Who built your robot?

[John Bono]

We have a grand total of one college student and one physics theacher beign all we have over High School student age. And the Physics teacher is only in the area of the bot half the time, telling us if something won't work (and that's only if it will waste at least an hour). He's so awesome.
Too bad our fishing boat last year didn't work...

[Clanat]

I agree with the sentiment that sometimes students don't do enough on the robot. I am also disappointed with the teams that say students do less than 20% of the design. How is that a student product, even if they do a lot of the building?

[Gope]

On our team we have several voulenters that are "macheenists" that work with a few engineers to construct our robot. Whatever work that can be done by students is done by them, and they all love it. I think our system is very much in the spirit of FIRST and allows for students to learn everything about the robot and alot about the tools in the machine shop we use.



Good luck at nats.

[Marc P.]

My thoughts as a student, having participated on my team for 4 years, (although now I've graduated and am now referred to as a "mentor") are this: There should be a balance between engineers and students, and between design and fabrication.

On my team, students come up with the ideas for what the robot will do, e.g. what it's functions are, what it's strategy will be, etc. Unfortunately, most high school students lack the engineering experience to design the specifics on how a certain mechanism will perform it's task. Our engineers sort of mentally prod students into spitting out ideas on how to create something, then the engineer will come up with the specific design, print it out with dimensions, explain to the student exactly how it works, then let the student fabricate and implement the part.

This is the situation for most of the complex mechanisms in our robot, and most of the simpler tasks (e.g. idlers) are designed and manufactured by seasoned students who have the experience of previous years. As a result, the bulk of the complex design work is done by engineers, while the majority of the fabrication is done by students.

I'd write and explain more, but at present I've the biggest headache I've had in a long long while, so I'll forego the explanation of why this is more beneficial to students than having engineers build the entire robot, and simply explain what they are doing.

[Jeff Waegelin]

Wow.... way to bring back an old thread....

Anyways, my team typically builds about 95% of our robot on our own. A few parts, such as gears for our transmission and a few other parts are done by outside shops, but the rest of it is designed and built by our students and our teacher. This year, a little less is being done by us, since all the aluminum for our frame is being welded by GM (we don't have the tools to do it ourselves), but we are building the steel prototype ourselves. Basically, we're gonna build it all ourselves first, then swap out the steel for aluminum to save weight.

[Moshingkow]

Our robot is 100% student designed. It is troubleshooted a bit by mentors, but this year our robot came out of the students minds. The mechanisms, the Autocad (i did that with another student) and the way it all fits was done completely by students.

Building is 95% done by students. The teachers and mentors are mainly there for advise and administrative reasons. They order the materials, help us with our problems with building and such.

We only have one engineer helping our team, but he cant really help us as much as we would like.

We are not only building our robot with our time though... On saturdays, we have two other rookie teams come to our school to work on their robots in our machine shops as they lack there own. On the 15th, we are going to have half a field built, and we are going to host a trial run with a few robots from the NYC area.

I think our team is really the epitome of the FIRST Spirit!

Tenkai

[Shawn60]

We are very fortunate to have on our team the owner and lead man of one of the largest machine shops west of the Mississippi helping us design and build the robot. We (students/teachers/machinists) spend about 30-40 hours a week working together in the machine shop. With their help our students are able to ACTUALLY DESIGN AND BUILD our robot. Yes the machinists do come up with a lot of the more advanced solutions to problems. As a teacher I think that is great. The experience of the machinists allows the students and MYSELF to be inspired and amazed by possibilities that we never dreamed possible. Using ideas of dedicated and willing machinists does not hinder student learning. On the contrary, I feel that the ideas of experts in "real life" design applications are not only good but essential for student learning.

When someone asks me who built your robot? I reply "THE TEAM DID". We are all members of the same team. We are all in this together.

Shawn
Team 60

[Mullen]

one other thing than who builds the robot is who works on it in the pits, last year at Chicago our team was approached by news reporters for one reason, according to them we were "The first team we've seen so far where the students are doing the work on the robot" i see a problem where students are actually encouraged to stay out of the pit area, how does keeping them out of the pits INSPIRE kids?

[Cory]

Originally posted by Moshingkow
Our robot is 100% student designed. It is troubleshooted a bit by mentors, but this year our robot came out of the students minds. The mechanisms, the Autocad (i did that with another student) and the way it all fits was done completely by students.

Building is 95% done by students. The teachers and mentors are mainly there for advise and administrative reasons. They order the materials, help us with our problems with building and such.

We only have one engineer helping our team, but he cant really help us as much as we would like.

We are not only building our robot with our time though... On saturdays, we have two other rookie teams come to our school to work on their robots in our machine shops as they lack there own. On the 15th, we are going to have half a field built, and we are going to host a trial run with a few robots from the NYC area.

I think our team is really the epitome of the FIRST Spirit!

Tenkai

wow that is so cool. Helping two other teams, and still managing to build your own bot! My hat is off to you and your team.

Cory

[John Bono]

I seem to remember hearing one of the mentors from one of thier team specifically told me and a freind of mine (who can back me up) that ONLY TWO STUDENTS WERE ALLOWED TO WORK ON THE ROBOT AT A TIME. That might not be a big problem, but when anything smaller than the concept and general profile of the vehicle is designed by the adults (did I mention that while there are only two students, there are four of them, at least one standing over thier shoulders at any given time, telling them what to do. I don't care if they tell them why--you're supposed to figure out the how by yourself--you learn it better that way--a teacher should simply be a guide). Now I'm not going to name any names, but anyone at the LA regionals last year knows exactly who I'm talking about. Oh how I wish we even had access to a machine shop (everything we do is made with what's in the class room--our most advanced pieces of machinary are the drillpress and jigsaw).
On a side note, I just realized that Socrates is a bigger martyr than Jesus. At least some people CLAIM to understand and follow Jesus' teachings.

[Joe Matt]

Sparky is designed, built, programed, and tested by students. Sure, you don't win or get the Chairmans, but you learn.

[John Bono]

Our sentiments exactly. Although if our pitching machine & grabbers didn't break over shipping last year we SO would've taken regionals. I'm serious, this thing would've been able to scoop up a ball a second, if it could get its hands on them (and we had a 3 ft. wide scoop). Ah.. the fishing rig...

[PyroPhin]

how can you learn if you dont get your hands dirty?

Yes, i agree that FIRST is not about actually building a robot, but how can you learn and get inspired about technology if you are sitting on the sidelines?

what Dean Kamen set out for FIRST to symbolize is teams puting aside there differences and working towards a common goal..

I belive that many teams have lost sight of the goals Dean origionally set out for us, and shifted towards a "winning is everything" mentality.
although the winning teams walk away with medals, trophies and banners, the real winners are the teams that didnt make it and still walk away with a grin on there face that something that was, at one time an idea on paper just rolled arround an arena for a day or two. They are the ones who walk away with the connections, the experience, and the feeling of " Even it it wasnt the best robot, it's our robot."

in the immortal words of KMFDM " DIY! Destroy what destroys you! DIY, Do or Die.."

Just my opinion
~Pyro

[LaurenH]

It's hard to tell we have 9 high school students and 6 MSOE students (5 of which are freshman). Were are all close in experence, and who ever wasn't quickly catched up. For the most part each student (HS) had their turn in welding, cutting, lathing, drilling, assembling, designing, ect... One of the teachers and an one of our skilled (HS) students did all the CNC parts.

I fact I think I ask the (HS) student for more help then they ask me.

It's a great feeling when you get the shy-freshman (HS)programer to use the pneumatic nail shooter, and lather all our secret weapons.

So...as far as it goes everyone does everything, you come to our meetings you are put to work (we even ask the janitor, but he only wanted to watch ) .

One more week left to go and were still in piece, luck to everyone.

[John Bono]

I still don't think a bot where even half the work is done by non students can be considered even legitimite. Watching someone solve a problem is leagues apart from solving it yourself--you should know that from any math class. It isn't just the knowledge--it's the experience and smarts you develop along the way.
On a side note, how do some teams even GET that many teams. What over-bloated company is sponsering these teams? We haven't had one single engineer. Ever. Our only non-student is our physics teacher, who only says if something will work or not--the rest is done by us (except that he'll hold something that we're cutting occasionally).