Go to Post Frank is frank, and I like that. - rsisk [more]
Home
Go Back   Chief Delphi > FIRST > General Forum
CD-Media   CD-Spy  
portal register members calendar search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read FAQ rules

 
View Poll Results: Should teams be allowed to make repair parts for their robot after a competition is o
Yes - Robots do break - Give us until Tuesday following. 80 61.54%
No - You break you will have to tuff out the repair on site 28 21.54%
No - Just pack up and go home, forget the nationals 3 2.31%
Just break the rule 19 14.62%
Voters: 130. You may not vote on this poll

 
 
Thread Tools Rating: Thread Rating: 7 votes, 4.57 average. Display Modes
Prev Previous Post   Next Post Next
  #46   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 07-02-2002, 19:36
Woodie Flowers Award
Mr.B Mr.B is offline
Registered User
no team (PNTA)
 
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: Plymouth
Posts: 12
Mr.B has a spectacular aura aboutMr.B has a spectacular aura aboutMr.B has a spectacular aura about
Another Perspective

I’m such a junkie for these discussions…

Is Gracious Professionalism where you find it…or how you define it? Or does it exist as an absolute truth, independent of the rules of the game?


FIRST is a program that has benefited thousands of children, and some older kids too…I’m witness to the latter as are many of you who read this. FIRST has taught us some invaluable lessons. I monitor this site as part of my continuing ed plan. I’m admittedly fascinated by the dialog.

If I might, I’d like to share this insight…..

Gracious Professionalism is not a natural act. For one thing it’s too hard to do without deliberate concentration…it is not yet reflexive in all of us. Winning is winning and loosing is losing, no matter how you define it, and no matter how many winners or losers a particular game has.

Winning is a nice thing…but losing is the character builder and the better teacher…..(hold this thought until the end of this missive.)

In 96’ or was it 97?… Chief Delphi won rookie of the year that year…and if I’m not mistaken…the CD Robot that competed in NH…was a lesser cousin to the awesome clawed machine that performed so well a few weeks later in the nationals……

Because of that, the robots our team took from regional to Nationals were thoroughly reconfigured between events…we believed making better robots was a form of gracious professionalism….those were the hardest 3 days of the competition…especially since they followed those grueling 6 weeks…..

The Chief Delphi 3 day robot “Fix” was an awesome display of redesign and reconstruction …as far as we knew only the Clinton Crew and Bill Beatty, built perfect machines “Out of the Box”…cause they must have had a big box full of nearly perfect machines.….

I remember that Joe and company were playing to win.…. so was that team with all the 1’s (111) and that was nothing to be ashamed of…nobody was pretending that winning was not important…and each time that our kids played the Delphi kids, or the Clinton kids or the wild Stang kids or any of the students from the other teams, we played to win…knowing we had the opportunity and abilities to fix whatever broke.

This new ruling will “Shackle” those teams who play to win. This rule will serve to negate creative adaptation and will as it is intended to do….make everyone a bit more careful..and a bit less aggressive…this is my theory about the rule…it will serve to offset the temptation to take out another team’s bot’,,,cause the risks of taking someone out are reciprocal…you remember..action and reaction…conservation of momentum…also the rule requires more due diligence during the 6 week construction period (read make it harder to get the job done well) during the already intensive (read too short) 6 week period.

The logic of the ruling is inescapable as Joe describes it, and equally clear from the perspective outlined above……and it is flawed in it’s premise.

The rule serves to create equality by limiting and restricting the use of team resources that we all share, such as time, strategies and creativity. Instead, FIRST and those who participate in FIRST, should promote parity through expanding team resources and options and restricting the monies spent….and loose the victim mentality. After all FIRST is the participants…no FIRST teams…no FIRST…

Example: Designers are necessarily limited in 5 essential ways:

Time (no one has forever to do anything)
Money/Resources (no one has everything)
Power ( you can’t use nukes)
Weight ( Even the rich teams gotta stop bolting stuff on eventually)
Knowledge (Even the Motorola Guys/Gals stop and scratch their collective craniums sometime)

First creates artificial values for some of these…and perhaps the ideal mix has not yet been developed.

In First, Time is finite and clearly defined…the restriction on parts ( the kit) is intended to save time (Locating and developing appropriate technology is by far the most time consuming aspect of any design project…but also the most educational…kits save time, but they limit the knowledge you gain by sourcing and comparing) That’s why modular homes and kit homes are far less costly…and desirable, than custom homes…reduced options…

In FIRST, Money is definitely NOT clearly defined….or even restricted in any meaningful way. Sure the robot has to have x dollars in the final product…but teams we all know and love spend tens of K’s developing the forms of the few hundred dollars in copper, aluminum, plastic and steel that ends up on the robot, …so the money limitation does not serve the purpose it is intended to serve..it does not level the field…read the posts…5k – 15K per bot…and more.

There are teams who have competed with true 500 dollar robots…the flying pig comes to mind…
So how did the competing teams level the playing field….spare parts was one way….

And the next 6 weeks were spent making spare parts….always we made spare parts….

Spare parts take time…poor teams can trade time for money, brain power and ingenuity can overcome deep pockets and limitless resources…so restricting the money spent on the machines,,,not the time, will promote some of the parity required and desired……it seems less appropriate to limit the time making the things that can be so very advantageous…things that decide winning or losing…the spare parts!

I’ll try to close the wide radius I’ve drawn..…winning is not an expectation for the majority of players..but participating fully is…and a broken part can mean not participating.

Make things really fair, limit money more than time or spare parts…

With respect to busted robots….there have been busted robots throughout the 10+ years of FIRST…it happens…During the 95 games, the first FIRST nationals were decided by a two out of three match between two bot’s, where each team toppled the other and where robots were broken in the heat of competition or combat…(whichever word offends least)…and no higher Gracious Professionalism could have ever been demonstrated then was shown by Wayne Paradise and the Clinton team…who gave up their time outs…their help, tools and expertise…and yes…their SPARE PARTS to help heal the robot they knocked over, a robot team who eventually went on to beat them in that final match……..think about what you just read….Robots get bumped, they get whacked and they break. And great positive life lessons should be the outcome…not crying or feeling victimized…but to do this right…you gotta BE a gracious professional and you gotta have spare parts!

Mr.B
 


Thread Tools
Display Modes Rate This Thread
Rate This Thread:

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
$3500 ruling......big mistake JamesJones Rules/Strategy 42 13-01-2003 18:38
Wow! what a year archiver 2000 8 23-06-2002 22:43
WOW!!! archiver 2000 3 23-06-2002 22:22
WOW RebAl Chit-Chat 15 10-04-2002 17:13
WOW ! Mike Schroeder General Forum 12 12-03-2002 21:32


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 10:31.

The Chief Delphi Forums are sponsored by Innovation First International, Inc.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2017, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright © Chief Delphi