So far, I've actually been a little surprised at the amount of robot variety I've seen so far. Maybe it will be different once I'm at an event, but I think more teams were willing to break away from Ri3D-style mechanisms than last year. Granted, last year's challenge was limiting in terms of what mechanisms would be effective, but we didn't see the strategic or design variety I was hoping for. This year has been better, in my estimation.
However, I still stand by my belief that Ri3D/Build Blitz could better serve the FRC community if they delay their builds and/or releases until at least mid-way through week one of the build season. It would allow for more open-ended brainstorming, prototyping, and strategy discussion, without the heavily credentialed influence of these projects. Strategically, the designs arrived at by most of the builds were very similar. There was a ton of influence put on shooting into the high goal and ground loading, without much placed on catching, easily catchable truss shots, passing, human loading, the one point goal, defense, or goaltending. Only O-Ryon really differed in this respect, and they're one of the least emulated teams. Unsurprisingly, a vast majority of robots seem to have these same focuses. And many of the varied designs I've seen come from the teams who arrived at different strategy conclusions and then stuck to their guns. I don't think a three of four day delay before the start of these projects would significantly comprimise the postive impacts they have, but it could help mitigate what I view as negative ones.
I do give credit to the teams for better documentation of their strategy, game analysis, and design process than the first year. Especially to the Build Blitz teams with their blog updates. Regardless of what happens with these projects, I'd love to see more in the way of this. Plenty of teams are working during these projects and can't follow live, so the more of these processes that can be archived and presented to teams, the better. Hopefully these teams can show more than just the results, but the rationale, iteration, and debate that helped them arrive at their conclusions (both strategically and mechanically).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Max Boord
Ri3D also helps with concept development. To quickly see that a pneumatic puncher does not work allowed us to totally throw out that concept on day 1. The same is true with spatula pickup and slingshots.
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You might want to tell that to
2530.