Quote:
Originally Posted by JChavis
My moral part of my brain said:
"Wouldn't this be degrading the amazing spirit and intention of FIRST, where people could build ROBOTS to do people's work, thus learning a technology and engineering mentality students can use in the future to assist the human race?"
I know it is very exciting to win, but what would teams learn if people in the future would have to create robots that would require human assistance?
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You weren't around for 2004, so pardon me while I drag this thread off track for a post or so. Back in 2004, robots could NOT score small balls, each worth 5 points (10 points if you were able to snag one of those four special 10-point balls before some speed demon got to them and knocked them off their pedestals autonomously), into any of the 4 goals. It wasn't that you couldn't build a robot to do it, it was that there was something like a 10-point penalty
per ball. The Human Player
had to make every single point inside those goals, by taking balls fed to them by the robots and throwing them into the goal. The robots could then double it by placing a large ball on top of the goal, or go for 50 points by hanging on the bar, or both.
Now, to really address what you're saying: I'm not entirely certain that you understand the spirit and intention of FIRST. The full name of FIRST is "United States Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology". (They've sort of ignored the "United States Foundation" part for many years now, but it is still part of the full legal name, as far as I know.) That name gives what the intent of the organization is:
inspire and
recognize science and technology. Nowhere in any FIRST mission or vision statement is "learning" mentioned. Does it happen? You bet it does. But it's a byproduct of the inspiration. What about building? That's in there, I'll give you that. Building skills, not robots!
FRC is a robotics competition. FIRST is not a robotics competition. FIRST chooses to use robots as a vehicle to accomplish the inspiration. To that end, they have 4 robotics competitions at different levels. If they thought that birdhouses, factory trips, or building a better mousetrap was the best way to accomplish their mission, they'd be doing that instead. The robots are highly effective at the mission, though, so they have stayed the primary vehicle FIRST uses.
I could go on, but I think that at this point if anything is unclear, a PM would work better.
P.S.: A few more human-robot interaction games of the past: In 2003, the HPs were on the field before the robots ran autonomous. In the '90s, HPs loaded the robots directly--there was at least one DQ for the HP "grabbing the robot" (though there is some doubt as to whether that actually happened). In 2005, humans ran out to load the robots, or the robots could grab from an autoloader. In 2007, humans could score on the rack in the middle of the field. I could add in that humans have been working with the robots since 1992, controlling them... but that takes it away from the HP and into the driver.