Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

Also of interest: The CollegeFIRST documentation I just linked was released 3rd week of March (ie. Week2 of FRC competitions)

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

Throw out your long time customers in order to better test a pilot program? Really?

The pit ceilings are MASSIVE, definitely high enough for the challenge to be in the pits instead of taking up half of the Championship.

However, I don't think they kicked FRC out to make room for college.

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the Championship is the first and only event for College level-FIRST and there are less than 20 teams. As we all know from watching week 1 events, things rarely go smoothly at the first competitions of the season, let alone of the entire program. Are they really kicking FRC teams out of the dome for an untested game with brand new teams? What if they have connection issues? What if the teams aren't really ready to preform (like teams in week 1 FRC events and rookie FRC teams?). Yes, flying robot could be cooler than FRC robots, but waiting for field connection or seeing flying robot not being able to fly is not inspiring at all.

That being said, College-level FIRST doesn't appear on any Championship schedule (or offfical FIRST anything, I think), so I'm not sure that is a valid reason for the change.

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

My personal opinion: For a pilot program, they will have chosen the best few schools to compete (WPI?, MIT?), and there will likely be little problem with things not going at least kind of well.

Flying robots seems to me like a great way to get the attention of people walking in off the street in STL.

EDIT: What I'm getting at here, is the teams who will be competing in the CollegeFIRST pilot are likely comprised of people who've competed in things like the DARPA Grand Challenge, and DARPA Urban Challenge.

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

Robot pedometers? I think an encoder would work ;)

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

Honestly Rick, FTC matches are extremely boring this year. Have you seen any? At the Chicago event, teams in the finals struggled to score a single baton, the match was decided by autonomous and balancing. The clips I've seen from other events weren't much better.

VEX on the other hand, that's non-stop excitement :)

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

I think what Rick was saying is the FTC students pour as much soul and energy into their bots as FRC students do and deserve the same chance to be showcased on the big stage.

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

I won't dispute the latter--while my involvement with FVC/FTC ended in 2008*, I can probably safely say there are some FTC teams that pour more energy into their robots and programs than some FRC teams.

That said, there is something to be said for spectacle that attracts attention and coverage from a broader base. FTC can be fun, but it's definitely a challenge to give the smaller field and robots that main-event feel like FRC has been able to develop. It's difficult for me to see a broadcaster bypassing FRC for FTC when saying "Hey, let's put robots on TV!".

In the end, I'm going to go to St. Louis, partake of the raucous celebration that is the 2011 FIRST Championship, and handle the postmortem sometime in May.

*Nothing political about that date of departure; within a month of Championship that year, I was working full-time. Barely enough time to volunteer as a mentor, let alone do extra events.

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

Some people here seem to be asking or speculating about the size of the Edward Jones Dome compared to the Georgia Dome. Here's some data on that subject:

According to the America's Center Brochure, the Edward Jones Dome is 105,000 sq ft. with the seats extended and 145,000 sq ft. with the seat retracted.

The Georgia Dome website lists the dome floor as 102,000 sq ft. on this page.

So the Edward Jones Dome ranges from slightly larger to much larger depending on whether the seats are retracted are not.

I've heard that the map and full schedule should be out tomorrow so hopefully that will answer some questions.

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

Most likely they will be using it, as they have in Atlanta for 7 years - for FLL on Thursday and Friday.

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

On the latest update from Bill, he says something about being assigned a pit and not changing pits. I've read through this entire thread and I don't recall seeing anything about pit locations or any concern about them. Why does he mention pit locations? Perhaps the reason there are only two fields in the dome is because the pits for those 150+ teams are in the dome?

Think about it. The pits are half the action when it comes to an FRC event. If your championship is supposed to showcase everything about your ever, why not make the pits easily visible to the spectators as well? In Atlanta, if a spectator made their way to the dome to see competition, how many of them actually made their way to the pit as well? Not too many I'm betting..

But if you have playing fields and pits in the same location, you get spectators to see the best of both worlds, and you make the queuing trip almost nonexistent (save for those few matches where you switch).

Now, as much as I like this idea, it also raises a ton of red flags: two sets of pit admin, two sets of inspectors, all-calls in the dome would be difficult (though I could never understand the all calls in the Atlanta pits anyway), load-in and especially load-out would be a nightmare, and on and on and on.

Just a thought.

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

I think rather that FIRST was getting too many queries about having to move thei pits to correspond with switching fields. The latest confirms that will not happen.

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

Interesting idea but a few points:

For the last four years that I have been at Worlds there has already been a set of inspectors and admin for all four fields so that wouldn't be anything new. Believe it or not the floor of the dome in ATL has always been a nice quite place, much quieter that the pits in the convention center.

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

If the Edward Jones building has a larger footprint than the Georgia dome, then why can't we recreate the same floor plan layout. Is the publicly available seating not conducive to the practiced and prepared setup, which was ideal for the Georgia Dome? I understand that there ae other programs involved, but with an even smaller floor layout in the past, they made it work.

If the only change on the program level is the addition of the collegiate sub-competitions, then my only possible logical deduction is that FRC is being displaced because of it. Not that this correct or substantiated, but this is my best guess.

I understand if this is what they have chosen to do, but I wish they would be upfront about the changes they made and which fields are located where. As far as I know, we have moved FRC fields to the pit, which leaves us with a LOT of empty space. What is going to be in the places where the division fields could be?...