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Unread 05-05-2013, 19:00
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

Sorry to post so closely together, but I forgot to hit on the 'ripping off other designs' argument to the level that I planned to in my previous post.

Yes, an open build season will lead to robot designs being copied on a wider scale than they are now, but I think that the overall effect is being widely overestimated. There are three important years that come to mind on this subject:

2008 - 121 Released their robot sometime towards the end of week three. Their claw and arm combination were so simple and reliable that most teams in FRC could have replicated the setup, an a tonne of teams did. I can remember talking about the 121 clones that year, and the funny thing is that many/most of the clones could never perform at the level that 121 did that year, despite being one of the most simple (and elegant) machine shapes possible.

2011 - Logomotion, for all intents and purposes, was an 'easier' version of 2007's game rack and roll - with the primary differences being the 3 different tube shapes instead of one, and a stationary scoring structure in place of 2007's rack. (The scoring grid in 2011 made things easier, if anything). I can remember on of my first thoughts being 'So we pick a 2007 design that we like, tweak it and go play?'. That sort of ideology would have lead most teams to building a solid upper middle tier robot, if executed properly, but for one reason or another, the copying wasn't as widely spread as many people expected, and there were still a handful of 'bad' copies.

2012 - Rebound Rumble, is almost the same to 2006 as 2011 was to 2007; heck, I and others I know, still refer to it as Aim High Part II. The same logic applied to 2011 above applies here, and even though there was some incentive to copy, many teams didn't.

If these years have taught me anything, it's that even with an open build season, we won't see teams rebuilding their robots to resemble 1114/469/2056/254/148/33/233/118 en masse - well, unless those teams unveil their robots within 3 days of kickoff like RI3D* did....

That being said, an open build season, may lead to more widespread copying of smaller mechanisms and/or 'magic' devices during future seasons. Here are the devices/mechanisms I can think of off the top of my head:

2008 - 'Drive-through' trackball removing devices.
2009 - 'Spin in circles' autonomous modes.
2010 - 'IFI Ball Pincher'. (And an array of other ball magnets)
2011 - 'Super Fast Minibots'. (Honorable Mention to the Roller Claw with an opening jaw.)
2012 - 'Stingers/Dingus' and other balancing aids.
2013 - It's hard to say right now, but it seems like Pyramid Antenna or Pneumatic 10pt climbers win out here.

Looking back, I'm not sure if the spread of any of these things was necessarily a bad thing. Very rarely did any one of these devices propel a robot from the bottom of the ranks into the top tier, but they did help to level out the playing field at the top, especially at the CMP. If anything, the only negative thing I could say about any of these is that it can suck to have something you've worked hard on ripped off by another team... But with that being said, if you're on the ball, by the time another team has ripped off what you've made, you're already using a new and improved version.

*I think RI3D is one of the best things to happen to FRC in a LONG time. The fact that so many teams were essentially handed prototyping information and a proven robot shape really helped to raise the level of competition at most events. I know that I referenced those videos more than once, especially as a way to validate some of our own results. Without a doubt, RI3D is responsible for a sizable portion of the mid-tier explosion that we saw this year.
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Unread 05-05-2013, 19:22
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

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Originally Posted by thefro526 View Post
If anything, the only negative thing I could say about any of these is that it can suck to have something you've worked hard on ripped off by another team... But with that being said, if you're on the ball, by the time another team has ripped off what you've made, you're already using a new and improved version.
For the life of me I will never understand this statement. I have only ever thought about people seeing and using designs as a good thing. Imitation is a form of flattery. Hopefully they improve on it or at least try to but either way it builds the competition.
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Unread 05-05-2013, 20:51
Ian Curtis Ian Curtis is offline
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

There are a lot of people that seem to be saying they are flirting with burnout even with a 6.5 week build season. I don't think we should consider this healthy!

If FIRST is coming close to burning out the core mentors that are involved enough to post on CD, we are definitely also coming close to burning out the mentors that are not posting on CD. Even if you don't like the idea of the unlimited build season, I think it is pretty clear we have to try something else.

For me, having one or two nights a week where I can just go home after work is awesome. After 10 years of robots, I know work expands to fill the available time, and as deadlines close in work just seems to get done. I know for 1778, I plan to meet much less next season than we did this year, and fully expect to build a much more competitive robot. (Conveniently we set the bar fairly low )

There seem to be a lot of people in this thread that are against the unlimited build season because they are worried about the top tier running away with the medals. As Adam said, I don't think that is likely. The 67s of the world are really far down the learning curve. IMO, a switch to the unlimited build season will result in less work to a top tier team, since you don't have to apply all your fixes to the practice robot and then your real robot. If you cannot put in the time to be top tier now, isn't reducing that number of hours a good thing for all of us? Those that observe a 6.5 week build season instead of the 16 week build season are already limiting themselves from the allowable build time, so I don't see why switching to the unlimited build makes you any less able to limit yourself.

The one strong argument I do see for Stop Build Day is that it means that everyone has a good night's sleep prior to the event, and no one is staying up late the night before finishing their machine and showing up grumpy. I did this too many times in FLL.

When I started reading this thread, I was very firmly in the "Stop Build Day" camp. But the more I think about it, the more I think we do it out of tradition instead of value added.
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Unread 05-05-2013, 21:13
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

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Originally Posted by Ian Curtis View Post
If FIRST is coming close to burning out the core mentors that are involved enough to post on CD, we are definitely also coming close to burning out the mentors that are not posting on CD..
I'm not sure this is true. The people that post on CD are the people that care enough to put in the kind of time it takes to burn out. So many of the teams I know that just sort of plod along every year don't get burned out. They have much more reasonable schedules, 2-3 nights a week and a day on the weekends. They don't meet consistently over the summer and some don't meet at all in the fall. However I agree that giving them more time will help.
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Unread 06-05-2013, 09:37
DjScribbles DjScribbles is offline
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Re: The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

Personally, I find the competition season as stressful, if not more stressful than build season.

Build season is fun, things are constantly improving; sure there is some conflict and lost sleep, but in general you can get things done efficiently.

Once build season comes to a close though, things stop and the combination of anxiousness and lack of opportunity to improve get rather stressful. I struggled from day 2 of our second event, all the way through MSC and CMP trying to test an autonomous routine that would have literally taken me two hours tops in our build area; but instead I had to fight to test something during our few opportunities on crowded practice fields (which do not provide enough room to actually test any creative autonomous routines such as center-line or 9-disk) and during our few practice matches.

The inability to improve, fix problems, and do basic maintenance is absolutely harrowing as well. At our second event, we had a big issue with shooter accuracy, before bagging we found and fixed an issue with the sensor, but it didn't get tested until 3 long weeks later at MSC. We have a shooter wheel that is almost bare, but it's difficult to make a case for changing it when you have a match in an hour and nobody thinks another wheel could work, and the one you have does still work.

Ultimately, I think the bag date may make the days between events more relaxed, but it greatly magnifies the stress at the event for everyone, and requires teams to take a ton of risk to try to improve; and when those risks don't pan out, it can have a huge impact on a student.

I would absolutely love to go to an event where our TODO list was:
Get Inspected
Double check that everything works well on the field
Compete

If that was every team's situation... imagine how easy it would be to get on the practice field when problems arise, how much more help you could provide to teams that are struggling, etc.
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