come up with a good equation for that, the solution becomes a trivial numerical problem to solve....

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I see FVC as that solution. In this competition huge funds do not make a major difference, and having more team members is not necessarily an advantage. It is not the same as the full FRC, with less prestige and excitement, but rather than teams entering the big competition as rookies and getting demolished, I think that Vex is an excellent alternative. It can be an introduction to FIRST. If a high school has a vex team for a year or two, goes to some off-season competitions with borrowed bots as a pre-rookie, then decides to join the full FRC, the team would not be at such a disadvantage.

As for fully leveling FIRST, government funding for rookies and struggling teams would have a huge impact IMO. A few thousand dollars to a team or a government incentive for companies to sponsor FIRST teams would allow newer teams to get some of the resources that the veterans have. This goes back to Dean's homework - make sure your representatives know about FIRST and receive invitations to events in your area.

At the same time veterans should reach out as much as possible to both local and distant teams. Check the little box on TIMS that you are willing to mentor a team, and then if a request comes in, see how much you can do. Maybe you can just be an e-mail or phone buddy for a rookie coach, or you could help set up a basic powerpoint presentation for them to get more sponsors.

-Steve

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I have not been involved with a Vex team. What is the difference that makes your statement true? Are Vex teams only allowed to use VEX parts? Are they allowed to fabricate or alter the parts?

If that is the limitation, then a parallel for the FRC would be a more restricted KOP class of robots, or a design that uses the KOP drivetrain... something along those lines. At regional events the top 3 teams with the best performace in the "Limited KOP class" might go on to the Championship?

Early on FIRST teams were very restricted regarding what could be used on the robot, I think at one point it was something like the KOP, one sheet of plywood, 8 feet of PVC, four square feet of sheet metal.... Would that be similar to the way the Vex competition is set up now?

the four divisions at the Championship crossed my mind on the drive home tonight. If we did have different classes or levels of regional awards, there could be 4 divisions of competition at the championship: rookie / expert / unlimited / student built...

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

From this year's manual:
So while the parts can be modified with holes and such, they already have many holes predrilled and are easy to bend by hand, so machinery would not make a huge difference. There are some individual kits for certain items such as programming and they cost anywhere from $20 to $100, but I doubt a Vex team will exceed $700 in parts (easily less if they buy wisely).

I would rather not see FIRST limit the available components on the full robot. But, yes, essentially that is what Vex is right now. Right now FIRST allows students to become involved in such a variety of areas that anyone can find something meaningful. We have one mentor who specializes in custom transmissions, and sometimes students work with him during the design process. If we were to restrict drivetrains (or any other component) then current mentors may find lose their current area of specialty, and students would not be able to learn as much in that field.

For having the divisions such as Student Built, I think that this may hurt the program a bit and the guidelines would have to be very clear. If a mentor suggests something and makes a sketch in AutoCAD, then watches the student, does that count? What if the mentor cuts the piece himself for safety reasons? And might teams decide that they have a better chance of making the championships/finals by not recruiting engineering mentors? (I would hope not, but there is a possibility)

This year I think that FIRST took a step towards fairness with their new alliance selection process (regardless of people's feelings about this, it indisputably gave weaker teams a better chance). Maybe they have something else lined up this year that would help younger teams.

-Steve

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I would like to see something that promotes most of the students on a team talking with other teams about the process of building the robot. Talking about how they came up with their ideas. How they found their money.

Some of this is contained in the Chairmans Award submission. Most of this type of information is given to the judges, but I want teams to talk about this with students/mentors/teachers/parents/people just visiting their nephew on Saturday/ on other teams too. I loved being a judge at IRI because most teams jumped at the chance to tell me all about their team and robot. The enthusiasm was amazing.

I've heard a lot of presumptions about how teams win. Rather than assuming, I want the how of their win to be questioned. Not in a "you shouldn't do it that way" but in a "How can I learn from them" way. What are the benefits of the way they did it? What are the negatives? How compatible is that with how we want our team to run?

Sometimes people need a little encouragement to meet new people to share and interact. I'm not sure how that could be accomplished, but I'm sure someone has an idea.

This doesn't necessarily directly address the issue of 'fairness' with regards to winning the robot competition, but I think helps with inspiring teams that don't often, or ever, win the competition.


Wetzel

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

As much as I would like to see the playing field leveled, I believe that as with anything in life, a slight to moderate imbalance is necessary to keep the program moving forward. When everyone is exactly even, who do you look up to for ideas and inspiration? If you're a team with limited resources, what inspiration is there to try wild, innovative, and new ideas to try to beat the "better" teams, when all you have to do is go with some stable, boring idea to beat the average run-of-the-mill bot?

With the ever increasing amount of off-the-shelf resources, such as the IFI and AndyMark transmissions and wheels, IFI Kitbot frame, and the EasyC programming environment, it's becoming easier and easier for rookie teams to build better robots. Rather than seeing strict rules put in place to stifle the "better" teams, I would rather see more resources being developed to help rookie teams build competitive robots.

Instead of lowering a team's expectations, let's raise the amount of competitive resources available to them. ;)

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I completely agree. This year's game was particularly new-team friendly since it didn't require the development of very complicated systems to remain competitive. Not only were arms not required, but you didn't even necessarily need to make a shooter. There were plenty of one-point bots that were successful. A low-ball bot made it all the way to the Championship Finals, and they might have even won if things had gone slightly differently.

Games that have multiple angles to approach from encourage new teams to focus on an area they believe they can do well. If they don't have the experience to develop a complicated arm system or a top-notch autonomous routine, there should be plenty of other ways they can solve the problems presented by the game to remain competitive.

I think the 2006 and 2004 games are the best examples of this in recent history. I can't wait to see what opportunities the 2007 game brings.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Both of you are exactly right.

If the rookies have a nice base available to them, along with secondary scoring objectives, the game will be more available to all.

There were a lot of corner dumpers this year that could beat some of the shooters.

In Phoenix, we were barely shooting correctly and were beaten pretty easily by corner dumping teams (I'm thinking 1006, fast eddie or something like that).

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I have to say there is a little generalization taking place here. At both the Midwest and Milwaukee regionals this year, rookies not only placed well but were in the winning alliance. As a matter of fact I think there were four rookies in the final match at Midwest and three at Milwaukee. The current alliance and scoring structure goes a long way to giving low scoring rookies (or any team) a chance to keep pace with other teams and be in a position to pick alliance partners. I believe that all teams at both these regionals had a great experience. When rookie teams are picking, they do not have the historical knowledge to pick powerhouse teams, they just go on instinct. It is up to the veterans to help insure that all teams at an event feel special, get help when needed and enjoy the weekend.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

ok 1745 is a team with small numbers(15 kids), little funding(last year we spend $248 on the robot), and little engineering support(I'm the most formally educated mentor on the team).

and we like the way that things are now. yes it may not be "fair", but the way we see it FIRST isn't about winning a robot contest, its about trying your best to complete a really really hard task in a really really short amount of time. just showing up with a finished robot is winning enough for us, any thing more is icing.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

i don't know if I buy it....in our rookie year we went and won at the Peachtree Regional as a rookie with almost no money. I see teams all the time that I know (since I talk with them) don't have a lot of resources build great, competitive machines. Also, I have seen some big money teams squander their resources and end up building a machine that isn't indicative of all their support. I think there are some hasty generalizations being made in this post that may or may not necessarily be accurate. Please consider this as you try to "make competitions more fair" because I think there is an issue with the problem statement that was given.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

This 4 division talk got me thinking of a possible way to give teams that don't do as well at the competition to get in the playoffs (besides the alliance selection thing).

The answer could be regions. Have each regional split up into regions (there would be regions for half the amount of alliances, so at the standard 8 alliance regional there would be 4 regions, at a super-regional with 12 alliances there would be 6 regions, etc.). These regions would be split as evenly as possible (7 teams per region at an event with 28 teams, regions not divisible by 4 may have a few regions with 1 team more or less than the others).

Most competitions have 8-12 matches played per team in qualifiers. Of these, some would become "region games", in which all of your opponents and partners are made up of teams only from your region. Every team in the region would need to play the same number of region games if possible; ideally a team would also play against and with every team in their region at least once, but the odds of that working out are low I think.

Then, when it comes time to declare alliance captains, each Region Winner (the team with the best REGION record, and if that is tied some kind of tiebreaker will need to be invented) will be guaranteed a spot as an alliance captain. This means half the alliance captains will be Region Winners, while the other half are still open to the teams who placed well but just didn't win their region (wildcard spots, bascially).

Since Region Winners are based off of your region record, a team that goes 3-8 in the competition overall but 3-0 in their region can become an alliance captain (for winning their region).

Now of course the odds are that a team not doing so well will have to face at least one powerhouse team in their region, but if they get the right alliance partners or have a lucky match they can beat them and win the region with that, rather than having to get lucky in numerous matches to place high enough to be an alliance captain with the current system.

Now if you found a way of classifying different teams you could try to create regions of all rookies, all teams without mentors, etc. Some teams might get left out if there aren't enough rookies to make a full region, or there's too many, or something like that, but it will give some a better shot.

Regions could also be used in Championship divisions as well.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Well, about the point u made about small teams.

Our team 65 (Huskie Brigade) has 20 Students every year. We do have the resources of GM, but every student has atleast 2 or 3 jobs if not more on the team. Last year, not all of our team even went to Nationals. We had to do everything with a little team. WE know how it feels to be scrunched for the extra hands to do things. We have a strict team and do not let our duties waiver. For the less experienced teams or teams with less resources, they need to be reached out to. Thats one of the reasons we are in FIRST, its to help others. A note to all the newer teams, you should ask for help. Many if not all the other teams will help in anyway they can if possible. I wish all the teams could have an unlimited amount of resources, but that is not the case. We know how it feels to not have lots of money or equipment because GM only sponsers the robot and travel part of our team, we have to raise all the money for the other things such as scouting and other things on the side. But it is worth it, when the team can come together and raise money or help out other people, it makes a good impact on many people.

I think that FIRST has made it as fair as possible until some complication shows up, and they will deal with that too

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

On this point, perhaps any "fairness" system would need to address just making it easier for a team who is not doing as well (a 4-6 or 2-8 kind of team) to get into the playoffs, rather than making it easier for a team because they're a rookie, have less funding, or whatever. If you assume all these types of teams need help you will end up assisting those who are already doing good in the current system as well as those struggling, and that's not the idea behind this. If you go off of how a team is doing at the competition you can make sure it is the struggling teams (or at least struggling in competition that year) that are getting helped more, regardless of what type of team they are.

I expect any system to have limitations though. I don't think any kind of system could be remotely fair and still give an 0-XX team a good shot at the playoffs short of allowing every team in the playoffs, and that would just extend to the already crammed regional schedules (could you imagine the Championship like that?).

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

that is one way increase the level of fairness, or to have classes or levels of competition in which teams can play

you could either have a KOP-only division, and let the super teams play in a totally unrestricted class (use whatever motors / controllers / parts...) you want

or you could turn it around to take some of the restrictions off the smaller teams, so they could buy completed assemblys from someone else, and focus more on one aspect of the design: SW, control systems, auton mode.

My gut instict is telling me we could not (and most teams would not want to) limit the game in ways, so that all teams are more or less equal, and then have all teams compete for the same trophy: ie, only 8 students and 2 mentors per team, or all teams can only use the KOP and nothing else...

I think we would have to move in the direction of having different levels of play within FRC, so that teams can target the level/class they have resources and people to do well in - that means the expert/vetran game could be opened up even more: super-bot class, maybe with $50k robots playing for the top title.

Ali was the HeavyWeight boxing champion or many years, and Sugar Ray Leonard was the top of his class in boxing. They were both champions, but they never had a match against each other. There should be a similar path for FIRST to explore.

I expected there would be some contention on whether FIRST competitions actually are fair or not. Every kickoff meeting I have attended in person Dean Kamen makes a point of saying the competition is not fair, and that it is not designed or intended to be fair.

Some of the aspects of the way the games have evolved are not to increase the level of fairness, but intead to keep the games exciting, interesting, and to let the weaker teams stay more involved.

Originally teams played against each other, there were no alliances. Your ranking at regionals depended mostly on how well your robot and players performed.

But now with the 3 team alliances, your team only represents 33% of your alliance. A really good team could be matched with weak teams in every single match, and not place well in the rankings. Likewise a weak team could be matched with excellent robots in every match, and end up in the top 8 of the rankings, even if their robot never scored a single point all day.

that is one aspect of fairness that could be addressed. Alliances exist in part to keep every team engaged, but the result is that the team that scored the most points, or played the best defense at an event, may not make it into the top eight, then everything else is out of their control.

the other aspect is the resource and team sizes. The smallest team you can have is 4 students and one mentor (you must have 4 students on the playfield). I think it would be great if smaller Highschools could have teams with only 4 -8 students, and they would have a reasonable chance of being the champions in their division or level, whatever that means, without having to defeat a team with 60 students and 20 mentors and a multibillion dollar corporate sponsor.

I think the issue of whether FIRST is fair should be clear - when compared to other sport-like events and contests that students can enter. I hope we focus here on ways to open the competition up to more teams, so they can compete against other teams 'like them'.

that doenst mean we have to make it easier for everyone - we could make it easier for smaller teams, and make it more challenging for the powerhouse teams.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

"Well, since Johnny is a slower runner than Alex, we'll put his finish line 10 meters closer so it's a fair race."
You'll never hear that at the Olympics.
As the coach of a small team with limited funds and limited experience, I think the way they've got FIRST set up is fantastic. If our team went in and won the whole thing as it is, it would be absolutely spectacular. However, if we were given accommodations, I think any victory would be cheapened. I would rather earn it.
As it is, we celebrate our small victories. Winning any matches were cause for ecstacy. Even though our dumper bot wasn't one of the strongest, we feel we contributed with our defensive play and strategizing. I think preparation is critical - the team members have to come in with realistic expectations. If we finish a regional or offseason with a winning record in match play, we'd probably go crazy. If we get picked as an alliance partner, I can't imagine the emotions from the kids, especially the veteran members. Sometimes the struggles make victory so much sweeter.
Also, I believe it is up to the veteran teams to show a great example, keep the bar raised high, and go out of their way to help out. In November, all the FIRST teams in Indiana will meet at Kokomo for a workshop. Teams will learn from the masters - Baker, Fultz, Florence, Beatty, etc. about all aspects of being a FIRST team, from fundraising and sponsorships to pneumatics and drivetrains.
The great equalizer in this competition is knowledge, highlighted by chiefdelphi.com itself. We can share ideas, philosophies, experiences, successes and failures.
One thing I do think would help is awards. Perhaps make some awards that would go to smaller/younger/poorer teams other than Rookie All-Star. Being publicly recognized as an up-and-comer would create a ton of inspiration for a team. Perhaps the Look-Out award? Wait-Til-Next-Year award?
gah. Now I sound like a Cubs fan.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

yes and no. Im almost certain no woman has ever won a large-open class Marathon race. Men have an inherent advantage in long distance running.

That doesnt mean women have never finshed before all the men crossed the finish line, but when open class races are held, the men and women are ranked in separate classes. Best male runner, best female runner.

They dont move the finish line for the women, but they do acknowledge the obvious differences in performace ability.

to address the concern of some people who seem to like playing 'against all odds', if FIRST did create levels or division of play, you could always sign up for the open class / unrestricted / super-bot class and go head to head against the best teams in the world, if thats what you want to do

but keep in mind, alliances may no longer exist then, and you would have to win on your teams merits alone.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I agree with Art on this one. Instead of limiting teams, offer more resources and off the shelf parts to teams so that those who lack funding and engineering staff can still build a competition worthy robot. The really spectacular robots built by powerhouse teams serve to get the students more excited for the next year, as they will hopefully want to build an even better robot. Events could be made more fair; a better and more accurate way to rank teams; more random match pairings, perhaps go to 12 elimination alliances instead of 8 so more teams can play, etc. Then yes, you could add robot classes, like MATE or Trinity Fire Fighting does. The unlimited class would be a good one to keep, then do a class that has the same robot construction rules as OCCRA (student built, very limited on parts). However, more classes means more work for the GDC, as there would have to be two versions of certain rulebook sections.

So as an alternative option, we could always try to expand BEST out of the south as well as OOCRA. Those competitions are limited in parts and mentor involvement, and we could keep FIRST as is. For really brave teams, you could compete in all 3, as they do not overlap.

Perhaps slightly off-topic, but I felt it is relevant:
As Dean has said many times, FIRST isnt fair; it shouldn't be. In real life, engineering companies and firms don't all have the same size bank accounts, or the same research capabilities. In order for FIRST to show kids what engineering is really like, they must give a somewhat accurate representation. If a kid wants to go into engineering knowing that some companies just arent at the same level as others, then he/she is truly interested in this stuff. But if we give the impression that everything is equal, that student may be very disappointed after getting their college degree. Besides, learning to deal with failure is an important part of life. So a team didnt make the elims, it has happened to everyone at one point or another. There was a little league near my hometown last summer that proposed that T-ball and little league should no longer include "outs" or "strikes". Kids have to learn to accept, deal with, and move beyond failure. I've been in that back row, watching everyone else get picked and win awards. As cliche as it sounds, you just have to try harder next year. Keep improving, and you will get your shot at those lovely medals. So if we do try to make FIRST more fair, don't make it "too fair"

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Life itself is not fair. You can excel in college and be killed by lightning or a drunk driver the day after you graduate.

But we do try to keep a level of open and fair competition in the business world. We have invention and design protection through patents and trade secret protection laws. If you want to start a one-man company, you can do that as well. We have laws against one company dominating a market.

In the business world you are free to move anywhere and find a company to work for that matches your goals and expectations.

But HS teams cant up and relocate to find bigger sponsors and more mentors. Students cant switch schools just to be on a powerhouse team.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Why not? Elite sports players do. My parents decided to live in Fairfax County when my dad got out of the Navy based in part on the quality of the school system. Granted, the students can't do that on their own, but plenty of parents out there will do whatever they can to have their child succeed.

That's not even mentioning the FIRSTers that goto a certain college because of their FIRST team/program.

Wetzel

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

This is out of box and pretty radical but I'd like to put it out there. It's no way polished just a concept I've had that I think i've taken from another competition but I can't seem to recall. This would proabbly apply to a rookie or low cost "division" and then above that would be open division identical to the current FRC.

The teams can only purchase parts from listed FIRST suppliers

Teams are provided with the KOP
plus they can purchase $2000 worth of parts/supplies/material from the following suppliers:

any amount from andymark
any amount from McMaster
any amount from Granger
$300 from 8020inc
$150 from skyway wheels
etc.

Conditions
$200 limit on Sheet Metal
$350 limit on Electrical componenets
etc.

all other FIRST rules apply

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Perhaps FIRST could complete the sports analogy and make varsity, jayvee, and freshman competitions. Or follow another high school paradigm and make classes, based on some sort of algorithm of team size, experience, etc. Or, like the NCAA, Division I, II, III. Then perhaps the champions could compete against each other....?

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Why not just pay $2000 less to begin with and spend the money however you want?

I think this thread is ridiculous. If you think FIRST should be leveled, you are missing the point. Yeah sure, you can say kids on small underfunded teams are walking away with a bad taste in their mouths.. but what about the kids on the wealthy teams? How do you think they feel when they don't even have a chance to get their hands dirty, and have put absolutely nothing into the robot.

Example: I was a freshman on my high school's team in 2003. The students helped come up with the strategy, but the robot was entirely built by engineers. We weren't allowed in the shops at Johnson and Johnson, so we didn't even know what the robot looked like until the last day of the build. We did OK in our competitions, but didn't even get into eliminations at Championships. That same team lost all of their sponsorship and engineering support the next year due to budget cuts. That year, the teams robot was built by 3 high school sophomores, a freshman, and 2 juniors. The robot ranked 4th in NJ, and was sitting in either 1st or 2nd all day Friday at UTC. So, don't come to me with sob stories. If you want it bad enough, you'll toughen up and put more work into it.

Its not about the money. Its not about the machine shop. Its about the dedication of the students and mentors on the team. Life isn't fair. Its the people who realize this fact and work hard to overcome adversity that succeed.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

The only problem with doing divisions or any sort of class system is the number of team you need at each regional to make it work well. At most regionals the outer extremes, lots of support or very little, have a few teams each while the majority of teams are somewhere in between.

Winning is good, but losing is sometimes better, it drives you to do better next year because you have something higher to reach for. Where if you win you don't really have anything higher to reach for and the drive to succeed isn't really there IMO.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Hear, hear!

If you don't like the way FIRST wraps a robotics competition around its core goals, you might be happier with another organization with competition at its core.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

First off, we cannot forget how much that FIRST has already done to level the playing field. Limits on how much teams can spend, alliances, random qualification matches, more and more in the KoP, etc. Not to mention, we have 3 awards with 3 different criteria that are rewarded exclusively to Rookie teams at Regionals, 6 (4 top seeds) at Championship, and both Autodesk awards have a seperate championship award for first-year entrants. In fact, TWELVE rookie teams won awards at the Championship event in 2006. And there is only ONE award that a rookie CANNOT win (Chairman's).
The first element to success in every FIRST game thusfar has been building a reliable and competative drive base. The KoP drivebase can be assembled in just a couple of hours, and with IFI, AM, Banebots, and other off the shelf parts, a highly competative drive base only takes a couple days and virtually no custom fabrication. In several games, such as 02, 03, and 06, you didn't need much more than competative drive base to extraordinarily well at an event.
Lowering the standards is the last thing we need in FIRST, and that is what creating divisions, handi-capping, or any other system similar would do. By forcing teams that may be disadvantaged in terms of money or membership to compete on the same level as larger, richer teams we force creativity and hard work. And it can pay off. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've seen rookie bots and thought to myself "why didn't I think of that?". The #1 seed at the largest regional in America was not only a rookie, but their bot was built largely in a barn. And they didn't even win Rookie All-Star or Rookie Inspiration! Why should we lower the standards?

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

How many people posting in here are advocates for the small teams, when in fact, they are from larger teams themselves?

How many people posting in here are from small teams, and want the levelled playing field?

I would assume that the answer to the former is a great deal, and the answer to the latter is next to zero.

If you really are concerned about the rookie teams, why not "sponsor" one of them yourselves?

Imho, I didn't enjoy last year's game as much as I enjoyed the others. Is this because F.I.R.S.T. is trying to help out the rookie teams? I hope not, but I certainly could not tell you.
Getting F.I.R.S.T. to change the game to help out the small teams is great and all, but I'd prefer it to be kept to a certain extent. If the game was truely level, wouldn't it be boring?

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I think you nailed it on the head

But i dont want people thinking that smaller teams are the less fortunate and the less adequate. To the contrary, i think that smaller teams with good mentorship can have the best time and the most success in whatever they try. Our team is small but has funding, so i cant say for sure. But i do know what its like in every other activity we do besides the stuff we have funding for. I applaud all the smaller teams for doing what they are doing and i hope they continue to keep up with the big teams.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I agree, I'm going to school 100 miles away from my former high-school... just because it's better.

Anyways, back to the problem statement, I too think it is severely flawed. When I look at the FIRST robotics competition, I see a game that anyone can play, and play at a very high level with only a kit-bot. And I have proof, team 1775: We where on the 2nd place alliance at the Midwest regional in 2006, our rookie year. It really doesn't matter how much money you have, the competition tests your creativeness in design and your ability to compete effectively. And having really good teams like 111 and 71 really ups the creativeness and helps out your competitive mind. I really don't see how you think things are unfair, all you need is time, passion, and thought.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

The First program is working well the way it is. I feel that First needs to continue to support the bottom teams by insuring that no team fails (doesn't ship a bot). They have done a good job with the KOP frame, transmissions, Easy-C and documentation. In my opinion, any team that goes through the 6 week design and build process has won, they just don't realize it sometimes. What does worry me is the direction some teams have been going. There have been several teams lately that have begun using sophisticated state of the art manufacturing process for the robot construction. This is not necessarily bad but can lead to some less than desirable effects. I'm mainly concerned with it causing a disconnect between the students and the mentors. First is all about having adult professional work through the process with the students. Instead of focusing on the wining thing I believe that some effort and guide lines need to be established on how to incorporate advanced technology into the robot and program while keeping the students and mentors connected. Basically First needs to support the bottom and cap the top. Also these are high school students getting their first taste of technology. If things get too sophisticated we risk blowing them away and turning them off instead of turning them on. There are no easy answers and every year this subject should come up.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

There are some inherent difficulties for rookie teams. they spend more time doing things that other teams can do quickly. An easy way to assist young teams would be to allow more time.

If a team has been in existence for 1-2 years then their ship date would be 8 weeks after kickoff. For teams 3-4 years ship date would be 7 weeks after kickoff. All other teams ship 6 weeks after kickoff.

It just allows more time for inexperienced teams to get their act together.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

It seems that most of these posts involve giving rookies a handicap of some sort. I do not think that this is an appropriate way to make the competition fair. Something that I have thought of is adopting a policy similar to that of Odyssey of the Mind. In OM, the mentors are not allowed to touch the product. They handle administrative tasks and guide the process, but cannot build/create the final product. If the judges feel that the coach has had too much of a hand in the process, the team can be disqualified. I realize that something this strict would harm FIRST, but it does not seem right when I see teams at competition with several middle-aged men in the pit working on the bot, while the students serve merely as drivers. A way to make FIRST 'fair' would be to add an award, or introduce a factor into qualifying points, that rewarded teams based on some sort of interview that could show how much the team worked on the robot rather than the adults. Inevitably, some things will require adult help, and the adults wouldn't mentor if they didn't get to play with the bot! But, the point of FIRST is to teach the students something, and a robot completely designed, built, and programmed by professional engineers will be of better quality than one done by students. If no students on the team ever touch the robot, will they learn anything?

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Yes - but only if they want to. In fact, they can learn way more from master craftsmen than they ever could from trial and error.

But this has been debated to death. FIRST is not another Soap Box Derby, never was, never will be. It is meant to have anywhere from 100% to ZERO% student participation in the build - most teams strike a happy medium - few, if any, can be found at either extreme.

Back on topic: I want to know who gets to decide when FIRST is "fair." Because I don't think it's fair unless we all agree. :confused:

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I look forward to the day when we are having these healthy discussions regarding FIRST's development and someone comments on several middle-aged women in the pit working on the robot. That will be cool.

Edit: To add to this comment, I don't know that what the teams are achieving and working towards in FIRST will ever be completely equal or fair. We are working in getting young girls engaged in science and math and keeping them engaged. That effort is gaining ground in FIRST and we are seeing growth but it will take time. That is just one example. Much of the discussion in this thread and others shows me that teams handle themselves wisely and carefully and look at different perspectives and views when developing and evolving. All of this shows up on the competition field with teams at different stages of the journey.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I know this has been debated ad nauseum in earlier threads. I've resisted jumping in before. But I don't like to see a distinction drawn between "team" and "adults". By definition a team is one entity, and an FRC team's adult members are as much a part of that entity as its high school students. One great example is FRC 71, Team Hammond, winner of the 2006 STL Regional Chairman's Award and a member of the 2006 STL winning alliance, along with several dozen other distinctions earned since 1996, including four FRC Championships.

Last year, St. Louis was 71's first event of the 2006 season and like many teams, they had a lot of work to do getting their robot ready to compete. As the lead robot inspector, I had a wonderful opportunity to see the BEAST evolve before my eyes. I watched both how the robot was improved, and how the team created those improvements. For students willing to listen, learn, take direction, and keep up with a professional work pace, there was a whole lot of hands-on teaching going on.

As many are aware, Team Hammond is sponsored by Beatty Machine & Mfgr. Co. and that sponsor provides the team, among many other forms of support, the services of several of the finest engineers, machinists and technicians to be found anywhere. The younger (student) members of 71 are lucky indeed to see and follow the example set by experienced professionals. And while it is true that many of 71's student members don't work on the robot, it is also true that many do. The standard they are held to is a very high one -- to work on the BEAST it seems you don't have to be a professional, but you do have to behave and perform like one. While this model of teamwork may not be the best for every team, it sure seems to work for 71. It is hard to argue with success, and 71's success is an inspiration not only to its own students but to all of the FIRST community.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I personally love the fact that some teams are dominated by pro engineers and receive thousands of dolors in funding! So much the better when we beat them! (or not :rolleyes: )

At least it gives us a goal...

I think FIRST is a big trap. They lure you in with these cool competitions and shiny robots and along the way they trick you into learning something :)

If you make the competitions fair, there will no longer be any competition, and as a result... it won't be exciting... and there won't be any bait :)
(why try when everybody wins?)

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

With a bit steeper gradient (first year: 8 weeks, 2nd year: 7 weeks, 3rd+ years: 6 weeks), this is the best idea I've heard in the thread so far. It is concise, it is definite, it is enforceable, and it gives help in an area that rookie teams probably struggle the most with: time. I don't think you'd get too many people whining about "that rookie team dominating because they got all the extra build time", because everyone would know that next year that team will have less time. Further, it isn't easy to manipulate this system. With cash or mentor divisions, you might have teams under-reporting cash spent or mentors used just so they get into a less competitive division. On the other hand, it is impossible for a team to claim they've only been competing for one year so that they get more time.

It's so easy to waste time on a rookie team just trying to figure stuff out. If you've got a first-year programmer with no instructions other than the internet, it isn't unusual to waste an entire night doing something that would take a 2nd or 3rd year programmer 5 minutes to do.

Many other ideas that have been proposed (divisions by cash, divisions by student/mentor makeup) are very difficult to draw lines with. If a team spends $1999, are they definetely worth helping out more than a team that spent $2001? Since help is likely to come in chunks and not in a smooth spectrum, it is difficult to make up brackets to divide teams with. Cash spent and # of mentors are things that require hairy definitions and gray areas. If a school buys $100K of machine shop equipment and uses it to shape $500 worth of steel into a robot, how much money was spent? If a recent graduate of a school shows up and helps out, are they a mentor, or still a student? To the team it would appear that they are just a student.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I hate to rain on the "give rookies more time" parade, but some could start a new team each year and use the extra time to build two or three robots and fine tune the rookie drivers. The win at all cost sponsor could continue to drop the third year team, start another, and thereby always field two at a time with a significant advantage. There are always ways to manipulate the system.

IMO, the best way to make things most unfair is to have different rules for different people.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Everyone should play by the same rules. It's not unusual for a rookie team sponsor to drop an intensive effort the first year and then pull back allowing the rookie to do well the first year and then go into the struggling mode. I think First continues to need to support the bottom and cap, limit the top. As for the complaints that First is stifling innovation. I believe that placing cost, material and methods constraints on teams will force teams to innovate more. I don't want First to get to the point where teams start buying the win instead of innovating to win.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

How many teams have won nationals by buying their robots from off the shelf parts?

None.

Every team that wins does so by innovating. Im completely unclear on what your issue is.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I see a lot of posts in this thread that dont seem to be addressing the core issue of the FIRST competition itself (in the manner it is structured), not being fair to all teams.

Some people are saying if we try to make rules that will level the playing field, that some teams or mentors will take advantage of them, and find ways around the rules to win (starting new teams each year so they are always rookies....)

the problem isnt that FIRST mentors and sponsors are cheating, that they want to win at all costs, the problem is the way the competition itself is structured is not fair to all teams. If a sponsor wants to bend the rules to win, they can do so now.

Some people are saying if we make FIRST fair (level the playing field) then it will be boreing, there will be no competition. I think the opposite is true. What we have now is like the New York Yankees playing hardball against little league and Tball teams. No matter how hard those 8 year old kids try, they do not have a chance at winning the world series, because the matches are way out of balance. Its very boring to watch an extreemly mismatched contest.

In the world of sailing they have what is called one design boats. Every boat is exactly the same. You are not allowed to customize your boat or to buy special parts for it. At the world finals every team gets a brand new boat. The only difference on the water is the skill and drive of the skipper and his crew. That is what I call a fair and very exciting sporting event. The races are usually very close and dramatic.

I dont think we can change FIRST so that every team is only matched against other teams that are exactly the same, with any sort of measureable parameters, but we could find ways to ensure the 'little league' teams are not playing against the major leaguers, and that the 12 foot Sunfish sailboats not racing against the 80 foot America's Cup yatchs.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

One of the major flaws of first may be US. I come from a relatively large team 40+ members and we have very little funding But the problem is not how much money you have it is your mentality. As a freshmen i always heard "they didn't build the robot, They have a Huge budget" It begins to rube off after a while. First isn't fair but thats what makes it fun the unfairness allows for further innovations. And the teams that lose the previous year just want to come back and kick butt the next. I can say that because thats how i feel after coming in dead last in our division at nationals I want to do better. But remember this tell your new members that it doesn't matter how much money you have it's how you think. If you think you'll win then you may win; If you think you'll lose than you will lose...

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I'm trying to figure out how, 2006 Curie Division Champ, 1139 equates to the New York Yankees. They had a RELIABLE DRIVE BASE , INNOVATIVE system to keep balls from jamming and an INNOVATIVE launcher .

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Earlier in this thread I went a little bit off-topic and forgot to express my own opinion on ideas to make FIRST competitions 'fair'.

My opinion is: FIRST should (1) re-write a rule when attempts to apply it have demonstrated that it doesn't work, and (2) keep improving the kit of parts by deleting parts that don't work well and adding parts that do. No quantum leaps are required. Just an ongoing process of continuous improvement.

Sean is correct above; the present FIRST rules actually encourage, and certainly do not frustrate, teams that are capable of innovating -- even if they are not funded like the New York Yankees.

Sean's dad was correct in expressing a similar opinion a couple of years ago.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Different rules for different teams is never a good idea.

Yes, rookie teams may have a hard time getting going their first year, but by allowing them extra time to build their robot you're just sugar-coating reality. This would be comparable to over-protective parents who never let their kids more than ten feet out of their sight. We can't shield teams from reality and never let them fail or experience the "real FIRST".

The only way to truly learn life lessons is through hard work, and for many people that means working especially hard to get the robot done in time. If that means putting in several all-nighters, then so be it. Is the chance of failure very real? One-hundred percent YES. But that is life.

As Walt Disney once said, "I think it’s important to have a good hard failure when you're young. I learned a lot out of that. Because it makes you kind of aware of what can happen to you. Because of it, I’ve never had any fear in my whole life when we’ve been near collapse and all of that. I’ve never been afraid. I’ve never had the feeling I couldn’t walk out and get a job doing something."

The only time a team truly fails in FIRST is when they stop trying. Otherwise, I'd say keep the same six-week build season, keep the same rules for all teams, and keep the same randomized divisions. Reasons for justifying different divisions in FIRST based off "this is the way its played in other sports" has no sound reasoning for FIRST. Baseball and boating competitions are about one thing: winning. In FIRST, that "one thing that matters" is not winning, but it is the I in FIRST, inspiration. How a team inspires its students - either by winning, trying as hard as they could, or any other means, is moot, as long as the end product is inspiration.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

For Inspiration Recognition of Science and Technology.

if you were to change the rules to limit teams and make a more even playing field, you would destroy the inspiration part.

FIRST is not about a robot competition . . there just happens to be one at every FIRST event.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I don't think there is a good way to make FIRST fair.

A team is how the members want to make it. If the team has the enthusiasm and work ethic to be successful, then they will. If a team really doesn't want to do much, just sort of slack off and wait for build season to argue about everything, then that team wont be successful.

FIRST can't do much to make the playing field level. It comes from the team members. It starts with teamwork. If you don't have a team that works well together, then nothing will be accomplished. This can be solved by getting together as a team and doing... something! It doesn't matter, just get out and do something together. A lot of time is wasted when arguements came up. That happened to us this year. There was an arguement about whether we should shoot or score in the side goals, then another arguement about the shooter design.

Arguements lead to wasted time, frustration, and poor products of one's work because of that frustration.

Communication is another big one. Communcation isn't entirely being able to talk. There's more to that. Communication is rendered to just someone babbling if no one is listening. Team members need to know how to listen to eachother. If the controls and mechanical aren't on the same page about what's going on, 6 weeks into it, everyone will be cursing at everything.

FIRST can do everything in it's power to make the game as fair as possible, but it's useless if a team can't get along.

The only true way to make it fair is for the powers that be in FIRST hold our hands through it all, and that's no fun.

Okay, I'm hungry. Bye.

-Dan!

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

that was true in the past, but for the last several years winning a regional also meant you could go to the championship. For some teams, if you dont win, you cant go.

Many teams take the stance that building a great competitive robot, and trying your best to win, is the way to inspire the students. How inspired will you be if you build a great robot, and play excellent matches, and your team still does not place well, if you dont make it to the playoff matches, if you dont get to attend the championship for 3 or 4 years?

How inspired will you be if you see teams that have machines that are not as good as yours, or teams that dont drive and play the game as well as you, place higher, and get chosen to go on, when you are left behind?

If things are too far out of skew, then students will learn a different lesson than the one we want to teach. Work hard, do your best, but then its a toss up whether or not you will reach your goal?!

If you goto Vegas and play Blackjack, or the Black/red on the roulette wheel, your odds are just under 50:50. Would you play if you knew the cards were stacked against you, or the wheel was rigged, if you knew the casino was not playing fair?

Likewise, what are we teaching students on teams that dont try hard, teams that build poor machines, but they end up with 6 or 7 super alliances, and win most of their matches, and place in the top 8? Hey that was easy!

that is what Im hoping we can moved towards. If the competiton was fair, if all teams had an even chance of winning if they work hard and are creative, then your statement would be correct.

But as it is now, you can have a great team, build an outstanding machine within the capabilites of your team and sponsor, and still have a very poor chance of winning a regional, going on to the championship, and winning there. Your team can play extreemly well in every match, and still lose every single time.

Im starting to think the imbalance, the unfairness, has been ingrained in FIRST for so long that many people cannot even see it, cannot recognize that its there, and that it exists on several levels.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

How about being 62nd out of 62 teams at the 2003 VCU? We got beat by a team that didn't uncrate their robot.
What did 116 take away from that. A desire to NEVER let that happen again.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

^agrees.

<my $0.02>

FIRST is not a level playing field sometimes, but neither is life.

</my $0.02>

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

So many people are getting worked up about teams with multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars and 20 engineers and massive machine shops with the latest and greatest in CNC machinery at their beck and call, etc, etc.

Stop and think about that for a minute. How many teams do you actually think have $150,000+ in funding? How many do you think have 20 engineers? For those teams that do have 20 engineers, how effective do you think it is for them to even have 20 engineers? Probably not very. I sure as heck wouldn't want 20 engineers on my team. Nothing would get done, unless you were going to have 20 subsystems.

The fact is, very few of these teams exist. Of the ones that do, so what? They're likely not doing much better than a team with half as many engineers, or half as large of a budget. Even so, it doesn't matter at all. Clearly the students on these teams are being inspired. If not, their team would collapse. No students would join it if they hated it and weren't learning anything. As has been said so many times, it does not matter how the students are inspired, so long as they are inspired

On to the point of resources. People in FIRST are very good at judging books by their covers, so to speak. If a team has a painted robot, or complex mechanisms, they must be super well funded and have a ton of resources. This can be true. Often it is not.

I'll bring up an example that's been brought up multiple times in the past (and hopefully not embarass them too much :p)--Team 968. They don't have resources. They don't have money. They're lucky to scrape together the entry fee. They wouldn't have been able to go to nationals last year if a generous donor hadn't paid the way for the winners of the LA regional.

Yet every year they manage to produce a professional looking, well engineered machine. I have yet to mention that they don't have engineers. They have a couple college students majoring in engineering, and a single teacher. Not one engineer. With that small mentorship group, and a small group of kids, they manage to produce some of the best looking and performing robots out there, year in and year out.

Im sure many teams looked at 968 this year and last, and the year before and thought that they were one of those $100,000 teams with 20 engineers. They work out of a classroom. They don't have machinery.

Which brings up my next point. Tons of teams/individuals complain about not having machining resources. 968 has none of these. What they do have is desire. If you want something bad enough, you can get it. All it takes is to call up all the local machine shops you can find in your phonebook. Many are willing to help, even with significant time committments. I don't know how many they got to donate time, but I can tell you we had probably 4 or 5 machine shops which donated time to make parts for us.

The resources are out there. The biggest difference between an average team and one of the powerhouse teams is desire. When the average team is complaining about how unfair it is that powerhouse teams have all these resources, the powerhouse teams are working hard to get these resources. When the average team is taking sunday off, or going home at 5 pm, the powerhouse team is working 7 days a week, and going home at 10 pm.

Desire to be the best you can be is what separates the two. Not machine shops. Not money. Not having 20 engineers. Heck, I look around on CD, and last year many teams were posting pictures of the machine shops at their high schools, or the machine shops they had access to. I saw tons of shops that we'd absolutely love to have access to--multiple CNC mills and lathes, manual machines galore, etc. By no means are we a disadvantaged team, far from it, but our machine shop can't even begin to compare to those I've seen of many teams given the "disadvantaged" label. Similarly, I'm sure there are tons of teams with multiple engineers who fail to ever approach the level of teams with far fewer engineers, or none at all.

Now obviously there are situations in which hard work and desire aren't going to get you to the top. But there are so many teams out there who could significantly improve their own standing by simply not complaining about what everyone else has that they don't, and working their hardest to get the things that those other teams have.

Finally, before you judge a team by what you think you see, it might serve you well to get to know the team itself. Only then can you form an informed opinion, and many might be very surprised at how different their views were from reality.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

this statement could cause a great deal of hurt to a small team with limited resources and mentors. Telling a team they did not win, that they dont have access to a multimillion dollar machine shop, that they dont have awesome mentors... because they did not try hard enough is condesending.

If a small team is very successful, and their success can be attributed to them (and not to the alliance luck of the draw team matching), then they would advance up on whatever structure or division format exists for the next season. If you prove your team is great playing against other teams on your own level, then you win this year, and you move up to a greater challenge next year. Certainly there will be small teams that excel. That is what a competition is all about - seeing how well you did, based on how well you prepared for the event.

I guess I have asked for too much to try to focus on coming up with ways to make the FIRST competiton more fair than it is today. This thread has fallen into a hopeless debate on whether or not FIRST is fair, and whether or not it even matters.

It seems pretty odd that a program that is suppose to be a culture of change, has fallen into its own patterns and habits, so much so that it cant even see the issues.

but as they say, seeing the problem is the first step. If you cant recognize there is a problem, then nothing can be done about it.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I personally don't really want a rule change in favour of weaker teams. As someone else said, it does kind of cheapen the victory a la "I'm the best of the worst!". However, of all the playing-field-leveling suggestions in the thread, I like that one the best because it is much easier to implement and enforce than divisions based on money, mentors, or success. Plus it DOES apply equally to all teams: all teams are rookies at some point.

In my time at 1141, we would often have a schedule something like this:
7am - school opens, work at machine shop until 8:30
8:30am-2:30pm - school (during lunch and breaks work on the robot)
2:30am-5:00pm - robotics
5:00pm-7:00pm - go home for dinner/homework
7:00pm-whenever the janitors kicked us out (usually midnight)- robotics

Weekends would often run from 9am to midnight on both days. 1141 has desire flowing out the wazoo. The problem is that there are plenty of teams that have just as much desire, but something extra.

It can't simply be desire, there is something else (I really don't know what) seperating the best from the rest, and I think it would be good for FIRST to figure out exactly what that is. I'm not convinced it is simply money, because money doesn't buy good designs. It (probably) isn't the students, since on average, you'll have the same batch of students at every school.

The main thing I think FIRST could help with is figuring out why there is a gap between consistently mid-pack teams like 1141 and consistently successful teams like their anagram 1114. What are the practices of highly succesful teams? How is it that 1114/1503/1680 can so consistently come up with very highly effective robots year after year? Do they practice the design period ahead of time with previous year's games? Are they infused with tons of high-quality engineers that help with the design greatly? Are the designs of the same quality, but simply executed better*? Are they simply larger and can thus pull off more grandiose designs? Do they attract a different slice of the student population?

*As an aside, my current team (1281) had a laugh while looking at team #25's robot at nationals. It was fundamentally identical to ours (high hopper, gravity feed to low shooter, fast 6 wheel drive), but each part of it was executed just that little bit better. Their hopper was rigid and so had fewer jams. Their shooter imparted more speed to the balls and was more accurate. It probably wasn't just luck that they designed it that way, they probably had their meetings and design process structured in such a way that only the best implementations of each feature was used.

I think the best thing FIRST could do would be a bit of research into what the spark is in consistently succesful teams. How do they do it over and over again? If they distributed a best-practices design and organization manual with the KOP, I think it would help the mid-pack and rookie teams tremendously. And I mean a really in-depth manual. Maybe they could put it on a DVD and include video of a design meeting at both student-run and mentor-run teams. 1281's design process is a bunch of people in a room talking until we kind of come to an agreement. There is obviously a better way to do this, since we had a few design showstoppers actually come up in meetings and get dismissed out of hand, only to rear their heads again in competition. I can probably think of tens of other ways to go about the design process, but I don't know if any of them would actually work.

I'm sure there are team organization and design whitepapers on CD, but something official straight from FIRST would be much more credible to rookie teams that are new to the competition.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Experience
initiative
off seasons
cooperation, collaboration, being open
stealing, oops, borrowing from the best
fluid and constant exchange of ideas, communication, fun, expertise
team development during the year
Experience

FIRST can design the challenge, provide the KoP & rules manual, set the time frame for robot development, application, ship - and then set the schedule for competitions

After that, the teams take over and do their thing.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Experience - There are many rookie teams who exhibit truly amazing design and construction. For example, team 1114 in their rookie year was stunningly effective.
Off seasons - This doesn't really explain how a given team becomes better at designing and constructing something effectively. It makes them more effective in regionals, but it doesn't explain the gap in robot quality between consistently high-end teams and others.
Cooperation/Collaboration - This seems probable. Allowing each team to only concentrate on making the best drive/shooter/whatsit they can allows them to figure out more of the hairy details.
Borrowing from the best - Is exactly what I want FIRST to help out with by determining and distributing the best practices of the most succesful teams. Not every team knows the best place to go for their borrowing needs.
fluid and constant exchange of ideas - Easy to say, harder to do. How do you structure a meeting so that everyone gets their say? How do you have a constant exchange of ideas when the design is generally finalized after week one or two?
Team development - This is a biggie I think. One idea I had after the season was over this year was to have mock design periods to build robots for past games in sept-dec so that a team could iron out their design process, get an idea for what worked/didn't, and have something productive to do besides fundraising. There are obviously many other team development things to do: what are they?

Basically, I want a book distributed with the KOP that has your post, but with enormous elaboration on what the best teams do. It'll allow ALL teams to learn and improve themselves, which is what FIRST is about.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Indeed you have.

Before you can start working on ways to improve the situation, you must first define the problem. The trouble here is that there is no common definition of "fair", and I don't think there can be. Your proposal seems to be about equalizing the quality of the robot, and letting the quality of the drivers determine the outcome of the matches. For FRC, I think that's the wrong emphasis on many levels.

If you like the idea of constraining the designs so they can be matched up into predefined classes, there are other organizations out there that do what you want. But they do it that way because they are robotics competitions. FIRST uses robotics competitions as an incentive, not as a goal.

If your target is "fair competition" along the lines of the one design sailboat races, I suggest that the problem is that you have chosen the wrong target.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

(dag nabbit... I broke my concise rule again... please bear with me as this is loooong)

FIRST is working hard to make ALL teams better, and provide ways for teams with less resources get on-the-field wins and awards. However, FIRST will never be exactly fair for all teams. I agree with the majority of the posters in this thread, as FIRST should not make more broad changes to make things more fair. Often we hear Dean and Woodie say that "FIRST is not fair". This is said each year at Kickoff.

We can tell that FIRST listens to teams and tries to lessen the gap between the high resource teams and the lower resource teams. Let's look at what has been done to improve FIRST in this area.

Here are some history and facts:

1. Alliances
From 1992-1998, there were no alliances. There was no collaboration, no sharing of designs, no co-opertition. In order to win, teams ganged up on 1 team at times. It was rough. Students were not encouraged to show off their efforts to other teams... heaven forbid they give away a strategy secret.

In 1999 the brilliance of the game was the insertion of alliances. Powerhouse teams had to depend on a partner. Lower resource teams could win with a strong partner.

2. Additional material freedom
From 1992 to 2001, teams could only use certain parts to build their robot. Only purchased mechanical parts and materials out of the Small Parts Catalog were used to build these complex machines. Did you need a gear reduction that was not provided as a gearbox in the kit? You had to make it from scratch from the list of additional raw materials. Did you need a gear or sprocket that was not available in Small Parts? You had to wire EDM or waterjet cut the gear.

Teams with excellent resources dominated back then. These teams had access to EDM machines and could design and create complex mechanisms that lower resource teams could not. Lower resource teams would see the exact gear they need at Martin or at McMaster, but they had no way of using it, since it was not available at Small Parts and they had a very hard time finding the resource of making the gear out of raw materials.

3. 2002 - 2003?
Additional awards were created for Rookie Teams. There was only the Rookie All-Star award. Now, there is Rookie Inspiration and Highest Rookie Seed in addition to the Rookie All-Star.

4. 2002: Kit drive train
FIRST made a great initial effort to provide each team with a workable drive train made from kit components. Before 2002, there were many events where robots were simply "boxes on wheels" that never moved. In 1999, 2000, and 2001, many alliances were doomed because it was 2 vs 1. 2 good robots could beat up on 1 good robot and 1 stationary box on wheels. The effort that FIRST put in to create the 2002 FIRST Kit drive train was commendable and provided each team with a workable chassis.

5. 2005: New kit chassis and drive train
In 2002, 03, 04... teams who used the kit drive train did move around the field, but they were still dominated (for the most part) by teams who made custom drive trains. In 2005, the kit drive chassis was a competitive base for a robot. Many teams who used this drive train won regionals. Sure, there are still teams with custom drive trains, but the advantage of one of these is smaller compared to years ago.

Now, for a story and some opinions from uncle Andy, so gather around the campfire...

I remember many years ago, sitting at the post-season FIRST forums in Michigan. All of the midwest teams were invited to voice their complaints to FIRST. Bob Hammond and KC Connor from FIRST attended this, posed questions, and took many notes.

They brought up the subject of fairness between teams, the idea of "divisions" of teams, separating the high resource teams from the low resource teams. Ken Patton, Joe Johnson, Raul Olivera and I were sitting together (for you new to FIRST, these three guys are some of the best robot designers and most inspirational engineers there has been in this program). We realized that we were these "high resourced" teams (since then, btw, each of our teams have lost resources). Lead mentors from the newer, lower resourced teams were giving their opinions. Of course, there was one guy who was really liking the idea of putting the higher resourced teams into their own division.

After some discussion, one quiet mentor from a rookie team spoke up, saying, "At the end of this year, we asked the kids what their highlight was. Our kids overwhelmingly answered this: when we beat Wildstang in a qualification match. I don't want that opportunity to go away. The teams who are new to this, or with lower resources must have the opportunity to play 'with the big boys'. While this surprised me, I understood it when it came from their point of view."

Of course, I am paraphrasing here, but something much like that was definitely said. The discussion ended right there. The one guy who was pushing for divisions was now quiet.

David needs a chance to beat Goliath. You want a way to inspire kids? Hand them each a little rock. Pour your heart into this program. Work side by side with them. Work late. Work through your problems. Get frustrated together. Let them see you mess up. Design that shooter for the 4th, 5th or 6th time. Don't give up. Tell them to go out and beat Goliath. They'll do it. No... that's not right... you'll do it together.

The propagation of the idea of making FIRST into a perfectly fair competition is just silly. Teams need to win, and they need to lose. People need to realize that the difference between winning and losing is HARD WORK. Woodie says this anytime he speaks... this is the HARDEST FUN YOU'LL EVER HAVE. It's not easy. This is life.


Andy B.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I'm inclined to say the difference is mentors, given the situation you've outlined.

Excellent teams often have very special mentors. They're the one thing that remains constant. Students can come and go, and hand down their knowledge from year to year, but eventually they all leave (or become mentors). The mentors are the glue holding everything together.

It's also a combination of everything else you've said. When you've been around as long as a lot of those guys have, you pick up tricks of the trade, so to speak. Experience brings a wealth of knowledge.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Thank you Andy. We could probably close this thread now, except I want to say something. :)

Experience, money and mentors doesn't always generate success. We've all seen examples of rookies or 2nd year teams achieving great things. Same for small underfunded teams.

Can I give an example the other way? And I don't think either of these teams would object to being the example. What happened between 2005 and 2006 to 67 Hot and 503 Frog Force teams? They didn't lose experience, they seemed to have the same mentors, maybe there were funding issues but not a cut-back to $0.00. Yet when we got to alliance selection at GLR, we were down to the final selection to fill in the 3rd partner for the #1 alliance, and both these immediate-past-Championship winners were still on the sidelines. 67 was selected to play defense only. Should either of these teams have been further penalized because of their experience, staffing, funding, etc, to give the have-nots or rookies a "fairer shot"? Not in my mind.

1188 is a relatively have-not team - we had only one engineer last year, and her day job is project management. We had a programmer engineer/mentor who could only be there a few hours a week. A couple of parent mentors who never had an engineering class in their lives, but were able to help with programming, design and build. We struggled with funding, and were fortunate in the end to get an additional $6,000 sponsor. We also were left on the sidelines at GLR, and were the 3rd pick for the 6th alliance at Detroit - and we knew we deserved it. We would not have wanted it any other way. Yet because of our off-field endeavors, we took home an impressive array of hardware - Engineering Inspiration, Judges, Safety, Website - were we any less successful because we weren't in the finals at GLR or were in a 2-matches-and-out alliance at Detroit? Hardly.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

It took me a while to be able to admire and respect some of the powerhouse teams. I was upset that my team was always at such a disadvantage, with around 10 -15 students and no money. However, every year I was proud that we were able to come up with something at all, given all the challenges the team faced. Last year particularly, things kind of fell apart in the middle of build. I was expecting the team to produce one of our most competitive robots yet, instead, we couldn't drive in a straight line. I was still proud that we were able to produce a robot at all. More importantly, I feel that I learned more last year than any previous year because of the challenges we faced. Even if our robots have a habit of not turning out, is always rewarding to go to competition and see another teams robot, that is nearly identical to our original design, go out and win.

A big part of FIRST is the fact that it isn't fair. Our team worked harder because we knew what we would be up against. Every year we are forced to be more innovative, to learn more, to stay at school until midnight every day for six weeks, just to build something remotely passable. The whole point of FIRST is that it isn't really about winning. Yes, it is really frustrating to not do well in the placings, or not win an award to qualify for nationals, but I after I got home, this always motivated me to work harder.

I do agree that more could be done to help smaller, underfunded (as well as rookie) teams feel less overwhelmed. However, it seems like FIRST is already taking steps to make that happen by doing things like improving the kit drive train.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I really liked when FIRST released the how-to video for the 2005 kit bot. If you had a hard time reading the drawings, you could follow the directions from the video. I think videos like this would help anyone who would take the time to learn something new. Their robot may not be amazing on the first shot, but over time will be great.

I also think teams need to learn how to properly engineer their robot. I know my old team, and can assume many teams, fell into the trap of designing the bot based on another team's old design. This is bad for two reasons: A) It stifles the creativity of team members, and B) limits the amount of things you can do efficiently because you are stuck to a certain design. Look at Team 195's robot. Do the mechanisms from 2005 and 2006 look surprisingly similar to those of 254 and 33? You be the judge.

An informed engineering process where the design is based off goals, not one where goals are based off design will win 9 times out of 10.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Let me add to that, the unique way the GDC works out the game design so that robots with less functionality using the kit base can be a valuable part of an alliance. 2006 was the best year yet for rookies (and some very young non rookie teams), in my opinion.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

There is a forest and it contains many trees. We can walk through the forest all day long and point at trees here and there and say "look how good this one is doing, its only two years old..."

but that doesnt mean the forest itself is growing, or healthy.

People have been asking me where the teams are in this thread who are not happy with the current structure?

I have been on teams that lost their sponsor, and had to find new ones. Ive pitched FIRST to CEOs and had them ask me "Are you crazy?! Are you actually going to do this?"

Ive been on teams that lost their teacher and engineer mentors because they burned out, or it was too much commitment to do year after year.

Ive been part of a group trying to form new teams, at schools where we could not get a single teacher to commit, because the personal demands were too much.

I know of teachers and mentors who have been told by their wives "If you sign up for FIRST again this year I WILL divorce you!" (seriously).

The teams that failed to form are not here to post their opinions in this thread. The small teams that are overwhelmed and do not even know about the CD forum are not here to post. The teams that folded because their mentors where overwhelmed are not here to post.

If we want the forest to grow, to have a tree at every HS in the US, at any point in our lifetime, then we need to address these issues.

Telling mentors and students you have to work harder, you have to do 'FIRST' 80 hours a week during the build season, and you have to be engaged in it the rest of the year as well, is not going to make FIRST grow the way it could.

I personally do not have the free time to mentor a team this year. 3 teams have asked me to mentor. I know of a new team in my area that needs mentors, but I know FIRST is a black hole that sucks you in until you have no time left to give.

It doesnt need to be this way. We should be able to form new teams with 8 students, one or two mentors, attend a local regional, only spend 10 to 12 hours a week during build season and still be able to give the students an idea of what its like to be an engineer

without being trampled at the competition by vastly superiour teams.

I have one person here telling me "Playing with the big dogs is an important part of FIRST"

and someone else telling me "If FIRST is too much then start a VEX team instead"

I think FIRST is big enough that we can cut the big dogs loose, and let them have their own superclass of competiton, and also have a division for small teams, where they can feel some measure of success beyond winning one or two matches a year. Winning a match against a powerhouse team is great, and that could be a small teams highlight of the year

but if they had the chance to be division champions, I think that is what they will put on their college applications.

We could have a Mega Class division and a µClass division at the championship, and even if those teams dont compete against each other, they would still connect and consider themselves to be FIRST collectively.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I don't think divisions would ever work. I don't think a team's performance one year necessarily implies how good or bad their performance will be the next year*. Especially in a high school competition where losing a team's only programmer, a leader, a welder, a mentor or a sponsor can happen in a snap, I don't think long-term organizing like divisions would be effective.

*I don't have time to do this right now, but a scatterplot graphing a team's percentile placing one year with their performance the next would quickly prove/disprove this hypothesis. If the plot is very tightly grouped around a line, then I'm wrong. If it is very spread out, then I am correct.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

It would seem to me if that's the limitation imposed on a team, you can give the students an idea of what engineering is, but if you're talking purely about a competitive standpoint, that team that spends 12 hours a week won't even be able to compete with similarly funded teams with similar resources who work at least 2-4x that per week.

Dean has already said the competition isn't fair, and isn't meant to be. Why is this being discussed? I'll print off my post and eat the piece of paper if FIRST moves to Ken's sailing divisions idea. It's just not going to happen. It would be bad for FIRST.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I did have enough time to make a scatterplot of team performance.

As you can see, a team's 2005 performance has almost no predictive power in terms of their 2006 performance. Teams that came in the bottom 10% in 2005 went as high as the top 10% in 2006. This is using the 51 teams that went to GTR in both 2005 and 2006. Based on this, going to a divisions setup makes very little sense.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Ken,

Your view of the forest is vastly different from mine. The one I see is healthy. There are many trees in here. You seem to be only looking at one type of tree - FRC.

There are other types: FVC, FLL, BEST, Botball, Sumo, Trinity Firefighting Robotics, Robot-one, Underwater robot competitions, BBIQ, Super milage, etc, etc.

15 years ago, this forest only contained one tree: FIRST Robotics. There is much "new growth" here. The neat thing is, there are no boundaries. New trees will spring up and this forest may be twice as big in another 15 years.

There are tall trees, fat trees, and bushes. We live in these trees. The people on these forums (ChiefDelphi) live in the FRC, FVC, or FLL trees. Some energetic people have homes in multiple trees. That's great for them. For me, I live in the FRC tree. Instead of trying to cut the FRC tree down, go climb another. We're pretty tall at this point and we don't need chopped. Our roots are strong. Don't try to uproot this tree and plant it where BEST is planted. Don't prune us into a BBIQ tree. They have their own branches and roots. If you want to make an impact, nourish another tree instead of chopping up ours.

Andy B.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

"Those issues" will not help those trees be any healthier. Teams don't fold because they arn't winning. Teams usually fold because of management, funding, and commitment reasons. Whether they are regional champions or last place makes no difference. 64 won the most awards any team has ever won in a single season, including a trip all the way to EINSTIEN FINALS in 2005, yet didn't return in 2006. 16 won the CHAIRMAN'S AWARD and didn't return the next year (but have since come back).
If you truly beleive that in order to help Team A survive, you must inhibit Team B, then you are sadly mistaken.
Ken, the FIRST Robotics Competition isn't a competition about who can "work the hardest" or drive the best. It is about who can build the best robot.
The FIRST program as a whole isn't about winning at all. It is about inspiring the next generation of engineers, scientists, mathematicians, programmers, etc. In many cases, students on these under-funded, under-mentored teams can be just as inspired as the rest of us. When 116 does poorly, we try and learn from it and keep it from repeating.
Another example from 116. In 2003, we had an animation team of 3 students. The year before (2002), they had produced something that, well, didn't exactly sweep anyone off their feet. Each of them had to bring their own computers to work on it. No mentors, no expensive, fancy add-on software, no real training. They worked their butts off for 6 weeks. Their end result was an animation that finished in the top 3 at every regional it was entered in (which was 5 by the 2003 AVA rules...even though we only went to 2), including winning the Lonestar Regional Autodesk Award for Visualization. One of those students is now at MIT, and another interned with the Dept. of Defense helping animate combat simulations.

And building off of Andy's comment. Many years ago, Dave Miller, a mentor working with a certain NASA team decided that he didn't like something with FIRST. At that time, it had no programming aspect at all. What did he do? Found BotBall. He founded a robotics competition that suited his style and what he felt should and needed to be accomplished by it.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Good point, Sean... I'll try to expand on it.

Another guy went off and started BBIQ (Mike Bastoni still is productive within FIRST, although not seen, but that's another story).

Back in the mid-90's in Texas, a group of people wanted things simpler than FIRST and started BEST.

I'm sure there are more. These people decided not to try to change FRC into something else... they decided to CREATE and INSPIRE in a different way by being productive in a new arena.

AB

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

To be honest, what is fair? Everything will be slightly unfair, there are inherent disadvantages to every competition. Fair is quite relative and at the same time quite subjective. The only way to be completely fair may be make everyone use the same robot and just make it a driving competition. Thats not the point of FIRST, its not FIRST's intent to be fair, its to inspire into Science and Technology we all know that, this isn't debated.

Granted FIRST, of the aforementioned competitions is probably one that creates some of the largest disparities between highly resourced and highly recognized teams, and the lowest of teams. But this to me is exciting.

FIRST has made great strides of late, I recall when a team was worried whether or not their ally would show up on the field. Now we worry whether or not that they have an effective autonomous mode, or if they'll be able to perform the more complex tasks of the game.

Many make it seem that there is no chance to succeed as a rookie team with no resources, or an underfunded teams. But with hard work and dedication to succeeding anything can be accomplished. At the risk of sounding proud I'm going to share a bit of how 1902 got founded this past year.

Team 1902, was a team started 2 weeks before competition, by 1 mom 3 students and a former high school teacher. They had not raised any money they had no tools, no professional mentors, little to no experience, just a team number and a desire to compete. Their first team meeting was held on the day of kickoff. They recruited college FIRSTERS to help with the team, to do what they could ( including myself ). This team worked out of a mentors garage, with but a discounted drill press, and a chop saw borrowed from a neighbor. With maxed out credit cards all season long the team actively pursued sponsorship, being able to secure a few corporate level sponsor, and a few thousand through innovative fund raisers. The team was then able to go on to competition and do fairly well.

In fact, they were finalists in both Florida and Archimedes division at the championship event, and seeded first with an undefeated record at Houston. The argument was made that often times teams will ride on the coat tails of other powerful teams. It is true with great alliances we were able to go far in competition. However through three events team 1902 attended the team went something like 32-11 ( can not find regional match list results so this is what I best remember ). If thats not a measure of level of competitiveness I don't know what is.

FIRST is not a fair competition. Most competitions aren't, there is always someone that will be better or faster, or more prepared, or have more money, or more mentors, or more tools. But this has nothing to do with competitive edge. 1902 worked hard, and continues to work hard till this day in order to put its most competitive foot forward. But when someone says that because this competition is not fair, that teams just can't compete because of the odds stacked against them I am frustrated, and only that much more determined to succeed. I am frustrated because not only is it possible to succeed its possible to win and win big.

FIRST is a competition, and a big part about this competition is winning. It is after all just that, a competition. FIRST has made strides to level the playing field, they've even started FVC which is almost completely level playing field as far as components are involved. But FRC is a competition, teams will strive to get a competitive edge, as well they should. Because if it weren't competitive, than I hardly believe it'd be as exciting. If FIRST weren't exciting, well It just wouldn't be FIRST, and I know I for one would be doing something else.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I think the system is reasonably fair to rookies. FIRST has gone to great lengths to level the playing field between the haves and have nots. A good example of the success of FIRST's efforts can be seen by looking at my teams success, or lack thereof, at regionals. We're plenty well funded and have been around for 10 years. However, almost every rookie beat us at the Boston Regional.

Here's some of the things that I think are not fair...

With the unprecedented amount of scoring software woes from last year I think it would be fair if FIRST made as much software as possible open source. A process should be created to allow teams to contribute bug reports. I would feel better about problems with the software if I had been given the opportunity to prevent them.
I'd like this rule to be clarified further. Specifically, I want "scoring changes made in the overnight" to become a less ambiguous process.
FIRST is taking our rights away as mentors. My job is to make sure my kids are inspired and the program survives. I can't effectively explain to the kids what happened out on the field if I'm not allowed to talk to an official. I also can't explain to a sponsor why the team didn't do well at competition. I don't think FIRST had their priorities right when they thought this up: encourage animosity among students and leave mentors in the cold?
I believe a mentor should be able to attend this session. Smaller teams are automatically at a disadvantage because they have field duties. In my experience students would rather watch the competition than talk to the judges about the chairmans award. The award is a celebration for an incredible team with a strong foundation. This foundation is usually built by mentors from the high school or company/university. Allow representatives from the foundation to be there.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I thought this was a great rule, actually.

For the most part, if a team member is going to get in a ref's face and start yelling, it's going to be an adult mentor. I think this really calms things down.

I know last year we were in situations where as mentors we were completely incensed, and it would have been very counterproductive for one of us to have been arguing with a ref instead of a student talking to them.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Actually, there was a precedent for 2006's scoring issues: 2005. (Which only hammers home your point.)

Are you talking about the referees and scorers getting together after the end of the matches, and rechecking their scorecards against the records that were entered into the scoring computers? Or do you feel that some officials were deciding to change selected scores based on a discussion and reinterpretation of the calls made earlier? (I would consider the former to be standard practice; I'm not aware of the latter to any significant degree.)

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

The latter happened last year. We could never get an official to answer us to why due to rule <G42> then they just told us to use some GP and get over it.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I just finished re-doing my last year->this year stats with all the standings available rather than just GTR. There were 424 teams for which I could get data (most of the 2005 regionals don't have standings posted). What I did is I just took an average of their percent placing over all regionals attended each year. So if a team came 5th/50 (10%), 17th/51 (33%), and 1st/70 (1.4%), their average for the year would be 14%.

I've also marked out the 2006 championship finalists. Note that some of them didn't even do well in 2006 and still had success. 296 even turned themselves around from an (apparently, my stats might be bad) poor year in 2005 and had themselves a championship victory in 2006. This wouldn't be possible if they had been relegated to a lower division in 2005.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I think your data proves the point that FIRST is not a fair competition. Since each team only contributes 33% of the makeup of each alliance, how can any team expect to have consistant match results, when they are matched with and against the best to the lowest performers?

When your team represents only 16% of the action on the playfield, I would not expect there to be any correlation between your teams performance, and the outcome of the matches (win/lose), unless you have been able to build a robot that totally dominates the playfield - unless you have a 6 to 1 advantage over the other teams. That is a totally unfair competition.

An excellent team may do great one year, and poorly the next year.

A poor team may do well two years in a row...

This is what we have been talking about, the competitions are not fair - the outcome can be completely random no matter how hard your team works.

What do you learn from that? Work hard and the outcome is still random?

Work twice as hard next year and you may end up doing even worse?

In the real world companies do form alliances and partnerships, but we get to carefully choose those alliances, and we get to reject a partner if they fail to perform. We are not paired with alliance parters at random!

This is not the only aspect of FIRST that is not fair, it is only one.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

There is a tendency to only look at the physical robot and its performance. A robots performance and capabilities are only one part of the competition. The way the competition rules are lade out only 8 robots are placed into the finals based on performance , not 24. The rest are picked. This brings a big human factor into the competition. For the other 12 robots they chosen based on the subjective evaluation of human beings. This is not engineering, this is marketing. If your team has performed well year after year placing in the top rankings and not been picked then you might want to look at your marketing plan. Do you have one?. This is what I like about First. It mimics the real world business problems. Doing first is like starting and running a company. In todays market designing a great and superior product doesn't guarantee a companies success. Today a company can make a lousy product and be very successful by having a superior marketing effort. This can be true for first too. I've been a small business owner for 24 years now and I can say that our market based economy is not fair, life is not fair. However there are rules in our society both written and natural. Learning to adapt and play with in the boundaries of the rules is part of being successful in life. Participating in First is practicing the skills needed for life and it's a whole lot of fun. We just need to be vigilant as the program grows and changes to keep it that way.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Hey Ken,
a very interesting thread you started here, just a couple of thoughts from "an old man".

1) Repeat after me....."It's not about the robot......It's not about the robot"

2) from FIRST's web site ".....teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way. The program is a life-changing, career-molding experience—and a lot of fun." This is very true. Whether you be a rookie, underfunded team ar a corporate-backed mega-team, there's always LOTS to be learned.....

3) Developing new "classes" of super-competition would totally defeat the concepts of info-sharing, partnerships, alliances, etc and create an eletist society within FIRST.

FIRST must remain a homgenious society. Rules are rules in any society.....either live by them, or work to change the rules.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Ive been saying that for years. People on CD jump all over my case when I say we should focus on giving the students the best exposure to engineering instead of focusing on winning

people tell me that 'playing to win' with a highly competitive robot is the way they inspire their students

the competition is there, its a part of FIRST, its a part of the drive that caps the program, its the goal at the end of the struggle.

If the competition is not going to be fair, why dont we let the teams play against each other for 3 days, and then have a random number generator pick the champions for that event?

If we say FIRST is not fair, its not meant to be fair, then why do we pretend there is a contest happening at all? If the competition is not fair, then there is no contest. Mostly (as the way things are now) its a random event.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Mostly a random event? I guess Beatty has been so lucky over the years, that they've ended up winning 4 Championships. The Poofs winning SVR eight years in a row, totally random. Team 25 going 48-5 this year, must have been a lot of dumb luck going their way. Yes, I submit that there is a large amount of luck in this competition. But calling it a mostly random event? That's a ridiculous statement, even by your standards.

(Aside, can we get Beatty added to the dictionary...)

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Why FIRST is like MasterCard......
Life always works in REVERSE order:

.....Taking home a cheap Lucite Trophy.........$10
.....Doing enough car washes to afford the trip to Atlanta ........$1,000
.....Soliciting & Teaming with a good sponsor and mentors.........>$10K

....BUT, getting to meet new teams, learning from each other, and shaking Woodie or Dean's hand.........PRICELESS

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

look at Bongles scatter diagram. there is no correlation between how teams have done from one year to the next

you can flip a coin and have it come up heads 5 times in a row, and its still random.

I give up on this thread. No one can get past the issue of fairness, and very little has been accomplished in the direction of making FIRST better by making it more fair

and I have been told more than once now "If you dont like the way FIRST is structured, then leave it alone and go somewhere else".

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Hey Ken,

one last thought when you say I NEVER had anything even CLOSE to the FIRST experience when I was in high school or even college. I could "kill" to be involved in such a great learning program.....stick with it.....

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

This is ridiculous.

For those of us who are on teams, provide material to the kit of parts, volunteer at events, and coordinate FIRST-related activities throughout the year, things are not random. I believe that you just insulted all of us who work hard to make FIRST what it is today.

From your outsider's viewpoint, things may seem random to you. How would you know any better? Join a team, volunteer at an event, or go climb another tree.

(for everyone watching, I just negative repped Ken for this out-of-line comment)

Andy B.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Warning: don't take the lack of year-to-year success correlation as a sign that no matter how hard you work, your placement is random, because that isn't what it means. These stats essentially tell you that maintaining support and talent from year-to-year is VERY difficult. There are many other stats I've done that indicate that cash on hand (# of regionals attended is a fair indication of that) and team age within a given year have a pretty strong correlation with team performance. Do a search for a bunch of stats I posted in march that had that kind of stuff in there. Back then I was trying to show that FIRST was kinda unfair towards richer, more established teams. However, then my team ended up doing very well and going to nationals, so now I don't care quite so much.

Short Version: As many teams know, it is really a crapshoot if your whole team stays together from year to year. 1281 lost our head gamepiece designer, programming mentor (me), half our student programmers, and our head teacher this year. That is why there is little correlation year to year.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Basically,
the system is working.
FIRST is not perfect, no organization is. The great majority of posts in this thread continue to support the system in place. It is a different system, it is not a system that mimics another or needs to and it is handled with care.

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Some real detailed analysis. I'm impressed...

Everyone, time to pack your bags. Apparently the competition is completely random. Those elimination rounds are no better than a game of dice.

I could come out with a detailed and typically Karthik-like response, but it's akin to doing the same sort of analysis to prove that sun sets at a certain time. Just open your eyes, and you'll see it.

/Edit: Andy beat me to it...

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

i agree with Mr. Baker 140% FIRST competitions are entirely fair, everyone is provided an equal opportunity to perform, everyone gets the same kit of parts, and FIRST has already laid down regulations on exotic metals in order to prevent wealthier teams from getting that far ahead of others. Look at this year for example, 1902(a rookie team!) worked extremely hard to be innovative, and they designed an awesome robot. by eliminating competition from the event, you are essentially capping the capabilities of some teams, if a random team was chosen, there would be no urge to make new and more efficient designs,the Ball drive system would have never come about, teams would have never pioneered the crab drive or the Mecanum drive. By designing your robots to be new and innovative to compete at higher levels than anyone Else's (or so you hope) is pioneering new designs, exactly what engineers do. Scientists ask Why, Engineers ask Why not. By having students why not, they are being trained to understand what engineers do daily. I am almost 99% positive that FIRST designs each game in an effort to keep competition high, fun and to test different aspects of engineering.

For those of you being dropped by sponsors, perhaps it may seem tyrannic and evil to you, however almost any company would drop a community service operation than to drop the jobs of hardworking employees who need that job to sustain their family.

As to Mentors and teachers, you must moderate how much time you spend, if you listen to Episode 4 of FIRSTcast you will learn how Mr.Baker has managed to moderate his robotics life, and his family life. As to being Burnt out, its a matter of over exertion, if at any point you begin to feel burnt out, please step back for a bit and take a breather.

So please consider this, when you limit competition, you limit the need for innovation, and by doing that, you limit the engineering experience students receive.

I'm sure there are many members of the FIRST community somewhat insulted by the contents of this thread, their hard work, pride, and joy all being insulted, so please remember Scientists ask Why, Engineers ask Why not. lets not limit their/our potential


just my 2 cents

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

We can sit here and argue till the cows come home, yet there are a few shared points between most people.
1. FIRST is fair
2. There is still luck involved but it is not very large amount
3. Some teams start off each season with a large sum of money, while other teams start off with no money
4. Some teams have large machine shops, while other teams have no shop
5. FIRST is trying really hard to have an "easy" objective in each years game that a team with a working robot can do and still contribute to the score
6. As long as we keep to alliances there will always be a last pick on each alliance

Now lets take a look at team 195, let us look at what some people would call, "success"
Previous to championship they had

• 2006 - UTC New England Regional - Radio Shack Innovation in Controls Award

• 2004 - Bash at the Beach - Top Seed

• 2004 - NJ Regional - Sportsmanship Award

• 2004 - Caulfield Bryer and Perkins Entrepreneurship Award

• 2003 - Bash at the Beach Champions

Does that not make 195 a successful team? Of course they are a successful team, but they had never won a regional or their division. Yet at championships in 2006 they were selected to join our alliance. We then went on with them and 968 to win Newton and then to become world finalists.

What I am saying is if a team wants to win that doesn't necessarily mean 1st place in every event. All a team needs to do is find something they can do and do it well. They need to get a working base before they can make a shooter or a harvester. They need a working base before they begin to set sights on the harder goals. Just get a working bot, try your best, and put yourself out there. Not all teams that get to alliance selection have in depth scouting and know everything about every team. If you know you aren't going to alliance selection put your bot and your team out there.
Too many good bots have I seen go down the tubes because the team tried to do too much.
Even team 25 cannot do it all. We could not pick up from the floor, in fact we had one of the most difficult bots to human load. What did we do? We trained out human player long hours to learn how to get them in.

In every competition there will be powerhouse teams and there will be small teams. Yet, in this competition we have alliances, where one team cannot win it all. As long as we keep alliances and FIRST makes an "easier" objective, I believe the game is fair.

Side note: Anyone remember team 25 pre-2000? Back before 2000 team 25 never won an award. From their rookie year of 97 till 99 there was no "success". Then in 2000 we won NJ then our division and then championships. From then on team 25 has continued to be a successful team.
Our first couple of years were rocky, why should we expect anyone else's to be different?

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

I think that's a bad comparison. Those teams aren't good... they're unbelievably fantastic to the point of domination. It's comparing an extreme to the status quo. For instance... the US has a good economy: look at Google. The rest of the economy is going OK but Google outperforms most companies by a long shot.

It's my belief that Ken is right in saying most "good" teams have fairly random success (125 for instance). One year floating in great and others in low. Some teams are great and consistently do well (Delphi teams). Some teams dominate (Beatty).

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

Let's let this topic cool off for a bit. This will re-open tonight after 6pm EST. (Will one of the moderators please re-open if I don't get to it. Thanks)

Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'
 

From the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

fair
Function: adjective
a : marked by impartiality and honesty : free from self-interest, prejudice, or favoritism
b : conforming with the established rules :

***
Wow, I am feeling a lot of love (not) in this thread - Brandon, thanks for the cool down period.

From the definition above, I would say absolutely FIRST is fair. Everyone starts the same day, gets the same rules, gets the same kit. Everyone has the same opportunity to recruit mentors and sponsors and create great machines.

Is everyone as succesful at doing that - no, they are not. Do veterans do better - probably - they have more experience - but that does not make it unfair.

We also need to remember that we all have different definitions of success. I subscribe to the "it's not about the robots theory" and see success in so many teams that is way beyond what their robot does or does not do on the field. How many students are moving to engineering careers, how many are getting scholarships due to FIRST involvement. How many college students stay engaged after high school. What new technology or capability did your students learn. I could go on. If your only definition of sucess is the robot on the field, then we only have three successful teams each year - the three that win the Championship. I don't believe that to be true.

A new Rolls-Royce mentor went to the IndianaFIRST forums last Saturday. One of his comments to me was "When I saw how many colege kids stayed involved, I knew it was something special".


Sorry for the Karthik-like response, but since he went short, someone had to step up.


:)