Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

A couple of thoughts:

1) trying to propagate "a outrance". I mean, if you want to have a first team in every high school in the US, the quality of the average highschool will diminish.

2) some hybrid robots were successful. I am obviously thinking about my team (469), but also 27, 47, 503, ... I would not want to discourage any team for setting the bar very high for themselves. Aim Higher was the moto last year: try to always do more than you think you can. You might not succeed, but the higher you aim, the higher you'll reach. (if that made any sense)

3) help IS available, it is however not easy to access/get aware of.

4) i do not like the title of this thread. There is no such thing as a "bad robot", unless its written for yourself only in your scouting sheets.

5) i actually think many teams did a surprisingly good job. I've seen very young team come up with audacious scorers. Last year was more veteran oriented than this year in my opinion.

Anyhow... only throwing ideas around as usual

Francois.

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

This one is going to be long -
What is going to stay the same as FIRST continues to grow, evolve, and mature:
- veteran teams with a lot of experience
- middle aged teams that continue to acquire experience
- rookie teams formed by former mentors of other teams
- rookie teams formed by college mentors who are high school alumni of former teams
- rookie teams who have very little experience/knowledge of FIRST

All teams contend with students entering and leaving in a cyclical manner. Teams that rely heavily on students for development of the team usually go through a rebuilding phase when significant numbers graduate, leaving behind a less experienced group.

There are teams who rely heavily on mentors for development and this can be consistent or inconsistent, depending on the team's ability to retain the mentors. Some teams have retained the same mentors for many seasons, some can not obtain mentors and some can not keep mentors - for a variety of reasons.

Veteran teams and all teams are susceptible to changes in sponsors and/or amounts donated/obtained
Not all teams have ready access to corporate sponsorship and have to get creative
Not all teams have ready or easy access to materials
Weather plays a role
The yearly challenge plays a role
The materials play a role

Even through changes, each of the teams will continue to improve as they continue to develop and mature. I sometimes think of this as a moving spiral. When I think of the spiral, there are always teams at the bottom, in the middle, and at the top of the spiral. Depending on the circumstances of the season, some will move upward more quickly than others and some may even fall from the top.

As far as a competition, we build robots to compete. Build and compete go together. Building robots and building people go together. Veteran teams and rookie teams find ways to compete together in the same competition, together. That has been the FIRST I know. Things may be getting a little slack in the time management before crating and for many of the reasons stated, thus shipping robots that aren't as prepared as they could be at the time of uncrating - but in many parts of this, I think the problems still fall within the norm.

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

But isn't this the point of FIRST. If the goal is to prepare students for the real world via hands-on experience in engineering, etc, then FIRST has accomplished this goal.

Take a look: not every team has the same resources, funding, mentorship, etc. Some teams have more, some less, some are willing to share, some are not--but in any scenario, the kids are in real-life scenario.

Say you start out at a pharmaceutical company such as Palatin, a small NJ based company with little funding, but many great ideas. In working there you may not have all the resources in the world, but you are still getting your hands dirty--and you're still making the best out of what you have.

Now say later in your life you move onto working for Pfizer, one of the world's largest 'bigPharma' companies. Now with access to all the resources the world has to offer, are you that much better off? Who knows?

But in real life you'll always be faced with challenges--and that is what FIRST set out to emulate..the challenges of everyday, real - world design scenarios. Many of the smaller companies allow for more creative freedom, and that explains what so many of those smaller companies are being bought out by bigger ones for their intellectual property. Both sides have their advantages--in a smaller company your ideas may be given more of a chance to develop (and in a smaller or team with less resources, you may have a bigger flow of more creative ideas), but in the bigger company, you might have much more resources, funding, and publicity (just as with a bigger team or more well funded team).

In the end, as many of my mentors have taught me before, FIRST is not about the robots, it's about the kids. It's about inspiring us to go into the fields of science and technology and to help develop us into the leaders of tomorrow. Now regardless of whether the students are a part of a big or small team, a poorly or well resourced one, or one with 100% or 50% student involvement in construction, etc, if the message is being carried across, then FIRST and that team have achieved their goals--to inspire and recognize science and technology.

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

My idea of a 'bad' robot is one that has a low performance level to what it was designed to do. If it was designed for a certain task or tasks and it does not perform them well, than it's a 'bad' robot in my opinion.

Therefore...I believe that robots arn't getting their chances to work to their performance because of the defense that is necessary. Pushing robots > Aiming Arms. That makes robots that could do well fail because of their inability to get their chance.

This year is a headache. There is so much aggravation and annoyances that is involved in this year that you just want to scream and punch a wall. You have to watch for the moving rack, you have to watch for the defenseive powerhouses, you have to wait through a 15 second 'waiting' period, you have to get lifted by a robot with ramps that are mostly huge and clunky, rules and rulings are tossed around...it can drive people crazy. It translates into robots that can't preform to their standards.

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

A couple thoughts:

Is it possible that the scheduling algorithm is partially to blame for a "perceived" higher level of "bad" robots? If you are paired with a "bad" bot for one isolated match, you probably will forget about it the day after the regional. It is quite another matter to be paired with the same "bad" or "no show" partner for more than half your matches. Also, there have been reports of these "bad" bots rising to the high profile Alliance Captain position thanks their schedule.

Rack n Roll and Triple Play despite a few similarities, are very different games (as others have mentioned in this thread)

Rack n Roll
Rack n Roll is inherently defensive and it is difficult to score tubes. In this game defense is even a part of offense. In order to make long rows, you need to stop your opponents from placing tubes that break up your rows.
Look at what you have to do to score a tube effectively:

• "Grab" (with a moving mechanism) a tube firmly.
• Precisely position yourself around a often defended central structure.
• Place it onto a (rapidly) moving target.

Triple Play
Triple Play was inherently offensive and it was easy to score tetras. In that game the best defense was a good offense. In order to breakup your opponent's rows, just cap over their tetras and make your own rows.
Look at what you had to do to score a tetra effectively:

• HP place a tetra on simple hook (like a pvc T)
• Drive to 1 of 9 goals spaced out across the field.
• Lower the self-righting tetra over the goal and release.

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

What happened here is called a win-win situation. Mentoring a rookie team is awesome. Having them beat you is a testament to your mentoring ability. Either that or K.I.S.S. has been validated once again!!!!


I fully expect (hope) to see 2073 doing quite well at the Davis/Sacramento regional. Why? A rookie team that stuck to K.I.S.S. (I know, predictions predictions....):)

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

Welcome to the real world. If we were able to live our lives in a bubble, things would be very different. However, you always have things pushing and pulling you in every direction, forcing you to look over your shoulder and having to watch out for that guy about to blindside you because they took the "easy" route and decided to just shut you down. Life is difficult, life is unfair, life sometimes doesn't give you a chance to show the world what you really have to offer. Life is about starting from nothing or starting with everything, and making your way to the top. Life is about making alliances and using those to your advantage to help better yourself and/or those around you. In many ways robotics mirrors life. In many ways it does not.

But, most of all, life/robotics is what you make of it.

-Danny

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

Something that messed up my team and I think many others was the thought that this game would be less defensive than previous years due to the yellow flag rule. And so we planned for a robot that was nimble but not very good at dealing with defense :(

In addition we went too simple with our manipulator which depends entirely on gravity which is hard to work with when getting knocked into :(

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

no offense to any of the other teams out there, but my team actually had some problems and we made it out fine. It was late in (i think) the fourth week and we still hadn't figured out a final robot design. Luckily we pulled it off and we did pretty well under the circumstances.

anyways, what I was getting at was what people before me had mentioned. Robots aren't exactly "bad" they just don't function as well as others. I know it may sound kinda corney, but we all are winners. Building a robot in six weeks is a huge accomplishment and i'm surprised at how many teams have succeeded in at least getting moving robots, but I would have to say that time management is key and there will always be a certain factor of "luck" in building a robot.

it's like my friend said (when we were talking about my team's lifters), the way we lift is an art because we originally never tested this idea and it just began working at the competition. it was not science, because through science we would have figured out the statistics for each lift and it would have worked only that certain % of the time. In other words, we were lucky in being able to do what we did at LA.

just my 2 cents.

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

IMHO I think that it isn't the fault of the teams for bad robots.. but as was said before, I think the game this year was a lot more complecated then people first thought it was. its a simple concept sure, but the little details involved in it matter a great deal. I believe overall vetreans and rookies alike that people missed tiny details when brainstorming or prototyping, and when we all actually realized the details we missed we hurried and rushed together a "quick fix" which ended up not working in most cases.

I also believe, as was said as well, that moat people are comparing to years before, where this year you have fewer opitions then most other games. I mean
2005: put pyramids on top or below other pyramids to creat a tic tac toe game and race back to home zone for bonus
2006: shoot balls into scoring zones ethier high or low, race onto a fixed ramp for bonus
2007: 6 robot brawl in the middle for control over movable spider legs, race back to homezone and climb a movable ramp that you have absolutly no specs on for bonus.

This game may seem simple at first but it is definatly harder then the last one I was at, and I think the main problem is that people saw how easy it looked, and didn't look deep enough into to it at the early stages of the build.

Again this is just IMHO

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

yes this is the real world. but using that statement, how can you complain about the lack of quality in robots? It is the real world, we are a bunch of high school students, and in the real world there a lot of bad things that people live with. Sure it is the real world and you have to get use to bumps in the road, bt FIRST is about having other peopl to help smooth out that road for you, so if you are thinking in the real world stop complaining about the quality of others ;)

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

Don't be dissing on the vertical tube handling, man. As soon as there's video of 868's robot online, I'll show you how much vertical tube handling rocks.

But yeah, I'll agree that I've seen a lot of terribly inefficient grabbers. Seems like it takes most robots 10-15 seconds to pick up a tube.
Grabber mistakes I've seen:
2 flat, parallel pincers - The tube flies out when you turn
Grab from the top - You have to aim in 2 directions now
Nothing on the robot to help align the tube - makes the driver aim more
No positional control on the arm (Potentiometers are cheap, people.) - Makes the operator's job incredibly difficult
Lack of tube sensors - Makes the driver react, rather than the robot.

A few sensors and a bit of programming goes a long way. It also helps quite a bit if you plan ahead and design so that sensors are possible.

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

well I have seen a few robots that can score this way quite nicely, and thursday will be our test to see if we can too, I'm not too sure what you mean by aiming in two directions, but thankfully we can grab from whatever part of the tube we see fit :p but our main way is from over top, so our claw doesn't get caught on the spider foot.. we will have to see I guess

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

Well I will complete this saying with "Jack of all trades, master of none. Though many times better than a Jack of none.".

I may have a bias simply because our robot is a both bot, but I don't feel that trying to do too much is the biggest problem this game presents. The problem is there is no sub task or easier part of the scoring method we have seen in years past... 2004 it was herding balls, 2005 you could simply push your tetras into the bottom of the goals, 2006 corner goals. We don't have that this year, which makes it hard for rookie teams and teams that are struggling. other problem is the lack of teams that can climb mediocre ramps. And last not enough work put into manipulators. This problem comes up every year, but FIRST normally allows (as Bongle said) a box on wheels to still compete. Not the case this year.

Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07
 

There are no bad robots.

There are some robots that occasionally display bad behavior.

We should all try to be kind and try to understand them, and help them to be better robots in the future.;)