Re: Another Culture Change
 

I think your missing one of the points of FIRST. You play with and against the same teams. Sure your gonna have some trouble playing against these powerhouses but then again your gonna do great with them. You need to embrace the fact that not everybody is on the same level.

Look at professional sports, you dont see players going around saying your teams better than mine i hate you (sure this happens but those guys are well you know) If their really into it they'll better themselves sp that they can win the second time around.

Even as a student i understand the fact that your gonna win some your gonna lose some but theres no point in screaming at teh other team.
Truthfully that isn't going to change anything.

The last thing i want to say is to the mentors, do something about it. Tell every single kid on your team to take 10 to 20mins and just sit down and read this entire thread or as much as possible. You'll see some conversation and i believe you'll see some change. Those kids will be embaressed and will look down upon themselves. This is the most viable solution. Maybe it will work maybe it wont try something though. For the sake of these teams.

Re: Another Culture Change
 

This is stupid, Its just a competition. Nobody should shove,hit, or bad mouth another team because they are the "powerful" ones. The point of this competition is to win but also to make friends, help each other out, and analyze new things. Things like what to put on your robot for the next competition. The team who attacked 1114 are just being immature. It was their first robotics competition. They needed some help. Maybe the other team was more experienced and they see themselves as powerful.

Lets hope this doesn't happen in this years FRC competition.

Re: Another Culture Change
 

i think that it is valuable to have a well cooperating team. its important because on person can destroy the whole team.

Re: Another Culture Change
 

I've been lurking on this thread a while and would possibly like to see a spin off thread started with reposts or links to a few nuggets in this thread. In a world of diversity of resources, parity will always be an issue and how one deals with that is very important and a worthwhile discussion.

Now, my interest is focused along the lines of Lil' Lavery point in that resolution to this issue is to reduce the degree of disparity and not by bringing other teams down or by limiting what a mentor or sponsor can do to support the development of a robot design. A distinguishing feature of FRC is that there are very few limits to how elegant a design can be. Great robots are inspriring to many. I am interested in knowing what is needed to bring other teams up a notch or two.

Having just helped organize the brand new Alamo Regional, it was difficult to explain to VIPS new to FIRST why immediately after opening ceremonies on Friday that we only had 4 or 5 robots on the field and one of them wasn't doing much. Very anti-climatic. This regional planning committee and folks associated with FIRST in Texas began team sustainability discussions immediately after grant money was found to grow both FTC and FRC in Texas.

I appretiate the posts by JVN, Karthic, Paul Copoli as they describe how their teams work. One can never have enough engineers and of sufficient variety but just how many is needed and of what type. What are the key pre-season activities in which the mentors and students engage?

I probably have a few ideas in this regard since I've spent 10 years building two teams without lots of resources and still struggle to get everything built before ship date. Having input on paper from other sources from successful teams may help turn the tide here in Texas to a point where we have more "A" teams than "C-". Everyone wants to be at an event where any group of three teams can win matchs against another group of three. Sometimes the game helps in that regard and IMHO why Lil Lavery is able to pull match video from 2009 of younger teams playing a smart game and winning against seasoned veterans.

So my call to action is to any self-described quality team to post a white paper, reference to a white paper or reply to this thread or creat another with what mentoring resources you have, what on-site equipment you have and what kinds of shop support and then what kinds of things you do before the build season begins to maximize success on the field and in the CA judging. Key in that discussion is how the mentors interact with the students. i.e. Paul writes that 80% of the CAD work is performed by students but 100% is reviewed by himself. What other critical design elements are 100% reviewed by a key volunteer or group of mentors. How is code tested? Are students required to submit wiring schematics and present electrical/power load analysis. (if they have Al as a mentor I be they do:) )

I've seen a few of these posts in the past and if someone has the time to pull them all together into a single document, I would be extremely grateful or maybe post a word document with url links to existing white papers on this subject...

Re: Another Culture Change
 

That's quite an assumptive statement. Where are the facts to back it up?

Re: Another Culture Change
 

We allow our students to fail, but we strive to get them to fix the failure before the team gets to competition.

The team constantly is fixing failures the entire season.

Squirrel,

I am not sure what you meant by not allowing them to fail, but I am sure you were making a positive comment, not a negative one right?

Paul

Re: Another Culture Change
 

CD-Media search "business plan" or "chairman's entry" - there are dozens of pages of white papers that do exactly this.

Re: Another Culture Change
 

I hope those VIP were still around by the end of the day to see how many competitive teams were on the field thanks to the hard work of everyone there, including those "powerhouse", "mentor built" teams discussed in the OP.

That's the real magic of a FIRST competition.

Re: Another Culture Change
 

In general I would characterize the HOT team as mentor designed, student programmed, fabricated, and built.

Our entire team is involved in game analysis, strategy discussions, and initial design concepts and inspirations. The Chief Engineering mentors (Jim Meyer and I) lead the team lead the team through these discussions, but it is open for any student or mentor to share their general ideas. During these discussions we have had students come up with concept designs for specific subsystems (2011- Two pronged arm w/claw) or even overall robot design concepts (2009 – large hopper with roller system to feed a turreted shooter).

Once we split into groups (design, mechanical, electrical, programming, field build, chairman’s, and animation). The design group and the engineering mentors assigned to design, are responsible for generating the detailed designs for the robot. How involved the students are in the details of the design depends on the age, skill, and desire of the design students. Typically, our designs are 90-100% designed and “engineered” by the mentors. I say “engineered” because much of our design process is more intuition based, than cold hard engineering calculations. The students are exposed to our thought process tri-weekly as we design parts during our meetings. A mentor’s computer is typically displayed on the projector so that the students can see and discuss how and why things are being designed certain ways. We try to explain important parts of the design to them, so they understand how and why it will work. Our design students then take our 2D AutoCAD files and create solid models of the parts and assemble them from our 2D Assembly sketches, working with the engineer to understand how parts are supposed to go together as designed.

Our robots are completely student machined and assembled, with the mentors working alongside the students to make sure the parts are machined and assembled as designed. When issues are found we explain our mistakes to the students and work with them on how to correct them. We have full access to the main machine shop at the General Motors Milford Proving Grounds. Our students use the CNC mills, manual lathes, a waterjet machine, and sheet metal breaks to create the parts for our robot. The only thing the students don’t do is weld up parts (which we try to keep to a minimum).

For the past two year we have been 100% fully student programmed in both C++ and Labview. We don’t have any mentors fully trained in either language, so the mentors work with the students on prioritizing general robot functions, autonomous strategies, sense of urgency, backing up files, etc..

Why is this how we function?

1. This way seems to be successful for our team, both on the field and off. We have tons of former students that have become great engineer all over the country. Many that are still participating in FIRST.

2. This is hard! Even to our mentors. We are not designers, engineers, programmers, or machinists that do this every day. It takes us 6+ weeks to get these things designed, built, and programmed.

3. Our engineers are not as good at teaching the students to do the design, as well as we are at creating the designs ourselves and explaining them. I am jealous of the teams with engineers that can teach the students how to design and still play at an incredibly high level.

4. Our mission is to work with the students to inspire them to be interested and pursue an engineering education. Not to train them to be engineers. We feel we are achieving this goal 100%.

Re: Another Culture Change
 

Andrew,

My suggestion would be for you to create a thread, asking the 'self-described quality teams' to post the information/links that you are requesting in the thread. From there, you can cobble it together into a white paper/resource. That way, each team can be responsible for their contributions but not have to worry about everyone else's. Just a thought.

Jane

Re: Another Culture Change
 

Your post beat mine to the web. I'll take a stab at a new thread with requests for specific questions so that I get the details that I am looking for. The 67 team post was very interesting and informative. That will have to wait for me to get some regular work done and grad school this evening.:)

APS

Re: Another Culture Change
 

Your performance speaks for itself.

I doubt there is something special about the students you have, that separates them so far from the students on other teams in terms of what they can accomplish with robots. I think the difference is in the adults on the team. I think it's based in a very strong drive to succeed in one or a few mentors, which leads eventually to a team that is an unstoppable powerhouse.

I don't propose that you not try to do your best. I am (apparently in vain) just trying to get the mentors of some of the top teams to have some slight grasp of how some other people see them.

I don't intend to be negative. I'm trying to help solve a problem. The problem has more than one side, though. If you can't see that, then you're going to have difficulty changing the situation.

If I've offended anyone, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to.

Re: Another Culture Change
 

John, first let me say thank you for making this sincere reminder of the behavior we are striving to eradicate, and the ideals to which we are aspiring. It's very edifying to see someone so esteemed in the community use the prominence of their position to promote such a message.

I do have to ask, though, why you chose to include the following in the instances of unacceptable behavior.

I'm pretty sure everyone would agree that elbowing others out of the way is not professional and should be avoided when possible (not to mention unsafe!) However, was there something about the quote that you felt was not in keeping with the behavior we are trying to establish?

Re: Another Culture Change
 

It has several objectionable themes.

• The idea that it's okay to assume that other team's robots are built with no student involvement just because you are jealous.
• The idea that student built robots are "better".
• The idea that it's okay to harass and abuse other teams based on the assumptions you made about their robot design process.

Re: Another Culture Change
 

Jim,

I think Paul's response is reflective of how these teams work.

One thing that I'm not seeing much of in the discussion is the students' drive and their thirst for knowledge. Their curiosity. What they bring to the table helps to define a team - and how those qualities are developed while on the team is a part of this.

Jane