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View Poll Results: Reasonable and achievable or shoot for the stars?
Reasonable and acheivable 87 60.84%
Shoot for the stars 56 39.16%
Voters: 143. You may not vote on this poll

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Unread 06-02-2017, 11:24
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Poll: Reasonable and achievable, or shooting for the stars?

This is something I've been thinking about for a while.
In a lot of threads, I read comments like "too many teams are going to try to do everything and fail" and "teams should focus on doing ONE task really well". While these are fair points, would it really be better if all but the powerhouse teams only attempted to build "reasonable" robots?

So here is my question:
Are students on a team more likely to be inspired and learn about the engineering process if their team decides to build a reasonable, achievable robot that performs some aspects of the game strongly?
OR
If their team attempts a more ambitious, challenging design that they feel BEST meets the objectives of the game, and ends up struggling to finish and/or perform at the level that they wanted?

At the end of the day, is it better to know your limits and not push too hard, or step up in the face of the challenge and try something awesome? After all, even if a lot of teams struggle, there will be teams out there who pull off something they never previously imagined possible.
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Re: Poll: Reasonable and achievable, or shooting for the stars?

Why not both?

Especially this year, if done right teams can add on mechanisms to address each challenge one at a time. You can spend the time needed to figure out shooting and get that functional, then add on a gear mechanism, and then a climber (or whatever order you prefer) as time allows.

Achieving an "everything" robot is pretty inspirational. But so is achieving a successful robot that gets you into the playoffs. I would argue (based on experience) that going after an "everything" robot and missing is worse for a team (in terms of moral, getting members to return the following year) than going after a simpler robot and being as successful as that strategy would allow.
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Unread 06-02-2017, 11:56
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Re: Poll: Reasonable and achievable, or shooting for the stars?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon Stratis View Post
Why not both?

Especially this year, if done right teams can add on mechanisms to address each challenge one at a time. You can spend the time needed to figure out shooting and get that functional, then add on a gear mechanism, and then a climber (or whatever order you prefer) as time allows.
I was expecting this game to play out in this way, but the extreme packaging constraints this game imposes really hinders a piece-wise development strategy like this. It's very difficult to make room for everything without planning for it all at once in advance... and then you become a do-everything bot that's falling behind in build season.

---

To address the OP: I've been on teams that shot for the stars and failed. I've been on teams that did the reasonable and achievable thing. The latter is much more inspirational and rewarding, every single time. No matter how reasonable and achievable, every robot will have lessons to learn, things to tweak, etc. Maybe if you're a top tier team with your act together, you'll get bored and your kids won't learn as much, but I really think those are the teams that don't struggle to shoot for the stars anyway.

It's not just about competitive success that makes reasonable robots better - it's just a smoother process overall, and people are more inspired when they make something that works.
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Re: Poll: Reasonable and achievable, or shooting for the stars?

Having been on teams in every spectrum of skill and resources. I can say that a robot that moves and meets its objectives is way more inspirational than a robot that doesn't do anything because the team overreached.

Set reasonable goals and expectations and do everything in your power to achieve them. Elite teams are elite because of what they do in the off season not what they do during the build season. If you want to shoot for the stars the time to do that is May-December not January-April.
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Re: Poll: Reasonable and achievable, or shooting for the stars?

It all really depends on a teams ability and resources. For some teams shooting for the stars is another teams reasonable and achievable.
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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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Re: Poll: Reasonable and achievable, or shooting for the stars?

Quote:
Originally Posted by JesseK View Post
Besides, I don't think our FRC batteries have enough juice to get the balls into orbit, let alone beyond orbit.
But that's the beauty of it, we're burning FUEL as we go, and thanks to the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, the more FUEL we burn, the lighter the load we have to lift!
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Re: Poll: Reasonable and achievable, or shooting for the stars?

Quote:
Originally Posted by JesseK View Post
Besides, I don't think our FRC batteries have enough juice to get the balls into orbit, let alone beyond orbit.
FRC batteries store about 1MJ of energy, and it takes about 1MJ of energy to get a 100 gram object to escape velocity, so one battery has enough energy to get about 1 fuel beyond earth's orbit.
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Re: Poll: Reasonable and achievable, or shooting for the stars?

Quote:
Originally Posted by JesseK View Post
Besides, I don't think our FRC batteries have enough juice to get the balls into orbit, let alone beyond orbit.
18 Ah @ 12V = 12*18 Watt-hours * 60 min/hr * 60 s/min = 777600 Watt-s or Joules. Escape velocity is 11186 m/s. So 777600 = 1/2 * m * (11186)^2 = 12.4g. Balls weigh 70g, so you'd need 6 batteries charging your ball launching system to reach escape velocity. Not counting drag, etc. A properly designed charging system could probably send a penny into solar orbit, though.

EDIT: Wikipedia also tells me delta-v to Low Earth Orbit is 9.4km/s, so getting into orbit isn't any easier. Not to mention you need an onboard motor for a circularization burn. Unless you're using ground based lasers ablating your fuel as a "motor".
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Re: Poll: Reasonable and achievable, or shooting for the stars?

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Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik View Post
18 Ah @ 12V = 12*18 Watt-hours * 60 min/hr * 60 s/min = 777600 Watt-s or Joules. Escape velocity is 11186 m/s. So 777600 = 1/2 * m * (11186)^2 = 12.4g. Balls weigh 70g, so you'd need 6 batteries charging your ball launching system to reach escape velocity. Not counting drag, etc. A properly designed charging system could probably send a penny into solar orbit, though.
That's the most interesting math I have seen all year.
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Re: Poll: Reasonable and achievable, or shooting for the stars?

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Originally Posted by RoboChair View Post
That's the most interesting math I have seen all year.
I bet I know what someone's planning for an offseason project....
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Re: Poll: Reasonable and achievable, or shooting for the stars?

When I started mentoring, we were a shoot for the stars team. Our ambition far outstripped our experience, our fabrication resources, and sometimes our budget. It led to frustration, burnout, and anger.

Now we go for what is reasonable and achievable for us, and we try to move that bar up a bit each year. That doesn't mean that we don't take on anything challenging during build season, but we try to make sure that we have a fallback position if new challenges don't work out, and that we're not taking on so many challenges we end up overwhelmed. We're trying new things, but keeping some things (like our chassis) simple. We still make mistakes, but now mistakes are setbacks that lead to a late night or two instead of soul-crushing, season-ending disasters.

Students still try new things, they're still inspired, and we're probably going to aim for a crazy shooter for our off-season competitions, since that's one of the skills we want to start building.
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Re: Poll: Reasonable and achievable, or shooting for the stars?

There are some teams that scale back on their goals and ambitions due to prior results, and perceived 'failures', yet they have no idea why they had 'failures'. Automatically scaling back is limiting, especially with teams that have resources, funding and student personnel.

Wasn't there someone who said 'you learn more from your failures than you do your successes'????

The FIRST program provides opportunities for learning on a whole host of levels..... Its more than just robots.....
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Re: Poll: Reasonable and achievable, or shooting for the stars?

As a mentor and professional innovator, I say there has to be a combination of both. It's all about risk vs. reward, innovation vs. stagnation, and being able to measure or recognize your base (which changes every year with team demographics). So:

1. Establish your base as quickly as possible...build on what you know and at least don't start with re-inventing the wheel. This should establish the worst you will do this season.
2. Aim higher. Growth requires struggle. BUT, make sure your aim is scalable meaning it can fall back to your base or go even higher. Your aim is the best you will do.
3. Allow yourself to grow during competition season.
4. If you are lucky enough to have a year-round program...keep going as if you are still competing after champs, finishing all those things you wanted to do at the beginning of the season, or new things you witnessed during the season.
5. GoTo #1 - Start next season at a higher base.


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Re: Poll: Reasonable and achievable, or shooting for the stars?

Winning is a lot more inspiring than building a cool robot in my opinion. That said there's definitely an optimal balance between the two.
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