Practice bot morality

[Drivencrazy]

I see nothing immoral about it. Part of the reason people do FIRST is to get experience in the practices of engineering. One key principle of engineering is iteration. A practice robot allows a team to greatly increase the amount of iterations they can go through. They can practice, find a flaw, find a fix, and implement it at their competition. If you think about it as a tool for learning there can be no thought of it being immoral.

As for the thought of it being unfair to teams without the resources there are many inequalities in FIRST. Would you consider expedited shipping to only the continental US an unfair advantage? No probably not. You would say its part of the challenge and move on. Disparity in resources is very similar. There are many different ways to raise funds on your own and if your team feels a practice bot is a way to increase your teams ability to meet its goals then find a way to make it happen and call it even.

[JohnSchneider]

"Going against the spirit of 6 week build [by adding to the robot after 6 weeks]"

Wouldn't most teams first Day at a regional be doing this

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by animenerdjohn

"Going against the spirit of 6 week build [by adding to the robot after 6 weeks]"

Wouldn't most teams first Day at a regional be doing this

If teams bothered to come out of the pits. Thursday is often Extra Eight Hours of Desperate Build Time Day to finish their still incomplete robot.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Guys,
This subject is brought up every year and the same answers are usually given. While winning is a great thing, let's not loose sight of what the competition is actually attempting. We are here to inspire students. The rest is all just fluff compared to improving someone's life, setting someone on a path, or getting someone to recognize high school education is simply not enough in today's world. We know that added experience gives students more reference on making good decisions. Why would you want to limit our ability to add to someone's life or learning?

Our team is a credit class in our district. Therefore it must meet certain lesson plans and goals throughout the year, all year. We build and prototype, improve understanding and ability, refine and correct strategy, and help others when we can. Part of that plan is a second robot platform.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by howyadugan1730

In the spirit of FIRST fairness is one of the main goals hence limitations on robot size, weight, and price; so that competition is not only challenging but fun at the same time.

[Citation Needed] There have been numerous instances of GDC members posting on here that a level playing field is not desirable. I'd be willing to bet you that there are transcripts of Dean's speeches that outright say that we all need to work harder to get what we want. In fact I know there are but it is a couple years old at this point (I haven't had time to go through transcripts from modern speeches).

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Seriously?
If you think practice bots are immoral you must think FiM is Gomorrah.

HA!

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

Guys,
This subject is brought up every year and the same answers are usually given. While winning is a great thing, let's not loose sight of what the competition is actually attempting. We are here to inspire students. The rest is all just fluff compared to improving someone's life, setting someone on a path, or getting someone to recognize high school education is simply not enough in today's world. We know that added experience gives students more reference on making good decisions. Why would you want to limit our ability to add to someone's life or learning?

Our team is a credit class in our district. Therefore it must meet certain lesson plans and goals throughout the year, all year. We build and prototype, improve understanding and ability, refine and correct strategy, and help others when we can. Part of that plan is a second robot platform.

I cannot agree with this more, if a team has a large number of students then build a practice bot is just logical. It gives more students hands on time with the robot which is always a good thing. It also allows you to use your current machine as a demo bot during competition season.

Also, addressing a common misconception. Practice bots do not cost significantly more unless you build identical machines with all new parts on both every year. Reuse motors and controllers. There is nothing wrong with that.

[FRC4ME]

If teams could bring their modified practice bot to competition, then yeah, that would be like buying an extra three weeks of build season. But they can't. Hence, the practice bot provides a perfect example of a project that can provide an advantage but also brings a whole slew of additional responsibilities. I've seen first-hand what happens to teams who think, "we've got a practice bot so we don't have to finish by ship date." They quickly discover at competition that the two bots stopped being identical earlier than remembered, and their "three weeks -> eight hours" build plan is missing a few steps.

The practice bot presents an important design decision early in the build season: are you confident you have the resources to duplicate everything while still making ship date and develop a competent plan for applying the lessons you learn from weeks of practice to the competition bot in only one day? If so, the practice bot can give you a huge advantage, but with significant risk: if you underestimate your capabilities or fail to manage the project well, you may end up in a really tight situation come ship date.

[MaxMax161]

A while ago I thought that finding loopholes, or doing more then the rules suggested, was not necessarily moral. But then by that logic the person who discovers how to fold space by finding a loophole in the laws of physics would be anything but a genius. And the student who worked a 2nd job to buy a physics textbook to act their SAT2s would be anything but deserving.

I think the lines between loophole and innovation, as well as advantaged and prepared are very thin and blurry, if existent at all.

Tl,dr; No, a practice bot is no more immoral then an SAT study book.

[JesseK]

*** Start of Bragging (nanny-nanny-boo-boo) ***
This year, we have design-by-committee approach to the bot. Even with that seemingly ridiculous team organization, it's the start of week 3 and every cotton-picking detail of the robot is DONE in CAD. That's right, completed. Some teams are still deciding on drive train, others still deciding on shooter vs launcher. Well we're done. (except the odd-angle curved paneling that no one on our team has a clue how to do ...). Our robot is so done that I re-did the framing for a more product-friendly presentation, and perhaps to some an intimidation factor. Now we just have to weld the framing and fab some small parts, then assemble everything (perhaps wait on some parts ... no waiting on Banebots this year though, muahahaha). In the process we've rejected over 20 different individual designs for various functions on the robot. We've also re-adjusted our strategy as a tradeoff to keeping things simple. We can't have everything we want, but we'll be better for it.

If we stay on schedule, we'll have the bot to the programmers at the start of week 5. Collectively we've already put over 300 hours into the bot (I've already lost 4 nights of sleep...).

For a practice bot this year, we'll take an old protoype frame and make a simple drive train. Then we'll put some sort of launcher/shooter/something on it, and I'll run the drivers through drills. The key this year isn't just practice -- it's practicing with the robot 30 feet away, and practicing with a robot where the driver literally cannot see balls near the slot because of the shallow angle. That by itself will make or break some matches.
*** End Bragging ***

In my honest opinion, teams who rant about 'unfair' should do the following:
Quit whining and focus on your own robot.

Originally Posted by JesseK

In my honest opinion, teams who rant about 'unfair' should do the following:
Quit whining and focus on your own robot.

To build onto that, to those complaining to use on CD about their unfinished robot: Get of Chief Delphi and start working/designing. Like my programming class teacher has said multiple times: "Stop complaining on reddit about your code not compiling and actually fix it". Love that teacher.

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Also, addressing a common misconception. Practice bots do not cost significantly more unless you build identical machines with all new parts on both every year. Reuse motors and controllers. There is nothing wrong with that.

Just to add onto Andrew's statement, your practice bot doesn't necessarily need to be a exact replica of the competition bot - it just needs to replicate machine function well enough that using it to practice is worthwhile.

Some teams build an alpha and a beta bot where the alpha bot is made quickly and rather sloppily (compared to the beta bot) to prove the overall concept of the beta or final robot. The design from the beta bot is then derived from the alpha bot with the alpha bot serving as a reasonably good practice tool. Since the alpha bot in this case is just proof of concept, you can get away with running used motors, gearboxes, electronics, etc.

[LinuxArchitect]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

I cannot agree with this more, if a team has a large number of students then build a practice bot is just logical. It gives more students hands on time with the robot which is always a good thing. It also allows you to use your current machine as a demo bot during competition season.

Exactly. We have 82 students in our club this year. They are working, in three separate teams, on three prototype robots right now, with a few mentors working on two others. Some combination of the prototypes will get promoted to the final design, and the students will build two bots, one to bag for FRC and one to use for other activities. One robot from the bunch will go to two different science exhibits.

We probably have an advantage over a smaller team, though that can be debated. But we're still at a disadvantage to teams with better experience/skills, more money, better school support, etc.

In recent years, we built our competition robot on Thursday on the event; sometimes on Friday. But we've slowly built up our resources, and student interest is at an all time high despite those performances. We're looking to the future with a multi-year plan to turn the program into a championship FRC team.

[rsegrest]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

Guys,
This subject is brought up every year and the same answers are usually given. While winning is a great thing, let's not loose sight of what the competition is actually attempting. We are here to inspire students. The rest is all just fluff compared to improving someone's life, setting someone on a path, or getting someone to recognize high school education is simply not enough in today's world. We know that added experience gives students more reference on making good decisions. Why would you want to limit our ability to add to someone's life or learning?

Could not agree more! This is about inspiring students to make positive changes in their lives and in turn the world!

Part of the lesson is also in realism though. For instance when you go to college there are going to be those who work harder to get the highest grade on the test while you go to an all-night Skyrim game fest. Is it their fault that you chose not to study?

FIRST does not 'demand' that you win. They ask that you give your best and full effort to succeed, learn, and help others and that is wholly upon you.

[AdamHeard]

I won't argue morality, legality or any other point about practice bots which has been thoroughly debated and discussed in numerous threads several times per year.

However, I will say there that any team can pull themselves up by their bootstraps to the very top tier with nothing but hard work.

When I joined 973 (no offense to the existing team at the time), they were mediocre at their best, and often below average.

Each year we set a few goals, and we achieved them; Each year we got substantially better.

Four years down the road from that day, we have a larger far more optimized shop, more machines in house (including a CNC), 5 times the team's 2007 budget, substantially more members, practice bots, offseason projects, powdercoated robots and a fair amount of on-field success.

I am not trying to brag, merely making the point that with hard work any team can massively improve their circumstances.

There is no unfair, just a personal lack of desire to improve one's own circumstances.

[Aren Siekmeier]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Four years down the road from that day, we have a larger far more optimized shop, more machines in house (including a CNC), 5 times the team's 2007 budget, substantially more members, practice bots, offseason projects, powdercoated robots and a fair amount of on-field success.

And, ahem, a World Championship? I guess you succeeded at avoiding bragging...

Building a practice robot is hardly not in the spirit of FIRST. FIRST says nothing about making yourself less competitive because you know there are those out there who can't/don't do the same things to help themselves out. FRC is about keeping a high level of competition while helping other teams do the same. The competition is the tool to inspire students in STEM.

[DR3381]

Our goal on Droid Rage 3381 is to have the students build the second robot completely untouched by mentor hands between ship date and competition. It is essentially our test to see if the students have picked up everything that they were taught over the course of the build season. Students go so far as to wrap it in police tape to make sure that no adults touch this robot for any reason.

Last year, the students completed the drive platform and we were running the robot around the shop, but we ran out of time before competition before the students could complete it fully. It was never a useful as anything but a learning tool for students, but hopefully they will work harder and have more time available to them to complete the second robot this year. Its great for us as mentors to see students teaching other students and a robot being built from scratch without us. Maybe someday they won't need us at all!!!