RI3D this year?

[audietron]

Originally Posted by IronBenderII

I haven't seen anything about doing a Robot in 3 Days this year, I'm hoping that is because nobody is doing it... Anybody know?

Jack

What is your reasoning for not wanting it?

[z_beeblebrox]

Originally Posted by audietron

What is your reasoning for not wanting it?

See this thread for some various points of view on RI3D/ Build Blitz projects.

[audietron]

Originally Posted by z_beeblebrox

See this thread for some various points of view on RI3D/ Build Blitz projects.

Ahh thanks! I completely forgot this thread even happened...surprisingly.

[IronBenderII]

Originally Posted by audietron

What is your reasoning for not wanting it?

Although I enjoy watching the build, I feel like it dilutes the robot gene pool. Too many Ri3D robots showing up at competition for my taste.

[asid61]

Originally Posted by IronBenderII

Although I enjoy watching the build, I feel like it dilutes the robot gene pool. Too many Ri3D robots showing up at competition for my taste.

I think a lot of it is just convergence. A catapult with an overarm roller was what a lot of teams used just for simplicity. It might be that a few teams copy them, but I for one feel the need to tweak designs to my liking.

[Jacob Bendicksen]

Originally Posted by audietron

What is your reasoning for not wanting it?

I know that a lot of people dislike the fact that the Ri3D groups produce a crop of robots that ends up being very limiting for many teams. It's tempting to just go for the option that you already know works (because one of the Ri3D teams built it), and while I think that these designs can be useful for rookies or teams with less resources, it does seem to have somewhat of a limiting effect on teams' creativity.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by audietron

What is your reasoning for not wanting it?

The usual reasons I see are something along the lines of this:

By running through a lot of the prototyping, with lots of teams watching, there are a lot of what you might call "copycat" robots. These robots take the designs and just build those, whichever ones they like, rather than taking the IDEA and running with it, or developing their robots fully independently.

These are valid reasons, for some folks. For others, those robots are exactly why Ri3D exists...


I'm a fencesitter on this one; I can see both the risk of copycats and the "oh, hey, this works, how do we optimize it for our current design/manufacturing situation" factor at play. Therefore, I remain undecided.

[Steven Smith]

Agree with all above on fence sitting.

We were a Ri3D "copycat" last year (technically BuildBlitz). We had a near 100% rookie team of students/mentors who had no concept of how to solve the challenge, build a robot, or even identify basic tools. Forcing a student led design would have likely resulted in us not completing a robot on time or it not being executed well.

We ended up with a respectable (though not super consistent) robot that performed well enough to get our team excited. Now we have a crop of returning students that are able to communicate some design ideas, better iterate on robots, and have more potential to make design contributions this year.

So... I believe we are proof that Ri3D does have a place in the "inspiration" category. I still believe it is both more inspirational and educational for a team that knows almost nothing to "copy" a competitive design and tweak it to fix all the issues that arise from poor execution, than for the team to build something completely original that is inherently flawed. Once a team starts to build team IP and original ideas, Ri3D should become less useful.

However, the number I saw thrown out there recently about ~10% of the team submitting FIRST choice orders on time reminds me that we on Chief Delphi are the minority. We still have a large number of teams out there that lack the mentorship to execute original and competitive designs on their own... and building a Ri3D bot is probably better than building a kitbot drive base with a non-functional mechanism.

[IronicDeadBird]

Given how much thought is put into these games I would absolutely say the GDC has the meta for what a good robot might need. Last year that was a quick efficient intake and high angle launch mechanism that over shoots any defensive options. The GDC does a good job of establishing meta through its animations without giving too much away (it why they always use the crazy mechanisms like the boot that kicks the ball perfectly) and the game design is consistent enough that even without RI3D with all the resources that you can access in the end you are going to have a lot of robots that look very similar because they all are going for the same goal.
Hope that makes sense I re-wrote it a few times...