Teams that do not bag their robots

[Al Skierkiewicz]

While B&T is checked by inspectors, there is several other people that will become involved in those cases especially when reported by the team or others. While we do not intend to keep teams from competing, each instance is a case unto it's own, requiring different responses. I can tell you for a fact that what appears to be, is rarely what actually occurred. For instance, several years ago a team was noted pulling a robot out of a crate after ship. As is often the case, the rumor mill started and the story became convoluted to the point that the team in question was being denigrated in public for no good reason. As it turns out, the team had been shipped something that looked like a robot but was not. Further investigation showed that the team had in fact followed all rules, shipping their robot on time. It was a simply a case of someone seeing something and jumping to conclusions. You have all seen instances of this rumor mill hurting other teams right here on CD over the years. GP carries over to passing or starting rumors without all the facts. Just don't do it. Give the team the benefit of the doubt.

[pfreivald]

What's the next worst thing to cheating and losing?

Cheating and winning, and knowing that your win will always be tainted, even if nobody but you knows about it.

If you have proof, I'd submit it to FIRST HQ and let them deal with it. If you don't have proof, then I'd do what I recommend most people do about most things: worry about your own integrity, and let other people worry about theirs.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Racer26

Knowing the way the B&T system is constructed, I'm amazed that nobody else thinks this happens on a regular basis.

IMO HQ should require us to submit a digital photograph of the robot in its bag, with the numbered tag visible within 24 hours of bag day. Then its much harder to abuse the system.

As it is now, there is absolutely nothing (except y'know, morals) to stop a team from working on their robot right up until their competition, and bag the robot the night before, having a mentor sign the paper saying it was in on bag day.

If a team was willing to cheat and lie to get extra time to work on their robot, what makes you think they wouldn't be willing to do a little work in Photoshop?

Having teams submit a photo would add a surprisingly difficult step to getting robots unbagged - FIRST would have to set up a system to gather the photos on bag day, gather the photos after each event for those doing multiple events, manage to find a way to strictly enforce district teams that have unbag periods between events, send all of those pictures on to the LRI's at the events so they could go through them all, along with the forms and the actual tags on the bags to ensure each team was compliant.

That would be a massive, complicated undertaking that would still result in holes that could allow teams to cheat and lie to get extra time on their robot.

FIRST isn't like other sports. That's evident just walking through the pits and seeing teams helping each other. I'm willing to trust a vast majority of the teams to follow the rules in good faith.

If you come across a team (and have evidence) that is not following the bag and tag rules, pass that along to FIRST before the regional - after the regional is over, there isn't much we can do. Please don't wait until the regional starts to bring it up to the LRI... that will cause huge issues at the event that can more easily be dealt with beforehand (if we know about it before the event, we can go in with a decision from FIRST. If it's that serious of a violation and we learn about it at the event, it takes up time from the LRI, head ref, FTA, and possibly a call in to HQ to figure out what to do, when all of these people have other stuff they need to be doing to ensure your event is successful).

When it comes to Bag and Tag issues... a vast majority of them are minor issues. The only major issue I had was at MN State Champs last year, and we got that figured out pretty quickly for everyone involved.

[akoscielski3]

Don't teams have an agreement or contract with FIRST agreeing to bag and tag their robot on time an keeping it bagged until legal to open? If so I would expect FIRST to take some sort of action regarding the issue. If nothing is ever done and teams find out how easy it is for people to cheat then more people will do it.

[OzzyArmas]

Thank you very much for all your responses, it has trully help. As for your comments on trusting teams, I would too, but not this team. And I wasnt trying to start an issue in CD, I just wanted to know what to do.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by akoscielski3

Don't teams have an agreement or contract with FIRST agreeing to bag and tag their robot on time an keeping it bagged until legal to open? If so I would expect FIRST to take some sort of action regarding the issue. If nothing is ever done and teams find out how easy it is for people to cheat then more people will do it.

If actual evidence (photos, videos, whatever) of cheating comes to light, I'd be a strong advocate for banning that team from competition that season, and perhaps a long-term (three or five year) suspension of their eligibility for Engineering Inspiration or Chairman's Awards.

But in the absence of evidence, worry about your own team. (Trust, but verify... Seems like I've heard these words before...)

[tr6scott]

Pictures solve almost nothing, and adds complexity.

I say this as we have barely made bagging the last two years. Yet the the real improvements made when we got to the first event, was in programming and driver performance. Pretty tough to tell in a picture, you got your autonomous code working, and your drivers trained...

Physically, little changed from Kettering to MSC, there were some improvements, but pretty insignificant compared to code and drivers.

Scott.

[nicholsjj]

Tldr: We need to get rid of bag and tag
I think this brings up another bigger problem in FIRST. I understand that the 6 week build season is something that is inspirational, but it does hurt the vast majority of teams in FIRST. The problem is with bag and tag is that instead of having your robot hauled away on a fedex truck, teams now sit there everyweek staring at their robots. This causes a problem I believe when these same teams watch a webcast of week one and see their regional teams competing and working on their robot. I understand that teams have earned the right to go to multiple events but should that punish the teams that are scraping through fundraisers just to attend a regional? Let's look at an instance this season. At Razorback team 1477 had competed at three event prior. Therefore they had 9 extra days to work on and tweak their robot before the regional. Even though 1477 had a World Class machine it was still not fair for the single event rookie teams at Razorback that only got to build on their robot up until 2/19. If we eliminate bag and tag we not only remove controversial situations like this one, but we also give single event teams a better advantage to perform. It would save teams money such that they might be able to attend another regional. Also it doesn't change much in terms of the overall level of the teams. A team that works building their chassis up until 2/19 will still be working on building the chassis up until the Wednesday of their regional.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by nicholsjj

Tldr: We need to get rid of bag and tag

One of the biggest challenges of finding mentors is the time commitment. People have families and jobs (and sometimes second and third jobs) and other obligations; increasing the time required to run a FIRST team would probably make recruiting mentors even more difficult. We can only keep up with you caffeine-slurping whippersnappers for so long...

If anything, I'd rather we get rid of the withholding allowance!

[nicholsjj]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

One of the biggest challenges of finding mentors is the time commitment. People have families and jobs (and sometimes second and third jobs) and other obligations; increasing the time required to run a FIRST team would probably make recruiting mentors even more difficult. We can only keep up with you caffeine-slurping whippersnappers for so long...

If anything, I'd rather we get rid of the withholding allowance!

I think we as mentors would be given more time. With an extended build season teams would not have to put in 14-18 hour days because we would not have to help the students produce a 140 lb complex machine in such a tight window. Looking at FRC as compared to Best we defiantly put in a less time ratio per lb.

[JohnFogarty]

I'm going to say this just based on what I got as a comment when I told my Brazilian team we only work in Aiken...3 days a week.

If you worked every day for 6 weeks you could produce a pretty awesome machine....but since most teams can't there in-lies the problem.

Within this 6 week period you are going to have teams that work every hour they can and then you will have teams that don't have that time commitment available to them. I know for a fact that my Brazilian team told me they work every...single...day.

While Aiken County Robotics only works a 2 (2-Hour Nights) and 1 (6 Hour-Day) we make a working machine every season, but I can tell you as a veteran team older than 1114....we are no where near on their level.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by nicholsjj

I think we as mentors would be given more time. With an extended build season teams would not have to put in 14-18 hour days because we would not have to help the students produce a 140 lb complex machine in such a tight window. Looking at FRC as compared to Best we defiantly put in a less time ratio per lb.

Even if you're trying to compete with teams that are putting in 14-18 hour days over the same time period?

I don't think I'd bet against the dedication of FIRST students and mentors.

[Alexa Stott]

Originally Posted by nicholsjj

Tldr: We need to get rid of bag and tag
I think this brings up another bigger problem in FIRST. I understand that the 6 week build season is something that is inspirational, but it does hurt the vast majority of teams in FIRST. The problem is with bag and tag is that instead of having your robot hauled away on a fedex truck, teams now sit there everyweek staring at their robots. This causes a problem I believe when these same teams watch a webcast of week one and see their regional teams competing and working on their robot. I understand that teams have earned the right to go to multiple events but should that punish the teams that are scraping through fundraisers just to attend a regional? Let's look at an instance this season. At Razorback team 1477 had competed at three event prior. Therefore they had 9 extra days to work on and tweak their robot before the regional. Even though 1477 had a World Class machine it was still not fair for the single event rookie teams at Razorback that only got to build on their robot up until 2/19. If we eliminate bag and tag we not only remove controversial situations like this one, but we also give single event teams a better advantage to perform. It would save teams money such that they might be able to attend another regional. Also it doesn't change much in terms of the overall level of the teams. A team that works building their chassis up until 2/19 will still be working on building the chassis up until the Wednesday of their regional.

This still creates an issue where teams competing only at, say, a week 5 regional have much more additional time than a team that only competes at a week 1 or 2 regional. If FIRST changed the rules so you could continue to work on your robot until your actual competition, I think you'd see many people rushing to register for later events to give them more time. Just something else to consider.

[dellagd]

Originally Posted by DevenStonow

I've yet to hear of this happening, but does anyone (probably inspectors at new events filled with first year teams) have a tale of this happening and what was done?

Apparently It happened at the Springside-Chestnut Hill District event this year.

Our team Moderator inspected at that event and the team was made to sign something and then allowed to compete. I believe it was a fairly new, if not rookie team. Unfortunately thats all I know.

[Anupam Goli]

This kind of makes me want to go back to shipping the bot. It's much less of a hassle on a team in terms of transportation, and it prevents any 'cheating' from occurring (though i will say that the number of teams that don't follow bag day is likely very very small). Also, most likely teams that don't follow bag day likely aren't better off than before. Every team looking to compete tries their best to iterate, and so most of them build a practice bot or withhold the mechanism they wish to iterate anyway.