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Unread 25-03-2010, 18:07
yaron yaron is offline
Founder of 2214 & FRC Senior Mentor
FRC #1574 (MisCar)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Rookie Year: 2006
Location: Israel
Posts: 17
yaron will become famous soon enough
Re: A mentor perspective on what happened in FIRST Israel

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon236 View Post
Several allegations have been made that the field in Israel was not to FIRST standards. That was not the case.

From "The Arena" Section 6.1

"The competition ARENAS are modular constructions that are assembled, used, disassembled, and shipped many times during the competition season. They may undergo a significant amount of wear and tear. The ARENA is designed to withstand rigorous play and frequent shipping, and every effort is made to ensure that the ARENAS are as identical from event to event as possible. However, as the ARENAS are assembled in different venues by different event staff, some small variations do occur. Fit and tolerance on large assemblies (e.g. the TOWER) are ensured only to within ¼ inch. Overall gross dimensions of the entire field may vary up to 4 inches. Successful teams will design ROBOTS that are insensitive to these variations."

The field in Israel was built with metric components to the specified tolerances. Our Head Referee, Stuart Bloom, measured the contested field elements and declared that they met 6.1 requirements.
1.5 tube is 1.5 tube, a tolerance for a diameter is not 4mm maybe 0.2mm. It is very reasonable for a team to design a lift system based on this dimension.
Another thing is the visible difference between the blue bumps and the red bumps. If it is so different than it is not engineering, and I thought one of the purpose of FIRST is to celebrate science and technology. You can not celebrate science and technology and forget about engineering. You invest hours volunteering and mentoring students in more then one team and assisting many others teams in order to eventually participate in a celebration of science and technology. The Israel regional, and I am maybe the most sad person in Israel to admit it, was far from a celebration of engineering, it did not serve as inspiration to many teams. Having said that and all what I mentioned in my previous post - nothing, and I repeat nothing is directed to the field people who were brought to an unbelievable situation by wrong decisions for the second year.
As a volenteer who spent three months with 3-4 hours sleeping each night being away for the whole night several times I am the last to show any disrispectfull to any volunteer in FIRST, and if someone took my "complains" as personal, this was not my intentions. I still want Israel to be the best regional in the world. Else, why would I mentor my student to assist so many teams in Israel. The general manger called me and the other mentor of MisCar the worst mentors in Israel because we push student to follow the system approach thinking model engineer follows. For me the FRC competition is very important, not because it is so important to MisCar to win, but because the competition is the only way to examine our process, to show students that inspectors, judges, teachers, engineers and other student appreciate thier achievements. If a well designed, well written code was able to be tested only for one game and only for 1 min and 50 seconds because of communication problems (the lift system was cancelled because the diameter was so out of the range, it was too danger even to try it), then something is wrong. No matter what best IDF or any other expert in the whole galaxy will say - this is not the way to run an event of 52 teams with over 1000 HS pupils and more then 100 mentors. You can not expose students to such a disaster. Too many pupils were crying, our captain was even brought to a first aid assistance because of what FIRST Israel general manager forced him to do!!!
And you know what, if all this was happening only to one team then I would say, sure they need to check themselves first, but it happened to many other teams.
Having expressed my self so long, I must also refer to another issue. You know me since 2006 we have been meeting In Israel and in Atlanta every year. Mentors in MisCar are devoted to FIRST goals and spirits - to all of them, and when FIRST-ISRAEL general manger blames us as people who are nor educating our student to the same values as we believe is .... I can't even find the word (and not because of the lack of English) to express my feeling on this.
And regarding your post about the FRC community in Israel - For all the US readers, I repeat again, Israel could be the best regional in the world because of the teams in it - only the management should be replaced. And I am not speaking on ALISHA who you know I respect and care for.