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Unread 02-12-2013, 21:52
Oblarg Oblarg is offline
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AKA: Eli Barnett
FRC #0449 (The Blair Robot Project)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Mar 2009
Rookie Year: 2008
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Posts: 1,116
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Re: Robot Tips For Rookie Teams

Last year was my first year mentoring a rookie team (4464), and it went much more smoothly than I think any of us had been anticipating. Here are some tips, based both on what worked for us, and what we realize we could have improved:

- Extensive preseason training, with FRC hardware. The importance of getting the students familiar with the control system, especially, prior to build season is hard to overstate. Mechanically, if the students do not have any experience with machining and/or construction, you really must get tools and parts in their hands. There is no substitute for experience and familiarity.

- Safety training! There are lots of good resources for this out there. Rookie teams should probably have a meeting or two prior to build season devoted entirely to making/reviewing safety rules and procedures, which should be written down and put in a visible place (on a poster or similar).

- Plan ahead of time, in detail, the first few meetings after kickoff. You want to have a brainstorming and discussion schedule that you can follow. Remember that you can't design a system without knowing your design constraints, which means that you must decide on a strategy before brainstorming a design. Hold practice brainstorming sessions based on past FRC games to get students used to the process. Make sure you encourage everyone to speak up and contribute ideas - I've seen far too many design discussions railroaded by a small number of very vocal team members (myself included) when other people had valuable input that simply never was put forward.

- Put a large build season calendar in a visible place, and set/mark important dates/deadlines as build season progresses. Organization is key to success.

- Specialize. After kickoff, pick one task, and build your robot to do it. Over-ambition is probably the single biggest cause of build-season disappointment I've seen, even on established teams. Keeping your sights within reason not only keeps the challenge more manageable, but enables crucial design iteration.

- Keep your designs simple. This means as few moving parts as possible. More complexity leads to more failure modes, and more failure modes leads to less success.

- When in doubt, overbuild rather than underbuild. The weight limit is a pain, but even more of a pain is having critical structural failure modes reveal themselves at competition. Exceptionally rigid/beefy mechanisms are usually not only more resistant to failure, but (especially in the case of shooters, like this past year) they often perform in a more repeatable, reliable fashion.

- Design and fabricate according to your machining capability. If you lack precision tools, match-drilling and cutting to templates are your best friends. Make sure that students know they need to keep tolerances in mind when designing.

- Make sure every structural bolt/nut assembly on the robot has some sort of locking hardware if it is feasible to do so - lock washers, nylock nuts, loctite, etc.

- Make sure your robot is serviceable. I've spent too much time at regionals than I care to recall taking apart half of a robot to replace one or two small parts. If it's not bulletproof, make every effort to ensure you can get to it and replace it in short order.

- Pick your drivers early, make a practice drive base, and practice driving. Driver ability is every bit as important as robot quality on the field.

- Make sure everyone on the team really gets gracious professionalism before attending a competition. FRC simply would not function if the atmosphere at competition were not as helpful and friendly as it is, and you need to make sure every single person on the team appreciates that, and makes it their job to uphold it.

I think this is enough for now. Most importantly, have fun.
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Member, FRC Team 449: 2007-2010
Drive Mechanics Lead, FRC Team 449: 2009-2010
Alumnus/Technical Mentor, FRC Team 449: 2010-Present
Lead Technical Mentor, FRC Team 4464: 2012-2015
Technical Mentor, FRC Team 5830: 2015-2016