Robot in 3 Days 2015

[Dan Richardson]

Click here to watch our video announcement for Ri3D 2015


From our blog: Robotin3Days.com

We are proud to announce the return of Robot in 3 Days for its third year and it promises to be bigger and better than ever! We’re excited that the spirit of collaboration and “mass-mentorship / viral mentoring” has proliferated over the last three years. When reflecting on the past few years we joked of a time when it was difficult to get the most experienced mentors to share their thoughts. Now with 7 official Ri3D teams and various offshoots, the culture of sharing has left its mark. Many teams now collaborate and create open source ideas that improve the competition, improve the education and improve the inspiration. The experience extends beyond YouTube with community based Ri3D teams that are seeking to further develop the FIRST teams in their area. One team, Team Tesla, is even inviting local teams and high school students to participate during portions of their build so they can more directly share their learning with their team. That’s also why for 2015 the Ri3D teams will not be competing against each other but participating because its fun to build a robot and worth sharing the process.

Each year we review feedback from the community and attempt to modify our approach to ensure we are consistently delivering content that helps inspire the community. In all things, we hope to be a source of inspiration, seeking to inspire those who watch our videos to go forth and do better. This year we are assigning members of the core build teams to identify learnings, math and examples to develop tutorials and how-to’s that can help enhance every team’s experience.

The Ri3D founders are focused on helping to change our culture and impacting those who need it the most. We recognize that this will take iteration in perfecting our formula for success. The one thing we know for certain is that, each year, this is a challenge that we have a lot of fun completing. Robot in 3 Days has renewed our passion for STEM education and we will continue to strive to promote science, technology engineering and math in everything we do.

We are extremely excited about the launch of the 2015 game and look forward to FIRSTmas and the start of our build on January 3rd, 2015. Make sure to join me in welcoming our new competing teams and make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook for the most recent updates.

We're looking forward to 2015 and can't wait to get started! More information coming soon!

[Jacob Bendicksen]

I'm curious - what's your reasoning behind doing the pure Ri3D again this year, compared to the resources/prototyping model that Build Blitz is doing?

[wilsonmw04]

Originally Posted by Jacob Bendicksen

I'm curious - what's your reasoning behind doing the pure Ri3D again this year, compared to the resources/prototyping model that Build Blitz is doing?

Because they created the idea? Why would they let another group of builders affect what they want to do?

[Jacob Bendicksen]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

Because they created the idea? Why would they let another group of builders affect what they want to do?

Fair enough, but I know that Build Blitz listened to community feedback and adjusted their plans accordingly. I was hoping to foster some sort of discussion with the Ri3D folks, since the Build Blitz people made their point with the announcement earlier in the month.

[asid61]

Originally Posted by Jacob Bendicksen

Fair enough, but I know that Build Blitz listened to community feedback and adjusted their plans accordingly. I was hoping to foster some sort of discussion with the Ri3D folks, since the Build Blitz people made their point with the announcement earlier in the month.

I think it's fine. More resources are better IMO.

[wilsonmw04]

Build Blitz has decided that giving a full robot to the community is some how cheating or is giving teams a 'solution' that is not organic (sorry if this belief is wrong. This is coming from the "feed back" you were speaking of.) Ri3D thinks otherwise. Neither is right and neither is wrong.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Jacob Bendicksen

Fair enough, but I know that Build Blitz listened to community feedback and adjusted their plans accordingly. I was hoping to foster some sort of discussion with the Ri3D folks, since the Build Blitz people made their point with the announcement earlier in the month.

Originally Posted by asid61

I think it's fine. More resources are better IMO.

Because the feedback that led to the Build Blitz change wasn't a definitive, "full robots are bad". Build Blitz viewed the overall feedback for 3-day builds one way and made the changes they felt would make it a better experience, Ri3D viewed it a different way and made the changes they felt would make it a better experience.

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

Build Blitz has decided that giving a full robot to the community is some how cheating or is giving teams a 'solution' that is not organic

This is not true.

Yes, Build Blitz will not be building full robots this year, but that's not because we think that doing so would be "cheating". We're very appreciative of Ri3D teams are doing with full robots, and think that these full robot builds can be both educational and inspirational experiences for the entire FRC community. Part of the reason we felt comfortable not doing full robots is because we knew that there would be a multitude of groups doing full robots that many members of this community want to see. Build Blitz is going to be focusing on developing game specific resources and examples to help teams for the 2015 season. Combining what we're doing with what the Ri3D groups will collectively raise the bar for all teams who seek out these resources. Remember it's not about one methodology being right or better than the other, it's about providing a diverse set of resources such that teams have a spectrum of options to choose from.

In summation, we're excited to see what each of the seven Ri3D groups come up with and can't wait to see how the community uses all of these resources to raise the level of play for the 2015 season.

[Ekcrbe]

I just want to offer my own, unaffiliated opinion and say that I support Ri3D's choice to continue with the full build, just as I have approved of its existence all along. I think there is likely a pretty silent majority (or at least a sizable minority) of FRCers who appreciate the good that Ri3D has brought to the competitions the last two years. Some, of course, choose to take the work they see the Ri3D teams do and base their designs heavily off that. Some use the knowledge to inform their prototyping, aim for or steer away from certain design aspects, and end up with robots that no one would accuse of being "Ri3D copies." Still others are just thankful that the level of play has gone up at their competitions, and that they less frequently run into alliance members who can't contribute to their matches at all.

Look around CD. Every time someone makes an angry or slanderous post about the best teams, the community's constructive criticism is "don't try to bring the top down, focus on bringing the bottom up." Ri3D has had more far-reaching impact to that effect than any other institution in recent memory, but this point seems to get lost in the shuffle. For this, much praise is due, and I think their legacy should acknowledge that more than the blowback they've received.

As a side note, for an analysis of the "killing creativity" claim, check out the very good post that Chris is me made in another thread.

[dibblec]

For a rookie team three years ago, we appreciated Ri3D's build as a way to get our students that were new to FRC ideas of the build process. It was a invaluable resource. Looking at past seasons and the amount of resources from other teams on their finished robots and assistance from nearby teams were helpful, but having that years's task and the video documentation of the process was another great resource. I can say without a doubt, the creativity still flowed and we still had to figure out how to design, make parts, build, wire, and most challenging, at the time, program our robot to do what we wanted. Ri3D provided us a great launching point.

From what I have noticed is that while the games have changed, some of the game pieces and how to shoot or pickup those pieces have repeated themselves. Is looking back at teams previous robots and how they handle games pieces killing team creativity or just a good way to do research? For a young team having teams and Ri3D as inspiration is a great thing. It ends up being virtual mentorship for us. Looking forward to see Build Blitz, AndyMark and Ri3D process again this year.

[Anthony4939]

Originally Posted by dibblec

For a rookie team three years ago, we appreciated Ri3D's build as a way to get our students that were new to FRC ideas of the build process. It was a invaluable resource. Looking at past seasons and the amount of resources from other teams on their finished robots and assistance from nearby teams were helpful, but having that years's task and the video documentation of the process was another great resource. I can say without a doubt, the creativity still flowed and we still had to figure out how to design, make parts, build, wire, and most challenging, at the time, program our robot to do what we wanted. Ri3D provided us a great launching point.

From what I have noticed is that while the games have changed, some of the game pieces and how to shoot or pickup those pieces have repeated themselves. Is looking back at teams previous robots and how they handle games pieces killing team creativity or just a good way to do research? For a young team having teams and Ri3D as inspiration is a great thing. It ends up being virtual mentorship for us. Looking forward to see Build Blitz, AndyMark and Ri3D process again this year.

We agree. As a rookie team last year, we knew what we wanted a robot to do, but were limited to what we had to build to do it. The Ri3D videos helped bridge that gap. We probably won't look at those videos this year until after our design and build, but it is an excellent resource for rookies.

[Mr_I]

Originally Posted by Ekcrbe

As a side note, for an analysis of the "killing creativity" claim, check out the very good post that Chris is me made in another thread.

After reading both threads, allow me to give another perspective.

One of the dangers of Ri3D IMHO is that it "allows" students to not develop their own creative juices. I heard the tale from another mentor on a team "far far away": last year his team was faced with a technical issue he thought he could use in a teachable moment as a way to analyze and find solutions to problems. He told me of his dismay when the students said "let's check the video", meaning the Ri3D clips on YouTube!

I do see the value of allowing under-resourced teams (aren't they all?) to quickly target better solutions rather than pursue failing ideas (cough, my team some years, cough), but it seems now teams that simply wait a few days don't have to "waste time" with the heavy lifting of design, just copy what they see.

A decade ago ago Team 811 discovered (and adopted) the Team MOE Collaborative Robot Design process, where we spend three days analyzing the game, developing strategies, fostering concepts, and ultimately zero in an overall design by Monday after Kick-Off, and it has served us well for years. Last year we built an amazing robot that won at Week Zero, semi-finals at GSD, Finalist at WPI (one missed autonomous shot shy of winner!), semi-finals at NE-CMP (clutch failure), competed at St.Louis, and won at Mayhem and RiverRage, yet we still have kids to this day complaining that our design should have matched one of the Ri3D bots. Huh??

Bottom line: If Vex Build Blitz is going to focus on elements and not the whole design, I'm all for it! Maybe Ri3D could consider emulation.

[ehochstein]

Originally Posted by Mr_I

After reading both threads, allow me to give another perspective.

One of the dangers of Ri3D IMHO is that it "allows" students to not develop their own creative juices. I heard the tale from another mentor on a team "far far away": last year his team was faced with a technical issue he thought he could use in a teachable moment as a way to analyze and find solutions to problems. He told me of his dismay when the students said "let's check the video", meaning the Ri3D clips on YouTube!

My team was met with the same challenge last year. They ran into a technical issue that they couldn't figure out how to solve. They ended up watching a Ri3D video and it inspired them to come up with a creative improvement to their catapult. In the end, the robot's catapult didn't look anything like a Ri3D robot.

That's why I am a supporter of Ri3D, and why I pushed to start the 'Snow Problem team in Minnesota. Every team is different and uses resources for different things, it isn't required anyone watches Ri3D nor is it required they watch the new Build Blitz stuff. In the end, I believe Ri3D/Build Blitz make FIRST more inspirational.

[Ben Martin]

I strongly support Ri3D, and am very glad that they are doing it again this year with more teams.

I think that creativity takes many forms, and I strongly believe that just as much creativity can come out of looking at an existing solution and adapting it as much as coming up with an idea "from scratch," though I do believe that most creativity in FRC stems from adapting an existing object or mechanical device concept used in the wider world into an FRC application (buckets in 2013, etc). There is an awful lot more time put into "detail the concept and executing" in FRC, which are heavily pushed toward success/failure by the initial design decision.

Ri3D provides teams with several tested solutions. Teams are able to prototype and build their own solutions, but they know there is a tested solution to fall back to if needed even at the end of week 1.

Having had multiples of both struggling and successful years, there is a lot more learning that happens with the students on tweaking and improving a machine that works than struggling to make a machine work at all.

Robots that at their core use Ri3D concepts to speed prototyping and overall layout design can still develop original mechanisms that win creativity awards.

[Dunngeon]

Originally Posted by Mr_I

After reading both threads, allow me to give another perspective.

One of the dangers of Ri3D IMHO is that it "allows" students to not develop their own creative juices. I heard the tale from another mentor on a team "far far away": last year his team was faced with a technical issue he thought he could use in a teachable moment as a way to analyze and find solutions to problems. He told me of his dismay when the students said "let's check the video", meaning the Ri3D clips on YouTube!

I do see the value of allowing under-resourced teams (aren't they all?) to quickly target better solutions rather than pursue failing ideas (cough, my team some years, cough), but it seems now teams that simply wait a few days don't have to "waste time" with the heavy lifting of design, just copy what they see.

A decade ago ago Team 811 discovered (and adopted) the Team MOE Collaborative Robot Design process, where we spend three days analyzing the game, developing strategies, fostering concepts, and ultimately zero in an overall design by Monday after Kick-Off, and it has served us well for years. Last year we built an amazing robot that won at Week Zero, semi-finals at GSD, Finalist at WPI (one missed autonomous shot shy of winner!), semi-finals at NE-CMP (clutch failure), competed at St.Louis, and won at Mayhem and RiverRage, yet we still have kids to this day complaining that our design should have matched one of the Ri3D bots. Huh??

Bottom line: If Vex Build Blitz is going to focus on elements and not the whole design, I'm all for it! Maybe Ri3D could consider emulation.

Do you have a link/file to MOE's design process? I couldn't find one when I searched.