Robotics after FRC

[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?)

[Jenn Feathers]

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?)

alright, Thanks!

[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.

[SuperBK]

I second the IEEE contests. They also have software, T-Shirt, website, and ethics contests at an annual meeting in the Southeast every year. Here was the list of last year's contests at a conference that I attended. They leave the work/practice room open all day and night prior to the contest. Rules are stricter - no non student help.

http://www.southeastcon2012.org/StudentProgram.html

[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

[Jenn Feathers]

Originally Posted by squirrel

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

oh, neat.

[rm -rf /]

Originally Posted by squirrel

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

I'd like to second this comment. I work in the area of industrial automation and the systems that make things, or move things, or monitor things use the same skills as you need to build an FRC Robot. And are usually at least as cool and extremely sophisticated (but they're not always built in 6 weeks).

Most of them don't have wheels. And it's usually not just one robot, but many working together.

How about this VW Plant. Order your car, and watch it being finished.

Another example, have you ever wondered what happens after you click the "buy" on a website. They guaranteed that if you ordered by 4pm it would ship the same day - that's not a trivial problem. The warehouse is just a huge robot thousands of square feet in size. It has to decide where your items are in the warehouse, how best to get them on a conveyor (often a mile or more long) and into one spot where they all end up in a box addressed to you. If you think finding a basketball target is difficult, imagine scheduling thousands of "picks", efficiently and without any errors. (There are "human" players too - you have to make their lives easy if you want to limit errors and keep them as employees).

Oh, you mentioned competitive. Get the order wrong and you either have to pay to fix the problem, and/or you loose the customer.

This video of how FedEx works is aimed at a younger age group, but still gives a good overview. There a thousands of PLCs (the equivalent of a cRIO) controlling every aspect of the operation, and they're all talking to progressively larger system so that FedEx knows where every package is all the time.

AND the whole sort has to occur between about midnight, when the planes arrive and 5am when the airports revert to passenger traffic. Miss a sort, and you have to refund all the next-day packages (millions of dollars), and have your customers consider UPS next time.

A small cog in a large wheel, the machine that dispense fuses is automated to the point where it will automatically re-order when the stock gets low - a fuse dispensing robot, although it always stays bolted to the floor. Loosing millions of dollars because you don't have a fuse is not an option - did you think of that when you designed the system?

Manufacturing is what generates wealth. Nothing else does. Moving money on Wall Street is just imaginary. You have to create something, cars, trains, electronics, washing machines (not a trivial control problem), widgets of any kind - taking raw materials and making something useful from them.

Manufacturing in the US seems to be undervalued. Witness the politician being eager to bail out the banks, but not so keen to help the auto industry.

It's manufacturing that provides good jobs. To be successful we need to manufacture in the US, not import everything and for that to be successful needs automation - robots. And who better to provide those than FRC alumni?