Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

We learned this the hardway last year. This year 342 made a very simple arm and a drive train that could climb even narrow ramps. We were going to build a ramp, but we learned from our past. There is a reason that there are three teams on an allience, so don't kill yourself with every scoring option.

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

There are many white papers and workshops at most kickoff's. Moreover, many veteran teams would be glad to help you put together a solid drive train. FIRST saw many teams had poor drive trains and created a kit-bot which could be assembled easily. The AndyMark gearboxes are also quite solid and many veteran teams use it. This sort of levels the playing field and makes it very easy for teams to at least make a working drive train.

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

Do one thing well --- I wish we could listen to our own advice.
Two weeks into the season another mentor and 1 along with three students visited our new rookie team 2165 in Bartlesville Ok. and there on about 5 tables in front of us was the kit of parts. No design and not really knowing where to start. We offered direction and advice. They accepted it and in KC the made it to the finals. They consistently place 4 ringers on the lower rack. they also had a fairly decent drivetrain. What allowed them to do so well? Dedicated mentors - I'm not sure but they had around 5 or so retired engineers guiding and helping them along the way. The critical need in FIRST is Mentoring support. We are starting way too many teams without good support network in place.
BTW we were beaten out by our mentees!!!! (Is that a word?)

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

For those going to Atlanta, check out the FIRST Robotics Conference.

From the list of topics being presented regarding drive trains:

Robot Drive System Fundamentals presented by Ken Patton from FRC 65 and GM Powertrain, Paul Copioli from FRC 217 and Fanuc Robotics.

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

ROFL. A solid defense is sometimes the best offence - if you can't do any better than the guy on the opposite alliance, but you can stop the other guy from scoring, it's perfectly valid to shut him down. Bumper-on-Bumper contact is very legal.

Watch the fun starting at time mark 1:50.
mms://sargasso-3.arc.nasa.gov/2006/first/lonestar/040106f3.wmv

BTW, we have much respect for team 118, last year at Lone Star they were completely dominant in autonomous. However, being the best of the best does have its downside, you have a lot of people who analyze you very thoroughly looking for a [narrow opening] in the armor. When someone finds it, you should see it as reverence - someone has been thinking about you over the course of 2-3 days more than you've probably thought about yourself!

-Danny

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

A lot of you are saying this game is quite the engineering challenge. But in 05, we lifted 8 pounds (or even 12 lbs I think it was for the "vision" tetras) and a good distance out, and a good height too. And almost every robot did it, and did it fairly well. These rings weigh hardly anything. (less than 1 lb). I'm not sure where we've gone wrong here. Was the end game bonus so exciting that everyone forgot about the importance of a good arm and gripper, and then failed at ramps too, and was left with nothing? I don't know. tTo me, ball gathering and shooting and climbing 30 degree ramps (aim high) seems more complicated than this game, and a lot more teams had very successful and impressive robots last year. I just don't get it.

Personally, I would like to see a whitepaper just on quality. What it is. Why it is important. Examples. How to achieve it.

However, I fear it would do no good. There are already so many whitepapers out there that no one ever reads. A lot of teams don't even read the rules. They show up without team numbers, bill of materials, rockwell distribution blocks, or illegal parts. They don't even know that Chief Delphi exists.

What I'm seeing is an increase of the number of teams in which FIRST is something they do, not who they are. They make it a two day per week 6 weeks out of the year program. It is meant to be more than that. It is about getting the industry professionals in there, meeting often and long, putting a lot fo thought into it, and delivering a product that meets the engineering challenge.

Yes, many teams have tried to build a robot beyond their means. And I applaud them for trying. But, the amount of "do nothing" or "drive and bash" robots has REALLY got to come down. We aren't moving forward here. Design within your means to build. Then you should be able to build it effectively, and put on a good show on the field.

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

This year my team ended up as a "drive and bash" robot. I must disagree with sanddrag though, in our case it was definitely not from lack of trying. We attempted to create a lift robot that would allow other robots to drive on a fairly flat platform and then lift them up. Our lift method was a worm gear winch powered by 1 Minibike motor. Despite my objections a number of our mentors were convinced that this had enough power to lift the required load. We met nearly every day for the whole six weeks and the lift mechanism was completed, it just couldn't manage the required weight. Due to a design/weight compromise the lift only worked with relatively balanced weights, but it did not end up having the power to lift 2 robots.

We did have a VERY simple arm that did score the only tube we attempted with it in our first qualifying match. We found that playing defense was the most effective thing our robot could do at that point.

We ended up as the highest seeded rookie team and took our alliance to the finals where we lost.

I think our biggest issue was the realization that although the numbers may crunch, the design may not work. The mentors seemed to expect a very high efficiency out of the system and the actual efficiency was quite a bit lower. Our design was close to working, it managed to get the proper weight up about an inch, it just needed more power.

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

A couple of thoughts on robot quality this year. The first is that a LOT of teams lost a LOT of time to the weather. I know that if we had gotten even 1 or 2 of the days we lost back we would have been much better off on the first day and as a result through the whole competition. For example, we had good code to make the robot track and move to the light, but never got a chance to get the arm working with the tube to make trying to score in autonomous worth the risk.

The second is that this game was, from a game theoretic standpoint, much harder than Triple Play. Everyone trying to score on the same object and any interaction with that object making it tougher to score. In Triple Play there were nine places to score so it was much easier to get out of the way of defenders. Also, a lot of the "scoring many tetras" phenomenon was due to the fact that you could carry multiple tetras.

The structure of the field this year made it much easier to team up in defense. And the fact that some bots were ramp only bots made it even easier to play defense. If you only have 1 or 2 opponents trying to score ringers defending is easier. At Pittsburgh it became apparent that there was a HUGE advantage to having two scoring bots (no matter what height at which they could score) because it complicated defense.

I do think that too many teams tried to do too much. But it seemed like we also had a bigger percentage of rookie teams at Pittsburgh than usual. I guess from the numbers, there were close to 300 rookies this year? Is that more than usual? We fell into the "did too much" category somewhat, although we tried to have ramps and an arm because we have a pretty large team and it gave more people something to do. When we were over weight at the regionals, we ditched the ramps and put on some ballast, exactly as our contingency plan dictated. And we didn't lose any build time because of the ramp.

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

I have an idea! Let's put a salary cap on fundraising for teams, then all the money they make beyond that goes into a general fund to support other teams with less money, after all they do it in sports. Then after we balance all the budgets we'll distribute machinery and mentors to all the teams (after being selected randomly of course).

Will what I just said even be considered? No. Because there are the have's and the have not's. Some teams have the capability to CNC their entire robot, some teams have a hard time getting access to just a drill press. Others have many mentors with a lot of know-how and knowledge, others have one, maybe two. The kit chassis and drivetrain is given to teams to help balance the playing field a bit, and it does. Some teams need a little more than just the chassis and drivetrain, and until those who do get it (or figure out a way around it), FIRST won't have a ultra-competitive playing field. This year what many teams to not be competitive on the field was what they had or (more often) didn't have.

If only FIRST was a professional sport......

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

i agree. i think FIRST should enforce some sort of cap that a team can receive from sponsors. I know of some teams that receive an enormous amount of money from sponsors. some teams can't find good sponsors and then have to make and earn everything themselves. that gives the "rich" teams an edge over everyone rigth off the bat. i'm not saying sponsors are bad, i think they're great, i just think there should be a limit a team can get total each build season.

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

There is a limit. $3500. That's how much you can spend in parts for your robot. The rest is money for equipment, travel, events etc. Some teams are "lucky" to have good sponsors, machine shops etc while others don't. I do not think money is as much of an issue because there are always ways to find equipment and resources. When building a successful robot, it is the engineering mentorship/knowledge that comes in handy. However, more money is always good.

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

I don't really think that there has been an increase in the number of poor quality bots versus the past year. The difference has been made slightly more visible by the lack of secondary scoring in this year's game, resulting in more bots that play pure defense. But I feel that there are just as many teams that struggled last year. The number of teams with poor arms this year is about the same as the amount of teams with poor shooters. Heck, last year, all you had to do for a minimally successful autonomous was drive forward, then release your starting supply of balls (and if your robot wasn't designed to do that, you could shoot them out at a low speed towards the corner goal and still hit a couple, look at 1541), yet a vast quantity of teams couldn't do that.
Then why do we see less teams capable of placing tubes on the rack than we did capable of placing tetras? Several reasons:

• Tubes are much harder to manipulate than tetras. Even though a tube is much lighter, to properly grip a (round, soft) inflated object with slightly varying sizes is much harder than lifting a fairly uniform solid object. In addition, the margin of error of the tubes for placing them on the rack is much smaller and requires a lot more precision than placing a tetra.
• There is another feasible design objective, ramp/lift bots. In 2005 there was only one real way to score. The positioning points were smaller and only required a drive-train, making virtually every team focus on scoring tetras (whether under or on top). In 2007, ramps are worth more and require contributions other than a drive.
• The rack is dynamic.
• The rack is central, making if further from the drivers than some of the goals in 2005, and closer to all the other robots.
• New size/weight rules. You could build 5 ft 120lb. in 2005, now you can't.

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

Well said, but in '05 there was really no other option, you made a bot that could score a tetra or you made a "bash bot". Thus more of those bots seem to be able to score.

In '06, ball gathering and shooting was very tough, much tougher than this year's design. How many 'bots could actually collect balls and shoot at the high goal real well - not many at the regionals we went to.

Some of us are getting spoiled and we need to take a look back at '02, '01, and before. They gave no kit frames or ready to use transmissions. Just getting a robot to be a bash bot was tough back then.

I see this as the effect of FIRST getting into more schools where there is little or no mentor support. This is OK, it's just that the learning curve is a bit lower. I'm a HS teacher with a science degree not an engineering degree. It took 3 years for us to get to the point where we feel somewhat competitive, from an engineering point of view. If we had some engineers mentoring us in the beginning, our learning curve would be faster. But after 7 years of this, we now have recruited engineers from our community and trained some along the way and now FIRST is who we are not just what we do.

Show some patience and encourage all the teams to grow and develop.

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

I think that if you're talking about their being too many "bad" robots in the competition this year, you most likely think that your robot is a "good" robot.

Now, with that established, what did you do to make this years robot so good? Some people have already mentioned things in this thread (such as time management, knowledgeble mentors, etc.) With those things said, you must know the magical secrets to building a great robot.

So, the problem is, its not being shared directly with the other teams. If you think you have a "good robot", then I think that all the teams in your local area should have a "good robot" as well.. Why? Because you know how to get it done, and your team, should be sharing that knowledge with the teams around you.

From what I've noticed, not a whole lot of veteran teams check off the little "willing to be mentored" box, but thats not to say that they couldn't use some extra help. Even just sessions where ideas are shared may prove to be beneficial. Maybe, your team has experience with using tread systems and another team has experince with telescoping arms.

I think it was Mike who made a comment earlier about how FIRST should show teams how to build drive systems properly. I think, if you know how to do those things, why don't you organize an info session? Everyone goes to the competitions and is able to point out flaws and ways to fix it in certain designs. Imagine how good the robots would be if those flaws were pointed out before they were shipped in the crate?

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

One of the biggest problems my team had in previous years that hindered us the most at competitions was bad drivetrains.

1st year - used #25 chain and it broke every round
2nd year - used 4wd with the pneumatic wheels, it literaly jumped when it turned
3rd year - used kit bot with 2wd in the center, its max speed was too fast and it didnt go straight.

After being the driver on our 3rd year I decided to design a better drivetrain, and used some of Paul Copioli's advice and go for the 6wd. Our drivetrain was our strongest part of the robot last year, and it brought us to the elimination rounds for the first time. This year I made sure we focused a little on the drivetrain again to make sure it was driveable.

With a good drivetrain, it is much easier to score even if your arm is nominal, and if you cant score then you can at least defend well. I think many teams do what my team did the first 3 years and dont put much thought in how the drivetrain will actuly drive and preform.