Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

For some reason the practice field by Newton was being ran like a competition field, 6 robots, and then have an "official" match as opposed to what it has and always should be,
A place for tweaking running reseting tweaking running reseting.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Congratulations! Being a "Rookie All-star" or rookie regional winner is truly special. Experiencing Championship is so intense and can almost be overwhelming, even for veteran teams.I'm not familiar with the details of the composition of Team 2753, but as others have pointed out, FIRST has specific definitions of what constitutes a rookie team.As a robot inspector, I look for consistency of colors for the power distribution wires. Most teams use red for +12V and black for return. I'll ask the students if this color convention is used throughout the robot, then I look at the power distribution board and Victors/Jaguars just to make sure no colors are crossed. It's OK to use white (or brown) for +12V and blue for ground in the robot, as long as it is consistent within the robot. Hooking up certain electrical components with the polarity reversed can be an expensive, even unsafe practice, so adopting a wire coler convention is a smart thing to do. At regionals, some inspectors may give a rookie team some leeway with the requirements, especially if a minor deviation is not giving the team an unfair advantage. The standards are higher at Championship and what passed at a regional may not cut it in Atlanta.I spoke very briefly about this with one of your teachers (Gary) Saturday afternoon. It's important to understand that FRC is not a robot-building contest, it's a project-based, team-building experience. FIRST does not dictate how much robot design and fabrication is to be done by students. What is important is the students learn the process used to develop the robot. There are a few FIRST teams which are 100% student operated, but this is not something FIRST endorses. The mentor-student partnership is key to the FIRST experience. Your team will establish what level of mentor involvement is possible and appropriate for your team goals. Your team will evolve accordingly. Being ahead of schedule is rare, but the time pressure to get matches completed is intense. One field fault or rules interpretation issue can cause the schedule to slip substantially (there was such an issue on Friday at Newton that delayed matches by about 45 minutes). At regional events, the pit announcer will page a team repeatedly or a queuing person will come get you - this just isn't possible at Championship. In Atlanta, teams typically arrive field-side 15 to 20 minutes before the match. I was "symbolically scolded" by a senior veteran coach (pointing to wrist watch) when our team arrived less than ten minutes before we went on the field. If you are working on your robot, a human player needs to be sent early to let the the alliance partners know whether to expect your robot or not for the match. Missing a match is painful for the entire alliance (and a hard lesson learned for the team involved).Miscues by alliance partners, questionable calls by referees and other factors outside of your control can adversely affect the outcome of a match. At Championship, the emotions can and will get amplified. Human player scoring was far more important in regionals than at Championship. Teams 67, 111 and 971 earned the Championship with superior machines, skillful drivers and effective tactics.
EVERYONE (rookies to veterans) in FIRST will have both terrific and frustrating experiences at competitions. Hopefully, your team enjoyed the experience and learned from it. Don't sell yourself short on going to Championship in future years. As a rookie all-star, your team is obviously doing things well. In future years, can find your team back at Championship by being on a regional winning alliance. If your team is focused less on winning matches and more on building a complete team, you can come as Engineering Inspiration or Chairman's Award winners. Some teams will sign up their team for Championship during open registration (October) every two to four years, to ensure each student has at least one opportunity to experience this most amazing event.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

This is something that does need to change. The most competitive teams often have the most cash. Attending four regionals and building a second robot certainly improves your chances of winning. But many/most teams don't have this opportunity.

Change 1: Limit the number of regionals that teams can attend, perhaps to two. (There are cross-pollination advantages to attending more than one)

I also did not like the extended build season this year. While it was common in FVC to rebuild your robot, this gets brutally expensive and time-consuming - and somewhat unfair - in FRC.

Change 2: Eliminate fix-it windows completely - you build during 6 weeks or at a regional only. Hard to enforce though, especially for software.

The on-screen font for the score was hard to read via webcast, with 8 and 6 and 2 all looking alike.

Change 3: A larger or more optimized font for on-screen display.

As for Rules: Yes, they are cumbersome, and the GDC sometimes shoots itself in the foot, but they are doing an excellent job already; who am I do request more excellence? All I ask is that the GDC be proud of this year's game, as it did throw a lot of teams for a loop and leveled the field.


I can vouch for 2753 as being a student-built robot. And they are FRC rookies as defined by FIRST. Just because they are one of the most awesome teams ever - and genuinely nice people, too - don't jump to conclusions.If you did not have time to do it right the first time, did you have time to do it over? Sorry, that is no excuse at all. Did those students feel any repercussions of their failure to complete their assignment?

Just ask Nick from 1676 if he felt any repercussions from his 3.5" high 1/2" wide team number plates he made...
Yes, we call it a scouting system, where we look at what each robot does, rather than what an alliance does. In this way, luck has very little to do with anything.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Or make it easier for people to attend more competitions. Thanks to the Michigan set up we had 62 matches for $9500, as compared previous years where $11,000 would have gotten us between 14 and 32 matches depending upon how far into the eliminations we would have gotten.

Even if the total district system does not spread all over the place right away, I think the other regionals need to look into how the Michigan districts saved money and implement some cost cutting measure. Or increase the number of regionals so there are fewer teams at each regional and thus more matches for each team(this is where the majority of the bang for the buck comes from in Michigan).

I really hope that the district system can expand to other areas and give more teams the chance to have as fantastic a season as Michigan teams had this year.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Okay, time for some of the negative.

Kit of Parts - FIRST, please give us push-to-connect pneumatic fittings in next year's Kit of Parts again. Seriously, since you didn't give us any this year our team is almost out. If money is an option, have a points system where before Kickoff we can "bid" on what we want in the KoP. Obviously some teams always use some parts while other teams never use them.

Dumb Rules - Every year FIRST creates a rule that every post-season event eliminates or changes in some way due to pretty much nearly unanimous disapproval of the rule. Last year it was G22. This year it was G14. Can we just avoid this all next year and just not have any such rules?

Actually, after being a referee at the VRC competition a few weeks ago, their game rules were all of two pages long. That's it. There was no "we-secretly-want-you-to-build-this-exact-kind-of-robot-rules" that many in this program really dislike. (And there is no denying this was the intent of many of the rules this year, given the limited bumper configurations, mandatory unmodified Rover wheels, trailer attachment, extreme robot size restrictions, etc). Let teams be creative, by please making less rules. I want to see robots that make me say "Wow!" again, as those were the robots that hooked me in this program. Sadly, they are an extremely endangered species nowadays with "stop-lawyering-the-rules!" people striking down all creative out of the box thinking, and I'm worried that students in the program now won't be as amazed and inspired by the winning robots of today as the students of yesterday were.

Why are the rules so complex? It seems there are too many chefs in the kitchen. Perhaps it should be time to ignore some of the lesser chefs, and concentrate on satisfying the majority of the goals from the most important of the chefs. It's sad, but I don't think we'll ever see a game as awesome as 2004 FIRST Frenzy ever again because of the number of chefs.

This is only a partial negative. Districts - From apparent results, they seem to work well in Michigan, and for that I wish them the best of luck. But from my years of experience in FIRST, I've noticed that the attitudes of people within the FIRST community vary region-by-region, and I'm not convinced the district model can properly scale out to the rest of the country/world. In addition, the way points were assigned at the districts seems very biased towards the robot performance and not enough towards the core values of FIRST. The other problem I have with the districts as it currently stands is that it "secularizes" FIRST. By not letting teams from outside the "district" (in this case Michigan) participate in the competition, it cuts down on the diversity of teams one can play against. Now if there was a provision to allow something like 20 teams from outside to compete in each week of competition, this would allow teams the chance to spread out more and compete against a broader base of teams, because as it stands now non-winning teams are screwed if they wish to play against a greater diversity of teams, and it can be disheartening to play against the same dozen teams over and over and constantly keep losing (although winning against the same dozen teams can be as equally boring).

However, there are some aspects of the districts that I believe are good, such as bagging the robot. You know what? Even without district competitions, I would love to have $1000 or even $500 shaved off regional registration just if we agreed to transport the robot there ourselves without the need for a shipping crate. Shipping a 400 pound crate across the state, only to have it return to a warehouse a town over for several weeks, then again get shipped across the state for the Regional seems wasteful.

I hate to harp on the same post as everyone else, but nearly all respect for this post was lost when I read the quoted sentences above.

The issue here is not about the wire color (which obviously does matter, but I'll leave that aside for now), it's about that you admitted you had not read the rule book before the competition. Then you come out and complain about the wiring color? As a tip for future years, take the time on Kickoff Day and fully read through the sections of the manual on The Game, The Robot, and The Arena. Read every rule as if you've never read it before. Don't ever assume anything.

Smokey the Fisher Price motor says only YOU can prevent rule infractions.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

This is a fantastic point that I don't think enough teams realize. I tend to know the rules inside and out, and we also have one high school student that is in charge of knowing the rules well and keeping track of updates and the Q&A. I feel like this is how many teams work and is a good way to run into trouble. Everyone working on the robot must know the rules.

On 2175 anyone working on the robot must also know the robot and game rules, specifically rules governing the section you are working on. I will pop-quiz kids and hand them a rulebook to sit in the corner and read if they get it wrong. I'm not doing it to punish them or to put them in "timeout" or anything like that. The only way for us to do things right the first time and to make sure our robot complies with the rules is for us to know what the rules are.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

To be quite honest I did not have the time. If I could make a 36 hour day, then maybe. The student assigned for rules did not complete the task, and after talking with him, he did not seem to understand why it was a problem at all. There are other issues at work here but I would rather not discuss them on these boards. For a quick background, we didn't have a kickoff day.....we didn't even know about the competition until after kickoff day. We started on February 4th, and until ship date I was building, coding, debugging, wiring, fixing, more debugging, more building......you get the picture. I am not saying it's an excuse at all, and if it does, I apologize. When your working the whole day Thursday swiss cheesing the robot to make weight, and you find out the robot doesn't fit size, then wiring colors are incorrect, and that the bumpers were less than adequate, you get, well, really annoyed. I'm still cooling down from the stress of this weekend.....and I'm sure it's obvious in my posts.

If I end up mentoring next year, it will start on kickoff day, a student will read the rulebook, another student will learn programming, and another student will work on scouting systems, etc. With 6 students on the team this year, and none having experience in FIRST, it made it REALLY difficult. We did great! But we have so many things we could have improved upon if we had the time and larger workforce.

Unfortunately, the other students have never had the experience with tools, power tools, or coding programs, or just working on something mechanical. The feeder schools that feed our high school don't have any 'woodshop' type classes, and neither does our high school. I was the only person who had this experience, because to be honest, I'm a freak, haha. I've worked on pinsetting machines at bowling alleys, which gave me most of the mechanical experience. I feel bad because I couldn't teach the other team members how to use certain tools, but the time just wasn't there But already I'm thinking of doing a whole after school type of class in the fall on what tools are and how to use them, along with coding and wiring, so we don't build our next robot in the dark.

All in all, we learned it is almost completely about planning and good organization. It wasn't possible this year, but next year it will be a priority.

Oh, and about Championships. How is judging really done? I only saw 2 judges the entire time at our pit. Is that normal? If it is, I think a large judging force should be used, just like the regionals.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

First of all, the opinions that I am about to express are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect that of any other inspector, or of FIRST...

Let me start by saying that I'm glad you enjoyed the fun parts in Atlanta. It's a fantastic experience and I wish everyone could go. It's almost impossible to go there, especially with a rookie team, and not have your team improve next year just from the exposure to other teams, robots, and ideas that they receive there.

I'm very sorry that you made it all the way to the Championship with a problem that should have not passed inspection at the regional. Having to tell teams at Atlanta that their robot is not legal, after they have passed at a (or multiple) regionals is certainly not the enjoyable part of the job.

We try very hard to make the inspection experience uniform between the 43 regionals, and the Championship. However, as it involves 300+ volunteer inspectors and at least 10 different sets of inspection equipment, sometimes there are variations and things slip by. In addition to the manufacturing variation in the boxes, they take a lot of abuse. We try to make sure at setup that the boxes are square, and the dimensions are correct. Teams are constantly bumping (or worse) them with the robots, and they may get knocked out of proper size. If you think there is something wrong with a box, please ask to have the box checked!

Others have done a good job of providing reasons why imposing some sort of color code requirement makes sense. All I will add is that I am often asked to help try to assist teams with problems. It's hard enough to figure out the wiring in many robots as it is, without adding in having to deal with some random color code. (Or even worse, having it all be Pink or Moe green:) )I'm sure Al can provide many more reasons, and horror stories.

From the rules document that you did not have time to read:
I did not personally inspect your robot, but my understanding is that the problem was not with the use of blue wire, which is acceptable for use as the negative connection (in agreement with the practice you refer to above), but with the use of a color for positive that was not on the above list in item (A). Please correct me if I am wrong about this.

As far as not having time to read the rules: If we are trying to expose students to engineering, then they might as well learn now that reading the requirements is not an optional activity. The requirements documents at my job run to several hundreds of pages for any given product. Not being aware of what the requirements are can lead to many unpleasant consequences, ranging from additional costs to my employer, to the loss of my job, all the way up to the loss of life on the part of my end user. It only takes a few minutes to skim thru the rules so that you are at least aware that there is a requirement for wire color, or bumpers, or the size of the robot, or size and placement of team numbers, or a bill of material, or ....... Then at least you can go back and find it later when you need to.

Please do not take the above personally. One of my biggest frustrations during build seasons is trying to get the team members on my own teams to read the rules. They seem to think it is easier to keep coming up with stuff and asking me if it's legal than to read the 32 page manual section containing the robot rules :( And sometimes I just let them show up for inspection with stuff that I know will not pass. And I make sure that whoever is going to do their inspection knows exactly what to look for :)

I hope you had an overall positive experience, and I hope to see you and your team back in Atlanta soon!

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

We did have an overall good time. Just many things got to me........I've been able to cool down after resting today and getting some decent food. My prior posts have been rather malicious after reading them. And as I've said, if I had the time, the rules would have been read. I've already done 98% of everything on the robot and coding, and having to do yet another thing as big as the rule book myself was not possible. I was hoping the assigned student could complete it, but the task floated away. At the time, we didn't even know how important the rules were/are. Now we know, eh?

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

I have to second everything Jeff said above. As an inspector, it is so frustrating when we run across issues that should have been noticed at previous competitions. We don't want to fail anybody. Our job is to make sure everyone followed the rules correctly and to help teams succeed in doing so. But nobody is perfect and in the end, all of the inspectors are volunteers. If they were perfect, there wouldn't need to be a second inspection.

I can't stress enough how important it is that teams read the manual. Seeing teams fail inspection for simple things that could have been avoided is very frustrating. You spend at least $6,000 on the season. That just isn't worth risking.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

I'm going to post again, since this popped up in the 45+ minutes I spent writing my other post (and convincing a 2 year old it was bedtime).

It sounds like you pretty much had the normal rookie experience, just compressed into about half the time. I do not envy you that, and it truly does make your getting to Atlanta all that more impressive.

I cringe every time I hear "the studentassigned to read the robot rules". I have posted my thoughts on this subject before, and they can be read here. Make one the expert, but everyone that is going to walk within 10 feet of the robot should at least read thru them.

Other than that, it sounds to me like you have a great plan for next year! Good Luck! If you need any help or advice, hop in here and ask! Feel free to send me a PM any time, I've been thru the "Rookie Experience" more than once. I don't claim to know the answers, but I have learned a few things I don't recommend...

Judging at the Championship is done by a very large team, just like at the regionals. You just did not happen to see the rest of them.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Original post by me: A system based on score or something, i don't know.
True however, when your in a field of unknown teams, not all of them scout and jump to conclusions about robots based on previuos years. I guess I'm just a litle annoyed because we got the short end of that stick. Sorry for my sourness :( , I don't mean to bring you guys down. Despite what happened, Atlanta was still super amazing.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

This is the first game I can recall where robots are scoring on other robots. Normally the robots are all working with a neutral game piece and scoring with it on some disinterested structure. By scoring on other robots, the team you just scored on gets hit with the double whammy of you scoring points and doing it at their expense in an in-your-face way.

I saw many matches where a powerful alliance had obviously decided in advance which robot they thought was the weakest of the opposing alliance and then proceeded to take turns filling their trailer to capacity. I over heard one strategy session where they called this a gang bang! Yikes!

I would suggest in an environment where we are looking to increase the self confidence of weaker teams, and have them leave the competition feeling good about themselves, that game structure is counter to what we're trying to accomplish.

We're all used to having some alliances with a weak member and that's fine. Often the stronger robots can make up for that member. Lunacy put too much pressure on weaker teams. That, plus the boring traffic jams, is why it's my least favorite of the last six FRC games I've watched.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

1999 might count, though I don't really remember the rules. The robots' job was to raise scoring objects over 8' in the air. That was the only way to score them. But, they weren't usually putting the objects on the other robots themselves.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

allright, let me get to it

1. G14 /// please FIRST, Never again try to cut a teams sucess short. We honestly could have seen a High Score placed this weekend, but you put the best teams on leashes that didn't allow them to perform at full capasity, and make us say... wow

2. Bumper Rules/Rober Wheels etc... Xerox Creativity Award. /// 7, Helux, Power Dumper, Shooter, These were the four designs that i saw most of this weekend. FIRST. please stop making the award about the sponcor (Xerox...copies) and more about what it stands for.... Creativity, bending the envolope, thinking outside the box. Seriously, a robot with a Gyroscope won XCA this year at CMPl.... thast sad

3. Districts /// Ovbiously we saw that this is something that either, FIRST needs to limit, or they need to make everything a district next year. There is no doubt in my mind that the #1 reason there were four MI robots in the finals on Einstein was because of the experance their drivers had accumulated by going to their respective events. Just to give an example, here are the match counts for the four MI teams that were on einstein (these numbers are after championships)

217: 85 Matches Played
67: 87 Matches Played
247: 82 Matches Played
68: 79 Matches Played

here are the totals for the other two teams that were on Einstein

111: 46 Matches Played
971: 32 Matches Played

I see a huge discrpeency there, Im srue you see it as well. Districts either need to be eliminated, or FIRST needs to start making Multi-Regionals affordable for everyone else

4. The Game /// Give the audunce something to cheer about, Someone was right when they said the stands were very quiet during Einstein Finals.

5. Volunteers and Cowd Control /// During Einstein Matches. If your a Volunteer and you were assigned to be on the floor for any of the divisions, I don't see why your not allowed to view the Finals matches from the floor of the GA Dome on the Archimedes/Curie side of the field. The volunteers this year would kick off Voluntters while keeping kids/mentors from other teams (Not the teams on Einstein or the Backups) would be sitting right there. Give volunteers some appreation and let them watch the matches from there instead of watching them from the bleeder seats because they were busy helping out on their respective possision and couldn't get good seats.

6. Sustaining before Growing /// FIRST keeps on telling us to grow teams. What they don't realize is that 40% of all FIRST teams eventually fold. Instead of trying to create mroe teams, try sustaining and satisfying the wants and needs of the teams you already have, try to bring back already folded teams, and THEN try to grow from there

7. Founders Award...NI vs IFI, Patent /// Please FIRST, don't start this mess, don't start a war, because honestly, that what it looks like your trying to do. first you debrand VEX in favor of NXT, and then you give a company thats been helping out with FLL since 2003, instead of a company thats been helping the orginization and it's teams for much longer in FRC.... and now witht he patent, I think FIRST is asking for it.

8. Awards/Finals. If my memory serves me correct. the finals were supposed to end at 6, Why was i sitting in the dome at 6:15 waiting for Finals match 2.... when the MINIMUM number of matches had been played? FIRST needs to work on time management, they give us six weeks to build a robot and fix it windws after (at least up intil last year,) you should be held to the same standards when you give yourself 2 hours to complete the Fnals on Enstein. on a side note, Teams, please don't call timeouts on Einstein, Dean Speaking is your timeout.