Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

What happened this year that FIRST could stand to improve upon?

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

One thing. ANIMATION!!! It was neglected this year. The autodesk booth was small, they didn't play the audio of the animation for AVA winner. Its a serious competition that no one pays attention to.

At least give us some tables in the autodesk booth so us few animators would have a place to sit learn from eachother. Its really hard for us to swap info with seating only for Phill and Ted presentations.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

[These all relate to the big screens in the pit.]

Not having the field video showing was a disappointment, and made it difficult to know how close to on schedule the matches were.

There was a sign by Pit Admin advising everyone to pay attention to the "dynamic" match schedule in order to know when to leave for queuing, but the displayed schedules always seemed to be the originally published times.

After the qualification matches were finished, it would have been better to show the alliance selection screen rather than the now-empty match schedule.

The Galileo screen had the Windows task bar hiding much of the match score information at the bottom of the screen for a while. Nobody in Pit Admin knew anything about where the displays were coming from or who could do something about the problem.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Another thing.

-If the Chairmans Award is the highest honor FIRST can bestow upon a team. Then save that award for last. If you give out the Chairmans award second, it doesn't seem like a big deal, and the rest of the day is.....blah.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

They used to do that, but nearly everyone would leave right after the second (or third) finals match was over to get to the wrap party and half the people wouldn't be there to witness the CA winner. By moving it to the beginning, they get to enjoy the rest of the competition and everyone gets to see them win.

BTW, Congratulations 236!

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

How about do all the awards first then run the final matches? Or is that too much buzzkill? Maybe there is no good way to run the finals and First is just searching for what works.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Doing it towards the beginning also allows the awarded team to be seated on stage and recognized by everyone throughout the remainder of the matches/awards ceremony.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

I would suggest moving some of the award to the beginning of Saturday or end of Friday, instead of putting them in between Einstein matches. Have the biggest awards on Saturday, such as Chairman's, Engineering Inspiration, and the FLL and FTC big awards (the names escape me for those.) It's pretty annoying to watch a match, sit for a half hour, and then watch one more match, and then sit for another 45 minutes and so on.

Though I can also see the flaws in what I've suggested, so maybe there is indeed no good way to arrange the awards and satisfy everyone.

The camera work could be pretty bad sometimes. Showing the drive teams every once in awhile is nice and all, but sometimes the camera would hover on the driver team or human player for 5 to 10 seconds (which is a long time in one of these matches.) I'm sure it doesn't matter up on the big screen but it is extremely frustrating to be watching the webcast and not even be seeing what's going on half the time. This seemed to be mostly an issue during the semi-finals on Einstein, oddly enough. Finals were pretty good and the divisions were pretty good. Maybe a separate feed for the webcast could be done? It would be pretty sweet to allow people watching the webcast to choose which camera to see, or at least have the option of watching from some kind of fixed camera that sees the whole field.

Outside of Atlanta the only thing I'd do is make sure to never, ever penalize a team for doing well. G14 wasn't too much of a big deal, thankfully, but the concept itself is just not good at all.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Now how do you deal with dead time during finals?

Here's how I'd do it: First, have all the non-robot awards other than the CA on Friday at opening. That includes the Founder's Award, Website, Animation, Autodesk, Volunteer, and WFA. (moves at least 3 to Friday AM)
Second, speed up the transition time. Slim down the intros as much as possible--the videos the last time I was watching were great for that.
Third, trim down the award/team intros if possible.

Oh, yeah, and keep speeches to a known length. Also, keep Dean from speaking (like that'll happen).

The real buzzkill is that it goes later than it's supposed to.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

I like those 3 points.

To be able to choose camera angles may be pushing it but it'd be nice.

And a fixed camera would leave me very grateful.
It's annoying to try and see how exactly you played out a match when your most interesting part for your team isnt visible because the cameraman is focused on something else. At least one fixed field cam would be fantastic.

And penalizing a team for doing well. I just don't like it, it kinda hurts the game. Instead of focusing on achieving the most with your robot and aspiring to be "the best you can be" better teams are spent making sure not to get too far ahead of the opposing alliance rather than showcasing the power and ferocity of the robot they spent so much time and money on.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Agreed on both counts. The webcasts were hard to watch sometimes because of the camera work. I realize that in this game it can be tough to follow all the action, but lingering close-ups of pinned robots or drivers don't help anyone.

As for G14... well... no... just no. Please, never again. A team should never have to worry about being "too good". I would bet the farm that it will be among the rules to be "adjusted" for IRI. That's usually not a good sign.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

the camera work was pretty good i most of the divisions but Einstein was truly awful. it was impossible to keep track with them zooming in on random things and doing top views.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

-G14. It's my least favorite rule in six years of FRC. I don't like the concept of teams being handicapped for success in competition--and I say that as a mentor of teams that have been whooped pretty hard in some matches over the years. Outside of the GTR finals, where 188's absence caused them to try to double-G14 their opponents for the third match, there wasn't any real strategy to it either. The concept might work in other sports--victory ballast in auto racing comes to mind--but not here.
-On Q&A, the only ruling (battery panic aside--it was resolved in time) that really caused me to grumble was that of the IFI Kitbot's legality. If I've got an old kit part that is still commercially available and otherwise legal, let me put down the cost on the BoM and move on. It's reminiscent of the "grip tape" versus "safety tread" debacle of 2007.
-On the pit displays, the blue alliance was a little too blue--so much so that it became hard to read the team numbers at times. A little lighter shade of blue would make it much more readable.
-At the Championship, we were a backup on Curie. We were stymied a little bit during lunch because we didn't know to pick up pit crew badges from the scoring table before going back. Announcing that next time would help greatly--it's not quick to get those badges back to the pits!
-The Driver's Station woes leave me a little uneasy for the off-season. I'm sure, however, that if FIRST isn't working on it already, they're starting as soon as they can get the trucks unloaded and breathe for a split-second.
-I'm sure others will harp on the open-trailer-equals-death matter here, but I'm neutral about it. It's always been hard, sometimes nearly impossible, to win a round with a dead or missing robot; this year was just more pronounced.

For the most part, I enjoyed this season. On to 2010!

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

A new DS system is much needed:D !!! And consistantcy on what is a field fault and a team fault. I don't know how many times a team would be given a 2 min clock to replace a fried DS and then the next match a team was given a 5 min, because it was ruled a field fault.:ahh: :confused:

I personally hated the emphasis on the human players this year; a team could win due to an awesome human player, not a robot. To me that at a robotics competition is not right.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

So let's not ever have a missing robot on an alliance. By coincidence I was talking to an Old Respected mentor this last week on this very subject. Starting with his notion (I liberally borrow ideas but at least I don't steal them...):

1. In regionals, allow a "hot fix" robot to compete. This might be a team's second robot, or maybe just a team that likes a weird challenge. During qualifying, this robot fills in every time there is a no show. It isn't listed in the standings, but its won/loss record and other scores are recorded and made available during alliance selection. While the hot fix robot cannot be an alliance captain, it may be chosen for an eliminations alliance. During eliminations, the rules would work as they do today.

2. In invitational tournaments (like Championships), whatever means is used to pick a team off the waiting list is used to pick the hot fix robot for each division. Since this team may or may not get a chance to compete, they get the "Rudy Ruettiger" trophy and an automatic invitation to Championships for the following year. They are eligible for selection to an eliminations alliance just like in paragraph 1.

Something like that...

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

After my second year of involvement with FIRST, I still have the same complaint. I understand that while COOPERTITION is way of FIRST (now trademarked and patented), this is, at its heart, a COMPETITION (otherwise, why keep score?). I understand that it's not about winning, but teams DO want to win the competition. Besides punishing teams for doing well (G14), there is the random, or "luck" factor. If a team works hard, and makes a great robot that meets the goals of the competition better than other teams, they should be rewarded. At every regional I attended, including championships, The seedings did not reflect the ability of the robots or the teams. If FIRST wants this to be a "sport", and be as popular as football, they need to come up with a better way to rank teams prior to alliance pairings. I have no problem with the serpentine draft and the no refusal rules, I see how that can prevent "super alliances", and make scouting important. I do have a problem with some of the best teams not even being in the top 8. Throughout the season, I saw teams that could not score at all ranked as the number one seed, while top scoring bots were not even in the top 10. Perhaps the seeding should be done based on the scoring of the bots rather than a win-loss record.

I don't have all the answers, but the questions remain. As many smart people as there are involved with FIRST, I am confident that they can come up with something better.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Bring the district format to Virginia :)

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

What did everyone think about the new control system?

Maybe some criticism will help NI and FIRST make the system better for next year if your team ran into any problems.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Amen. Although I tend to think of this as a positive for the Michigan District format rather than a negative for the traditional regionals. The extra competitions, more matches per competition and selection process was really apparent (at least to this viewer) at the Championship. As much as I loved the DC and NASA/VCU regionals this year, I hope that Virginia follows the Michigan model soon.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Just one thing, the TV screen that shows everyones ranking and win/loss record is really hard to follow when it jumps a few lines every few seconds. As soon as you find your number it moves and you lose it. It would be easier to follow if it could smoothly scroll through the rankings.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

1) The game this year was really hard to follow and not that fun to watch. Most of the time, especially in elims, you could not tell who was winning. In a couple of elim matches all the bots were pinned in the corners for most of a match. Boring. Games need a couple of central places where scoring happens. 2008 had two hurdling areas centrally located, 2007 had the rack, etc..

2) The playing surface really leveled the field and G14 was not required at all.

3) 40 lb allowance was great, THANK YOU!! However, 6 week build season now becomes an 8-10 week season for some and since some teams basically redesigned and rebuilt devices between events; we are treading into more sticky situations in future years if this continues. I attended 3 events (2 as a coach, and one as a spectator) and none of them enforced / checked the 40 lb allowances. I know GP was in place and can't think of any exceptions, but I know the GP boundaries will be pushed further in the future.

4) The DS seems a bit delicate and could use some improvements to beef it up. Don't get em wrong, what WPI has done is really amazing - but it could be a bit more durable.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

I think that FIRST need a more diverse game. It almost seemed like this year that every other robot did the same thing, and only the most experienced and wealthy teams that can afford the best parts seem to be able to win. The other problem I have is the charge for Atlanta. Our team knew before even going to our regional that even if we won we would not be going to the championship due to lack of money. There needs to be some sort of fund to help rookie, or struggling teams keep a team, because as of right now we do not know if the team will exist next year...

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Love the ideas on fixing the "no show" problem. As mentioned in another post by a team mentor of ours, there was a regional where a robot missed the first 4 matches and was ranked #1 since they had not lost. They ended up ranked 6th at the end.

I think there are other remedies as well:
If you're in cue/q/queue(?), and your opponent is missing one, you get to pick from the previous alliance that left, they don't. Bring a spare battery.

Or, in "graciousness", your team chooses to leave a team from your alliance off the floor. That's the easiest, closest to "gracious profoopertition" you can get. Is "profoopertition" trademarked yet?

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

At the Great Lakes Regional (cough, cough) Michigan State Championships, the driver's stations kept dying Mysteriously. Turns out they weren't grounded for static charges: the plastic wheels running on the regolith surface was popping the driver's stations all weekend.

First, GROUND THEM!

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Another thing I remember now. Could we get a more readable font for alliance selection and the brackets being projected up on the big screen? It's always pretty tough to read the numbers.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

i wouldn't worry about that, regolith and rover wheels are not returning.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

G14, was unneeded as many have said before. Also one thing that I have noticed from 2006 on is that FRC is starting to get soft, first with the bumpers and now with the Themed game. I miss the older days (2005 back) where it was metal on metal slamming into each other. One more thing I think FIRST is making too many robot design rules, so the robots are becoming bland, look-a-likes.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Well I would like to see matches replayed if there were feild prolems. Our first qualifier was lost because our robot, which had communication, which worked right before we left the pit and right after we returned, did not move the whole match, the match did not ount for us, however, that looks exactly like a los because no points are given. Also, could alliance pairings for qualifications be a bit more even.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

While I agree that this is a competition, the rest of your statement I must, respectfully, disagree with.

1) <G14> is not a punishment. It is a conditional statement and one that the teams can control. A failure of a team to not control their own scoring, and thus invoke the 2x or 3x condition, just means that that team is not paying attention well enough (with very few exceptions).

2) There is no "no refusal" rule, but there is a "refuse and you cannot be picked again" rule. This rule is strategic in nature.

3) The game is not about scoring. The game is about your alliance having more points than your opponents alliance. Have you ever considered that those 'non-scoring' robots are picking because they make their whole alliance better?

And now back to the thread:
My biggest concern this year was the number of 'redos' and the lack of information getting back to the teams in question as to why they were happening.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

And I will have to disagree with this. At the regionals we attended, the real time scoring was not accurate enough to be able to stop scoring to avoid a G14. We had one match where the score at the end of the match showed us winning 46 to 34. After the volunteers had finished there official count the final score showed us with 109 to 36. I completely agree that if we had seen that the score was what it actually was we could have slowed down our scoring or scored on ourselves. However, as it was there is no way I as the coach was going to tell our drive team to slow down when we only had a 12 point lead. This happened throughout our matches, and because of this, there was no way I would call off our drive team no matter what the real time scoring said. Additionally, teams are picked based off of scouting, which this year was primarily based on how many balls you could score versus how many were scored on you. If we were capable of scoring 25-30 balls in a match, then we would absolutely do it so that we would be the most appealing team to other scouts if for some reason we did not seed in the top 8.

Additionally this whole idea of punishing our students by not allowing them to perform to there full potential just because they put in more time or effort than others is ridiculous. Teams should be rewarded for building truly impressive robots and should be allowed to play to there full potential no matter what. I have been involved with FIRST for a while now and have been a part of teams with very good robots and very awful robots. I know in my rookie year when we were beaten very badly, I never once felt bad about myself, and instead took it as a challenge to not let that happen next year. After improving from year to year, I am finally a part of a team that builds incredible robots, and it is because we have very good, dedicated students and mentors.

I do feel that FIRST has gotten "soft" in the past few years with various rules to try to level the playing field. This is a competition, and the competition aspect is what draws the majority of people, and especially spectators to the event. There is no other sport that penalizes a team for being stronger than there opponent, and I hope FIRST gets away from this silly practice in the future.

As a whole I did enjoy this game very much and I liked the complexity of building a truly competitive robot to accomplish the various intricacies of this game.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

I agree with my 1771 mentors on their points. Want to level the playing field? Unlevel the surface. That is, let's get away from building a pizza box bottom, let's make these things crawl over something for an advantage, but still allow the common pizza box to go around. Something like that.

I now know that you can't be truly competitive without massive hours and generosity by mentors and sponsors, and enough money for a twin robot and preferably a second regional. If I calculate the volunteer mentor hours as cash donations, we probably spent over $50,000 this year. Heck, two regionals, the Nationals and a twin robot will bring you to $20,000, and that doesn't even include pizza on build Saturdays. The BEST competition is much more fair in this resolve.

Is it time for FIRST Elite, and keep FIRST FRC for those that can't get the cash? Maybe that's IRI? I'd like to know the average budget of other teams like the ThunderChickens, etc. Not to point fingers, but to bring reality to what exists. My guess is you can't get to the top without amazing dedicated volunteers and resources (material, financial, etc.).

On an ending positive: after only a few years, I have students disappointed that they didn't make it to the World Championship Finals of an engineering contest. Pretty cool.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

I guess my question then is why do we even need to impose rules to try to level the playing field. No matter where you are in the real world there will always be people or companies with more or less than you. I know our team budget does not even come close to many other teams but that is ok. It makes the accomplishment that much sweeter. Additionally, those teams who do have more should feel great for achieving all that they have. It takes a ton of work to obtain funding and tooling to be able to get to the level of some teams and that should be applauded. I think the FIRST model is fine and instead of trying to force the field to be "level" through a rule (G14), we should just embrace that some teams have more and some have less and no matter the situation you can build a very good robot. I know that I will be pushing and motivating our team to seek out more sponsors and such and to way day grow our program into one as incredible and efficient as 217.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

while is is disappointing to have a no-show robot on Friday, doesn't it provide an extra incentive for you on thursday to make sure every robot is ready to play? the team you help may be your partner in the first match.

if the easy solution to a no-show robot was to grab a replacement from the field, then there would be less incentive to help the struggling teams and eveyone would be "more likely" to focus on themselves. the struggling team would continue to struggle, and miss the inspiration that comes from being part of the competition.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

I guess I dont really think that teams need the incentive to help teams fix there robots. For me if I have time at a competition I would rather help a struggling team fix there robot than sit around and talk about nothing. Most teams would help each other out whether they were allied with them in the future or not. That is just the FIRST spirit I guess, so I don't see how adding a filler line would hurt that aspect of FIRST.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

WPI did NOT make the driver station, Quikbyte did.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

I agree with you completely. FIRST is a collective learning experience, not an isolated one. If it were, almost every team with a number over 1500 would not be at the level they are today. I know we wouldn't be around if it weren't for Kell Robotics (1311).

And on the <G14> issue, I thought that it was gentle enough that the "punishment" helped more than it hurt. In all honesty, if any team quadruples another team's score, they probably don't need their super cells to win. Yes, there are some exceptions and it isn't perfect, but it was an OK system with good intentions.

That said, I wouldn't be the first one to bring it up at a GDC meeting.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Completely agree on assisting other teams. Our first match last year we helped a team from another country (with no common language) get past inspection and onto the field. While I may be incorrect, a team this year refused assistance, and did not show. It is also the professional thing to admit the need for assistance, to help your alliance by acknowledging your true state.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, but I think it would be great if FIRST could return to hanging the enormous "sponsor logo" banners on the black curtain at the regionals instead of just a banner with the FIRST logo. It seems to be an easy way to give recognition to sponsors that support the event.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

I have been with FIRST since 2005, was a driver from 05-08 and a spectator this year. And i have to say I thought last years game was boring to watch, but this one was bad. As a driver this game is sweet, but as a spectator theres no real excitement. I mean sure when your bot is out there or your rooting for certian teams to win its a little more fun, but still theres no "wow" factor. Like in 06 and 07 there were ramps teams would climb in the last second, which made it exciting; 05 the line; 04 hanging on the bar. The Supercells were rarely scored and most of the time it was scored by the alliance that was winning anyways.

I would like to see a game where more than 3 designs would be present. maybe have 2 different shapes or sizes of element to manipulate.

Another thing, on Archimedes the DJ had like 10 songs he would play over and over again. They are good songs but they get old real quick.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Let me say something about the uneven resources issue.

I've been a student member of Team 339 for three years, and we've always considered ourselves one of the "small teams". We get a reasonable amount of money each year (enough to attend two regionals, but not for a second robot or Atlanta most years), but we have to work for it. We don't have a large corporate sponsor; instead, we have many smaller sponsors for whom we must perform demonstrations to keep the money flowing in.

In terms of volunteers, we are very limited in that regard. We have no engineers on the team; just a mechanical mentor (who is a social studies teacher), a programming mentor, and an animation mentor. We are also limited in our number of students; this year we took sixteen total to Atlanta.

This year, we decided we wanted to attend Atlanta and performed extra fundraising efforts. Every single person on the team participated in the process, sending letters and talking to local businesses, trying to raise the necessary cash. We also had to make other sacrifices; for example, to save money, we were unable to buy a second cRIO, let alone build a second robot. In the end, though, with $100 donations here and $500 donations there, we raised enough money to go. That experience alone provided us the satisfaction of working together to ultimately achieve a goal as much as building the robot itself.

Our competition season was great. We led the #4 seeded alliance and won the Delphi Driving Tomorrow's Technology award at DC, and won the Autodesk Visualization award at Chesapeake. In the end, we all felt very satisfied with our achievements, and considered 2009 a great year.

As I said, thanks to our fundraising efforts, we were able to attend Atlanta this year. We went knowing that we had no chance against the larger teams with their own practice fields and practice bots and professional engineers, but that was okay. It did nothing to dampen the excitement of our own experience; we had a great time in Atlanta, and though our record was 4-3, we were very satisfied with the performance of our robot. We didn't expect to win, didn't win, and still had a great time.

Then, five minutes before leaving to catch our flight home (since we couldn't really afford to stay another night), we won the Delphi DTT award at the Championship level. Needless to say, the team was ecstatic. Now in our tenth year, we won our first ever national recognition. Who knows: maybe this will make fundraising easier in future years.

But anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that not having the resources required to "be truly competitive", in no way dampens the FIRST experience and in many ways actually enhances it. Winning a national engineering award with no engineers on the team - meaning the work being recognized was 100% the result of us students' efforts - is really an indescribable feeling. FIRST doesn't need to do anything to "level the playing field", because its unevenness only improves the challenge for some of us. The big teams should be happy they can perform so well and win with consistency, while the small teams should be happy they can perform as well as they do with their limited resources. This way, everyone has a great experience, no handicaps required.

But to get back on topic. I think they need to do something about the way Einstein is run. They are the international finals for pete's sake; they ought to be at least as exciting as a regional, if not more exciting. Instead, as everyone worries about whether they are going to make their flight and/or the wrap party, no one except the team competing really cares about what's going on on the field.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

The sponsors "banners" were put on the screen as video banners this year. I believe this change was due to finances.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Well, being a rookie team, it was our first year in Atlanta.

But once again I will bring up the topic of a rookie team. From this weekend, I see FIRST defining a rookie team as a team with a number from 2700ish to 3100ish. AKA a number chosen this year. So I have a question. Is team 2753 a rookie team who has never participated in FIRST? What about 3091? 2753 was almost exactly the same as 399, and 3091 sounds like several teams just recombined into one, making them a rookie team. Can anyone clarify this for me? If they are in fact rookies, who have never done FIRST before, then who built the robot? I can guarantee it wasn't the students. I am not saying that we should of won by an means......I would have been happy if any real rookie team won.

Second.....rules. First off, regionals need more control. We fit easily into the measuring box at the LA Regional, but somehow our robot grew 3/8 of an inch between then and Atlanta, and the frame was not bent. In fact, I cut off a piece that was a little too high on Thursday morning just because I didn't like it sticking up. It fit that way into the measuring box at the LA Regional, but after cutting it off, it didn't fit in the boxes at Atlanta. If you are going to be so specific about something, the equipment measuring it needs to be precise as well.

Wiring colors? I'll be honest, I had no idea because I didn't have the time to sit down and read a rule book, and other students assigned the task did not complete it. But with that aside, why does it matter what color a wire is? Gauge is of course understandable, but the color? I've been working with electrical 'stuff's for years. IMO, it's a rule that is not necessary. Rules are normally for controlling the robot entries from having extra advantages (Size, Weight). But wire color? Come on. Don't pull the safety card on this either. Knowing a wire is ground or hot shouldn't decide how you work with it. You treat every wire like it's hot, just like you always treat a gun like it's loaded. On top of that, our wire coding was not correct at the LA Regional either, but none of the inspectors noticed. It would definitely help if we knew about it then, rather than at the Championships.

Third. Mentor involvement. Some of the teams I see have robots that you just KNOW that high school students didn't build, because when you go to the pits, you see a mentor fixing it, not a student. If your students are not capable of building a high caliber robot, then don't. Build a kitbot. They'll get more experience out of building that than some other complex robot. When awards were given out at the individual divisions, I saw several teams with parents/mentors getting handed the awards, with the students following behind them.

Match scheduling. If you want people to 'watch the monitors' make them visible! Being next to FTC, the only thing we saw was FTC. Being 8 minutes ahead of schedule, in my opinion, is unacceptable. If times are given out to the minute, then that schedule should be stuck to. Sure, fall behind, but getting ahead? We had to fix a bent frame from a match right before, which took A LOT of work, and then we show up at the field 8 minutes early and the match had already started.

Overall, I see a lot of unnecessary control in places, and not enough/no control in many others. I agree on several other things in this thread, like G14 and the control that human players had. Having a good human player could easily win the match for you, not the robot. But I won't elaborate that stuff.

I will say that I am glad I went to Atlanta and had the opportunity to experience it, because it will be much harder to get there after our rookie year. It had the fun parts.....and it had the parts that made me steaming mad. Some improvements can definitely be made though.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Perhaps the cost savings forced onto FIRST by the economy had something to do with not having video in the pits. They did have video last year.

The dynamic schedule should have shown when each actual match started. If you view the online results at FIRST's website, you'll see the actual times the match was started (for Galileo). For example, when Friday's opening ceremony ran long and forced us to start match 1 at 9:42 instead of 9:25 as scheduled, all the following match schedule times were moved. Three matches scheduled to begin before lunch were actually moved to after lunch. As far as I can tell, match times will never be moved back before the original scheduled time however. Much of Saturday morning we were running ahead of schedule. We did in fact wait until the scheduled time for one robot. I was not in the pit to verify what was on the screen, but I'm pretty sure that the display was the current dynamic schedule. This year FIRST had available an internal VOIP phone system linking the inspection stations, pit admin and the fieldside scoring tables. If that is available in future years, please ask pit admin to check with us.

I'll pass the suggestion about the alliance selection screen on to the software person. I know that was visible in the pit last year, but that might have been because there was a copy of the video feed which was showing the alliance selection display in the dome.

The pit display is run by a laptop in the pit area connected to the scoring server fieldside. Had you voiced this comment to one of us at the scoring table, we could have had someone look into it. In a perfect world, everyone who volunteers for FIRST would know the answer to every question. I'm sorry you didn't get a helpful answer.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

While I agree that there may be "mentor-only made" (MOM?) bots out there, keep in mind that mentors working with kids in the pits may actually be an instructional moment. It may be something simple too, allowing the kids to do other things. Of course, sometimes we do need to remind a mentor that they are not the student too, I had to do it myself twice on Saturday. I will always disagree that the design and concept and all construction should be student-driven, because the "I" in FIRST does stand for "Inspiration". Our team has grown by leaps and bounds because of inspiring ideas from our mentors.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Regarding 3091, they are not a 'recombined' team. Their students and mentors have some experience with FIRST through FLL and FTC, but this was indeed their initial adventure into FRC. I've seen some teams that go on a hiatus for a while. Though they cannot technically be a rookie team, there is often no one involved with any FIRST experience or memories from the team's earlier existence. There are in fact teams that are started by established mentors that move for jobs or other reasons. Perhaps the definition of rookie isn't perfect.

I'm not sure how the sizing boxes could have been very different. They are in fact the same sizing boxes that were used at the regionals. Of course there may be some small variation between them, but it's hard to understand the variation you're describing.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

A more likely scenario for the discrepancy in sizing would be that your robot shifted during shipping. The crates are handled, less than cautiously, and if your robot is bot very structurally sound you could have frame members shifting in the crate. Not to mention, after one regional and countless hard-hits, a frame can easily be tweaked enough to through the superstructure of a robot outside of the box.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

I could believe this. That said, with regard to the video screens:

-On Curie, the team numbers on the scoring display were completely unreadable. The alliance selection screen wasn't much better (and, in the 87-team division, cut off the lower-ranked teams).
-The way of displaying the final score could be refined. It took me until the later part of Bayou to figure out that the red background to the match number meant the score was final. I'm not sure that someone just walking in would figure it out that easily.
-I miss the days where the seeding was shown on the screen. Showing sponsor logos is important, but a screen for a few minutes once or twice a day with the information would be great for those of us stuck to the stands.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

ANIMATION!! nobody knows how hard it is.....:(

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

A couple comments.

I'm not going to claim that I know anything about 3091, but it sounded like in the awards that the kids came from different towns, not different prexisting teams. (Correct me if I'm wrong).

As for 2753 and 399, they are from completely opposite sides of the country. The fact that their designs are similer seems random to me. It is very possible for rookies to dominate. 2753 is a good example of this. It doesn't mean they aren't really rookies, it just means that they are good. My team's most successful competitive year was our rookie year. All I'm saying is, just because a rookie is really good, doesn't mean they aren't really rookies.

About the mentor involvement. Mentors are crucial. Students need to work to learn, but they need mentors. Kids can also learn by watching mentors do things. (I'm not advocating it, it still teaches kids). Part of the real world is designing things and sending them off to be made. I'll be completely honest, my team had a student and mentor designed swerve drive, we sent away the CAD models and had the parts machined for us, it's just the way it is. I may not have operated a manual mill to make the parts, but I learned about 4-axis CNC machines, which in many ways can be just as valuable. Even if you don't make all the parts on the robot, you can make them for other things like prototypes. I learn just as much from prototypes on manual machines as I do from the computer made final product. Even though the final product is professonally made, it doesn't mean I didn't learn a ton of things along the way. Mentors shouldn't do everything, but sometimes they need to do certain things. FIRST is about learning and if kids are doing everything themselves, then they likely aren't learning as much as they could be.

About the rules. If you aren't happy with the rules of inspection, specifically the box, go out and prove them wrong. In Boston last year, my team's robot didn't fit in the box, we got out a measuring tape and showed them that their box was actually 3/8 of an inch too small. We passed inspection. If in fact somehow your robot did grow, and they have an accurately sized box, then that's something you have to find a way to deal with. In the real world, if they tell you to make a 4 foot wide robot and you make 4 feet and 1/8 of an inch, you get fired, if it's 4 feet, you get a raise. The rule book may be long, but someone has to read it. Someone on my team always reads the entire book each year just ensure that we know what we are doing. It's just one of the things that you have to do. All of these things are learning experiences, and honestly, there isn't a better place to learn than FIRST.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Burt,

First of all, being an FRC rookie does not mean you have never done FIRST before. FIRST runs both FLL and FTC both of which can provide extremely valuable experience to a group of individuals who would still be FRC rookies. Team 2753 was made up of students from last year's FTC Champions so they definitely had some FIRST experience. You can also search around for posts by the user "Lowfategg", he is a student on 2753 and after seeing some of his posts here I am fairly confidant that students did a lot or all of the work on that machine.

With regards to mentor involvement, you would be surprised at what students can do when they have experienced knowledgeable mentors guiding them and assisting them. Many of the machines probably have much more student involvement than you think. Having said that there are no rules regarding mentor involvement (other than driving) for a reason, FIRST knows that different teams will choose to run in different ways and has decided not to regulate this. Some teams will have mentors doing all or almost all of the work. Some teams will have students doing all the work with no engineering mentors at all. Most teams will fall somewhere in between. If this is a problem for you and/or your team there are many other Highschool robotics competitions that are limited to participation by highschool students. There are many other topics on this subject already and I suggest you search and read through some of them. Many others have done a much better job of expressing some of the points I am trying to make.

I agree with your point regarding the measuring box, it is important for the measuring instruments and scales to be consistent between events.

With respect to inspection consistency. It is and always has been the job of your team to insure that your robot meets all the rules and you sign a sheet expressing that to the best of your knowledge you meet the rules as the last part of inspection. Inspectors are volunteers doing the best job that they can.

While many of the rules are put in place for safety and to prevent teams from gaining a competitive edge others are put in to ease inspection and to instill good practices. If you have been working with electrical stuff for years then you should know the value of respecting the common standards for electrical wire coloring. Using consistent coloring allows for easy visual inspection of electrical systems to insure that they are wired correctly which benefits both the team and the inspectors. I'm sure Al has some even better insight about the reasoning behind this rule. If he doesn't wander in here and see this I recommend you post in the electrical forum or send him a PM.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Just to clarify this, as a member of one of the teams that was involved in 3091, they were a completely new team who consisted of completely new members from two different high schools in Atlanta sponsored mostly by the 100 Black Men of Atlanta. Several Atlantian teams, including us, helped them get started (as in, helped them become an official team, watched over their build season and helped out when possible), but their Rookie All Star award was all due to their dedicated work.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

FRC has a definition of a rookie team, which can be found here:
http://www.usfirst.org/community/frc...t.aspx?id=6632

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

I'm not blaming the volunteers, I'm just saying that some of the ruling is unnecessary. I am an individual who uses whats available. If I had the option of buying red and black wire at home depot in the correct gauge sizes, then I would have, because I do understand wiring codes. I used blue for black (not an uncommon practice for common/ground). They didn't have the red or even black wire (both surprising and not surprising in a way for Home Depot), so I used what I could buy. Having wire is better than none at all. Home Depot was not our only stop either.....electrical specialty shops no longer exist in our area.

The measuring tape idea from Sgreco is one I wish I would have thought of. Great idea, and I'll be sure to do that if we ever have this problem again.

Rookie then, should be defined, and maybe separate awards. Just an idea I'm throwing out. A team with robotics experience against a team with none at all has a large advantage, whether it's FTC or FRC, or some other robotics experience. Those are two completely different types of rookies in my opinion.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Foreword: I've posted in a similar style to this post times before; there are very legitimate questions Burt asked in this one. This one is similar to some of the other discussions in construction only.

FIRST has a definition of what makes for a rookie team. Some rookies are always going to have better resources--2753 had a dominant run in FTC, 2815 has such mentor help that five years' experience still makes you a youngin'. I can't speak for anyone else, but 2815 remained a "real" rookie team through the conclusion of the Championship. Mentors drove our design this year, which I have absolutely no problem with--they had the experience. With time, I expect our kids to step up and work with the mentors to pick up some of the techniques and wisdom we've amassed.

If you think the measuring box is off, ask the inspectors (politely) to measure the dimensions. The sizing boxes are shipped with the fields, so damage isn't impossible, but you're really best off breaking out the tape measure on this one.

And there's your first mistake. Just like the trailer hitch rules, or the team number sizes, or the display of schools and sponsors, it's a specification handed down by FIRST. You have to read the manual to be sure you find them all.You might be fine, but other teams aren't so lucky. I've seen some genuine rat's nests over the years--with no wire color rules, I'd have no chance of figuring out the issue. I imagine Al Skierkiewicz or another one of the electrical know-it-alls can expand on FIRST's logic here. That the LA inspectors missed it is unfortunate, but it's not a free pass down the road. Your team is ultimately responsible for ensuring compliance with all the rules.

There's no rule prohibiting this, and several awards celebrate partnerships between students and mentors. Partnership would imply that both groups are putting in their fair share of the work, not sitting quietly on the side and making sure the other group doesn't kill themselves. ...or they could be working alongside mentors, learning the process that goes into producing an effective machine. I've been on both sides of the high-caliber coin; the kids seem much more inspired by the latter. If you've got a mentor that can show the students what you can do with a certain construction technique, why not let the kids discover what it takes to do it?Many times, judges will give one award to a mentor and one to a student. I know this was the case when we received our Rookie All-Star award at Palmetto.

I agree that matches running early can be perilous, but shifting deadlines are a part of life. I'd suggest sending a person next time to keep watch on the schedule screen and give you proper warnings to give you time to get to the field. We had a scare at Bayou with the match schedule--we didn't see that we had the second match back from lunch, resulting in our drive team having a quarter-mile sprint back to the arena. One of our partners wasn't as lucky, and no-showed the match. You live, you learn.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

I've never seen such a huge FRC crowd be so quiet as the one watching Einstein matches. While I appreciate the game's dynamics, and love how it opened up the doors to creative ideas in ways to do drive systems, it was downright boring to watch. Many of the regulation matches during regionals wound up with clumps of robots and trailers. It was difficult to tell who was doing what scoring, then all of a sudden the group would break apart and there would either be a pile of balls on the floor or a trailer loaded up. Without watching specific bots, it was hard to tell. It was a great game to design for and play though.

The fields weren't completely consistent regional to regional. We gave ourselves a 1/2" clearance...yet the bots sank 1/8" into the regolith, you needed another 1/8" to get over the seams (varying regional to regional), and the Atlanta fields were put onto a soft plastic floor which caused even more sinkage. Combined with another 1/8" reduced clearance to due material fatiguing (yea, our fault), Atlanta just left a bad taste in our mouth. We could take our bot to the practice field and fly around, yet on the Galileo field we kept getting stuck. I understand it was already very difficult to manage field setup this year in this regard, so I'm not sure if there's room for concern or if I'm just venting here.

I believe that next year we will have to help this year's rookies along if the field surface is highly tractive. There were several atypical drive train designs (crab/swerve) that simply will not work on carpet due to axial loading ... or at least they won't work for very long. I also expect to see some 2nd year teams with 4 wheels on the corners of their robots wondering why they're having difficulty turning.

I also don't think it's a coincidence that there were so many Michigan teams on Einstein this year, percentage-wise. I don't begrudge any of the teams who were there, and I applaud FIRST for finding a format that cuts costs and increases field time. It will be highly disappointing if this format is only used in Michigan again though.

I do not agree with the 40-lb allowance for future years. It's supposed to be 6.5 weeks, and it's supposed to be hard for a reason. Of the 3 competitions I attended it was only enforced at DC, and even there it was only sporadic checking.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

I can respond on the wiring colors. It's happened before, on occasion, that teams have shown up with wiring that is all one color. You'd think that that wouldn't be a problem. But, it is. It's a lot harder to trace. That makes it dangerous. You see, if you wire something backwards and don't have the standard colors, something could easily be destroyed when that isn't caught.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

After reading all these posts...I still have nothing to add to "The Negative" thread

:)

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Thank you for saying this. This was what frustrated our team during this championship, I think we ended up ranking 54 because on our first day we were with some of the worst teams against dome of the best teams. Because we didn't have a name with any of these teams (except Bacon, and 179, who also got gyped by the rankings), we were not picked despite how well our individual robot performed. Maybe a system where the average of your scores determines, I don't know I haven't sat and thougt of how to rank teams, however, I do know that luck is way too prevalent in the current system. I might only feel this way because we got the short end of the stick on it, but other than that, I saw alliances such as 67, 111, and 45 in qualifiers. Most of 71's matches had another powerhouse against not that good teams. It just irks me that we had a robot at a high caliber and then lost because of random luck with alliance selections.

p.s. keep in mind that I am not being biased about my robot, our average scores for Friday, the day we didn't win a single match, was in the 80's (If you disclude the match were we got a DQ due to field issues). Sadly, the alliance pairing consistently gave us a pairing with teams that could barely make a score and against teams that could put scores above that number, it seemed unfair that this happened every match (except for Saturday after the teams had done their scouting).

On a different note: BRING DISTRICTS TO FLORIDA!!! It seemed to work great in Michigan, and that would increase the competition of the regional. SPeaking on a purely financial note however, paying for the initial districts, and the state competition might leave our team high and dry for Championships, but it would cost less than two regionals, which we have been thinking about.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

To everyone complaining about the withholding allowance and GP; how is this any different from previous years? We used to have the two build sessions, and teams were on the honor system not to spend any more time than that building things. Now, we're on the honor system not to build more than 40lbs worth of stuff. In fact, at least the withholding allowance can be weighed if necessary; in previous years, it was not possible to tell if a team had spent more than their two sessions working.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

- G14... i agree that im not the biggest fan of it. I know it was in good intentions, but if the real time scoring is going to be off? How can a team be penalized? One match the ending score was 55-32 us. Then after everythig is re scored, it was 122-32. We got a tripple G14....

- I was working the front gate at championships on wednesday night. It really did tick me off when mentors, not students, are yelling at me because we wouldnt let them take 8 people in. or take multiple trips. This has been the way for a LONG TIME. The way i see it, FIRST could easily say "just unload thursday" Remember, most volunteers there wednesday have been working tuesday 7am-11pm and wednesday starting at 7am. READ THE RULES

- about the wire colors... hate to be crude, but you gotta read the rules or suck it up. sorry. "i didn't have time isn't an excuse to me...

- Practice field was not run properly. Schedualing team for 10-10:10 then 10:10-10:20 does not work. You gotta leave a gap for unload and load. Also seemed to me the volunteers running the fields had no idea what they where doing. Example, letting 3 robots run with over 5 people on the field. I watched 2 kids get hit too. People running the field didn't seem to care.....
(i know...first i defend volunteers, then i bash em)

- I agree that awards such as spirit, animation, ect. can go friday. That way, chairmans, rookie all-star, EI, and competition stuff cna be done saturday, with time ti spare. O.....speeches should be cut down....

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.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

I would have to say that 1999 doesn't fall in either category, since you weren't scoring on the other alliance's robots, and you weren't scoring the floppies on a structure.

If you want to be particular, you could say that 2007 counts as robots scoring on other robots, since you climbed on top of another robot to score bonus points at the end of the match.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

There are lots of "comments" on G14, but if you paid attention to it in your strategy you were rewarded.

In every division, the final rankings were determined by RS, average losing alliance scores.

In Newton, all top 8 teams were 6-1, RS determined the order.

In Archimedes, 2 - 8 were 6-1, RS determined the order.

In Curie, 2-5 were 6-1, RS determined the order.

In Galileo, 1-2 were 7-0, 4 - 10 were 6-1, RS not only determined the order, but if you were even an alliance captain.

Use the rules in your strategy and to your advantage.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

There seems to be a misunderstanding about RS. It has nothing to do with score differential, only with the losing teams score. If the losing team only gets 36 points, that's all you get, regardless of your own score. If you win 38-36, it is no better for RS than winning 135 to 36. The G14 doesn't enter into RS.

On another note though, your average score is the tiebreaker for two teams with identical W/L records and RS. It was the strategic goal of my team to receive a G-14 every match. If the real time scoring had been accurate, we would have boosted the other team's score by scoring on our own trailer, but having seen 70 point swings from real time to final score, we decided that we needed to score as much as possible.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

FIRST clearly understands the issue of teams folding. They have also stated with abundant regularity that teams need to learn how to build sustainable organizations. Your team is responsible for its financial well being, NOT FIRST.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

i disagree -

if you are winning 135 - 36, you should start scoring on yourself to push up the other alliances score, so that it is 135 - 100. You get the win, you get of RS.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

The important point was that real time scoring was so incredibly inaccurate that there was absolutely no way that I as a coach would tell our team to start scoring on ourselves for fear that the score was inaccurate and that we would mistakenly lose. When real time scoring is off by 70 points, there is a serious problem. We were going for at least 1 G14 per match after deciding how ridiculous the rule was.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

That's an interesting observation. I noticed that the concentration of helix/power dumper/shooter/7 robots was very high at championships, but at the regionals out West they were not that common. I guess most of the very creative robots just didn't work as well as these four designs, which is why you didn't see nearly as much creativity at Champs. The few, effective desings won the regionals, so they made it to Atlanta.

http://selectric.org/nerds/2009la/

shows the robots at Long Beach, notice the very wide variety of designs! Arizona was the same way, lots of very interesting designs.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

And how would you know you were winning 135-36? It has been demonstrated that the real time scoring is often not even close.

Hypothetical match: RTS shows you winning 135-36, so you score 30 points in your own trailer making the RTS 135-66. Then the real score appears and the final score is 136-135 and you lose. This is not an exaggeration. I witnessed at least one match where the RTS was off by more than 70 points. It was not worth the risk.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

You could look at the trailers.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Unfortunately looking at the trailers and determining the number of balls in each is also not reliable particularly in the heat of the match. I think FIRST needs to do away with these supposedly "leveling" rules. Some teams will inevitably be better than others and they should not be punished for building a more effective robot. For me it is inspiring to see a team go out and truly dominate a match with superior driving, strategy, and robot. I must say this year watching 217 and 67 in various matches was a wonderful experience.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

First of all, congratulations to all the teams for their achievements. I don't want to take anything away from the winners but I do have some concerns about the way the judging went.
I think the most obvious example was the All Star Rookie award. There were some really fantastic rookie robots out there and a lot of people who struggled to make it to Atlanta. But this DOES feed into the definition of a rookie team and more specifically... WHEN you become a rookie team.
Team 3091 is an excellent team and They have given enormous support to FLL and FTC... However, when Woodie was chronicling their activities and reasons they were selected, one line stood out to me. They had done fund raising for FLL/FTC over the summer and sponsorship of FLL/FTC teams before the start of the 2009 season. In my estimation, you become a rookie team on Jan 3 2009 and should be judged by your rookie season IF it is indeed a rookie award. I must have missed something because I have never seen a guide detailing what you should do the year before you become a rookie team. Normally, a rookie team is not expected to have extensively promote the FIRST family because they are... well... new. (I don't think you are even ALLOWED to submit a Chairman's Award bid as a rookie.)
I have no problem with the award being given to 3091. But I have a problem with the reasons the judges chose to give it to them. There seemed to be a bias due to their involvement with FLL and FTC and it made for an uneven playing field for the other rookie teams. Not all areas have FLL and FTC, and FRC is often the first competition that arrives (though I think that may be changing) so the opportunity to help isn't even there.
Still, I'm sure the judges had their reasons but I hope prior involvement does not become a requirement to win a rookie award at the championships.

My 2 cents

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

So I guess you are trying to say that because they went above and beyond what most if not all rookie teams do, then they should not be allowed to compete because most other rookie teams can not accomplish as much as they have. This sounds incredibly flawed to me. We had the privilege to play with 3091 at Peachtree and they are a great group of young people. They are without a doubt a real rookie team, but they happen to be very dedicated and they have some very strong mentorship from many local atlanta teams. Rather than saying it is unfair for a team who is capable of so much to win this award maybe all the future rookie teams should look to this as an example of what should be done to win the Championship Rookie all-star award. It sounds to me like they are already on there way to winning an EI award or a Chairmans award which should be applauded.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Without a doubt they are an excellent team and a great bunch of young people. I believe I said that. And I never said they were in anyway unfair. And you are quite right, they are on their way to a chairman's award. My point, that you have horribly twisted, is that they should win on the merits of being rookies... there are other awards... like the judges award that would cover the extraordinary work they did. In fact I wouldn't mind if they had been given BOTH a Judge's for their work and the All Star rookie for being an exceptional rookie team. I'd actually wouldn't be mentioning this if they had. I just feel the work they did PRIOR to becoming a rookie team should not have been a consideration for this particular award. Just splitting hairs what "rookie season" means.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

I think rookie season should encompass the entire time before a team finishes competing in their first season. All of the planning and team building as well as fundraising that occurs before the official season is just as important as what goes on during the six week build season and ensuing competition.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Effectively, we are now in the 2010 season. It started at about 6:45 pm EDT Saturday. Existing teams are free to do tons of pre-build-season work, both on robot prototypes and extra-curricular activities; why not rookies? (Just don't use any of the parts you fabricate before kickoff on your 2010 competition robot.) If there's no FLL team in your area to mentor, start one.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

What a team can put in their rookie and chairmans award, in my opinion, starts right after the end of the previous season. Team 2415 came to me my senior year, 2007. As soon as my season was over, i began helping them plan events, activities, etc. "rookie" year is defined the first season a team competes. Its clearly defined by first. Why did 3091 have a easier time because they were involved in FLL or FTC? They helped others...isnt that the point of FIRST?

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Which doesn't change the fact that the more teams fold, the less often FIRST achieves its goals. Telling soldiers that it's their job to charge machine-gun nests doesn't change the fact that charging machine-gun nests is hard and a lot of soldiers will die trying. Perhaps FIRST needs to change the program so that it doesn't cost $500-2,000 per student per year to be successful? What if there were an exciting STEM robotics program that only cost $150-200 per student, AND allowed more hands-on engineering opportunities for students?

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Well you can indeed plan for it and work towards that goal. That sounds good to me, but there is a, albeit small, risk that we have had our last FIRST season. You never know, so UNofficially the season has started as you so astutely pointed out. Why not rookies? Well... can you actually be a rookie before you register for 2010? I don't know the answer to that question and therein lies the problem. FIRST has not clearly defined the WHEN part. Arguably though, when you pay your registration fee because they will not give you a kit of parts until you do.
Hey I never said I had a problem with local FLL teams. There are plenty around. And start a FLL team? Been there done that. SO I'm good.
And just as a reminder... all this is just my OPINION. But I also have the opinion that FIRST is not perfect so, what do I know.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

We sat on the far side of Galileo for the finals and closing ceremonies, at the very top, and it was very hard to hear the announcements. It was speculated that perhaps the speakers were aimed for the top tier of seats as these are closed off during the rest of the competitions.

Dave's Top Ten List was shown only on the middle screen and not on the side screens, so we still have no idea what he said (there was a lot of laughter so it must have been good). The flags and equipment blocked our view of the main screen. Will the list be posted somewhere?

There was a closing video that we also didn't see, shown as we were headed out at the end. It would have been nice if they announced that there was going to be one at the very end so we could have stayed in our seats and watched it. (Rumor is that there is a brief shot of our team's Green Man Group in it). Again, will this be posted as well?

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Oh... Hey Thank you... You FOUND it.

"rookie" year is defined the first season a team competes

and from the FIRST website

"Each year, the FRC season begins in early January with a Kickoff "


SOoooo you've made my point... the rookie year starts in January according to FIRST.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Interesting...do they also say when the season ends? I would guess that's probably some time around the third week of April?

:)

The season is only four and a half months long, but we work all year long. And a rookie team simply cannot compete in FRC if they don't form their team and do fundraising and whatnot well before January.

I try to learn from successfull teams....

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Hey I don't make the rules I only read them and follow them. and no... you are a rookie until the next season... just like in baseball so it is a full year until January rolls around again.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

Until the Michigan System is imposed nationwide, I think FIRST should involve some sort of at-large bids for teams that do not qualify from regionals.

After pairing with 40 for eliminations in Chesapeake, and losing by three points in the Third match of the finals, not only were we disappointed that we did not qualify for nationals, but that 40 did not. 40 had the best autonomous scoring that I had seen this year, and reached the finals in both of their regionals. Luckily they made it to Atlanta off the waitlist, and Captained an alliance in Divisional Eliminations. I think there are five or six more teams that didn't qualify that had the potential to do the same thing in Atlanta.

From what I can tell, 40 is the only team that made it in off the waitlist, while there were many other teams I can think of that would've greatly added to the overall competitive level in Atlanta. In watching webcasts of Atlanta, I saw teams that preregistered for Atlanta that barely ran and functioned. I understand some teams decide to preregister for Atlanta instead of competing at a second Regional, but Atlanta is supposed to be The World Championships of FIRST. If FIRST is to be considered a sport, I think something needs to be changed about this. I think preregistration should be for Hall of Fame teams, Previous World Champions, and Division Champions. After that, and filling Atlanta with the qualifiers, FIRST should have some sort of system similar to the Michigan Points to fill up the divisions, until the whole country is on that system.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

For future reference it appears you live really close to a McMaster-Carr storefront. It is much better than an electrical specialty storefront because it literally has everything including the kitchen sink. That is where I order all my wire for my projects. If I actually have the right location for your team it isn't that far away.

Re: Lessons Learned - The Negative
 

That's the thing. We're not sure if FIRST is a sport or like one. We are told that it is not about the game or the robots but that seems like the main and most fun part. Even the game rules are written seriously (little too seriously) to make the game and the robot serious business.

Clarity is lacking.