Sustainability - 2014 - COTS parts

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by Foster

My theory was that COTS parts, would make it easier for teams to get over the initial hurdles of getting a robot pulled together. And if it's easier to build a more competitive robot (vs Dewalt days) will we start to see more teams become sustainable.

It sounds like from prior posts that my theory is flawed, the lack of constant funding (and/or not having a multiyear funding source in place) and the lack of high caliber mentors will still be the biggest failure points.

I think the theory is for a large part, true. If we consider that any increase in sustainability, whether it be one team per year, or one hundred teams per year, is an increase in sustainability, then it would remain true. COTS parts alone are not going to 'solve' all of the sustainability problems in FRC, but they do make it a heck of a lot easier to remain competitive (as in, can execute the game challenge) without overtaxing already limited resources. With limiting resources, human and financial being the root cause

As an example, I look at all of the teams this year, that were able to take the AM Kit Bot, and use it right out of the box. Sure, it's not the perfect drive train - but if you want something that isn't going to break (when properly assembled) and is easy to use at the lowest level (learning to drive) but also isn't all that limiting at the highest level (you can build a $@#$@#$@#$@# good robot on the Kit Bot) then there's little out there that will beat the C-Base when all things are taken into an account.

In the last two years, I've seen a handful of rookies pop up within MAR, most of which use the Kit Bot, or a drivetrain derived from it, and regardless of how well their mechanisms work, the fact that they can drive without struggling usually allows them to contribute to the alliances overall efforts, which gives them the feeling of being a part of whatever successes that alliance may have.

The same is true for a lot of 'also-ran' veteran teams, that essentially 're-rookie' every so many years due to the loss of student knowledge, or the loss of a mentor, or just from years of 'not caring about winning'. I've seen and been a part of veteran teams that built 'not so good' (being nice) robots using questionable custom drive trains and under planned manipulators for years and years. Those teams then switch to the c-base (either as given in the KOP, or modified similar to the KBOS method) and their performance seems to improve dramatically. Part of this is due to the reliability of the Kit-Bot/C-Base, but another part of it is that they've now wasted little, if any time on their drive train and can concentrate all of their limited resources on some sort of scoring device.

This sort of mentality applies to other basic robot mechanisms as well, but not to the same extent that it does a drivetrain, since no one (as of now) offers a complete solution to building an arm, roller, elevator, claw, etc - but most of the hard bits are either commercially available or well documented enough that a team can get relatively close without trying all too hard.

All of that being said, I do agree with a lot of the posts above saying that there are other issues that play into the sustainability discussion, especially those regarding funding, and mentor time/lack there of. The only real way to fix either of these seems to be a two-fold approach, on one side we need to emphasize to new or struggling teams the need and benefit to getting out into the community (world) and finding new resources - both financial and human - but also stress the importance of effectively utilizing what they've got.

IMO, from what I've seen, it seems like the easier of the two points to get across to someone is the need to 'have more', since most teams will acknowledge when their resources are lacking. Changing a teams methods or ideology regarding robot planning and construction seems to be something that is either really easy and well received or something that is basically like beating a dead horse. There are a lot of reasons behind this, some of which make more sense than others, but one of the primary roadblocks seems to be that a lot of teams don't really care about being 'competitive', or at least in the traditional sense. So many teams out there are happy to field a robot that makes an entire competition without breaking, or are used to making it into eliminations one year out every four or five, that they just don't see the need to chase that next echelon of performance. Fixing this might require some sort of 'FIRST-wide' commitment to being 'competitive' at every level, which can be/is interpreted as not necessarily being part of the message of FIRST. depending on how you define competitive

In any case, one of the many blessings of the District system is that it seems to do a much, much better job of 'lighting the fire' when it comes to engaging both rookie-ish and veteran teams. The combination of smaller events, and more of them, increases a struggling teams odds to have a 'good' competition experience, which I think most people can agree that a single 'good' or 'great' competition experience (i.e. winning an event with a powerhouse or something, or even just making elims) can be the single event that serves as a catalyst to years of improving performance both on the field, and off.