Thoughts on Ri3D and BuildBlitz

[dradel]

I think we are saying the same thing just differently. I've heard a bunch of bellyaching about this years game, but I think it really brings the "teamwork" back.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by dradel

Isn't it more important to teach them how to think!!?? Winning is nice, but it shouldn't be the end all be all. Putting forth true effort, and learning something is way more important than bragging rights.

To consistently win you need to learn how to think. Engineering is about using your resources. Buy/make analysis is a common occurrence in industry. Using prior examples is also a common occurrence.

If you want to build a bridge, you learn the techniques and the math, but you also look at past winning bridges. That's how you build a winning (I.e. not this) bridge.

Winning does not exclude learning, to requires it.

Check out my user title (right under my name), I think it's appropriate for this discussion.

[tkell274]

I agree that having robots being built in three days and having all the cad files and part numbers readily available is an issue and allows teams to be lazy, but I feel that is not that big of an issue.

My thought being that yes some teams will take these ideas and do better than they have in the past but for the most part teams will continue to only build upon the basic ideas or use their own totally original ideas that will get them the win on Einstein. And using ideas from other teams or past years is not always a bad thing. I don't see anyone on here complaining about that fact that pretty much half of FIRST uses or has used at sometime 1114's kitbot on steroids and that's because it's a good and well tested design that makes a better robot.

I feel that robot in three days has actually made FIRST a lot more competitive now because although it does now allow teams to just take some cad and part files and build a totally solid and competition ready robot, it also forces teams to figure out ways to defeat these ideas and make even more effective and well designed robots. Because in the end the Ri3D and BuildBlitz bots might be able to make it to district or regional eliminations, but they will all be beat out by better designed robots that came from a teams original idea.

[aldaeron]

Similar to cadandcookies, I stand by my pre-season post

While there was a lot of cool stuff shown on Ri3d/BuildBlitz, our team compared the final bots against the strategy discussions we had in the first 3-4 days. We decided there were a few shortcomings in the designs (as you would expect with only 3 days to conceptualize and build). We are inspired to design a robot that correct these shortcomings and is a level above and beyond what we saw.

Overall I think Ri3d/BuildBlitz added to the season in a positive way.

-matto-

[BJC]

I cannot speak for VEX on this matter. I just want to bring another factor to your attention.

This year's game is very easy compared to the last two years. There isn't much getting around it.

This year's game challenges are effectively:
-score in the high goal (also means you can truss toss.)
-intake ball (also means you can score in the low goal and assist by spitting out)
-catch a ball/pass ball

You can argue the finer details but the best robots in the world basically just be doing these three things really well. You could say this game has a low ceiling -- meaning the robot that does everything really doesn't have to do as much as other years.

2013, by comparison, was much more challenging. There was not a single robot in 2013 that could do every part of the game -- meaning the ceiling was very high, perhaps the highest in FRC history.

2012 is much more similar to 2014 in that there are fewer things to do. However, shooting into a basket (IMHO) was and still is the most technically challenging thing an FRC robot has ever had to do. The 27' wide 2014 high goal is child's play by comparison.

The thing I'm trying to get at here is because this game has a lower ceiling than most, the 5 robots built in three days this year were all able to accomplish more of the game tasks than they would have been able to do in harder years like 2012 and 2013. This makes them more attractive to directly copy rather than use for inspiration like they are intended.

Food for thought
Regards, Bryan

[Allison K]

Change is a constant in FIRST, and due to the nature of the competition it must be. Even the changes that we now collectively agree were good have generated enormous suspicion (districts anyone?). Ten or so years ago the announcement that AndyMark.biz had been founded and would be selling COTS gearboxes triggered many of the same arguments. There was concern that COTS gearboxes would hinder creativity and that all the robots would look the same. Now a decade out from that it would appear that the general consensus is that availability of those products (and now other components from AndyMark as well as VEX and other suppliers) has overall been a value added proposition and actually promoted creativity by making more advanced mechanisms available to a larger portion of teams. I see the 72 hour robot builds an analogous event. It's a natural evolution of the community created by FIRST, and I think it's something that we will look back on and agree has had a positive effect.

[Jay O'Donnell]

I recently thought of an analogy to sum up what I believe the OP was trying to say.

Essentially teams can use Ri3D as either a way to copy designs or to use the ideas shown as inspiration. I see the teams that just copy these designs as the kids who copy other students homework in school. Do we celebrate those kids and tell them they've been inspired? No, we call that plagiarizing and cheating. The teams the use Ri3D to inspire their kids and come up with even better designs are like the students who instead of just copying answers, ask others for help with their homework so they can understand it. I think we can all agree that having teams who use Ri3D as inspiration are beneficial, but I think people aren't realizing that having teams who just copy might not be so beneficial. Just my two cents.

[PayneTrain]

The see these events as professional engineers and FRC lifers (and even some FRC rookies up in New England this year) donating just 72 hours of their time to telementor the entire FRC community. It's the next step in the ever evolving landscape of FRC resources. Some resources to compete at a high level in FIRST are universal (ie the KoP and manual) while some are used at varying degrees by teams of varying experience and other resources. It's easy for the segment of the FRC community that lurks on here to forget that for every Hall of Famer or World Champion, there are 10 rookies or low-resource teams who need things like 72-hour builds as their only engineering mentor resources for the whole season.

To build something like anything in these 72 hour builds is easy, to build them to a T is more difficult, but to use them as a jumping-off point to develop your capabilities is probably their best use for most teams on here. However, all of these things require someone learning at least how it works, and why the teams made decisions that affected the robot one way or the other, and that can lead them to creating something better, or at least learning how to make something good.

I certainly hope we don't see any veteran teams using any design influence from any other competitions they may have been involved in. What about "collaboration" leading to exact replications ? what is to say that similar designs as the 3 day builds wouldn't surface anyway? The 3 day builds are a tremendous resource for teams with limited depth such as rookies. The idea of FIRST is to cast a larger net, purist's need to chill. Thanks to all the 3 Day Build teams.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Jay O'Donnell

Essentially teams can use Ri3D as either a way to copy designs or to use the ideas shown as inspiration. I see the teams that just copy these designs as the kids who copy other students homework in school. Do we celebrate those kids and tell them they've been inspired? No, we call that plagiarizing and cheating.

Wow, that is harsh. If a history teacher was excited about STEM and scrounged up enough money to field a team out of a classroom that only had the resources to put together a sweet looking AM14U, would you tell them to go home because they just copied Andy's design and built what the (very thorough) instructional book told them to?

I don't think it is our place to tell someone they've been inspired. That is a very personal revelation. 1778 will keep working hard at the I in FIRST -- I hope everyone else does too, however they see fit.

[Jay O'Donnell]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

Wow, that is harsh. If a history teacher was excited about STEM and scrounged up enough money to field a team out of a classroom that only had the resources to put together a sweet looking AM14U, would you tell them to go home because they just copied Andy's design and built what the (very thorough) instructional book told them to?

Well obviously that's a different circumstance. If all a team is able to do is put together a kitbot then that's all they're able to do. And you're right that for some teams, that's enough inspiration. However if you look at the teams that are able to copy the complete designs of the Robots in 3 days, they obviously have the resources to build something more than a kitbot, and can build their own machine. A quote that's said often our team is "look at that robot and be able to call it yours, because you designed and built that yourself." Of course this is my opinion, I can't say that what inspires my team is the same as what inspires another.

[nicholsjj]

http://youtu.be/i1QyM9WTF18?t=1m8s This great video narrated by Morgan Freeman quotes Dean saying that he wanted to inspire high school students to embrace science and technology the way Shaquille O'Neal inspires them to bounce a ball. Well I think this is exactly what these Robot in 3 Days/ Build Blitz teams are doing. Even though JVN, Andy Baker, Dr. Joe, etc. are not not 7 feet tall and have the ability to break a backboard, they all have the knowledge and respect of the FRC community to display a robot that was designed and built in 3 days. Many students probably have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours watching these fantastic mentors in order to better themselves and their teams. Does it reduce creativity? Probably so, but I do not see the letter "C" anywhere in FIRST. I actually believe that researching as many resources as possible is a major part of engineering. Using prior knowledge and experience is a very important part of successfully completing any task IMO. I know I would have loved to see a roller claw in 2011 because I will admit that our team had no experience to pull from and we didn't start looking at CD until about week 6. Also as far as cheating goes; nowhere in the rules does it say you may not look at others designs in order to help design and build your robot.

[TheMadCADer]

Originally Posted by BJC

I cannot speak for VEX on this matter. I just want to bring another factor to your attention.

This year's game is very easy compared to the last two years. There isn't much getting around it.

This year's game challenges are effectively:
-score in the high goal (also means you can truss toss.)
-intake ball (also means you can score in the low goal and assist by spitting out)
-catch a ball/pass ball

Still, none of the 3-day robots this year are catchers (because it was impractical to design for as a robot intended to stand alone). Last year the 3-day robot team didn't even touch 30-point climbing.

The ceiling may be low, but it's still above what the 3-day teams are hitting.

This year, our team had a full robot design after the first day. It just so happened that we came to most of the same conclusions as Team JVN. This is convenient, because now we have a ton of prototyping done for us so we can modify it until it works. I don't think it's a problem because teams can come up with their own ideas just as fast as these groups do. They can build faster, but they can't talk much faster.

[Donut]

Originally Posted by Jay O'Donnell

Essentially teams can use Ri3D as either a way to copy designs or to use the ideas shown as inspiration. I see the teams that just copy these designs as the kids who copy other students homework in school. Do we celebrate those kids and tell them they've been inspired? No, we call that plagiarizing and cheating. The teams the use Ri3D to inspire their kids and come up with even better designs are like the students who instead of just copying answers, ask others for help with their homework so they can understand it. I think we can all agree that having teams who use Ri3D as inspiration are beneficial, but I think people aren't realizing that having teams who just copy might not be so beneficial. Just my two cents.

One of my main concerns with all of the Ri3D/Build Blitz robots is the sentiment expressed in this post, and the kind of arguments or resentment that could cause at competition.

Let me outline our build season so far this year. The team mentors on 167 this year agreed not to discuss the Ri3D type videos until the team's prototyping and design process was basically done in an attempt to preserve wild ideas, and since I am the only member on my team that posts or checks CD regularly we were able to keep things under wraps pretty easily. We prototyped four different shooting mechanisms and four different pick up mechanisms, then spent most of a Saturday comparing and debating different design combinations and their implications for the rest of the robot. Guess what? We essentially arrived at team JVN's design on our own, even a choo-choo style mechanism which had been used previously for the kicker on our 2010 robot with good success. There are some subtle differences in our design (pick up arm has a larger range of motion, fitting in a catcher, etc.) but if some of those things end up not working and getting removed we will look like a team JVN knock off* at a quick glance.

Our team knows that we came up with our design without much outside influence and that the prototyping process was very beneficial, and now we can use those 3 day builds as some guidance on perfecting the mechanisms. For another team at competition though it will be very easy to conclude that "they just copied that design from Build Blitz." And with six different designs done in 3 days this year it will be easy to conclude that about a much larger number of finished robots this year than last. I hope we don't all have to justify to other teams that we didn't steal our design.

*The accusation of being a team JVN clone is one of the higher compliments a team can receive at an FRC competition.

[KeeganP]

Hey everyone. I am in no way suggesting that we discontinue/disregard that the Ri3D and Build Blitz teams did an incredible job and should be thanked for their amazing effort, skill and time commitment to making FIRST better.

All I'm suggesting is that next year they limit their production of exact resources until after build season is closer to a conclusion. I agree that teams could theoretically just turn a blind eye to all of this, but can you really control an entire FRC team's internet access? What happens when one student comes in and says "look at this robot!" or claims to have a great idea the he/she *knows* will work because they saw it already.

I think that perhaps if the teams had just waited until later to release their CAD drawings I would personally be happier -- teams couldn't just copy the robots. I understand that no robot (hopefully) will be a direct copy of it, however I think that being able to look up the exact dimensions, part numbers, etc. for building an obviously successful robot becomes degrading to a team that can no longer call their robot design original and student led. After all, what's FIRST's mission? To inspire a generation of technology leaders. Are they going to learn to think outside the box when they can download 5 different robot CAD files and combine them? Or are they just learning how to assemble a box set?

Let's keep this discussion going and how we can improve upon the Ri3D and Build Blitz ideas, rather than attacking each other's views on what "inspiration" and "cheating" are.