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Originally Posted by Cory
The gap is not all that big in the first place. Since 2005 and the advent of the then IFI kitbot (Now AndyMark), the gap was narrowed dramatically. For those who were not around prior to 2005, the kitbot was a complete joke. It was nearly useless. This meant teams all but had to make a custom base/drive train. Many teams failed. I'd estimate that perhaps 20% or more of the teams could not drive reliably. Post 2005, everyone can have a reliable, robust base driving in under a week (and normally 2-3 days). Immobile robots are far less common now.
The introduction of AndyMark products in 2005 narrowed the gap even more. You wanted a shifting transmission prior to 2005? Well you had two options. Option one-use the drill motor transmissions that came in the kit and shift them with a servo. These were not shift on the fly. Option two-design, build, and test your own custom shifting transmission. Both of these options were labor intensive and were not trivial. Many teams who tried option number one couldn't do it reliably. Option number two was a LOT of work.
Along comes AndyMark in 2005. Suddenly anyone with $700 to spend can buy reliable two speed shift on the fly gearboxes for their robot. Now two speed robots are the norm, not the exception. Teams who normally made custom shifting transmissions can now use some COTS components to lessen the labor involved, or purchase the entire assembly to focus on other components of the robot.
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I wasn't going to comment on this before, but why not.
973 wasn't a "have" team at the end of last season, and we decided we weren't happy about that.
Did we sit around keeping everything the same, the only action we take being complaining about large corporate teams and waiting for a sponsor to fall on us? No, we hit the pavement hard, in all aspects. We raised more money this season than any other, and with the exception of a NASA grant, actually LOST many of our main large sponsors (Big thanks to Laron for sticking around). We threw all conventional wisdom on the team out the window, and replaced with hard work and a focus on continuous improvement.
Our shop is one of the smallest (and leakiest) I have ever seen teams work in, our machine tools are extremely temperamental (and I think we actually lost more time with their temperamentalness than any progress we made with them), our neighborhood is poor and agricultural, our team is small, etc...
We used a lot of the money we raised to buy nicer tools and equipment (not machine tools, that's later on the list), and plan on continuing this process. We have some of the nice things the "haves" have, but our goal is to eventually have all of it.
We also started stressing that you have to do all the little jobs right for the big picture to add up, and the quote in Akash's sig from Paul Copioli sums that up great;
Quote:
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Be excellent in everything you do and the results will just happen.
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So, if you feel your team is at a disadvantage, or the playing field isn't level....
Do something about it.