Thread: Bad Robots
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Unread 14-04-2014, 14:56
Andrew Schreiber Andrew Schreiber is offline
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Re: Bad Robots

Quote:
Originally Posted by Max Boord View Post
1. Is this common in FIRST?
Its totally event dependent. you wont show up to Waterloo or Orlando finding too many toasters. In contrast, I remember watching the western Canadian regional a few years ago and finding a large portion of robots that could not handle the game piece.

2. Is this common in Aerial Assist?
Yes. this years game piece is more inconsistent, bigger, fragile and contested for than almost any other game piece in recent FRC history making it much harder to be an effective scoring robot on the field.

3. What is the build season like for teams who end up with a robot that just doesn't play the game well.
It all depends on when this is realized.
A. IF REALIZED EARLY:
Smart teams will change there design to fix the problem. Bad teams will just tell the drive team to deal with it.
B. IF REALIZED LATE:
Good teams will try to build a new system that they can switch out at there event or right before stop build day. Bad teams will just ignore/ deny the situation by lowering there standards for what is an acceptable robot.
C. IF THE TEAM HAS LIMITED RESOURCES:
Good teams will attempt to use programming/ strategy/ driver skill to compensate for unacceptable or inferior hardware.
4. What causes teams to be bad?
Usually a lack of resources or a failure in the design and planning process. If you take 1 thing away from your pre rookie experience it should be think before you act. Try to pull designs or design ideas form past games that used a similar game piece or field layout. A prime example is 67 (hot) and 971 (Spartan Robotics). They both evolved the 2008 world champs robot to make it work in this years game and preform better. 67 is currently 49-7 and 971 is 35-0. I highly suggest looking at some of karthik kanagasabapathy's recorded presentations on how to preform effective strategic analysis of a game and how to design an effective robot to play it.
1) No, it's not. There are tons of toasters at those events. I can personally attest to there being a large number of toasters at Orlando as well as a large number of robots that would be better off as toasters. But that's not merely an Orlando phenomenon, building a robot is "hard". Now, how high a percentage of teams are toasters at any given event varies but usually there are a mere handful of robots that would not look at home heating bread.

2) This game is harder than the previous one and has vastly worse penalties for failure than the last couple. (2012, imho, was about as hard to effectively score based off folks ignoring the 1 and 2 point goals). This did NOT contribute heavily to the percentage of toasters on the field. The scoring system, however, exacerbated their effect from merely being an annoyance to actively hindering their partners' attempts to seed well.

3) Robots are "hard". By which I mean that teams bite off too much at once. The only way to be successful in FRC is to focus on what Andy Baker has deemed the 3 most important aspects of your robot. The Drivetrain, The Drivetrain, and The Drivetrain. Build on top of that. Meaning: Many teams neglect to focus on reliably moving their robot from point A to point B. The next thing to focus on is acquiring a game piece and reliably letting go of it. THEN you can focus on scoring it. Now, I'm sure 1114/118/254 don't follow this practice but they are exceptions. When you have multiple Einstein appearances you can do whatever you want.

4) Not recognizing limitations and resources. Not recognizing game strategies. Not understanding the impact that game actions have on outcomes and the impact outcomes has on rankings. Not understanding the metagame of the area (Ie, if you are in New England just assume that you will have at least a few matches wherein a team repeatedly rams you from across the field... build your bot accordingly).


Top thing for how not to be a toaster at your first event? Ask for help. CD is a great place to ask. Make friends with a local team that has some experience, they can provide experienced mentors who can give you guys a reality check as well as the common gotchas inherent in FRC (wait, we should zip tie our battery connectors?). Plus, they likely have a surplus of extra motors and such that might help with prototyping or spare parts.
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