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Unread 06-02-2017, 12:06
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Expert Flybot Crasher
FRC #1885 (ILITE)
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Re: Poll: Reasonable and achievable, or shooting for the stars?

I think most teams have a presumption that doing 1 thing well is less of a "challenge" than trying to do everything. Any team can ferry a few gears in a match and climb a rope after many seconds of line up and capture. It is quite difficult to build a robot which will consistently ferry MANY gears, account for ALL 10% occurrences and THEN capture/climb a rope in a minimum amount of time. It's the difference between a true expert and someone who 'dabbles'.

This year I've learned a lesson lesson that would seem obvious given that it is in plain sight, but isn't put to practice by the majority. Average teams who do not understand what it takes to optimize and test a design for realistic on-field scenarios will never be at the same level of power house teams. It is the perfect year & game design to learn this lesson, as optimization of the "easier" challenge is still quite valuable.




Now for the metaphor...

Don't shoot for the stars. It's ambiguous, has many unknown unknowns (including purpose), and is generally lonely up there. Eventually you can't even see where 'home' is and lose all perspective. Shoot for something more plausible, like the Moon or Mars. If you're particularly ambitious, orbiting Venus or Jupiter would be pretty cool too. And if you aim for those targets, don't miss - even our solar system is vastly empty and quite lonely.

Besides, I don't think our FRC batteries have enough juice to get the balls into orbit, let alone beyond orbit.
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