The Robot in 3 Days Challenge!

[joelg236]

This is amazing. Cannot wait.

Is it possible to coordinate between the teams to have them create different strategic designs? As in (per 2013) having one team make a cycler, one with ground feeding and one for full court shooting? Not sure how well that'd go for overly hard tasks (full court shooting), but slightly different ways to play the game would be very helpful for other teams.

Also, how big are the teams making these robots? Is it small like the first year, or bigger (ie. 10+ people)?

[nicholsjj]

It nothing else how about those five robots and the top FRC 25 robot compete in a match during IRI this summer, assuming that logistics could be worked out. It was kind of sad that Ri3D last year built a very solid robot, but it was never able to be in a match. I think I will be pulling for Ri3D 1.0 because they provided the initial spark that lit the fire for this idea. I hope that all five robots this year will provided students and teams with a high amount of inspiration.

[Akash Rastogi]

Can we get a list of names of team members? It'd be cool to know more about each one.

[Peyton Yeung]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

Can we get a list of names of team members? It'd be cool to know more about each one.

Andy Baker- Nuff said

[Dan Richardson]

Originally Posted by Peyton Yeung

Andy Baker- Nuff said

Andy Baker once built a championship robot in 72 minutes by staring at a kit of parts and willing it to win.

[Joe Johnson]

Chief Delphi folk,
I am SO psyched to be involved in this thing.

BOOM DONE. is going to build a great robot. By many measures, I have a stronger team of robot engineers and access to better equipment and resources than I have ever had (and that includes the early days of Chief Delphi, which is saying something!).

BUT... 3 Days imposes its own harsh limits. So certain things are impossible just by the clock on the wall. Beyond this, BOOM DONE. is imposing limits on itself that I think will be unique among the 5 teams currently planning on building a robot by Noon on Tuesday (consider this something akin to Dan's Our House, Our Rules speech)

BOOM DONE. will:

• Build a robot that could pass a FIRST inspection
• Build a robot that could be built by a 30th Percentile FIRST team
• Build a robot that would likely be playing after lunch on Saturday

Pass inspection:
Of course, if FIRST requires something on our robot that we can't get by noon on Tuesday, we are going to have to amend this list, but as a rough idea, we'll have bumpers. we'll have a cRIO, we'll meet the wiring specs, and motor specs, and BOM limits. In short, we will have slog through the same crazy quilt patchwork of 10,000 rules that FIRST teams have to slog through.

30th Percentile:
All the members of our team are iRobot folk. We will be working at the iRobot HQ. The team was almost CALLED Team iRobot (until some folks got cold feet at the last moment). If we wanted to, we could almost design a robot in CAD, start with a block of aluminum, mount it in one of our mills and machine away everything but our robot by noon on Tuesday. But we are not going to do that. Our team has spent a LOT of time and energy trying to figure out ways to build robots that low resourced teams could duplicate.

We'll talk more about what that means, but bottom line, we want to raise the bar for the bottom third of the FIRST teams. If we can do this in 72 hours, you can do it in 6 weeks.

Playing After Lunch:
I co-founded Chief Delphi. I was there at Disney when Dr. Murphy handed Woodie the FIRST Woodie Flowers Award. I GET that FIRST is about more than winning on the field. BUT... ...it is my experience that the great programs of the FIRST world almost always build on a foundation of competitive robots. Success on the field begets success in other realms.

So... ...for a lot of teams, a successful year boils down to playing after lunch on Saturday. I want to give teams a road map: Here is a path that will likely lead to playing after lunch.

There is a lot more to say, but that'll do it for now.

Let's do this thing.

Joe J.

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by jblay

Love it. Love it so much.

Won't the AM people have an advantage cause they know the game a little early?

Thanks, Joe. This is a good question.

The AndyMark people on the design team for our robot in three days effort do not know the 2014 FRC game. We do have a head start in knowing about the Kit of Parts drive chassis (aka. AM14U), and parts in FIRST Choice.

Therefore, our team will be using the AM14U chassis and also as many Kit of Parts items as we can to create mechanisms and robot assemblies.

I'm pumped about this effort and excited to be working with a group of excellent designers and fabricators to help make AndyMark create a competitive robot within 3 days. However, I am bummed about not being able to watch the other teams as they build their contraptions. Maybe we can taunt them along their way and have some fun with this!

Andy B.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

Therefore, our team will be using the AM14U chassis and also as many Kit of Parts items as we can to create mechanisms and robot assemblies.

To make things more realistic for the average FRC team, what kind of resources will each of the teams be using?

IR3 Creative had resources that I think most teams have (mill, lathe, other manual equipment) + COTS. Will AndyMark focus on all Kit and other COTS parts + Manual machines only? Same question for Boom Done.

Additionally, will the teams be working towards creating 3 differing design concepts, or will there be no coordination between them to vary the end result?

.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

30th Percentile:
All the members of our team are iRobot folk. We will be working at the iRobot HQ. The team was almost CALLED Team iRobot (until some folks got cold feet at the last moment). If we wanted to, we could almost design a robot in CAD, start with a block of aluminum, mount it in one of our mills and machine away everything but our robot by noon on Tuesday. But we are not going to do that. Our team has spent a LOT of time and energy trying to figure out ways to build robots that low resourced teams could duplicate.

We'll talk more about what that means, but bottom line, we want to raise the bar for the bottom third of the FIRST teams. If we can do this in 72 hours, you can do it in 6 weeks.

ooooh! Any chance you'd be cool with some of us Dr Joe fanboys coming by during this event? I promise to try to keep my "oh my gosh oh my gosh I can't believe it's Dr Joe" quiet in the corner...

[pfreivald]

Looks great, folks! I can't wait to see where this goes...I'm especially interested in seeing the variation in strategy, design, and mechanism choice by the various groups.

[Joe Johnson]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

ooooh! Any chance you'd be cool with some of us Dr Joe fanboys coming by during this event? I promise to try to keep my "oh my gosh oh my gosh I can't believe it's Dr Joe" quiet in the corner...

We'll have to play it by ear. Let's see how it goes once the 72 hour clock starts.

[cmrnpizzo14]

For teams AndyMark and BOOM DONE. will there be separate youtube channels and twitter accounts for updates on those teams or will it all be posted on the current RI3D channel?

[Dan Richardson]

Originally Posted by cmrnpizzo14

For teams AndyMark and BOOM DONE. will there be separate youtube channels and twitter accounts for updates on those teams or will it all be posted on the current RI3D channel?

Right now Robotin3Days.Com and YouTube Robotin3Days will act as an aggregate for all major content releases. The plan is to also mirror the live streams on our site. There are some technical bits to work out there.

AndyMark will be tweeting (@andymarkinc) updates and simulcasting videos on their AndyMark Inc YouTube channel. I believe they also have some cool additional content going up so it's definitely worth a subscribe.

TeamBoomDone will be tweeting out @TeamBoomDone and currently will be uploading video content to Robotin3Days YouTube channel.

[Dan Richardson]

Originally Posted by cmrnpizzo14

For teams AndyMark and BOOM DONE. will there be separate youtube channels and twitter accounts for updates on those teams or will it all be posted on the current RI3D channel?

Right now Robotin3Days.Com, YouTube Robotin3Days and Twitter @Robotin3Days will act as an aggregate for all major content releases. The plan is to also mirror the live streams on our site. There are some technical bits to work out there.

AndyMark will be tweeting (@andymarkinc) updates and simulcasting videos on their AndyMark Inc YouTube channel. I believe they also have some cool additional content going up so it's definitely worth a subscribe.

TeamBoomDone will be tweeting out @TeamBoomDone and currently will be uploading video content to Robotin3Days YouTube channel.