Poll on winning teams using practice bots

[Bruceb]

If you have won a regional, district or championship event this year please answer one question.
Do you build a second(practice) bot??
Thanks
Bruce

[Alan Anderson]

We always plan to. We don't always get one built that helps a lot.

We haven't won an event since 2001, but this year we made our first practice bot, and it really showed. We performed 300 times better than we have our previous years. I highly suggest making one if you can.

[Francis-134]

Team 190 did not have a practice robot (now, or ever in the past), but we did keep our shooter between each event and attach it to a 2x4 and plywood replica of the last stage of our collector. We designed the shooter to come on and off the robot in about 1/2 hour or less and have quick disconnect wires for all the motors and sensors. While not as beneficial as a practice robot, this did give our programmers the opportunity to work on the vision targeting code and get some baseline numbers down for our shooting positions.

Our total expenditure was nothing, as we only used stuff that was laying around in our lab and the actual, competition ready shooter.

[sgreco]

I didn't vote because neither of my teams won a regional, but what do you consider a practice bot? I know 2079 always has some form of a bot that can be used to practice driving, but it's certainly not a clone of the competition bot either.

[ahunter669]

3259 built a practice bot. We won at SMR this year along side 772 and 234. One problem we had was that our practice bot had a much lower center of gravity than the competition bot. Our drive team got used to the performance of the practice bot between SMR and St Louis, and as a result we ended up with some tipping/stability issues at Championships. However, I feel that overall use of the practice bot was a great benefit to our performance.

Aaron

[Alpha Beta]

This is the first year we built a practice robot, but not the first year we have won a regional. Our team nearly doubled in size and it was benneficial to give more students hands on experience. Every time the practice robot broke I cheered a little thinking this was one more weakness we can correct on the real robot before it becomes a problem.

[CalTran]

We didn't win an event this year, but the year that we did, (2010 Oklahoma) we did not have a practice bot nor did we have some equivilant to that effect.

[techtiger1]

We were alliance captain #7 at the Orlando regional seeded 9th overall and captain #2 seeded 3rd overall at the South Florida regional. We did not win an event but I think our overall numbers reflect a solid season. We did build a full practice bot and it did improve our performance between regionals. 1251 has done so for many years and every year the practice bot is done, we do perform better, it does increase performance bottomline. What gets me is we have a season like this past year and everyone around the team/ in the state says 1251 had a bad year, that however is a diffrent discussion.

[Jared Russell]

We started building the practice bot, but by week 5 it was lagging behind the main machine due to parts delays and re-designs, so we decided to focus our efforts on finishing the main machine. The progress that we made on the second chassis was still valuable, as it allowed us to play around with stinger geometry and mounting arrangements prior to Boston.

We will likely continue to plan on building a second robot for next year and beyond, but the unbagging windows that come with our move to a district competition model let us get by without it this year.

EDIT: Prior to 2012, we have built a complete practice robot in every season from 2006 onwards.

[smistthegreat]

A brief summary of my 4 years on 1507:
2009: 1 regional win, 1 regional semifinalist, 1 division win
2010: 1 regional quarterfinalist
2011: 1 regional finalist
2012: 2 regional wins, 1 division quarterfinalist
All 4 wins came as alliance captain.

All with no practice bot. I've always wanted to, be it hasn't been practical to us so we make do without.

[Grim Tuesday]

I spoke with quite a few powerhouses on Friday at Champs, and every single one but 341 said that they made a practice bot.

The interesting thing is that some teams choose to make a "clone bot" after the production one is complete, and others make the competition bot based on the practice one.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

We build one but call it a prototype. This year's was closer to the real one than most years. Often it is simply built of 80-20 extrusion.

[IKE]

Jim Zondag asked myself and another mentor to conducted a survey of the top 25 OPR teams in each division during the Championship with some questions about practie robots and practicing. Thank you to all of those that helped with the survey. We were able to get 85 of the 100 teams we intended to talk to (I blame the 15 missed on the MAR teams as I spent a lot of time discussing their experience in the district model with them ). Jim will be talking our results and compiling a paper on it. I will likely add a commentary section as the survey brought up a lot of interesting discussion.

[tr6scott]

I didn't vote, as we did not win a regional this year. Last year we did not build a practice bot, last year we won two regionals. This year and for the first time ever, we built a practice bot. We were able to, due to great sponsorship support this year. Last year we were a team of 15, that graduated 9 seniors. This year we were a team of 28 with 5 returning members. Last year we stayed on schedule, had a simple design, had two weeks of driver training and a working autonomous before bag day. This year, we finished the robot, just in time to give the drivers about 4 hours of practice time before bagging, and an untested autonomous. Last year we competed week one, and was the best bot at Kettering. (Jim Zondag's words, not mine). This year we were not. (my words). This is our stats this year from Ed Law's scouting data.


Kettering Regional 1 CCWM [-0.1,-0.9,16] OPR[7.7,7.6,11]
Livonia Regional 2 [1.6, 7.1, 9] [17.8,21.7, 6]
Mich States Regional 3 [3.5,15.6,2] [26.6,28.0,6]

So last year's team probably wouldn't have benefited from building a 2nd bot. Last year, we spent our time refining minibots during the competition season. This year we had a huge return on the investment of building a 2nd bot. So the rate of return in building the 2nd bot, really seems to be determined by where you are on bag day. If you are the best bot out of 40 week 1, why spend the money, you can prototype tweaks and use your out of bag time to improve systems that need it. If your are the other 39 bots competing week 1, you have more opportunity for the investment to pay off.

If we have the money next year, we will build a practice bot. It is a rare event when you get to be the best bot on week 1, and even though we will strive for that again, the odds are not in our favor.

We spent around $4,200 for the practice bot, $1,500 of that was a cRio and the Andymark 2nd bot electronics kit, both will be reused for next year. The second bot is also more expensive, because of purchasing any KOP parts you need too.