Practice bot morality

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by JamesCH95

There are teams that would have the population to work full-bore for the entire time. These teams have a well-earned advantage now, but the advantage would become astronomical if they could work for the 6-week build, the two weeks before week 1, and then the 5 weeks until week 5 and 6 competitions. Not to mention there would be a huge disadvantage of week 1 and 2 regionals.

If the ship date bag-n-tag date were to be eliminated (allowing a team to work on their robot all the way up to the competition), the return on investment/advantages gained by a lower or middle percentile team would be significantly larger than the R.O.I. gained by a top percentile team.

Think of it like the graph of natural log, with the x-axis being man-hours of work and the y-axis being robot performance. There is a minimum amount of man-hours of work it takes to just build a Kitbot drive train, but the more and more man-hours you put into prototyping, testing and refining, the lower and lower your returns will be for the amount of time/work invested in it.



Many top percentile teams have robots that are nearing the physical performance constraints of what can be accomplished with the given motors and electrical systems. And having more time to build wouldn't impact these teams for driving practice either, as many of these top teams already build an identical practice robot and build or have access to a full-size practice field.

The other reason why eliminating the ship date would help lower and middle percentile teams more than top ones is turnaround on parts. Finding a machine shop willing to donate time and labor to help make parts for your team is a lot easier if you tell them you have a two week turnaround time rather than a 5 day or less turnaround time.

Or for vendors like AndyMark or Banebots, being out of stock of a critical motor or gearbox is not as crushing to a team who lacks the resources to design a custom one in short order if the ship date is eliminated. How many teams were burned last year receiving gearboxes after ship date? How many of those struggled on practice day at their regional to mount these gearboxes and power up their robots for the first time? How many of these teams could have performed much better on the field if they had the ability to mount these motors and test their robots a week before the competition?

I also think the mentor/student burnout would be eased if ship date were eliminated and we have another several weeks to work on the robot. Given the extra time, why burn the midnight oil early in the build season? Why stress about trying to have Mechanism X completed and working in exactly 32.4 hours to make ship date?

Every other high school or college level robotics/competitive competition allows their teams to work right up to the competition, and every competition is exactly the same: all but the last three or so weeks are spent mostly easy-going, and then everyone crams like crazy in the last few weeks to get everything done. So even if the amount of man-hours of work is the same, the lessened stress from waiting for parts ordered from the Internet is definitely worth it. A one or two week turnaround for out-of-stock parts is not something to stress about then you have 7-10 weeks, but is a major source of anxiety when you only have 6.

Edit: And the "advantages" of teams who compete at later regional would be severely curtailed as District-style events spread throughout more of the country, as with multiple events, the likelihood you won't compete until late in the build season is reduced.