The Quest for Einstein

[MrJohnston]

Originally Posted by Karthik

I understand the sentiment here (we all need to be careful about being shut down by limits that may not exist), but I highly disagree with the premise within the context of FRC strategic design. Recognizing when something is impossible for your team is absolutely critical to the success of any team. The teams that perform the best are the ones who recognize their own capabilities and design and build within them. Every year on 1114 we rule out certain designs because they're beyond what we can effectively create in a build season with our given level of resources. The focus is always on "how far can we push the envelope, without compromising consistency and effectiveness". I find the biggest mistake FIRST teams make is to try and do too much, and end up being mediocre or poor at the overwhelming attempt. This is definitely much more common than teams who don't push the envelope far enough and end up being over matched.

Getting to Einstein isn't impossible for any team, however building a robot to do every task in the game at an Einstein level very well may be.

I kept my response a little over-simplified. After visualizing a robot that could accomplish a specific task, it is imperative that the team determine whether or not the construction of that robot is within their capabilities. However, that decision cannot be made until some thought has been put into how the task could be accomplished.

It has happened on my team - and others - that a strong strategy is suggested, but that it is rejected without putting any thought into how it might be accomplished... In other words, they would never give themselves the chance to be successful.