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Unread 03-05-2013, 11:18
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Adam Freeman Adam Freeman is offline
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FRC #0148 (Robowranglers)
Team Role: Engineer
 
Join Date: Jan 2007
Rookie Year: 2005
Location: Rockwall, TX
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Re: The Stereotyping of Successful Teams

Quote:
Originally Posted by EricH View Post
Sorry, Adam, but I must disagree. I believe it's known as Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the allotted time.

What I mean is this: Expand the season to 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 weeks, and I'm willing to bet that you will STILL spend multiple hours a day, multiple days a week, every week, trying to iterate a newer and better item, reworking the robot between Week 1 and your first competition when you realize that your design isn't working out, doing a lot of things to make the robot perform better, or even just driver practice.

The ONLY thing that will be different is... wait for it...

... You'll have your competition robot to do it on. That means you don't need to build a practice robot. Assuming that you did that after bag day anyway (or before building the competition robot), you really aren't saving that much wear and tear on yourself, because you're still running into the "Just one more tweak" from 3 or 4 different directions, which leads to more late nights, more nights, later nights...


Basically, what I'm saying is that by allowing teams to work longer, they will do just that, resulting in even more burnout. It's just human nature. I would almost go so far as to say that it won't help the teams you're trying to help, it'll hurt them. Almost.
I don't want to drag this out, and maybe it's a topic of discussion for a different thread...

But, I can't believe that a "lower" level team having 24/7 access to their robot to practice with, iterate, etc... could be anything but a good thing.

I understand that will lead to more time committment and work for them, if they choose to continue to fill the time. But, is that worse than not having access to their robot and showing up to competition after competition not being able to execute the designed game tasks?

Maybe they needed another week to get a shooter working, or get a climber or drivetrain adjusted. It's pretty hard to do major adjustments and tweaking at a competition.

With more access to the robot, do they have to meet every day....or can they meet every other day? Can they adjust their schedules to get more time with the machine, but also a better mix of time at work and home as well?

As I said before, the top teams are already doing more anyways with a practice bot. 2056 and 1114 are practicing 4-5hrs every day. 254 is re-designing an already awesome climber to be even better. 67 is trying to get partially functioning climber working to it's full potential. This is already happening.

Basically, when there is work to be done...we put in whatever time is required to get it done. Example - Last year we rolled out of the gate at Waterford and the robot was essentially "perfect". After that we did not mess with it or tweak it at all (outside of some minor autonomous improvements), all season. This year was different. We were not ready and continued to work all season to get to the point we wanted to get too. We (67) are going to do what it takes to attempt to meet our goals. If we don't need to do more work, we won't. If we need too we will.

We've talked about raising the floor. Giving the "floor" more access to their machine does exactly that. Jim Zondag has data that shows more competitions and more access to the robot leads to better performance.

Will it just create a mean shift of performance for all teams? Yeah, most likely, but it may also tighten up the difference between the best and worst teams. We are probably approaching the limits on how much better the best teams can get.

This thread just seems weird to me, that a discussion about how 341 worked harder to be better, leads to an arguement that handicapping the best teams and restricting access (not having more access) to the robot for lower level teams is for the betterment of FIRST's mission.

IDK, maybe my perspective is just one sided.

-Adam
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2005 FIRST World Champions (330, 67, 503)
2009 FIRST World Champions (111, 67, 971)
2010 FIRST World Champions (294, 67, 177)
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