Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

I'm afraid this is a misunderstanding of what KISS is about. It does not mean that your goals and capabilities are "simple", it means that the way you achieve them is simple. There is always a simpler and a more complex way to accomplish the same task, KISS simply means that you always strive for the simpler way. It means that your first design idea is probably not the simplest one, and you should keep working to simplify. Complexity leads to break-down, and there is a balance between complexity and performance.

Many FRC world champion robots have been elegantly simple, which is one of the reasons they were able to survive the long road to becoming champion. 2010 was our most successful season ever, and also one of our simplest robots ever. Never sacrifice your goals for what you want your robot to do, but never quit trying to make it do it in a simpler way. That is what competence and competing at a higher level are about.

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

I taped a relevant quote on the TechnoKats' programming computer when I became the team's software mentor in 2004:

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

Hi Garret,
As many others have said...
You need to think about this from two perspectives: "success within the competition" vs. "success within FIRST itself"... though many people will immediately dismiss "success within the competition" as irrelevant, I feel that is an ignorant, and naive thing to say.

The robotics competition itself is the mechanism which FIRST teams use to inspire students. As you know, this robotics competition provides a "problem" which students are supposed to solve by working with mentors using an engineering design process. The first step in any engineering process is to define your problem -- what are you trying to do?

Now each team answers that question differently. You need to determine what your team values.
Most people say: "We're trying to win a World Championship!" (148 does this) and centers the design process around solving the problem of: "How do we win a World Championship?" -- Lots of teams use this as their ultimate goal.

To me, it is the obvious choice... FIRST gives us a game, robot rules, scoring criteria, a tournament structure, a series of regionals, and a World Championship. At the most fundamental level, the "problem" we are presented is: "Design a robot to win this game." The cool thing is, this is a fun and fulfilling problem to solve! Not only that, but it is an easy problem to engage students in (you can trick them into getting excited about engineering, because everyone is naturally wired to love competition).

When it comes to FIRST (you've all heard the cliche) -- we're all winners.
When it comes to the competition: to the engineering design challenge, we're NOT all winners -- some solutions are better than others.

Do people really believe it is hurtful to acknowledge failure in the engineering process is possible? All engineering SOLUTIONS (the robots are our solutions) are not created equal -- in the real world, or in FIRST. If you remove the potential to achieve excellence, you remove a goal to strive for, and you encourage mediocrity.

So... why is it bad to say: "We failed to achieve at the highest level..." ?

On 148 our goal is: "Do everything we can to achieve excellence."
We're not disappointed if we don't achieve excellence, so long as we did everything we could in our pursuit of it. You always want to make sure you leave everything on the table. We're constantly searching to improve such that we can move toward this end. I think that is the magic in our process, and I believe our students have really latched onto it. This philosophy works at all resource levels -- it doesn't matter what your team has..

It is NOT possible to fail within FIRST.
It IS possible to fail within the competition (whatever your criteria for failure may be).

Disappointment is different than discouragement.
A little disappointment at failing to achieve your goals is (imho) a healthy thing. It will make you try a little harder next time. It will force you to evaluate the process you used, and work towards improvement in the future. As long as you're not discouraged... rock on!

I think this is some of the BEST of what the competition has to offer... on 148, we celebrate failures as opportunities for improvement.

So here comes the controversial part:
Teams have NO excuse for setting their goals so low in FRC. This drives me NUTS!
It doesn't take a whole lot to be a competitive team with a competitive program. If you set your goals high, if you work towards those goals, if you take advantage of the PLETHORA of widely available resources and if you're smart about it -- I believe any level of team can play on Einstein. Instead of just figuring out how to build a custom drivetrain, how about you focus on the problem FIRST gives us, and figure out how to win a world championship with the resources you have?

By neglecting to use the kitbot you've done yourself a terrible disservice. The engineering challenge presented to us involved scoring points in a goal, not building a custom drivetrain. Maybe if you had used the kitbot, you could have used your (self described) limited resources to build a better mechanism for playing the game. Maybe you could have had time to modify and expand on the kitbot foundation to better play the game. There are plenty of opportunities for learning in this type of design...

You've got gracious down, but where is your professionalism?
Striving to build the "best robot" is a fine goal -- don't hate on it. Pursuit of this goal will result in plenty of inspiration. Probably more inspiration than pursuit of a lesser goal...

-John

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

I have looked at it from both perspectives but I apologize that my post only reflected one. I do agree with what you said.

We don't set goals low. Our goal was to build or at least make an honest attempt to build a robot that could do every part of the challenge. However due to inexperience within our team we were unable to make it great in every part, but we could still do most of the things our robot just had a trouble pushing the balls because the part of the front of the robot got damaged and as a result the robot kind of stunk at pushing balls into goals.
Just so you know we have a team of 30 students (with 80% of them being first-time participants) and only 1 mentor who could come to every practice and only 3 more who could show up on weekends (sometimes). Our advisor came to only one practice and a student handled all of the administrative/fundraising by himself. We also had to build out of a garage. Our machine shop this year consisted of a 12" bandsaw and drill press, with some (mostly my family's) hand tools. The students did everything with minimal help (with exception of aluminum welding because we had a sponsor who volunteered to do that).
Yes our resources were minimal, but when it comes down to it our students (including me) learn a whole lot and that is what matters. I apologize if this sounds angry (I am not) but I do not like when people generalize their own situation and good fortune and assume that it is the same for everyone.

Yes this is true, but our robot was not only about using a "custom-drivetrain" that was our main feature but our robot did have parts for every part of the challenge, we did end up removing parts for suspension and ball control due to weight. Our robot was competitive but was not as competitive as others because of some unwise design decisions to to a lack of knowledge.

I apologize that my post reflected this belief. I am not hating on building the best robot or trying to win. I am not hating on anything. I am just saying that measuring success only on scoring points is wrong. I sincerely apologize if I have offended anyone. I understand your points I am really sorry that I let my own frustrations come out in my post.

Also here is a picture of my teams robot just so you can see where I am coming from.

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

Garret, I am happy you posted your opinions from that point of view. It must have been difficult to complete a robot with a small budget and so few mentors.

I would think it wise to do all you can to get a mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer and a programmer to help. As an electrical engineer I have learned through seeing my mistakes and those of others and can predict where problems can occur and find quick, easy and inexpensive solutions to many problems. As long as I am explaining why things need to be a certain way and answering questions the learning will happen. An experienced mechanical engineer would have been able to tell you where you can safely use cheaper materials and where you really shouldn't.

I do realize that getting mentor help is not easy but I think the rewards for your team would be great, not just in being more competitive but in learning more, enjoying it more and in keeping the team together.

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

Definitely true. As a matter of fact we have been doing just that. Over the summer our team went through a complete restructuring and we have developed a plan for a sustainable program. We have already secured several thousand more dollars in funding several companies are already saying they want to supply mentors. We also have managed to secure a build site at one of the schools. We are expanding our outreach and are trying to restart the FLL programs at the Elementary schools.

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

That's great to hear. Sounds like you can look forward to an exciting season.

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

I want to ask all of you something: What are your average budget you guys have for building the robot every year? Excluding registration fees and ect, just solely for building the robot. We still need tons of money this year, we want to get a 2nd regional, so thats an extra 5k. I think there has to be an easier way to get money. More productive way too

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

Budget: ~$1000 to build robot. $5000 for registration. $4000 for MSC.
Mentors: College Mentors: 5 Professional Engineers: 1 (only made weekend meetings)
Students: 5 (One of whom was a German exchange student and a rookie, 2 others were just rookies)

Record: (21-21-3)

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

So with a team of 7 students you made a robot? I must say, impressive. We had around 40 people last year and we did mediocre:o

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

More students is not better if they don't work well together.

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

I second that! :) (You silly teams that can build out side in shorts and a t-shirt and not be cold. :P).

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

Our team of 5 students built a competitive robot because we used what was given to us. Instead of a custom welded chassis we used the KoP C channel. Instead of an upper welded chassis we also used ANOTHER KoP C channel. Instead of custom transmissions we used the KoP Toughboxes. In fact, I would say that the only major part of our machine that wasn't KoP was the ball control system (a simple double pincher) and our kicker.

Things I would have changed: I would have gotten rid of my stupid objection to doing a simple pneumatic kicker and focused on doing that with a relatively flat trajectory at a height of ~1.5'. I also wish we had tried to check if 8wd with 4" wheels could be made to go over the bump. (All checks were done in Inventor prior to being constructed)

Things I was happy with: The 6wd worked well, the KoP frame has a little too much drop for my liking with the 8" IFI wheels though.

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

Get the robot done faster. My team has a tendency to nit pick and get nothing done while the drivers sit in a corner. Last year, our teacher took the robot apart seven different times, and then yelled at us for not being able to drive it right.

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

if we knew what we know now, i think we would have tried to get the robot done much faster. we went right down to the wire to get the bot finished, and because of it, we never got a chance to work on our hanger prototype. our bot was pretty good last year, but a hanger would have made it very good. the decision process was really slow last year, and that kinda hurt us in the end. we still built an awesome machine, but with more time, we could of had a great machine.