Robot Tips For Rookie Teams

[Oblarg]

Last year was my first year mentoring a rookie team (4464), and it went much more smoothly than I think any of us had been anticipating. Here are some tips, based both on what worked for us, and what we realize we could have improved:

- Extensive preseason training, with FRC hardware. The importance of getting the students familiar with the control system, especially, prior to build season is hard to overstate. Mechanically, if the students do not have any experience with machining and/or construction, you really must get tools and parts in their hands. There is no substitute for experience and familiarity.

- Safety training! There are lots of good resources for this out there. Rookie teams should probably have a meeting or two prior to build season devoted entirely to making/reviewing safety rules and procedures, which should be written down and put in a visible place (on a poster or similar).

- Plan ahead of time, in detail, the first few meetings after kickoff. You want to have a brainstorming and discussion schedule that you can follow. Remember that you can't design a system without knowing your design constraints, which means that you must decide on a strategy before brainstorming a design. Hold practice brainstorming sessions based on past FRC games to get students used to the process. Make sure you encourage everyone to speak up and contribute ideas - I've seen far too many design discussions railroaded by a small number of very vocal team members (myself included) when other people had valuable input that simply never was put forward.

- Put a large build season calendar in a visible place, and set/mark important dates/deadlines as build season progresses. Organization is key to success.

- Specialize. After kickoff, pick one task, and build your robot to do it. Over-ambition is probably the single biggest cause of build-season disappointment I've seen, even on established teams. Keeping your sights within reason not only keeps the challenge more manageable, but enables crucial design iteration.

- Keep your designs simple. This means as few moving parts as possible. More complexity leads to more failure modes, and more failure modes leads to less success.

- When in doubt, overbuild rather than underbuild. The weight limit is a pain, but even more of a pain is having critical structural failure modes reveal themselves at competition. Exceptionally rigid/beefy mechanisms are usually not only more resistant to failure, but (especially in the case of shooters, like this past year) they often perform in a more repeatable, reliable fashion.

- Design and fabricate according to your machining capability. If you lack precision tools, match-drilling and cutting to templates are your best friends. Make sure that students know they need to keep tolerances in mind when designing.

- Make sure every structural bolt/nut assembly on the robot has some sort of locking hardware if it is feasible to do so - lock washers, nylock nuts, loctite, etc.

- Make sure your robot is serviceable. I've spent too much time at regionals than I care to recall taking apart half of a robot to replace one or two small parts. If it's not bulletproof, make every effort to ensure you can get to it and replace it in short order.

- Pick your drivers early, make a practice drive base, and practice driving. Driver ability is every bit as important as robot quality on the field.

- Make sure everyone on the team really gets gracious professionalism before attending a competition. FRC simply would not function if the atmosphere at competition were not as helpful and friendly as it is, and you need to make sure every single person on the team appreciates that, and makes it their job to uphold it.

I think this is enough for now. Most importantly, have fun.

[themccannman]

Originally Posted by themccannman

Here's a presentation Mike Corsetto and I gave to our team just a couple months ago. Should give rookie teams a good place to start.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tp700bu4l9...0workshop.pptx

Last post on the last page, I really think this will help rookie teams so I just wanted to make sure it wasn't missed by people looking.

[yash101]

I looked at that presentation. It was quite through and full of important information. Another good thing is that it is in Plain English!

[cmrnpizzo14]

1.) Have decent looking bumpers that match the FIRST color scheme, using the recommend material is best as well. Good bumpers do not make good robots but at competitions you can usually get a feel for a robot by looking at its bumpers.

2.) Watch Karthik's presentations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Apk_X-maRf8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smWy7FQ8jLE

Pay attention to his section on strategic design, especially in the 2012 one. He talks about many ways to make a competitive robot without many resources. The example that he uses is that in 2012 having a small robot that could balance well on the bridges was more valuable in most regional play than a less than mediocre shooter. Follow his priority list idea. It's simple, but it works.

3.)

Read the manual! Read the manual! Read the manual! Read the manual! Read the manual!

If you don't know the rules you aren't really playing. Think of that friend that wants to play Settlers of Catan, even though you don't know how, that says he will just explain the rules as he goes along. It's no fun and really hard for both of you. Learn the rules before you play.

[Whippet]

No matter how good of an idea it seems like, or how much weight it will save, do NOT use castors in your drivebase. Your drivers will thank you for it.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

There is a lot of information to be had on the FRC website, documents for mentors are very helpful.
You will want a robot cart at your competitions. Carrying the robot to the field gets old after the second match.
Bring the KOP to your competition. You never know what you will need (or forgot to add to the robot). You can't put on what you don't have.
Inspectors are your friends. They are they to help you or find someone who can. They are tasked with making your weekend fun and memorable for your students. They will explain all the nuances of being at your first event and help you work towards success and a possible award. Inspectors are there to help you compete (and be compliant with the rules) not to prevent you from competing.

[Taylor]

1. Get in touch with your Regional Director or Senior Mentor. Find out what teams are in the area.
2. Invite the area teams to your workspace - or invite yourself to theirs. Have donuts. Make friends.
3. Find out what these local teams are excellent at, then contact them for tips and tricks throughout your design and build.
4. Weeks 3-5 are the toughest - find some way to stay motivated and on-task. Don't lose sight of the fun of the program, but don't let the fun overtake the work.
5. Design your pits during build season. Note which tools and hardware you are using, so you'll have them at events.
6. Schedule in time to do programming throughout the build season.

[thefro526]

- As mentioned before, the Kit of Parts drive train is an invaluable resource, and out of the box, it'll out perform a good half of the 'custom' drives built in a given year. If you've got the time, and the money, using a handful of COTS components to upgrade, whether they be from AndyMark, VexPro, West Coast Products, etc, can end up being very worth while. 1114 Produced a document outlining how to build a 'Kit Bot on Steroids' which is something achievable my more teams than not and will perform well enough to keep up with just about anyone.

- Your Drive Train is the single most important (non-control system) thing on your robot. Do no compromise the drive without good reason. I can think of numerous occasions where a has shown up to an event with a broken/under-performing/bad manipulator and still made a significant contribution to their alliances efforts by being able to drive reliably, consistently and intelligently.

- Make Friends. A lot of teams, Rookie and Veterans alike seem to spend the 6 weeks of build season in a vacuum for fear of giving up the 'secret sauce'. Trust me, it's not exactly a good idea - although, every team has the right to share as little or as much as they want with the world. Sometimes a quick 5 - minute discussion with a local team (or not so local team) can be an excellent catalyst for new ideas, or improvements to current ones, or the voice of reason to a bad strategy.

- Keep it Simple. FRC History has taught us that Simple Robots can do amazing things once on the field. Find one part of the game objective, and do it very well, and you'll have a place on someone's elimination alliance more often than not. Also, on the same train of thought, be aware that it is possible to 'over-simplify' something, especially certain mechanisms - sometimes an extra motor or degree of freedom will 'add complexity' to the system - but make it easier to operate overall. It's a battle that a lot of teams fight every year, but if you're aware of it up front, it's an easy one to come out on the upside of.

[yash101]

Make sure you have a drivetrain. I remember that there were some climbing teams with no drivetrain. Even if you aren't going to use it, have it for in case. That way you will be able to reposition yourself, even if you are targeting only climbing!

[Pendulum^-1]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

- Extensive preseason training, with FRC hardware. The importance of getting the students familiar with the control system, especially, prior to build season is hard to overstate. Mechanically, if the students do not have any experience with machining and/or construction, you really must get tools and parts in their hands. There is no substitute for experience and familiarity.
[/i]

I say double down on what Eli said here. Do this NOW.

If possible, get with an existing team before the kickoff. Work with the hardware.

Read the basic technical manuals on FIRST's FRC site.
http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...ical-Resources
Don't necessarily memorize the manuals, but know the major components, what they do, and at least know where a point of information is when you need it.

You will have to learn and know how to use the control system before you can use it. Every hour you spend learning it before kickoff is an hour you do not have to spend doing it after kickoff. You will need all those hours, trust me.

Team 4464 did a lot of that work that Eli cites before the season started. They started in early November, as I recall. They qualified for St Louis.

[Rosiebotboss]

Originally Posted by rsisk

Ask questions before it is too late

When is it too late?


Seriously, Rick, IndySam, Al Skierkiewicz, (I spelled that from memory, did I get it right?), EricH and many others on this thread have done this thing called FIRST for a very long time. (13 years for me). There is some VERY GOOD advice stated here. Follow it.

If there is one thing that I want to emphasize and that is RTFM, cover to cover and back again. Many of the question you may have during build season and many tips on building a successful robot can and will be found in the Manual. Start now with the Administrative Manual just released.

Rookies--RTFM = Read The FIRST Manual.

[Chris is me]

Andrew and I did a webcast about designing simple robots within the constraints of a limited resource team. Rookies would maybe find it useful. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiImNNu32qI

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by thefro526

- Make Friends. A lot of teams, Rookie and Veterans alike seem to spend the 6 weeks of build season in a vacuum for fear of giving up the 'secret sauce'. Trust me, it's not exactly a good idea - although, every team has the right to share as little or as much as they want with the world. Sometimes a quick 5 - minute discussion with a local team (or not so local team) can be an excellent catalyst for new ideas, or improvements to current ones, or the voice of reason to a bad strategy.

This is the biggest piece of advice I would give to rookies as well. There's no such thing as a team that accomplishes everything on their own. Branch out and ask for help. Don't end up in your own little bubble, especially if you are a struggling veteran team.

Another big suggestion - continue to raise money throughout build and competition season. You WILL need to purchase new parts, rent buses, or get hotel rooms. You most likely will run out of money, so don't stop fundraising. Money is also crucial to being able to improve your robot throughout the season if you need to change motors or transmissions or electronics. When you get to the point where you think you have enough money, keep raising money.

[yash101]

I do not know if this is necessarily important, but make good friends, talk with others, socialize and maybe even exchange phone numbers! That way, if you run into a problem, you will have a contact with whom you may get help in the solution!

[geomapguy]

Originally Posted by yash101

I do not know if this is necessarily important, but make good friends, talk with others, socialize and maybe even exchange phone numbers! That way, if you run into a problem, you will have a contact with whom you may get help in the solution!

This is definitely true. Even as a fourth year team, we are still in contact with some of our mentor teams for help.