Quote:
Originally Posted by tindleroot
What do successful teams do to robot-wise to win division champs and Einstein from year to year?
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Your questions seems to focus most on how teams do it from a robot standpoint, but there is so much more that goes into making Einstein than the robot.
There are many, many factors...but they start with the Team. Robots make it to Einstein once, but Teams make it there multiple times.
Some of the factors are:
Leadership: The team must have quality leadership to help guide them through the early stages of the build. Leadership with both fore-sight to see what Einstein will look like, and also hind-sight to know what has worked in the past. Since students are on a 1-4 year cycle, the best teams draw their leadership from their mentors. Not saying students aren't leaders, but the best teams draw from that partnership and usually have a mentor as the final decision maker.
Expectations: The top teams expect to get to Einstein! They focus all of their effort to attempt to achieve their goal.
Quality Game Analysis: This is a must! Need to understand the game and decisions that will be made at the start of the season and all the way though to Einstein. This is a continuous improvement process. Analyze, Adapt, Analyze, Adapt....
Engineering and Design: Very few (if any) robots make it to Einstein that aren't high quality machines. Since you are playing though an entire regular season and the division, your machine needs to be designed for robustness.
Driver Skill/Practice: To compete to get to the biggest stage in FRC, your drivers better be well versed in how to operate their machine. Either through practice or match play, by the time you get to the division eliminations, they should be as good as they can get.
Hardwork / Preparation / Determination: Be prepared to put in the work, either through efficient time usage or brute force hours.... the top teams are focused and determined to not get knocked off their pedestal. From Jan - April there is usually something going on to design, iterate, test, practice, fix, improve, etc...
Execution / Continuous Improvement: Einstein level teams have a hunger to drive for perfect execution. They continously work on every detail of positioning, machine operation, strategy, communication, etc... to hopefully continue to improve every step of the way.
Scouting: Good scouting is essential to making it to Einstein. Without it you won't make it through a Division qualification without issues that may or may not damage your chances at making it to Einstein. Additionally, a successful alliance selection at Champs is probably the #1 way to get onto Einstein. Recognizing that team that exactly fits the strategy that compliments your machine or picking up that team @ the 18th pick that should have gone in the top 8. These are the ways that improbable, but dominant allliance are formed (ex; 1477, 1241, 610).
Luck!: Sometimes it just takes a little luck to make it to Einstein. Having a good qualification schedule, not having robot issues in eliminations, someone else having issues, being on the right side of the bracket, etc... there are just so many variables that have to fall into place to get your one machine onto the correct alliance, against the right opponents, etc... that even with all the above a little luck always helps.
Even with all these factors well in your control, the best robots don't always make it to Einstein. As Peter pointed out above, such a small percentage of teams make it to Einstein, that we should all be considered really lucky just to make it there once!
But even with that said, talking with the Teams that make it there consistently, you know they will be working as hard as they can to be in position to make it there year after year.