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Unread 06-02-2017, 11:53
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Valkonn Valkonn is offline
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AKA: Paulo Garcia
FRC #3495 (Mindcraft Robotics)
Team Role: Mechanical
 
Join Date: Jan 2016
Rookie Year: 2014
Location: Fresno, CA
Posts: 46
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Re: Poll: Reasonable and achievable, or shooting for the stars?

For the past 3 years, team 3495 had a very small design team and made very small and incremental improvements. During that time, I would have agreed with you in the "reasonable and achievable" approach. There is no point in overreaching and attempting to fulfill goals that are way out of your experience level.

For example, building a turret without any successful vision experiences is likely going to end up pretty badly. Building a fixed shooter would be the more reliable option.

However, if you stick with this mindset forever, you're going to be pumping out bots without any advancement and will always perform at a sub-par level. Speaking for my team personally, last year was the year we decided to switch things up. We used vision processing (it failed). We switched our drivetrain belts to chain (that failed, they were incredibly high maintenance). We went with an innovative drivetrain design (it failed) rather than the basic pneumatic wheel setup.

Now, those failures were pretty rough. We got crushed in the Las Vegas quarterfinals and let down our teammates. But by the end of the season we had a greater understanding of vision, chain, and drivetrains. Those failures allowed us to make huge improvements and apply them to this robot.

My point is that it's OK to fail, so long as you learn from your mistakes. You should never be content with your level of performance. The point of this program is to learn, and that means taking leaps into technical areas you know very little about. Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant.
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