Bad Robots

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by wesbass23

I agree with MrTechCenter

Biggest advice I can give is to not try and do too much in your first year. Too many teams (veterans included) try and do too many things and end up not being able to do any one thing well. Focus on getting a strong working drivetrain If you go with a basic tank drive (also my recommendation), use at least 4 cims). Many teams are looked over in alliance selection if they have a poor drivetrain even if they have functioning other parts of their robot. After you have a working drivetrain, focus on getting one mechanism working for the current years game. Like this year, an arm to posses the ball and let go will make you extremely valuable to teams at regionals. Finally, seek out veteran teams who seem to know what they are doing if you need help (you are already ahead in that aspect). Good Luck!

Originally Posted by EricH

This. This. And THIS.

Robots that can't play the game more than just defense? All too common. Robots with nonfunctional scoring mechanisms? All too common.
Robots that are too complex? See last two statements...

So, this is important, yes, but I'd be careful not to go too far onto this side and forget to challenge yourself. I've seen many a team and leaders who have preferred to be complacent and not attempted to try to go the extra mile.

There's a line between 'not doing too much' and betraying the program by not challenging yourself. Toeing the aforementioned line is what teams of all levels struggle with.

- Sunny G.

[AustinH]

Understanding the logic behind the Minimum Competitive Concept in conjunction with getting early practice building drivetrains in the off season (and driving the heck out of them) will put you off to a great start. Depending on your region, there are probably veteran teams in your area with old kit chassis that either went unused or are obsolete. Be sure to contact veteran teams in your area to see if you can have one (special shout out to 360 for doing just that). For a control system, even something as simple as a 4 channel RC airplane transmitter/reciever combo and some spare motor controllers (jaguars, talons, victors, etc.) is sufficient to replace a $500 cRIO/digital sidecar combo if your only goal is to drive around (though you'll still have to get a battery and an electrical distribution setup going). Our first "robot" did nothing other than trundle around at a very slow clip, but if you set up a basic obstacle course, you instantly have a Tank Drive 101 class for new drivers.

We used essentially this package right here. It won't get you programing practice, but it's a very low-cost start.

[evanperryg]

Originally Posted by wesbass23

Biggest advice I can give is to not try and do too much in your first year. Too many teams (veterans included) try and do too many things and end up not being able to do any one thing well. Focus on getting a strong working drivetrain If you go with a basic tank drive (also my recommendation), use at least 4 cims). Many teams are looked over in alliance selection if they have a poor drivetrain even if they have functioning other parts of their robot.

All of this is very true. My team has made better robots in our last two years than we have ever made before, and it is because we have done specific things very well. In 2013, we focused on getting a really consistent shot. We did it, and ended up with our first regional win ever(albeit as a second pick defensive bot). One of the first things we look at is drivetrains. In fact, it is a deciding factor in who even gets on our pick list and who doesn't. Very, VERY few weak drivetrains ever make it onto our picklists. A good, powerful tank drivetrain means that even if your bot isn't the best at playing offense, you may get picked for your strong defensive capabilities. Look at 5125 at midwest regional. Their entire robot was a simple kitbot drivetrain. However, it was done so well it could push almost every robot at the event. Even through there were still collecting and scoring robots still available, they were the first alliance's second pick and ended up winning the regional.

To answer OP's questions, it really does vary based on what regional you attend. There are some locations where most teams have great resources and can make great robots. Other locations may not have as many resources, possibly caused by a lack of students, mentorship, or sponsorship.

[Akolbi]

I DEFINITELY agree with hedgehog on the failure aspect. One of the things he didn't mention was the the main feature of our robot, namely a large shield, was actually making the best out of a bad situation. we had meant to make the robot climb the pyramid (the endgame last year) and get 30 points. after we failed at doing that, we decided to build a shield, making use of the existing mechanisms. It worked for us. (it also made a stylish way to show off our tshirt)

also, a corollary to failing, everything will break. We literally had no system on the robot NOT break by the end of last year, the omniwheels even fell apart, and the kit wheels are BALD (to the point where i'm surprised the DMV didn't say anything )

Good luck next year, I hope you do well! You're already thinking like a veteran. just be prepared to work some late nights, and NEVER lose hope in yourself, your robot, and most importantly, your team!

[techtiger1]

Congrats you have experienced the great divide.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Max Boord

1. Is this common in FIRST?
Its totally event dependent. you wont show up to Waterloo or Orlando finding too many toasters. In contrast, I remember watching the western Canadian regional a few years ago and finding a large portion of robots that could not handle the game piece.

2. Is this common in Aerial Assist?
Yes. this years game piece is more inconsistent, bigger, fragile and contested for than almost any other game piece in recent FRC history making it much harder to be an effective scoring robot on the field.

3. What is the build season like for teams who end up with a robot that just doesn't play the game well.
It all depends on when this is realized.
A. IF REALIZED EARLY:
Smart teams will change there design to fix the problem. Bad teams will just tell the drive team to deal with it.
B. IF REALIZED LATE:
Good teams will try to build a new system that they can switch out at there event or right before stop build day. Bad teams will just ignore/ deny the situation by lowering there standards for what is an acceptable robot.
C. IF THE TEAM HAS LIMITED RESOURCES:
Good teams will attempt to use programming/ strategy/ driver skill to compensate for unacceptable or inferior hardware.
4. What causes teams to be bad?
Usually a lack of resources or a failure in the design and planning process. If you take 1 thing away from your pre rookie experience it should be think before you act. Try to pull designs or design ideas form past games that used a similar game piece or field layout. A prime example is 67 (hot) and 971 (Spartan Robotics). They both evolved the 2008 world champs robot to make it work in this years game and preform better. 67 is currently 49-7 and 971 is 35-0. I highly suggest looking at some of karthik kanagasabapathy's recorded presentations on how to preform effective strategic analysis of a game and how to design an effective robot to play it.

1) No, it's not. There are tons of toasters at those events. I can personally attest to there being a large number of toasters at Orlando as well as a large number of robots that would be better off as toasters. But that's not merely an Orlando phenomenon, building a robot is "hard". Now, how high a percentage of teams are toasters at any given event varies but usually there are a mere handful of robots that would not look at home heating bread.

2) This game is harder than the previous one and has vastly worse penalties for failure than the last couple. (2012, imho, was about as hard to effectively score based off folks ignoring the 1 and 2 point goals). This did NOT contribute heavily to the percentage of toasters on the field. The scoring system, however, exacerbated their effect from merely being an annoyance to actively hindering their partners' attempts to seed well.

3) Robots are "hard". By which I mean that teams bite off too much at once. The only way to be successful in FRC is to focus on what Andy Baker has deemed the 3 most important aspects of your robot. The Drivetrain, The Drivetrain, and The Drivetrain. Build on top of that. Meaning: Many teams neglect to focus on reliably moving their robot from point A to point B. The next thing to focus on is acquiring a game piece and reliably letting go of it. THEN you can focus on scoring it. Now, I'm sure 1114/118/254 don't follow this practice but they are exceptions. When you have multiple Einstein appearances you can do whatever you want.

4) Not recognizing limitations and resources. Not recognizing game strategies. Not understanding the impact that game actions have on outcomes and the impact outcomes has on rankings. Not understanding the metagame of the area (Ie, if you are in New England just assume that you will have at least a few matches wherein a team repeatedly rams you from across the field... build your bot accordingly).


Top thing for how not to be a toaster at your first event? Ask for help. CD is a great place to ask. Make friends with a local team that has some experience, they can provide experienced mentors who can give you guys a reality check as well as the common gotchas inherent in FRC (wait, we should zip tie our battery connectors?). Plus, they likely have a surplus of extra motors and such that might help with prototyping or spare parts.

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

3) Robots are "hard". By which I mean that teams bite off too much at once. The only way to be successful in FRC is to focus on what Andy Baker has deemed the 3 most important aspects of your robot. The Drivetrain, The Drivetrain, and The Drivetrain.

This. So much this. You cannot emphasize this enough.

Our ball acquisition broke (in a crippling, multiple-hours-to-fix manner) partway through Greater DC this year, and we were selected by the winning alliance because we had a reliable, beefy drive and could push people around extremely well on defense. That our robot spent ~70% of the competition doing nothing at all with the ball was immaterial.

At Chesapeake, our drive stopped functioning effectively (for a number of reasons), and even though our manipulator was functional, we did terribly.

[Jibsy]

As mentioned before, kudos to you guys for getting out to an event as pre-rookies, that's a fantastic start already.

There has already been lots of high quality input given here, but there's one thing I would like to add to that I've learned from personal experience. That has to do with the design and build of mechanisms.

As has been mentioned many times above, building robots is hard. What you will find though, is that there are teams that have little trouble whipping together prototypes in a day or two that functions at or above par of most of those at competitions. Put together a full robot of prototype level mechanisms that work, and you're already above average.

So where's the challenge here? The challenge comes in actually building mechanisms that WORK. I remember back to my first year (2011), spending countless hours working on building a minibot and a deployment system. The prototypes I built were clunky, slow, and only sometimes worked - even though the task wasn't super complicated. I remember having an idea I was excited about on how to pick up tubes, but not having the slightest clue how to actually build it.

Picture in your head now - say you wanted to create something like a drive-train. Odds are you could picture something in your head, but wouldn't know where to start as far as actually designing it.

To cut to the chase, between now and kickoff of your very first FRC build season (WOO!), imagine stuff, then research how you build build the stuff you imagined (via Chief Delphi, mentors, other teams, etc.), design the stuff, and then build it!

Being a pre-rookie team, you probably don't have a stockpile of supplies kicking around to make stuff. Which brings me to another point - if you can work now at finding mentors, machine shop sponsors, metal/plastics sponsors, you will be in a good place come kickoff.

I would love to keep going, but my break is up! If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me a message. I would love to help y'all get started!

[rich2202]

I was at Wisconsin this year, and 2 weeks later at Midwest. A lot of the same volunteers were there, and I asked one: "Was competition at Wisconsin much tougher?". The other person said: "At Wisconsin, for over 1/2 the teams it was not their first regional [for that year]." At Midwest, there were a lot of green teams.

One team at WI was so-so, but at Midwest, they dominated. Part of it was that their game play (the driver) had a game dominating strategy (and a bot that could execute).

Experience playing the game, and being able to make improvements (hold back) between regionals (once you see how the game is played) is huge.