Must all parts of Robot be done?
 

I have a question...
Since we barely gonna finish the robot this year, hypothetically...
can you bring in parts to finish your robot in the pit before inspection?

For example, you haven't finished your claw/arm and you work on it between the ship date and the regional, could you assemble it on the robot at the regional?

Re: Must all parts of Robot be done?
 

Yes. While not an "ideal" practice, there is no rule prohibiting it. In fact, it is FAR better to ship a crate full of parts than to not ship anything.

Once you get to the regional, ASK FOR HELP from surrounding teams. There is a famous case from a few years back, where a team's robot was destroyed in shipping, and surrounding teams all banded together to reconstruct their robot, all from donated parts, on a day.

Try your best to get it together and allow the drivers a little practice, but no matter what, ship something in that crate.

Don

Re: Must all parts of Robot be done?
 

I believe if you dig deep into the rules you will see that you have limited time you are supposed to meet/work on parts once you have shipped your robot, but I'll have to read up on that.

Re: Must all parts of Robot be done?
 

The rules regarding when you can and when you can't work on the robot are pretty strict and specific. You should read Section 8.3.4 of the manual carefully. After the Robot ships, you CAN NOT work on upgrade capabilities for the Robot (as described, your robot arm would certainly be an upgrade capability, as the function would not exist on the Robot at that time) until you get to the competitions.

To do what you want to do, you can throw all the unfinished parts into the crate with your Robot, and ship them out on the required deadline (all of your upgrade parts need to go in the crate with the Robot - see Rule <R41>). Once you are at the competition, you can unpack them and resume work on the Robot at the event.

-dave


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Re: Must all parts of Robot be done?
 

Yes, you are not allowed to work on the robot after ship date, except for the "FIX-IT Windows".

<R28> During the Build Season: During the period between the Kick-off and ROBOT shipment deadline, teams are to design and fabricate all the COMPONENTS and MECHANISMS required to complete their ROBOT. They are encouraged to use all the materials, sources and resources available to them that are in compliance with the rules of the 2008 FIRST Robotics Competition. When the ROBOT shipment deadline arrives, all work on the ROBOT must cease and the ROBOT must be placed in a “hands-off” condition. The entire ROBOT (including all FABRICATED ITEMS intended for use during the competition in alternative configurations of the ROBOT) and OPERATOR CONSOLE must be crated and out of team hands by the shipment deadline specified in Section 4.5.1.1

The accepted way to deal with an unfinished robot seems to be to put all the unfinished parts (and even materials to make the parts you haven't started on yet!) into the crate, then on Thursday of the competition, ask your pit neighbors for help and finish it that morning.

You might want to take a look at your design and see if you can make some major changes that will allow you to build a simpler, less capable robot in the remaining week of build season. For example, if you have a complicated mechanism for hurdling, and building it has kept you from completing the chassis and electronics and programming the driving function, you could think about what it would take to instead make a herder that will work when you pull it out of the crate at competition.

Re: Must all parts of Robot be done?
 

My reading of <R32> says that they can make upgrade parts in the fix-it-windows following regionals that they didn't attend. Since 1389 is going to a 3rd week regional, they would have 2 sets of 10 hour periods in which to make new parts. Only the first fix-it-window immediately after shipping prohibits upgrade parts.

Re: Must all parts of Robot be done?
 

If they are going to a later regional, then that would be correct. I was under the (apparently mistaken) impression they were going to a Week 1 regional. If they are going to a later regional then they can have an opportunity after each competition weekend to work on upgrade parts. But no matter how many fix-it windows they can use, they are still limited in the amount of materials that they can bring to the competition under Rule <R41>.

-dave


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Re: Must all parts of Robot be done?
 

dlavery and Joe Ros are correct.

In all Fix-It windows you have 10 hours max to work on parts or codes for the robot. You have one Fix-It window right after the shipping deadline until 5pm on Saturday February 13. In this first window you can not make any upgrades to your robot.

You then have another window starting at 8:30am on Thursday February 28 and ending at 8:30am on Thursday March 6. Again you only have 10 total hours for working. This is where you can start making upgrades for your robot. You then will have a Fix-It window after each regional where you can work on upgrades.

Re: Must all parts of Robot be done?
 

you can, but you miss valuable practice time, and you may miss actual games if things go wrong

Re: Must all parts of Robot be done?
 

Is any robot ever actually done? Even after we get to our second regional, we usually are constantly changing the 'bot between matches. Don't work on parts during times that are against the rules, but don't stop yourselves from making improvements as time goes on.

Re: Must all parts of Robot be done?
 

Heck we still work on the robot even after the season is over just for demos and what not.

Re: Must all parts of Robot be done?
 

Actually, i think at 2007 Greater Toronto regional (might have been 2006), there was a team whose robot never GOT to the competition until saturday morning. I believe this was team 4

Other teams managed to lend them enough parts to build a robot onsite during thursday and I think they competed in all matches on friday until over the PA partway through saturday morning came "Team 4, your robot has arrived." followed by sounds of rejoice.

Was quite a spectacle.

EDIT: As I recall, they received an award... Judges award perhaps?

Re: Must all parts of Robot be done?
 

There are three or four cases I know about. 4 (2006, GTR), 692 (2001, their rookie year), 22 (2006), and 14__ (2004, another rookie, CMP). No robot, no problem... call for help and wait for the help to arrive.

Re: Must all parts of Robot be done?
 

I was unfamiliar with 22 having to pull the one-day wonder; most of the one-day wonder discussion I've read involved either 4 (GTR 2006) or 1396 (Championship 2004).

You could lump in 1650's sole FRC appearance as well in a way; the team more or less shipped its kit of parts and was assembling on Thursday at Palmetto in 2005.

Re: Must all parts of Robot be done?
 

You're just on the wrong coast for 22 (L.A.) and 692 (SVR).:D

Re: Must all parts of Robot be done?
 

Note that at the regionals, you are limited by the amount of tools you may bring as well. You can annoy the surrounding teams by constantly asking for every part/tool under the sun, however you probably won't make many friends. The last week is crunch time for many teams, so do try to get as much done as possible before the robot ships. I'd hate to think that you didn't actually test your robot and therefore weren't able to forsee it tipping over every time it did <Insert X Cool Action Here>.

Last year we had 3 versions of our claw -- at VCU, version 1 didn't work so we made another version for Vegas. In between Vegas and Atlanta, we made version 3 but found that Version 2 worked well enough. However, the point is, we HAD a version one that shipped with the bot. I hate thinking that this loophole would make it legal for teams to continue working on the first concept of things AFTER ship date just because their only regional is not week 1.