If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

I'm particularly curious and bored this morning, so here's something that's been on my mind for awhile for a thread.

If you could re-do your 2010 build and competition season over again, how would you do it differently, and why?

There was a lot of potentially missed opportunity this year. Only one team successfully pulled off the redirection strategy. Not a lot of teams had adequate ball control, zone traversion ability, or hanging. What mistakes did you make, and how would you learn from them if 2010 repeated itself? Anything from strategy to build to competition.

My answer below to kick things off.

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Strategy wise, I would have probably pursued prototyping a redirector. A lot of teams are going to say it, but 2791 brought up the idea and quickly dismissed it because we didn't think we could get the balls to reach all the way over to the goals, among other reasons. We had the "midfield oriented" design approach, we knew the center was the most important, we had the high traction... we just missed the opportunity to close the last link in ball acquisition.

In build season, I wish we abandoned hanging and spent all of that time making sure ball control was rock solid. We saw and talked to (?) 1726 and from that we thought ball control would be pretty easy to do with a roller. We obviously thought wrong. I'm tempted to say we should have tried harder to get over the bumps, but it was a main focus for our team throughout build and we were nearly there. We just ran out of time at the end to get over.

In competition, I wouldn't have changed a thing. We drove as we probably should have for both events. We picked great partners both times. Ultimately, we did what we came to do.


Your turn :D

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

Kicker durability. We put a lot of surgical tubing on the kicker to get adequate range, which put a lot of forces on the points where the tubing was attached. Result? Our kicker was cooked by the end of Palmetto. (1398's failed midway through Atlanta.)

Hanging and redirection would've been nice, but the complexity required to let us keep going through the tunnels means I'm not losing any sleep over those calls.

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

We would have built somewhere with less snow :)

(and stuck with one hanger idea long enough to make it work well)

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

We would have persued a vertical hanger,
gone with a a non-articulating drive train using 6" wheels instead of the 4" we used,
I would have liked to use a cam based kicker instead of the winch reset system we used.

I don't think our strategy or anything like that would have changed. I also don't think we would have built a redirecting robot. It violates a couple of our standard rules on what can win a game, in addition to the fact you need at least half a field to build and tune that that design.

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

If we had to change anything, we most likely would use a thinner wall aluminum instead of stock to make our chassis. With the new weight we would have built a vertical hanger arm. I think we would also paint the robot black with some orange, instead of orange with some black.

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

I feel like our drivetrain held us back this year. Not only was the four wheel design absolutely horrible, but the chaining on the drivetrain was extremely unreliable. If we had thought about the 8-WD and implemented that, it would have made our entire game play much more intense.

But anyways we learned from our mistakes (hopefully) and we'll have a robot with a much more reliable DT next year.

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

I would have liked for the team to have made decisions faster.

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

I think a lot of teams struggled with the decisions this year. At the opening scrimmage before the ship date, it seemed evident that teams were not as prepared as they had been in the past.

I think our hind site would have us using the IRI drivetrain from day one, and hanging much faster.

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

This was the only year I can remember in my time in FIRST that I don't regret any of our strategy decision. Where we missed was completely in execution. We knew going with a hanging recycling bot was going to be tough, but unique, so we thought we'd roll the dice.

The changes I would make would only pertain to specific design choices (materials, motor selection, etc.)

-Brando

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

Hmm, well even with a decent robot there is always room for improvement so I'll take a shot at it.

Possessor, I wished we could have explored a pincher more. Our dual stage vacuum was really good (it has the power to pick up a trackball), but the ball had to be right where the suction cup was to get a hold on it. We added "active shepherding" which was two belts in front of our robot to pull balls from the side towards the suction cup which worked well but wasn't amazingly effective.

I wish we could have built a vertical hanger and hopefully using gas shocks like teams 67 and 1625. Our original impression was that if we could score just two balls in the time it takes us to hang then a hanger was a waste of weight and build However we didn't always have the time to score two balls in 20 seconds, and as we found on Archimedes, North Carolina, and IRI a hang could have been the difference between moving on or tying as we could score the same as our opponents but 4 bonus points would always give them a win.

Beside that there wouldn't be much I'd change, maybe used a different material instead of 80-20 to avoid the weight and moving of parts.

I would say 2010 was the best year so far for our team with one regional win, one finalist, captain and quarter-finalists on Archimedes and IRI, as well as various awards to go along with it made it a very good year for our team. Even with the changes to our robot we wouldn't have done spectacularly better, I'm satisfied with how far we went! :)

p.s. Happy Birthday Brandon!

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

Thanks!

I was trying to figure out how you knew it was my birthday until I saw the birthday cake next to my name...I somehow have never seen that before in my ~6+ years on CD.

-Brando

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

Looking back on the 2010 season, I really wish we would've thought of the design as a whole from day one. There was too much of a disconnect between those designing the machine and those actually building it. In the end it ended up as more of a hodgepodge of ideas than anything.

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

I would have learned that FeedWatchDogAndWait in Labview was a synchronous call rather than asynchronous before instead of after the competition.

I would have scrapped the mecanum wheels.

I would plan to win.

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

Haha, I have my sources at Northeastern! :p




jk

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

A quick note on hanging with regards to strategy.

If your team has the ability to score more than 2 points in 20 seconds, then in theory, it would have the ability to score 12 points in a 2 minute match. Ironically. I think well over 50% of the matches in qualifying had a winning score of 6 points or less.
With an auto-mode that scores 2 from midfield (there is a straight line angle that an 18" wide kicker can kick both 2 balls from mid-zone into the goal), and two points hanging, this would mean that you would only have to score those 2 that came back into the midfield (2 scores in 100 seconds) to score 6 points, on your own without changing zones. This by itself would have won the majority of FRC qualifying matches.

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

Moving forward, we will simply realize the talent we have and try to reorganize where appropriate. Case study from lessons learned:
With a Mecanum setup, kickers on 2 sides seemed like a great idea...

• A power kicker facing backwards would allow the driver to maintain a 'facing away' orientation when in the far field. The idea here was to keep the driver's natural tendencies natural (i.e. not 'flip' turn directions when facing the wrong way) while far across the field. This theoretically would have allowed us to line up faster. This kicker never made it to full fruition due to a week of snow.
• A medium kicker that allowed us to play midfield or close field. This one was successful.
• The trade-off was to forgo hanging.
• (side note) Karthik probably would not have approved since we were planning to play all 3 zones. Coincidentally with DC being a Week 1 regional in 2010 and a variety of skill-leveled teams in attendance, we wound up having to play all 3 zones. I only mention that because a student mentioned it to me in Atlanta.

With a Mecanum setup, side rollers for the balls on the wall also seemed very viable; coincidentally that would have been unique and allowed us to easily win DC.

• The 5th Gear Simulation revealed that most balls wound up along a wall. Early in competition we found that those that barely missed the goal would roll out directly in front of the goal; if they were not hit just right, usually they'd end up on the side wall.
• The choice was made to handle balls on the wall.
• A side roller that ran the length of the robot side could be strafed up to and run in the direction of the goal.
• The difference was poor execution because our best builders were either on FTC (new to the team) or on Build 2 (parents of new kids) with the field elements, bumpers, and general build supervision.

The strategy and direction was solid; we missed the boat though.

Moving forward, more individual components need to be simulated: especially any complex ones. Naturally-articulated drive seemed like a great idea, but also caused some headache due to its tendency to pop up the front of the robot when accelerating. It wasn't the worst decision or outcome, but I wonder what things would have been like with a rigid pneumatic-wheel drive.

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

Strategy wise, I never bought it when teams claimed they didn't hang because scoring 2 points in 20 seconds was "easy". For one, hang time can be shortened (1114 and 254 are great examples of sub 5 second hangs) or nullified entirely (buzzer beating lifts from 67 or 1625). So it might not even take the full 20 seconds. Secondly, many people I talked to claiming this didn't really have data on how well their own robot would score points. It just "looked easy".

That being said, my team wasted a lot of effort on hanging that we could have spent playing the ball game well, and that's ultimately more important than hanging this year. If you can't score any balls at all, you're a liability no matter how repeatable your hangs are and how good your defense is. Not kicking in auto lost a lot of teams games.

What IKE touched on is a good reason why seemingly average teams like 230 were so successful this year. They called the game very well, prioritizing on accurate autonomus shots, a reliable hang, and a few other points in between. They made 2-3 in auto, kicked a few easy points over the bumps in the midzone, and hung. They won WPI without any kind of ball magnet and played well into the eliminations at CT and Championship. 230's a good model for doing exactly as much as you need and no more.

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

We likely would have made our hanger faster and would have powered it with gas springs.

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

Each team has to judge their own build capability during the build season. Ask yourself, who are you to make the call for them when they decide that it is indeed easier with their tools to try to improve their kicker rather than construct an entirely new mechanism for 2 points, so long as the points get scored?

Case and Point:
Capability is coupled deep into strategy, even in a commercial market. Can every flat tablet be an iPad, with its ground-breaking features in some areas and shortcomings in other? No. But other companies in the market have tablets that have similar features, have less DRM, are cheaper, and have a less-aggressive marketing campaign. In the tablet market, iPad may be a pop culture superstar, but it gets major fail-points for getting any real work done due to its DRM (also known as iTunes), lack of keyboard, and lack of compatibility with common everyday devices. So for companies entering the market who play to their own strengths rather than Apple's, they may find that they have a superior product to a niche and are able to make money just fine. Those who enter the market and try to directly compete with Apple are at high risk for failure: getting past the marketing may only lead to intellectual property barriers.

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

Pay closer attention to the differences between the "Real" field elements and the "Low Cost/Team" Field elements. We built our tower using 4x4 posts for legs and spent the next six weeks figuring out how to reach the horizontal bar at the top. We removed our useless hanging device before our first match. Had we been staring at a tower with the true vertical pole (or at least thought about it), perhaps we would have come up with the superior solution (curl) to the "true" problem, which was getting above the platform, not reaching for a bar.

We learned a general design rule for future reference (regardless of the game): If a task needs to be accomplished only once during the match and doesn't need to be reversed, consider stored energy as the power source.

Good thread, but perhaps it should differentiate between "If we knew then what we know now" answers and "Considering the information that was available at the time, how could we have made better choices, and how can we do better in 2011?"

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

Sidebar: The practice field instructions FIRST gave for a cheap version tower were atrocious. The 4X4 posts they recommended were not a correct substitute for that situation.

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

Overall we were pretty pleased with our robot. We had an excellent hanger (altough it took us probably 7 or 8 seconds to hang minimum.) We could cross the bump easily at any speed. We often scored two balls from the far zone in autonomous.

I think our biggest weakness was the ball roller. I think we were contacting too high on the ball which made the downward force too high.

Another potential improvement is that we didn't change anything on the robot from the time we bagged. We won KC, had a narrow loss in the finals at 10,000 lakes and a narrow loss in the quarterfinals on Newton. All this with the robot exactly as bagged (except of maintenance) at the end of the build season. Had we worked on the ball roller during the competion season we likely could have done a bit better. I'm on the fence about this. I like calling the robot done on the last day of the build season and then seeing how our decisions work out - a bit sentimental maybe.

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

Well for the past 3 years, 548 has worried too much about drive trains and forgone the actual game piece manipulation. Make a long story short, we made around 8 drive trains during the season, yes, we successfully built a new one each week with 2 in week one, and modified the competition one before states. With so much work put on the drive train, after 6 weeks of build, we had a linear kicker that was never tested, 2 hangers that didn't work, and no ball possessor. This resulted in copying a ball possessor from HOT team and our kicker breaking for our first full day of competition. Lucky for us our robot found a home in the near zone and played very well there, even though it was poorly designed for the mid zone. So with our team not having our final drive train till 10 weeks after the game announced, I'm wondering when other teams decide on the exact drive train they are going to use, I'm hoping next year to get it done by week one.

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

I wouldn't have bothered with the kicking mechanism on our robot, or all the associated pneumatics, and would have focused on the ball herding strategy, which worked out pretty well for us. I would have used that extra time on improving the drivetrain, because getting around defense was a big problem of ours throughout the season.

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

Nothing.:)
and I hope they continue to look at a ranking/scoring system that was used this past year. Makes the ranking interesting til the very end.

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

I don't think I would have built a redirection bot, simply because that takes control of the game out of your hands and into your alliance partners' hands. No thank you. Sure it worked out for 469, but they did compete at regionals where there was plenty of competence.

I would have made my opinions heard much much more, and pursued a 6/8WD robot more, and probably thought about the bump a little less. I didn't see too many teams clogging up the tunnels all year.

I wouldn't have changed our ball control idea or kicker. Our application of our ball control was poor at best to me, but it did have great potential. A sturdier attachment system, and being used on a drive base that didn't draw 40 amps of current to turn would have been just fine. Our kicker was great after Pittsburgh, I wouldn't have changed a thing on that regard.

-Nick

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

Definitely would take a redirecting robot idea seriously. It was brought up in a design session and quickly dismissed.

I also would have liked to have seen our team pursue a ball magnet and proper latch system for our kicker earlier instead of a double kicker.

That being said, 2010 was definitely the most enjoyable season so far!

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

I would have bought a bigger box of popcorn and sat up higher in the stands. In the middle.

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

For the most part, I was very satisfied with our robot's performance this year. Certain things could have gone our way (Week 1 suspension), or been done better (ball possessor).

However, there was one robot idea I had that would have been epic cool. Essentially, it would have looked a lot like 71's 'bot this year, with 2007-style ramps. The main point of the robot is facilitating suspensions, even without alliance partners that elevate. The robot unfolds the ramps, alliance members climb on, and the robot hooks to the tower and pulls all three robots up off the ground and over the platform.

Now, to note, that really would not have been a great robot. But that fact is it would score 8 points in the last about 20-30 seconds (with setting up time). That would have won most regionals across the country, though would not have been as good in Michigan or the CMP.

One concern would be getting enough power, but if at hooking, drive motors were transferred to hanging power, it could be done at a reasonable speed. This would be especially compatible with a spring-out hanger such as 2619, 201, or especially 2959.

Though having said all that, i still think our robot is better.

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

Very few things I would change. Our head guy insisted we spend the first 2 meetings after kickoff talking about the game and planning strategy and not talking about the robot. This led to our priorities being speed and agility, being able to play any section, change sections and having a strong kicker, with hanging being a lower priority. I must disagree with previous posts as our mecanum wheels were one of our best assets and our drivers made good use of them. Although some teams had awesome hangers I saw many waste the last 30 or 40 seconds trying to set up, so I am not too disappointed we did not get ours working.

My biggest lessons as a first year electrical mentor are to plan the wiring very early so you can get what you need instead of using what you can get quick, and having the wires to the 4 wheel motors the same length (I have not yet been able to test if it makes a difference in how easy the robot is to drive straight).

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

...we would have prepared a block-469-from-reaching-the-tunnel autonomous program BEFORE we reached the Curie finals, rather than during the 5 minute break between matches.

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

Wouldn't we all? Lol.

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

The Poofs tried that and didn't quite get there in time after clearing all 3 balls.
They had the mode work almost perfectly on Einstien.

That wasn't the only way to do it though.

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

Our kicker design did what we wanted to, so I don't think we would have improved our kicker.

We could effectively block 469 in autonomous, so that wouldn't need to be worked on.

Probably our biggest limitation this past year was the bump. We were forced to use the tunnel due to our design, and while the limitation only affected us when we versed 469, I think it would have been a bit quicker to climb the bump rather than driving to the tunnel. We realized at our first offseason competition that it would be fairly easy to convert our robot into a bump bot, but figured that there would be no point.

We also should have looked into hanging a little bit more. We had both horizontal and vertical hanging ideas, but we threw the idea of hanging out the window early on. We should have at least prototyped, but we decided that a hanger wasn't needed.

Lastly, we should have worked harder on scouting and public relations. It seemed like we a good team that the other good teams were ignoring, yet a team that the rookies and 'bad'(for lack of a better word) teams were looking up to. Don't get me wrong; we enjoyed the praise and attention from the rookies, but we wanted to play with the powerhouses more often than we did.

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

If 1647 could breakaway again, I know we would have probably just modified and read the rules a little better to modify our deflector. It wasn't as perfect as we thought but it worked in Philly fantastically. Again with what someone else brought up with the balls on the wall, I had a great idea about making a swerve/mecanum drive that would have a single shooter like ours and get up against the walls. With our bot, it was difficult to situate ourselves behind the balls so we would have worked on that as well.

There are many things that we would have loved to tinker with but I believe that we played a great game this year and will continue to do so next year.

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

Use physics to get the ball to land in the goal every time... And fully auto

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

Re-do our kicker and the overall design. Possibly even add a ball magnet.

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

Our biggest priorities

1. ball control

2. ball control

3. ball control

When you control the ball... you control the game.... Pele'

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

I think to a certain extent, when you get to the "top level" of competitive play, the good teams are paying attention to the field already. They scout better than anyone, and as a result they'll take careful note of how well you do regardless of how much attention you draw to yourselves.

As for the balls-on-the-wall problem, I thought my team had a pretty wonderful solution for that: Lexan on the front tilted inward about 10 degrees. Driving against a wall "rakes" the ball into the center, at which point our vacuums would grab on. This small and subtle difference saved ball after ball from being pushed away from our robot and gave us a huge competitive edge over other "push bots" since we wasted a lot less time per ball.

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

When we shipped our robot to Wisconsin, we had a hanger on our robot. Unfortunately we were about 5 lbs. overweight and no one seriously thought about cutting the weight we needed to cut to keep it. Now, I realize exactly where we could have cut most of the weight we needed. The place: our ultra-tough kicker. The reason: as part of our design we had a massive 6-8 in. diameter delrin drum (swiss cheesed of course) but in reality we only needed half a drum (or no drum at all). It weighed a good ten pounds. Cutting a third off on the front portion certainly would've helped.

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

What I'd do: Actually smack the seniors over the head who refused to do any math or physics calculations and just slapped parts on the robot and said, "It'll work". It failed. Miserably. Our hangar was about 3 inches too short, getting over the bump was an arduous task and took almost 10 seconds if done right, the kicker kicked about 4 feet and it had severe issues turning...


Lesson learned: Do some frackalacking calculations and design work people.

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

We would probably spend less time on our repeater-crossbow-kicker idea and we would probably build the flipper arm on the bottom of the robot that would flip it on to the platform from the bump that I thought of last week.

This would have been nice because it would have allowed us to get what is essentially a hanging robot but would be much easier and much faster. Also we never lost a match by more then a point, so those two points would have been very nice.

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

By the end of the season (after IRI end of the season, not after cmp end of season) I was very happy with the robot. Most of the changes I would make involve making already-made changes earlier:

1. Should have had a pincher collector from the beginning, and tuned it during the last few days instead of building a top roller then building/testing the pincher roller after the robot was bagged.

2. I should have implemented the automated ride height modification software at the beginning instead of before IRI. This seriously helped with chassis rock and improved turning. Before that, we had to balance the two, and too much rock leads to carrying penalties while to little leads to difficulty turning.

3. 4-motor hang? With the arm controlling ride height, needing constant power to operate, I wouldn't do this. I think we hung fast enough.

4. Talk to judges better - As a programmer, I always want to win the Innovation in Control award.

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

Can my team win that for the lack of controls? (Autonomous all the way)

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

Sounds like it would work, assuming your full auto program actually worked.

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

We converted from a vac to a pincher roller at our regional. it worked well but was a few inches narrower than if it had been designed into the machine from the start.
I really wish we would have put a 254 style hanger the robot. I thought of pretty much the same thing but couldn't figure out how to power it fast enough. realizing it could have been pto powered off the drive motors was a big DOH! moment, oh well.
It's all about speed. lots of teams could score and hang, the good ones just do it really fast.

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

Where to start:
1. Hit the team captain, who decided on several failed aspects:

a. We had an infrared sensor on the front to detect when a ball comes and automatically kick, however, once it was on we no longer could cross the hump, and when asking the captain to test it prior to shipping, he said, "It goes over."

b. the captain put a pall on our winch system, so if we overshot (which we did every time it didn't jam) we could back up and get on the bar. (One note, our winch system in practice was exceptionally fast, so overshooting was a major issue that should have been fixed, I am a major proponent of never doing this again since I was the person who controlled the kick power and winching)

2. Focused more on driving and kicking then the hang
3. Eliminated one setting on our multi-powered kicker (it was three pneumatic pistions, with settings for one piston, two pistons, and all pistons to fire, with springs aiding the pistons). The lower power didn't work, and we should have made medium and high powered kicks better.
4. Brought spare omni wheels and wheel brackets, as ours got damaged in shipping and from out team captain doing serious damage to the frame by driving into the tower
5. Had all Craftsmen brand tools, for our mentors bought the cheap Walmart tool set. We mostly used one frosh's Craftsmen ratchet set, but in competition, we shattered and screwdriver (sending pieces into other pits) trying to bend out chassis back in shape (in hind sight, we probably should have used something different, but it was hilarious, and still is funny to reminisce about.)
All in all, we had a bad year, but hopefully 1178 will do better in 2011.

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

easy tell first to get rid of the bumps! that would be nice, that way the game would be less of a failure. at least then no one would flip over.

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

Then where's the point? You'd just drive balls into a hole in the wall. That's not exactly challenging.

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

The bumps were one of the important engineering challenges of the game. We had a low center of gravity and have never flipped over in 3 events and 2 offseason events.

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

Well, that doesn't really answer the question in the first place. :D

But I'd have to say Chris is right. If there were no bumps, then any one with a rolling chassis could effectively play the game.

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

A robot that flipped was the failure, not the game. This game was excellent. Meeting a design challenge is the whole point of FRC.

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

I think the no bumps is an interesting point, it would have been an easy way to solve the flaw in this game; but not the right way in my opinion.

Moreso than any recent year, many teams could not play the game. Why? The harsh intake rules. I view FIRST went too hard on this, at the expense of lower end teams.

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

I agree with this as well. I think they did not want to see teams that could completely dominate a ball and power it up into the goal. They wanted the ball to be vulnerable at all times. The rules did the best they could to ensure teams never really had COMPLETE control over a ball, but the best teams still figured out how to do it (ie: 254, 148, 217, 1114). What it meant for the lower end teams was that they could hardly interact with the game piece in a way they wished to. A lot of it was bumping and praying you timed it right.

-Brando

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

I'm a little confused why the apparent intent was for no one to have such ball control. Not being able to really take hold of a game piece just makes the game sloppier. It's implementing a task that "is hard and looks easy" and would only make the game less watchable than if it were a touch easier to control the ball.

The game didn't play out that way and I think that was a lot better as a result thanks to the IFI magnets, but I wonder if the game would be a lot worse with just random shop vacs versus backspin rollers.

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

No bumps != no flips. I've seen lots of flipped robots in my time, even on flat fields. The one year I didn't see one was 2009--and it's a bit harder to flip with one of those trailers and low traction as factors.

If I was to change one rule, I'd go with changing the suspension points up a bit to encourage more suspensions. 2337 was one of only 2 robots to ever be the base of one in competition, and very few were even capable of being a suspension base; more were capable of suspending, but didn't have a base.

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

I am by no means saying that THE intent was that no team should really be able to hold a game piece well, but based on how strict and limiting the rules were, thats what I implied.

As for why that would be the case, I imagine the GDC thought the game would be easily dominated if teams were allowed to manhandle balls. They also may have wanted to just add another degree of difficulty to the game. This is just speculation.

-Brando

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

Agreed! The time spent to create a suspension wasn't even worth the points.

I would agree that the harsh intake rules and bumps made basic robots useless in some matches. We have had tons of matches at events when you would look at the teams with you and wonder, "what can they do?" Front striker was an okay idea, but some teams couldn't even herd into the goal. Defense was another option, but what if they can't move zones and they have to start far with no autonomous? 2008-2009 were really easy for all robots as driving laps or defense was something every robot to do. This year was harsh on teams that had no offense and no zone changes.

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

I really seem hesitant to latch onto the idea that we should make the game more accessible for teams that can't even assemble the kit chassis (enough to change zones) or put a flat piece of lexan on the front of the robot (become a push cart). Were there really a lot of teams that not only couldn't change zones at all, but they couldn't push balls in front? I would agree completely if the kitbot didn't climb bumps out of the box, though.

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

Yes and yes. We played with teams and I saw teams that were we have one zone to play. And from scouting I have written, "They had a lot of trouble herding into the goal/can't" so many times.

Chris as I remember 2791 wasn't able to change zones at one point! ;)

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

Well, one match we found out we couldn't bump climb the hard way (fun fact: sometimes it takes more than just having 8 wheels :P). We Saw-Zalled off our hanger for the next one and then we could tunnel.

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

Unpopular comment coming...

We should absolutely NOT lower the bar so that struggling teams can compete. In my mind any team that could not at least push a ball into the goal this year should not have been competing because they didn't seek help.

The KOP drive train absolutely could go over the bump. Barring that it could go under the tunnel. It wasn't fast and it wasn't pretty but it worked.

The KOP code was simple plug and play.

Wiring is detailed pretty well as long as you read the directions.

The KOP gearbox is among one of the best single speed transmissions on the market in my opinion.

In my mind the only obstacles to having a robot that could score at least 1 ball a match were the bumpers and frankly I don't need to start that rant again.

In short, any team that couldn't even push a ball into the goal failed. FIRST gave them an out of the box solution to most of the problems they faced.


(Please note, this is for teams within the continental United States only. Outside of that things are different, shipping delays, language barriers, etc, contribute to it being genuinely harder to compete. I respect the teams that attempt it and am awed by the teams that succeed.

TLDR: Keep up the great work you guys! This rant only applies to teams in the States)

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

I actually thought this game was good for rookies/kit bots. When was the last time that a kit bot could be an alliances leading scorer? Unlike in past games, 67's full field goal was the same as 3XXX's pushing balls into the goal. Of course, the kit bot needed better teams to feed them balls, but they still could actually score. In 2009, a box bot's best chance to score was to push balls to their human player. In 2008, they could try to push balls around the field (but this rarely happened because a team could hurdle the ball much quicker and get 4 times the points). In 2007, they could hope to climb a ramp/lifter. In 2006, they could push balls into goals, but for 1/3 of the points. Early in the season, well driven kit bots could be very valuable to an alliance by actually scoring.

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

One thing I would have liked to do over is read the rules more closely and figured out the scoring system. It ruined a lot of teams positions and it was downright confusing!

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

Throw the KISS mentality out the window. I believe that mentality has made the team feel competent; feeling competence is not good. We must get better everytime, or we will never be able to compete at a higher level. Even though I am not the team leader this year, I will strive for perfection and never feel satisfied. Never ever be satisfied with your performance; there is always someone that will out practice and out perform you.

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

I have to disagree. I really do not think the goal of FIRST is to score points and win matches. I have always believed that the goal of FIRST was to Inspire students. This kind of statement is hurtful and definitely a clear example of what FIRST does not represent.

My team was one of those teams that did not score every match and had a hard time doing so due to the shape of the front of our robot. Did my team fail just because we couldn't score? I would think not. If you saw our robot you would see that it had its flaws but still had a unique drivetrain and very effective drivetrain for traversing the bumps. I think that a team that does not learn anything or does not at least make an effort to inspire others is the team that should not compete not the team who did not make a competitive robot. I feel sorry for any team that measures success purely on the basis of winning because that team will never succeed and will never be able to really enjoy their FIRST experience.

My team has some things we want to do better next year, but we are always striving to improve and never give less than our best. My team had problems with money this year and we had to build the robot on an extremely small budget. As such we decided to buy cheaper materials rather than sacrifice functionality. Looking back if we had bought higher quality parts our robot would have done better. We could have gone with a basic kit-bot chassis that we built and hooked up in the first few days, but would we have learned as much? No we would have made a robot that was boring (no offense to anyone who used kit bot).

I understand your frustration, but seriously FIRST is more about Gracious Professionalism and Inspiring than building the best robot.

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

Though I agree with much of your post, the KISS mentality is a very valuable strategy to follow. Many ideas should be tested but if the results are the same go with the simple one. This is very true in industry. Simple means you can test more completely. It also means less malfunctions, and there were many robots that broke down this year. Keeping it simple is a skill too few engineers have.

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

I want to go the "double redundancy" to the max this year, we will see how it would turn out. Being able to rebound from most problems during the match; so make it robust but yet sophisticated at the same time. While simplicity is a good approach, our robot was really too simple last year. I rather over prepare than under prepare.

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

Yes, by definition you failed at the challenge being able to score. No you didn't fail at the mission of FIRST. I'm fairly certain that Andrew's point was related specifically to the game challenge, not the mission of FIRST.

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

David, there is another saying that applies as well as KISS.

"Keep it as simple as possible, but not simpler."

If, to meet your goals for a robot, a complex mechanism is required, simplify it as much as possible. Multi-speed drive? Use an off-the-shelf shifter, unless you also want multi-traction drive, in which case there may be more elegant ways to do both. Multi-joint arm? Is there a way that a single joint can do almost everything the multi-joint arm would need to?

Just a couple of ideas.

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

With all due respect, Andrew wasn't referring to you. There's a distinction to be made between those who failed on their own and those who failed attempting to nuse the kitbot. It sounds like you did the former.

What I believe he was saying is that if you can't make a kitbot run, you probably couldn't have succeeded too much in inspiring your own students to engineering. By deciding not to use the kitbot, you opted out of his example entirely.

I apologise if I misunderstood or misinterpreted anything.

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

Andrew is discussing robot specific issues, not FIRSTs goals/mission. If you see the rest of the comments in the discussion they almost all have to do with how a team would tweak their robot to better play the game.

Would you consider your robot successful? I'm not talking about was your team successful in being inspired, but would you consider your robot to be a success? Did it accomplish what you set out to do? What would you change with the knowledge you have now as the season has ended? These are the questions this thread is asking.




I agree with Andrew's points. I saw many teams this year unable to complete the challenge FIRST laid upon us. The kitbot gave a very capable system right out of the box and it was disappointing to see many teams not able to even cross a zone or herd a ball into a goal.

I wonder how as FIRST veterans we could help to combat these issues with incomplete/ineffective kitbots before they get to competitions?

-Brando

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

I believe the only effective measure would be for FIRST to require rookie teams to accept help from veteran teams when that help is offered. Too many teams don't know what they don't know.

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In my 3 years on 254, I've been part of very simple and very complicated robots. After a year of maintaining the robot, you'll be a lot more fond of the simple robot.

However, a simple robot does not mean that you are compromising and only playing part of the game. On the contrary, a simple robot means that you have designed a robot to play the game and then spent weeks and weeks perfecting it, making it as strong and reliable as it can possibly be.

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

This is too true. A friend of mine was mentoring a rookie team last season as the only technical mentor and found himself ignored by the students most of the time, despite his 7 years of FRC experience.

Some teams/people may just need to fall, and fall hard, before they accept any help. All that we can hope for is that a team or individual doesn't get completely turned off from FRC/FIRST before they seek support.

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.

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

Use rollers, which were almost nonexistant at BAE.

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

For our rookie year, we made a great robot that got us top seed and into the semi-finals. The main change I would have made is more scouting, of which we had done almost none of, which meant we picked less than ideal team members. This year, we had a lot better scouting system, but missed the ball on a lot of the things we had done right last year (the big one being getting in practice time before the competition).

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

Didn't think I'd see this thread resurrected...

But anyway... Now that I've been through another build season, I think I can take another look at how we should have done things that year. My conclusion, we had some good ideas but what really killed us was the complete failure of thinking things through and exploring every option (Funnily enough we made the same mistake this year concerning some things, those weren't crippling though like the ones we made in 2010...) and then FOCUSING on what was absolutely essential (we failed again here too, we did better before losing focus though).

EDIT: Anyone have any ideas to help keep these problems to a minimum (besides just talking about it and trying hard not to do so)?

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

I think a big problem that teams have is that they think they have 6 weeks of build time, then some programming after build season before competition. I think that in order to make a successful robot, it needs to be more along the lines of 1 week desgin, 2 weeks build, 1 week program, and the remaining 2 weeks for practice and tweaking. If we had done the amount of work we did on our robot during the regional the week before the end of build season, we would have had a much better robot. There were a lot of problems this year that could have been fixed with some quick testing (such as autonomous), but we never had any hands on time with the robot till the competition.

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

Oh, we set out a time line somewhat like that before the season but we fell behind. While it is a helpful tool for setting out goals, it didn't really help out in the implementation.