Robotics after FRC

[pwnageNick]

I haven't seen VEX mentioned yet. I'm currently a college student mentoring a high school VEX team, and it works much better than FRC for me schedule-wise. Since the competition runs year-round, our team holds once-a-week meetings on the weekends, meaning that I don't have to sacrifice my school nights to come help out.

VEX also has a collegiate-level competition division you might be interested in, but I don't know much about it.

Not talking about mentoring but participating, does working on a VEX Collegiate team seem like you would be keeping to "in the box"? I've considered doing VEX in college next year, but feel like maybe that would be sticking with something I'm already too familiar with.

I've also been considering the C.A.R.D. competition but wasn't sure if it was still happening/planning to continue/how strong it was.

This is a great thread.

-Nick

[torihoelscher]

At Embry Riddle they have a Robotics program like F.I.R.S.T. Its pretty cool! I cant wait to join them! They dont have enough girls! If you want, I can give you the information about it!

[Jenn Feathers]

Originally Posted by torihoelscher

At Embry Riddle they have a Robotics program like F.I.R.S.T. Its pretty cool! I cant wait to join them! They dont have enough girls! If you want, I can give you the information about it!

is it only offered there?

[popnbrown]

I would recommend that you seriously think about mentoring as a freshman, but that you don't rule out. Spend time with the team and slowly ramp up your availability, if at a certain point you can't handle it then ramp it down. I worked with two CAT engineers and a freshman in college this Fall from October to December, and the freshman was there more often than me, and was there at every single meeting. He even continued to mentor the FRC team, and was basically there 6/7 days of the week, for our meetings for FRC (I'm pretty sure I made less meetings). It's definitely possible, just be careful.

Originally Posted by torihoelscher

At Embry Riddle they have a Robotics program like F.I.R.S.T. Its pretty cool! I cant wait to join them! They dont have enough girls! If you want, I can give you the information about it!

What program is this?




Also currently a junior in college, I run a club, that has several teams that compete in:
JSDC - University of Illinois competition, jsdc.ec.illinois.edu
IGVC - Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition hosted by AUVSI at Oakland, MI
Lunabotics - which someone already mentioned
VEX College Competition - which probably comes the closest besides CARD, and is relatively cheap to get a team started in

Beyond that there are these:
Battlebots - you know what that is
AUVSI - in addition to IGVC hosts a bunch of different competitions, land, water, and sky based
RoboCup - You build a team of robots that compete in a game of soccer
RoboOlympiad - or something like that, I'll look it up for you, they have a multitude of competitions, from SumoBots, to RoboCup type games, to building like a MazeBot (MouseBot or something).


Wanted to add info about CARD as well. Probably the closest to FRC, and it tries to spread the same values of FIRST unlike other competitions, but it's currently having a lot of difficulty getting up and running. As of now the competition for this year has been postponed, because a lot of the involved are also heavily involved in FIRST. If anyone is ever interested in CARD, I suggest going to the website and e-mailing them.

[JohnSchneider]

I believe shes referring to Riddles CARD team

We have a world champion formula SAE team here at A&M but its not open to freshmen-sophmores.

[Jamie Kalb]

Originally Posted by pwnageNick

Not talking about mentoring but participating, does working on a VEX Collegiate team seem like you would be keeping to "in the box"? I've considered doing VEX in college next year, but feel like maybe that would be sticking with something I'm already too familiar with.

If you're asking about whether collegiate VEX is limiting in the level of robotics you get to use, I don't think so at all. I know the rules are much more "open" than the high school competition about the use of custom electronics. More motors and sensors are allowed, and there's more of an emphasis on programming - I'm fairly certain the game is 1 minute of autonomous mode, then 1 minute teleop, as opposed to 20 second auton and 2 minute teleop of high school VEX (and FRC). In that sense, it's a more accurate simulation of real-world robotics than the "glorified RC cars" of FRC. I don't think being "too familiar" with this area is a problem at all - there's plenty of room for expansion and lots to learn still.

[Foster]

In college VEX you build both robots in your alliance. This gives you those ability to create robots that partner together.

There are also relaxed rules on sensor electronics, so you can add Arduino type boards to do off board processing. You also can build / machine components out of polycarb blocks and hefty metal items. There are about 80 teams and growing. Two biggest areas are New Zealand with about 8 teams and the 2011 Championship along with Mexico with 10 teams. STEMRobotics supports a PA team KTOR and a FL team CAKE.

See the VEX site and forums for more details.

[Racer26]

The one I didn't see mentioned (and maybe thats because it's currently idle) is the DARPA Grand/Urban Challenges, for fully autonomous vehicles.

I didn't know about Lunabotics, that's pretty cool; is that a yearly thing with different games each year, or is it new, or what?

[CarterM]

I highly recommend either Formula SAE, as it's already a huge competition around the world, or C.A.R.D. Here at Milwaukee School Of Engineering, most of our teammates were FRC members and, as stated above, it's simply a year long, less restricted FRCompetition. Both are really quite fun in their own ways!

[EricH]

Originally Posted by 1075guy

I didn't know about Lunabotics, that's pretty cool; is that a yearly thing with different games each year, or is it new, or what?

Go to the site that two of us linked to back on page one. If you can't find it, http://www.nasa.gov/offices/educatio...unabotics.html. You can see prior years by following the YouTube link on the left side of that page.

The game is simple: Dig dirt from a given zone, and bring it back to where you started from. This part doesn't change much if any year-to-year. The part that changes? Size and mass requirements.

So why is this a college-level competition, you ask? Because there is one requirement that makes life miserable, and one feature of the game that does the same thing. Everything has to be lunar-plausible, and the dirt is a lunar soil simulant which has some nasty properties.

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

Don't get stuck in the robot trap. There are a lot of engineers in the world, and only a very small portion of them do robots for a living. Branch out and give some other collegiate competition a try -- you can always come back to FIRST if nothing else gets you going.

“I think they are a bit over-rated. It’s certainly fun to do — for all parties involved: Students, Teachers, Parents. But robotics is such a narrow slice of the totality of STEM that I worry other dimensions of learning might get sidestepped in the process.” -Neil DeGrasse Tyson on FIRST as a vehicle for getting kids into STEM

(Which begs the question, if FIRST only excites students about robots is it fulfilling its mission?)

This.

I'd suggest Formula SAE as my favorite of the SAE competitions. There are so many other SAE competitions everyone finds something they like: Baja, Aero Design, Clean Snowmobile, and Supermilage. There are solar powered cars (as mentioned). There is the AIChE Chem-E-Car competition.

A number of colleges have their own competitions. My college had a sumo robot competition and a seek-and-destroy competition, both as classes.

As general advice: broaden your horizons during college, don't just focus on robotics. You might find that you like something else a bit more. I found out that I like building and driving races cars just as much (maybe even more) than I like building robots.

Edit:

As creative and awesome as FRC robots are, they are quite restrictive in terms of materials and equipment. It's an entirely different design and engineering experience when the rules are truly opened up to the use of anything you can possibly design, build, or buy.

[cire]

I compete in a competition called Mech Warfare (www.mech-warfare.com/). It is a form of robot fighting in a way, but the robots do not destroy each other, they track airsoft bb hits via sensor panels to track scores. I personaly see the competition as a engineering challenge, as the robots are required to be walking robots, and have to carry a fairly large payload (airsoft guns, wireless camera, battery, target panels). Also, the community helps each other and shares designs, code, ect, it is not what you would expect with robot fighters. Although i will warn you that a LOT of people say they will build a robot, but never do - so some people may not take you too seriously until you share your progress.

Here is a video of my robot from last year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrhlYsF2uTU

The competition is held at Robogames, i'd recommend taking a look at that event as there are about 60 different competitions you could enter.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by JamesCH95

As general advice: broaden your horizons during college, don't just focus on robotics. You might find that you like something else a bit more. I found out that I like building and driving races cars just as much (maybe even more) than I like building robots.

Probably preaching to the choir here, but absolutely. I met a kid this summer who was really not excited about his job saying "He only wanted to do robots." I'm sorry, but pointing to a $330 million airplane and saying "That part is mine." is awesome. Not to mention while most robotics challenges are within the reach of a hobbyist, big engineering challenges like commercial airplanes, bridges, highways, trains and things of that nature really operate on another order of awe inspiring magnitude.

[Jenn Feathers]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

Probably preaching to the choir here, but absolutely. I met a kid this summer who was really not excited about his job saying "He only wanted to do robots." I'm sorry, but pointing to a $330 million airplane and saying "That part is mine." is awesome. Not to mention while most robotics challenges are within the reach of a hobbyist, big engineering challenges like commercial airplanes, bridges, highways, trains and things of that nature really operate on another order of awe inspiring magnitude.

There are train competitions/challenges?

[MrForbes]

Probably not, but there are engineering jobs designing trains...I think that was his point. You can get a job making really neat, big things that are not robots...they are even more amazing