Re: Collegiate FIRST competition
 

Took no offense, and I totally agree with you. In college other programs WILL appeal to me. I know this because I signed up for the Robotics team after watching the Nova documentary on the DARPA Grand Challenge. I was partially disappointed with the FRC experience, not saying that it was not fun or anything, but I guess I did not push my self last year. I came in expecting either fully autonomous robots or something like battle bots. Never expected a seemingly random game with lots of different elements put together. At the end, it just seemed like an advanced RC machine. I'm not complaining, but it is forcing me to get out of my comfort zone. FRC just felt like tee ball than baseball. It was so restricted.

Seriously though, I would LOVE to participate in the Grand Challenges. Just the thought of it excites me.

Re: Collegiate FIRST competition
 

I'm sorry you feel that way about FIRST. I've played multible sports and have found FRC the most enjoyable extra curricular I've ever done. (probably a good thing sense I'm not about to go pro in any sports.)

Back on topic however, as a Junior and possible competitor of this college level FIRST I would have to say that I would probably would not perticipate. Too much of one thing isn't good, even FIRST. After 4 years of FIRST in high school, I think 4 more in college (persumably) would be a tad bit much. I would much prefer to go through college getting a degree (and hopefully a job.) Only after that I would then go back and consider being a mentor.

In the end though, I have a feeling it'll be successful. It's sort of like back in the day when people weren't sure about having robots on alliances with each other. In the end everything will work it's way out.

Re: Collegiate FIRST competition
 

Oh no, you misunderstood. I Love FRC. but once I have tasted it, I yearn for more. I find FRC not satisfying my crave. It doesn't mean I don't like it, it means its not enough:yikes: If you know what I mean

Re: Collegiate FIRST competition
 

It's very helpful to master tee ball before playing baseball.

Re: Collegiate FIRST competition
 

And a career is getting you ready for...?

Re: Collegiate FIRST competition
 

Off-topic rant: I get tired of the somewhat constant FIRST bashing of new ideas and programs on C.D. Appearantly the only good thing FIRST ever did was start FRC and then they are supposed to do nothing but support the veteran teams with infusions of cash and not change any of the control systems or elements of the game as change is bad. Can we just ask for folks who want to repeately fan the flames of lack of $$$ for veteran FRC teams, and how VEX is better then FTC to look for appropriate times and places to make those posts other than everything new about FIRST?


On topic rant: Valid points have been made by FIRST alumni in colleges that support FRC teams or are involved in other and possibly higher degree of difficulty engineering challenges. I've not done the research but my guess is something very far from 100% of colleges and universities in America have engineering students, or other science/mathematics, business, workforce program traininig certifications, junior colleges/technical schools actually have students compete in such programs as several of you have posted. This is not to say that FIRST is 100% perfect and in a competition with outher programs.

Please re-read a quote from an undisputed authority of FIRST and STEM type competitions Dave Lavery,
Dave on VEX verses Tetrix
Dave on Coopertition Patent


Final point in my rant:
How is it that the VEX college challenge is not controversial or such a threat to FRC and VEX high school teams that it has existed as a pilot and now in it's second year of competition? Is there a double standard or just ignorance?

Re: Collegiate FIRST competition
 

Ignoring sponsorship money as a sticking point on this, I admit I do not think this is a great idea for FIRST. I think this will drain resources from FIRST and its supporters (volunteers not sponsors).

My biggest objection to this, however, is that I feel college students should get out of the nest eventually. Let's face it, for many of us FIRST is a comfortable. We have our old friends, the mentors we grew up with, and we even have our old role models. I don't think I am alone when I say that I am very comfortable in the FIRST community because it is familiar. I think that college is a time to see new things and find new communities. That doesn't mean you should stop being involved in FIRST but that you should be willing to branch out. Sometimes I think that is hard for people and I see this program possibly making it harder.

I won't pass judgement on this program until I have seen it and it has had a few years to get on its feet. I will however urge all college age students to think before they mentor or before they do this. Evaluate your options, there are a lot of really cool programs out there, do your research.

(Also, I guess I'm in the minority when I think that FLL is the best thing FIRST ever did, FRC is a distant second)

Andrew, on your final point I want you to take my opinion with a grain of salt, I am not terribly familiar with the VEX program or competition structure. I have looked into the Vex Collegiate competition though. I guess I could raise the same objections to that as I do to this. Maybe it is just less high profile.

Re: Collegiate FIRST competition
 

As far as being in college to learn about engineering, To my personal experience, my friends at Illinois Tech Robotics(ITR) (Illinois Institute of Technology) state that they learn more from the projects we do, hands on, at ITR than they do in their classes. As a significant portion of the Committee bringing forward this proposal for a pilot is students, and alumni of IIT, all related to the Illinois Tech Robotics group, it is with this experience that we push towards creating a game for college students, to continue hands-on education, that is unparalleled in any classroom (that we are aware of). We seek to continue to create excitement for engineering, and also to help promote the other levels through the awards structure (With our events point system, we place a considerably higher value on the non-robot awards)

A little about ITR:
We have a heavy focus on mentoring and working with FIRST programs. We were in fact founded with this purpose(in 2005), building our own robots came a couple years after founding.
Our recently retired (a week ago) president and head of the College Level FIRST pilot group, Chris Jones is also the Illinois FIRST Senior Mentor(with Karina Powell), and has mentored a few teams during his time at IIT/ITR (he is presently a Grad Student). We have multiple members (including myself) on the Midwest Regional Planning Committee. Our faculty adviser is the FTC Affiliate Partner for Illinois, so we help run the Chicago FTC Kickoff, scrimmages, and the Illinois Championship.
One of the roles of our outgoing V.P. Philanthropy is to run the Chicago/Illinois FRC Kickoff (presently me).
Among our members are a few team mentors, and we run workshops for local area teams often.

Last year the club accumulated just under 5000 community service hours (nearly all with FIRST)

In addition to that we have 4 major robot projects ongoing. With 1 complete for the year.
Jerry Saunders Creative Design Competition (which we won last year with one of our three robots, Roslund)
A Quadcopter for the College-Pilot
A swarm of roombas that will be networked and autonomously search for something as a collective group.
An exoskeletal leg project to increase agility
The complete project is IIT's Pumpkin launch, which ITR placed first in.

The organization also performs it's own fund-raising, with many in-kind donations, in addition to supplemental funds from the university managed student activities fund.

I throw all this out there just to give perspective on what we (the College-FIRST planning committee) know is possible with an organized and motivated group of students.

Re: College level First!
 

Some great points in there Tristan. Thank you for taking the time to work through it.

To address some of your concerns about the lack of limitations and regulations, our thinking here is that this pilot is collaborative. Teams will be discussing their designs as the pilot proceeds and we will work together to spot trouble spots early. We want this to be an opportunity for teams to balance as many design constraints as possible and innovate on levels not possible in the other programs, but you're right, safety is hugely important.

As for the range of robot capabilities and the focus of the program, that's the beauty of the way we've structured this program. To start, there is a tremendously low barrier to entry for this sort of robot (closer to FTC than FRC). But more importantly, the winner in this event is not whoever builds the most agile robot... it's the team who executes, who reaches out to the FIRST community who is awarded our Event Champion. Sure, we'll select a game and play tournament style matches on Saturday, but there will be just as much focus on all the other things that go into the teams. If you have ideas on how to make that even more so, we would love to hear them!

I recommend you (and anyone else with well thought-out suggestions) head to the FIRSTForge website, join the project and share your thoughts with the community. We're keeping this as open as possible for those interested in taking the initiative as you have!

Re: Collegiate FIRST competition
 

I'm actually curious to see how the pilot goes this year since we are looking to start a FIRST alumni organization at NC State next year.

Re: College level First!
 

I thought about joining the project on FIRSTforge to share this, but figure it is just as well posted here.

I love engineering challenges at the college level. They give students an ability to apply their knowledge beyond the classroom and in many cases keep students motivated to learn. Now there are an abundant amount of these challenges already (FSAE, Mini-baja, moon buggy, SME robots, Aero, IGVC, etc) each one of them presents a different opportunity for students to focus on a specific thing. That being said there are a few things that differ with the proposed format than other competitions which in my opinion will negatively impact the competition.

1) New game every year: While FRC is fun this way in a college environment all sports and most engineering clubs have the same rules year after year. This is due to the fact that most clubs take their previous works and build off of successes and failures. Iterative design is the key that keeps teams and clubs going, so each year knowledge can be passed from older members to younger members. Tackling the same or similar challenges allows people to focus on perfecting aspects of their systems rather than hurrying to try and get something complete.

2)Multiple challenges: One competition would be sufficient to challenge students to push their boundaries. By making multiple challenges with different feature sets required for each you are inadvertently causing the overall performance of each challenge to fall, as people will not be able to focus on solving a problem and with divided efforts comes less time on each element. In a sense it is being a Jack of all trades and a master of none.

3)Not focusing on the robot: This is the biggest one. To put it bluntly, I would never compete in a technical competition where the performance of my robot is not the deciding factor for becoming "the event champion." After reading through your handbook the "team spirit award" has the same weight as the best on field (or air) performance. With FRC the other awards (chairman's, EI) are all important because it is typically these things that put into perspective the big picture of what is important in life, yet the focus is still the robot. In a college environment I highly doubt that any dean would be satisfied hearing that his team was the best robot but lost to the team that had a cooler t-shirt and cheered louder. You are not catering to students in the sense that you want to inspire appreciation of Science and technology, you are presenting a no-nonsense engineering challenge where the robot performance should be the only metric. To give an example from the FSAE competition, there are different elements (braking, steering, acceleration, etc) and the requirements for a design presentation, but it is never a factor if a team spreads the message of FSAE in the community (although many teams do show their cars off).

All in all i think there is always room for another college engineering competition as different students have different interests and the goal is to challenge people within their specialty, but if you follow the model set by other FIRST programs and focus on things other than the engineering your program will not rise to the level of success it could achieve otherwise.

Re: College level First!
 

That is one of the things we have considered, One of the models we see, is the Jerry Saunders Creative Design Competition, and while it changes every year, it doesn't completely change, you still tend to use the same robot every year, but with tweaks and modifications.

This is something we haven't set in stone yet, so please do join the FIRSTForge site, and help us figure out how to carry on with this element of the competition.

Re: College level First!
 

To address your third concern, the weights set forth in the manual are very much just placeholders.

This concern of yours highlights the HUGE variability in what people think. You can ask for the program to be perfect, for it to not take away from FRC, for robots to be built for almost nothing... but ultimately these things are impossible. This award structure is how we will recognize that there is more to the engineering challenge than the short competition; there is more to FIRST than the robot; there is more to a team than the driver on the field; and so on.

As for the same robots each year, just because the challenge may vary doesn't mean a team can't build off of the same platform. This program has no restrictions in place to prevent re-entry next year. Of course, this is a pilot and we've never done it before, so who knows?

The reason there are multiple challenges this year is that we have no idea how well any of these robots will perform. We also have no idea what sorts of challenges the robots will be able to complete. This 3-game triathlon format is how we will utilize our experiment to take as much data as possible. We increment the difficulty and test out various air and ground modalities with the hope of receiving as much feedback as possible about what people like and dislike following the event. Do you like one game more than another? Tell us!

Thanks for the critical thinking and great feedback!

Re: College level First!
 

I agree with Greg, make it more about the Robot and whittle it down to one game.

This is college level, it should be about the robot when it comes to victory. Although the other areas are important, engineers are primarily paid to make good products.

Personally, it'd be the difference for someone like me even considering competing or not; some people only like competitive competitions.

Re: Collegiate FIRST competition
 

Is there any way to still get a team involved?