VEXpro Build Blitz 2015

[Karthik]

As part of our VEXpro 2015 Product Unveiling yesterday, we also announced our plans for Build Blitz 2015.

http://www.vexrobotics.com/vexpro/ex...ild-blitz-2015

Originally Posted by VEXpro Build Blitz 2015

The VEXpro team has been paying attention to the feedback from the community on the pros & cons of the Ri3D and Build Blitz projects, and after careful consideration we're revamping the way we do Build Blitz for 2015. This year, our engineering team will not be building full robots over the course of three days.

Starting during kickoff we'll begin an entire WEEK LONG roll-out of educational materials, application engineering examples, prototype videos, design guides, strategy analysis and more -- all targeted specifically for the 2015 game! Maximizing what we can accomplish in the three days should not be the goal; we want to make sure we keep our focus on enhancing the experience of what all of you can do in six weeks.

Our goal is to provide teams with the foundation materials they need to succeed in this year's game. We want to eliminate the frustrations associated with being an inexperienced team, without removing the challenges inherent in this incredible program.

So tune in on January 5th 2015, two days after the FRC Kickoff when we'll start releasing materials, and keep watching www.BuildBlitz.com for information as it is posted!

Based on the feedback we got last season, we saw that it was important for us to continue doing Build Blitz to help provide teams with resources, instructions, and inspiration to guide them through the build season. At the same time our feedback told us that many teams were concerned that the evolution of these quick designs was having unintended consequences on the community. We hope that by shifting our focus from complete robots to game specific educational resources, we've hit the sweet spot where we can help and inspire many, without removing the challenges we all love and thrive on in FRC.

We'll use this thread to keep the community up to date on all our progress. For full details and updates be sure to check out www.BuildBlitz.com, as well as our VEXRoboticsTV YouTube Channel and our @BuildBlitz Twitter page.

If you have any questions or feedback, please share it with us! Build Blitz is designed for the community and we want to make sure all your voices are heard!

[IceStorm]

I for one will be looking forward to these videos. VEX only continues to impress me with what they are doing for the robotics community.

[ErvinI]

This is an interesting development with Build Blitz. While I personally will miss seeing fully functional robots within 3 days of kickoff, this is a great compromise between the two sides of the argument.

In fact, if you guys develop your educational resources accordingly, we may actually see an increase in the variety of designs for less experienced teams. That's always great to see!

Looking forward to the second edition of Build Blitz .

[rick.oliver]

The fun just got a little harder ... perhaps ... thanks for continuing to serve the community ... looking forward to the resources.

Will you be sharing the schedule (I assume) you have developed of which specific resources you expect to release on which date starting on January 5th?

I ask because I want to adjust our schedule to take full advantage of your input.

[Oblarg]

I'm extremely pleased with this development, and think this will be a fantastic resource for the coming year. Thanks for putting such an emphasis on getting and responding to community feedback.

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by rick.oliver

Will you be sharing the schedule (I assume) you have developed of which specific resources you expect to release on which date starting on January 5th?

We want to be careful with committing to any dates prior to kickoff; so much of what we develop is going to be game specific, we don't want to over commit prior to knowing the game. Once we wrap our heads around the game and decide what resources we're focusing on, we'll publish a detailed timeline of what to expect. Now in terms of generalities, we hope to be developing and releasing our Build Blitz resources across the the first week of the build season.

[Dale]

This idea of not building complete robots and focusing on educational materials is a really good development. I hope the other quick build teams take a similar approach. Having solutions just handed to students has always seemed to me to be depriving them of the valuable experience of prototyping and dreaming. It's all too easy to look at something that works and say "let's do that."

[asid61]

Originally Posted by Dale

This idea of not building complete robots and focusing on educational materials is a really good development. I hope the other quick build teams take a similar approach. Having solutions just handed to students has always seemed to me to be depriving them of the valuable experience of prototyping and dreaming. It's all too easy to look at something that works and say "let's do that."

I don't think that anybody from around my area would outright copy from a CAD file. I would feel the need to improve upon the design or remake it with my own watermark or splice it with other designs. It might vary from team to team, as I live in a fiercely competitive/ prideful area.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by asid61

I don't think that anybody from around my area would outright copy from a CAD file. I would feel the need to improve upon the design or remake it with my own watermark or splice it with other designs. It might vary from team to team, as I live in a fiercely competitive/ prideful area.

The issue that most vocal detractors of the 3 day builds isn't about teams copy cad files... It's about teams seeing a finished design and copying the whole concept. How many choo-choo's and el-toro's did we see last year? Teams take the finished robots and just say "let's do what they did" instead of experimenting, prototyping and coming up with their own ideas.

Personally, I love this new direction. Focusing on educational materials and prototyping various ideas will hopefully help to increase creativity and diversity in Design, without giving teams an "easy out" of copying a complete robot they know works.

[mathking]

I think this is a good development. Even though I am firmly in the camp that believes the three day builds have been good for FRC. I just spent a lot of time going through our old match videos and trying to grab good pictures of as many of the robots we have played with and against as possible. As a side project I was also looking at robot designs. And one thing that is clear to me is that the last couple of years have seen a significantly higher percentage of functional robots. And once I subtracted out all of the box on wheels (or box on wheels with non-functional devices) robots I did not see a lessening of variety.

That said, if this project helps teams with ideas about how to develop prototypes without complete robot designs I think it will be a positive development for FRC. I think that the biggest problem many rookies have is that limited experience and limited resources often inhibit the development of prototypes. I think that sometimes older, more well-resourced with experience teams tend to forget how much their institutional knowledge plays into their development process, because to them it just is a part of the process. This seems to me to be a good way to increase that knowledge base across the FRC community.

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

The issue that most vocal detractors of the 3 day builds isn't about teams copy cad files... It's about teams seeing a finished design and copying the whole concept. How many choo-choo's and el-toro's did we see last year? Teams take the finished robots and just say "let's do what they did" instead of experimenting, prototyping and coming up with their own ideas.

Personally, I love this new direction. Focusing on educational materials and prototyping various ideas will hopefully help to increase creativity and diversity in Design, without giving teams an "easy out" of copying a complete robot they know works.

To be fair, we don't really know the scope of this new Build Blitz, and it could certainly lead to similar things. I initially thought this new version would make detractors of Build Blitz even more angry because we would be seeing multiple mechanisms and ideas prototyped, tested, and built by Vex.

My impression from from Karthik said above (though I'm certainly just speculating here) is that they plan to release game specific designs or ideas, just not a whole robot. Why waste time building a drivetrain when you do more service by building another arm or pick-up mechanism? I think this is a pretty great idea. We'll see later what the full plans are, though I'm currently expecting more than just videos talking about design techniques or documents of educational material.

[Oblarg]

The plan to roll out content over the course of the first week, I think, is one of the most important improvements. Last year, I felt it was simply too much, too quickly - much of the important process that led to the designs (brainstorming, prototyping, tuning) were washed out in mad rush of the 3-day build. At the end of it, it was common to have students wanting to copy aspects of the different robots without any firm motivation other than "it looked good on the reveal video."

It sounds like it'll be much easier to parse the information this year (what works well, what doesn't, and most importantly why that's the case), which is very important.

[Ilovepineapples]

I do not see this as a positive development. I won't go outright and say I dislike it but I feel this will narrow the designs we see even more than in Ri3D.

Now we'll see the same VEX designs repeated over and over by all teams using the same pre-fabricated parts. We'll have some nice looking robots and VEX will have a bigger pocketbook.

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by Ilovepineapples

I do not see this as a positive development. I won't go outright and say I dislike it but I feel this will narrow the designs we see even more than in Ri3D.

Now we'll see the same VEX designs repeated over and over by all teams using the same pre-fabricated parts. We'll have some nice looking robots and VEX will have a bigger pocketbook.

I don't think Vex is going to produce the only viable designs, nor, likely, the optimal ones. What it will do, however, is provide viable designs that have already been proven to work for teams that do not have the resources to experiment with many different ideas. This significantly raises the floor of the competition, and I think that is a good thing.

Anecdotally, in 4464's rookie year we did not have the money nor manpower to pursue prototypes if we did not know that they would eventually pan out. The Ri3D two-wheel linear shooter made our robot possible that year - not because we copied it exactly (we didn't - our robot was a full-court shooter and looked very little like theirs), but because they demonstrated a working proof-of-concept and we could purchase the parts for a similar design with the confidence that they would eventually make it onto our robot. That was invaluable.

[Ilovepineapples]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

I don't think Vex is going to produce the only viable designs, nor, likely, the optimal ones. What it will do, however, is provide viable designs that have already been proven to work for teams that do not have the resources to experiment with many different ideas. This significantly raises the floor of the competition, and I think that is a good thing.

Anecdotally, in 4464's rookie year we did not have the money nor manpower to pursue prototypes if we did not know that they would eventually pan out. The Ri3D two-wheel linear shooter made our robot possible that year - not because we copied it exactly (we didn't - our robot was a full-court shooter and looked very little like theirs), but because they demonstrated a working proof-of-concept and we could purchase the parts for a similar design with the confidence that they would eventually make it onto our robot. That was invaluable.

Exactly. They are doing the same thing as last year but without the robot base. I fail to see how this addresses any of the concerns that the original nay-sayers of Ri3D/Build Blitz had.

I will of course save my final judgement for after Build Blitz this year. But currently, this is how I see it.