900's Championship Cheesecaking Chronicles

[JesseK]

When I learned about the 4 harpoons Friday evening, my instinctual reaction was "we've over-indulged on cheesecake". On the surface it just seems like we may as well get rid of the bags, tags and deadlines - just make build season 4 months (1/3 of our life) long. For teams who regularly attend Champs, that is what FRC has turned into and it doesn't look to change any time soon. The features and tuning race which takes energy to keep up with really escalated this year.

A bit later, I then thought "haters gonna hate", because I got 'it'. Finally, why the Simbots have no problem picking a team who has limited capabilities overall and may even be ranked dead last at an event - it's an oxymoron of selfishness and selflessness was hard for me to understand at first.

Making those 4 structures, tuning them and getting them perfect in 3 days so as to stay within withholding was a monumental task that shows the focus, dedication and selflessness that the Simbots have. With those harpoons, they could guarantee the choke hold strategy if they made it to Finals. They could also single-handedly take a team who has had a rough week and make their day. Rather than becoming an 'expected' middle-of-the-pack Champs experience, a team can take the story of the road to Einstein back to their school/community and propel their program forward. That is what a great team can do for the rest of FRC over time. It's something only the elite few can do. It is something to aspire to.

Originally Posted by meg

Regardless of what team chose us, we would have done our absolute best to do our most for that alliance. Part of the reason we didn't start disassembling our first robot until AFTER our last qualifying match was we didn't believe it would be fair to the teams we were competing with.

I agree with you wholeheartedly here. Thursday night, and Friday noon-ish we were discretely approached by the Poofs about frame geometry, coding, available ports, etc. They were obviously looking for a compatible cheesecake partner. On Friday we started getting good with our own strategy, meaning we had two options: continue down our current path, or sandbag in order to attempt to be available for the Poofs. Sandbagging was tempting - 'they're perfect' was overheard by me and another mentor. Yet it would have been major disrespect to to rest of my build team and our Friday partners for us to not play our absolute best with the robot we had.

Such is the life of a specialist on the serpentine draft system.

[Ed Sparks]

I just want to say that what FRC-900 did was completely amazing and I mean that in the best possible way (my intent). It made me rack my brain, consult the rules, ask a bunch of questions, talk to the various alliance members, consume a bunch of inspector time, etc. I've never been as busy after the alliance pairings as I was on Curie this year ...... and I thought it was great. I want to say that everyone on FRC-900 that I interacted with was the model of gracious & professional. You guys had every right to get a bit frustrated with all of the pressure of pulling this off in the amount of time that you had and having a swarm of inspectors buzzing over your head. Congratulations to you for an amazing effort and especially for not becoming unglued under the pressure.

I hope I have the honor of working your division in the future.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by Ed Sparks

I just want to say that what FRC-900 did was completely amazing and I mean that in the best possible way (my intent). It made me rack my brain, consult the rules, ask a bunch of questions, talk to the various alliance members, consume a bunch of inspector time, etc. I've never been as busy after the alliance pairings as I was on Curie this year ...... and I thought it was great. I want to say that everyone on FRC-900 that I interacted with was the model of gracious & professional. You guys had every right to get a bit frustrated with all of the pressure of pulling this off in the amount of time that you had and having a swarm of inspectors buzzing over your head. Congratulations to you for an amazing effort and especially for not becoming unglued under the pressure.

I hope I have the honor of working your division in the future.

Ed, believe me when I say that the honor was ours. Thank you for being an amazing person and working with us. It was an absolute pleasure.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by JesseK

A bit later, I then thought "haters gonna hate", because I got 'it'. Finally, why the Simbots have no problem picking a team who has limited capabilities overall and may even be ranked dead last at an event - it's an oxymoron of selfishness and selflessness was hard for me to understand at first.

You know 1114 can totally do that just with their good scouting and picking a dark horse for their 2nd or (now) 3rd pick. I know cause they did that at GLR in 2007. (Their dark horse let them down for embarrassing reasons, but still.) I'm pretty sure getting picked by 1114 or any #1-8 division alliance is going to make a team's day. I'm also pretty sure that having a specialist robot that's working well passed over for a poorly working robot that can be more easily cheesecaked stings a bit. So I'm pretty sure cheesecaking is zero sum at best for overall inspiration.

[ryan2640]

As I read through this entire thread and all the responses/comments within it, I must conclude in my opinion, in which this story is truly incredible. With myself being apart of team 2640, which is based only an hour or so away from 900, I have gotten the chance to collaborate with the Zebracorns before competition, and playing against them during the Quarterfinals at NC in 2014, and recently fighting it out in the Finals at the 2015 North Carolina Regional as well.

This story is truly significant by itself, but even more important for what is being introduced to FIRST in 2017. I'm sure as every FIRST participant knows by now, that there will be two Championships starting in 2017. For most teams, the most important part of Championship (next to winning ) is the experience of getting to be around hundreds of teams and getting the opportunity to strategize and collaborate with teams from different countries, and different coasts.

With the new Championship setup approaching in 2017, these types of stories could be restricted, due to the designated locations for teams who qualify for championship. For example, just depending on what Championship 1114 gets placed in, 900 may not have the chance to collaborate with them again, and as we all are becoming aware of now, their collaboration this past week was a true beauty of engineering and teamwork.

I am extremely glad that a team so close to home (900) was able to experience the chance to play/collaborate/strategize with hundreds of different teams and was able to partner up with 148, 1114, 1923, in which they made a great run at Championship.

I applaud 900 and their teammates for the accomplishments they achieved. We look forward to seeing/collaborating with 900 in future events during the season and throughout the offseason!

[nstephenh]

Originally Posted by Dominick Ferone

Sweet because this may be something I have our programmers do just as an off season challenge.

I know I'm dragging up an old post, but if you want to know more about our code for this year, we just started up a thread about all our code.


I can comment a bit about how things went from a programming side of things. On Thursday, one of our mentors who had been observing 1114 hands me a sheet of paper detailing about how their mechanism worked. At this point we were thinking that we were simply going to remove the superstructure from our robot, and mount whatever crazy contraption they had on our ~50 pound drive train. We quickly looked at the labview examples for doing pneumatics and solenoids, and began redoing our project, removing code for our arm and instead changing it to work with 4 "PWM" Solenoids, 4 Pneumatic solenoids, and 4 winches. Unfortunatly our details weren't exaclty right the first time around, but as our team began working more and more with 1114, we learned more about the design, and eventually learned that we needed to set up 4 solenoids controlled by a singlespike, 4 pneumatic solenoids, and 5 winches. By this time we were only halfway through, and then we learned that our swerve drive was just two heavy, and that 1114 had some java code ready to go for the tank drive KOP that we were buying. We decided that they had probably already tested their code and new more about it, so we ended it at that.

New problems arose the next day when we had to set up a driver station. As a LabVIEW team, I had never seen the Java Dashboard, and it took a lot for 1114 to explain to me what it was. I thougth they were talking about the default one for at least a half hour (sorry). Eventually we copied it out of the tools folder from one of their laptops and dropped it into (hopefully the correct place) onto one of ours. We had no idea if it was going to work though, so we eventually just used one of 1114's laptops. Apparently there was some problem with the version used in inspection, but I have no idea, as I went back to the stands to watch some matches.

I'm sad that we never got to see the robot on the field, but it was fun watching all the matches from down near the field. The experience of working with 1114 and all the rest was amazing, and I know what part of Canada to go to now if I ever want to leave the US. And thankfully I didn't have to do any more programming under pressure on the field (I was the guy at NC regional pushing code at the last second for Team 900, if you were there). Thank you so much 1114, 148, and 1923!

[cglrcng]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

Everyone,
Thank you for the nod to the inspection staff. We are happy to be of help, you really challenged us. This device/assembly/(add your own words) was a challenge to evaluate for legality under the robot rules and to believe it to be safe for the teams and any human close by. I am happy to report that everyone we were involved with, acted with the utmost GP in assisting us with the process. It was obvious that the design team had thought and planned for everything I thought might be an issue. While scary in looks and operation, it contained significant safety features and system backups should anything fail during deployment or operation. I would like to restate for the team involved that you acted with all the decorum expected of a Hall of Fame team and I am proud to have been involved in your endeavor.
Attached is a picture of the device in the transport configuration behind the Einstein fields. Yes it fit!

__________________________
Al, now can you please post a side by side pic of the Robot that Team 900 originally brought to ST Louis to compete with? (I am sincerely interested in asking about exactly what happened to the ORIGINAL ROBOT that Team 900 brought to the competition). Did they leave with 2 ROBOTS in their crate or just 1 ROBOT? ....Was it (their original upon arrival crated ROBOT), completely disassembled firstly (and the existing robot parts used to build the later NEW ROBOT), before building another from the ground up robot in 7 hrs.? (It looks in their video like a brand new kitbot chassis was used).

If not, then how is it possible that they did not exceed the (rules controlled), posted 1 ROBOT weight limits and Total BOM Cost limits? (IE: THE ROBOT must not weigh more than, or cost more than the listed rules limits).

Were the 2 combined/separate ROBOTS more than 125 lbs. or $4,000.00 in total costs? Inquiring minds just wish to know.

Looking forward to reading that Team 900 whitepaper, and learning more about the safety decision(s) & inspection(s) thought process used to deem legal that particular set of mechanisms, not that I actually thought others were any safer really (as is, THE FASTER & FASTER the can burglaring COMPETITION PROCESS became in my mind, AND IN REAL PRACTICE, a CONSTANTLY more unsafe set of circumstances for the involved parties at the direct sidelines of the field every match existed Re: Everyone nearby AS THE COMPETITETION HEATED UP was more than seriously at risk, though we were rather lucky a few times on Hopper field during the playoffs of our Division it could have had other more extreme & dangerous safety results...

(Extremely nervous head ref's and others were the resultant factor)...They knew the dangers involved, and they were quite high. (A Hockey Goalie type mask w/ a hard hat and a Bomb Squad type padded suit for each, rather than just safety glasses was more advisable railside for Ref's, Scorers, FTA's and all others, including all others looking on closely as the only ones truly safe were drivers directly behind the glass, and those sitting in the nosebleed sections of the upper levels of the arena).

Some of the very fastest hooks for grabbing cans BECAME LOOSE shattered/jagged (and non-tethered, very sharp projectiles launched far and wide and often recovered later far away from the field of play & missing heads along the way).

I personally did not see how it got to where it did (I later handed that shattered pc. personally back to our head ref and actually understood then why he was so danged nervous)...Personally, I was too busy setting that scoring switch down gently & quickly on the floor, and heading for cover behind & under the corner of the FTA table myself...Glad I did now, given where it was finally recovered, as I was definitely standing in the direct line of the projected flight path. (The "it" I speak of, weighed about 2~3 pounds, spiked and dangerously shattered jagged 1/2" sched. 40 pvc, a Team 987 type can burglaring cheesecake hook element, that worked famously....and also failed quite dangerously too, all at the same time...time after time).

The game design brought that element of high cheesecaking (and it was only allowed after a rules change, and a Q&A mind changing failure in my opinion).....Frank's ORIGINAL Q&A ANSWER, should never have been changed in my personal opinion as it elevated the dangers involved in the game to alliance wide dangers, from occasional single robot dangers to the participants, officials, and the spectators. (Am personally just glad noone was injured yet...I also know the dangers are not quite yet over either, as other events are to follow soon enough).

Just a personal (up close), opinion is all. The 2015 Shelf Can Wars (and the ensuing high stacking, were fun to watch, but if allowed to continue...and it will soon enough, then a robotwars type fully enclosed arena of play (along w/ a netted top should also be necessary at high levels of competition since you cannot win the war, without battling and winning the highly contested "shelf can wars in 2015 FIRST FRC Recycle rush").

Cheesecaking in 2015 snatches the best, and ramps up the competition for all. ALL PUNS INTENDED.
_________________
Addition:
Al's partial quote:

The robot built/rebuilt by Team 900 contained parts of their robot that was initially inspected at the 2015 Championship and was found to be legal to compete under the Robot and Tournament rules.


Thank you for the explaination AL (sry it was there later in the thread & before my posting, but I was quoting so had not read that far as of yet)...Now can we please see the side by side PICS? (Inquiring minds just want to see the 2 very different ROBOTS side by side!)

Hmmm, seems to me NASCAR has it more right than we do sometimes, just a thought. When you go to the backup car, YOU GO TO THE REAR OF THE FIELD. While you can do so, there are penalties to suffer, but, you can still compete. You still are required to "Run what you Brung" so to speak. While the 2015 FIRST version of Cheesecake can be and was no doubt highly inspiring for a few teams affected, I imagine it was highly mortifying for many mid-stream teams overlooked during the picks. It happened at Regionals, just as much as during the Champs.

[Foster]

While I'm sure there is a huge market for shirts that say

What Would Karthik Do?

I'd like to say that FRC is "The varsity Sport for the Mind (TM)" Lots of people think the "mind" part is over after build, but teams have proven year after year after year the "mind" part isn't over until the buzzer sounds at the last minute.

There was a post earlier this year about how the top teams would have a special advantage at the Saturday alliance selection. This was one of those cases where two top teams used their brains (and CAD) and lots of elbow grease to make things happen on Saturday.

It also re-enforces the reminder that you may think your top roboteers have wrenches in hands, but the roboteers on scouting and alliance planning are keys to the second 6 weeks of the season.

Good story Team 900!

[cglrcng]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

THIS IS AN AWESOME QUESTION!

I was going to ask something very similar sometime today when I got few minutes to spare.

Let's suppose 148 had prepared a Harpoon2.0 Bot prior to Championships and that 1114 was incompatible with 148 for some reason and let's suppose further that 900 had approached 148 rather than 1114. Recall that 148 was the #1 seed and 1114 was #2 (behind 148 by a grand total of 7 points -- had they simply tossed two more noodles over the step at some point during 10 qualification matches, their positions would have flipped).

In this situation you have to ask, What Would Karthik Do?

I think we all know this answer: He would advocate for drafting 900 as their second pick just to prevent 148 from getting access to Harpoon2.0 Bot.

What would 900 do then? If they accept, 148 almost certainly would not have allowed Harpoon2.0 Bot to exist at all (recall key bits of kit were designed and built by folks not on Team 900). If they refuse, then their season is over. It is tough ethical choice.

Either way, this really puts the lie to argument that many cheesecaking advocates make: that it is all done in the spirit of Gracious Professionalism. I think one of the features of the draft is that all teams are available for all drafters (with the exception of those who decide they would prefer to captain their own alliance) but in this case, 900 was really only available for one team, no other drafters allowed.

I don't like it. No sir. I don't like it one bit.

Dr. Joe J.

P.S. It has come to my attention that a lot of folks are giving Libby K and others who have said supportive things about Team 900 a hard time over the past few days.

I myself called Libby out for an innocent hyperbole she made about the amount of work Team 900 did. I was wrong to do so. This was a cheap shot and I should have been a better man. I publicly apologize and wish that I could take it back. Libby, I am sorry.

As to you other trolls... ...you need to look in the mirror a bit as well. If there is not space on CD for someone as awesome as Libby to express her thoughts then CD has fallen mightily. We are better than that. JJ

_________________

Our team was faced w/ the same possibillities earlier in the season at the Las Vegas Regional...I am not a part of the process of Alliance picking on our team and actually was working for FIRST NV at the time (so had no team input), but had a discussion in total hindsight after the event was completed, so the opinion expressed was just my opinion of what I would have suggested, if I were involved in the picking process, for future team reference only.

The situation:

Team 148 and Team 987 were of course on a mission to both prove a point concerning the Dallas Decision. And of course on a mission to capture another title and set of blue banners like any great 2 teams should. They 148 and 987 were seeded #1 & #2...Our team was seeded #3. They started cheesecaking the #41 seeded team early on, and it was duly noted by one of our newer drive team members, and he didn't like the situation personally very much...It was explained to him that it was well within the rules of the game as a game strategic legal method. (In a "Hate the game, not the players!" type of way).

Asked what I would have suggested they do (as far as hindsight, after #1 seeded 148, picked #2 seeded 987), I responded that I would have certainly picked the same as they did on their first choice, then on second choice w/ only moments to go, picked their fully cheesecaked #2 pick. Thereby leaving them to make the tough choice of risking asking for their sweet cheesecake back (which I don't think would happen by either highly respected team), and thereby give them little time to cheesecake another...(though I know they would have), along w/ much fewer legal materials actually onsight to actually do so (though I'm sure they still would have had plenty of materials avail. to do so also), and much less of that even more valuable time avail. to complete the new cheesecaking mission. (Hey, what's good for the Goose, is Great for the Gander! And that Gander LOVES CHEESECAKE TOO!)

I'm glad they didn't do so, and actually picked another team (as all 6 of the eventual Regional Alliance members qualified eventually for Champs by either major awards earned, or by just playing in the finals of the playoffs of that Regional)...But, as a game strategist and very highly competitive by nature...I'll use every fully legal tactic and that rulebook, to win the game...And...You should too! IF DEEMED LEGAL like eventually this year).

But it wasn't how the season actually started off (I had earlier pointed that out once it was done when I thought by the posted rules it wasn't legal to do so in Week #1, and the Q&A original answer verified that, then minds were changed by the eventual uproar, and the Q&A answer was rethought)...That is the real dilemma, and the OP's actual original question elsewhere & pointing to this thread...Should it be legal?

I would have LEGALLY stolen & eaten their sweet cheesecake...And then smiled big, & told them their extremely hard work baking it, was very highly appreciated, and it tastes Soo Darned GOOD TOO! Thank You's, With Smiles All Around.
________________
I was just hoping someone was actually selling slices of cheesecake at champs this year...I would have gladly purchased more than a few slices myself.

One thing I'd still like to know though, is in the very same Division (Hopper)...I saw most tethered ramps had their Team # license plates fully and proudly displayed...and others...well, they had no license plates at all...And in the Division Playoffs no less.

When I pointed out 1 that had ZERO TEAM NUMBER DISPLAYED...A ref responded...You will have to discuss that w/ the inspectors I guess (who were located in a different building BTW)... That is definitely BIG TIME WRONG in my opinion. It is either legal on the field of play, or IT ISN'T. (The rules are Black writing on White Paper or background)....No grey (gray), appears in the rulebook to me. And it should not to you. (Though there are Blue Boxes).

[akoscielski3]

Originally Posted by cglrcng

_________________

SNIP

SNIP

It would be appreciated if you could take your opinions to the thread about people opinions on this topic. This thread was made by 900 to show people what they made with their alliance partners at Championships this year.


Thank you

[Citrus Dad]

If you search the posts by many 1678 mentors, you'll find that we complained about this year's game design consistently. We didn't like any of the implications of this year's game (including the bonus of taking the 3rd robot off the field to score the 4 point movement in auto.) We were upfront about our particular strategy and were among the first to come out with it at CVR. There were no surprises from us at Champs. (And then ironically, we never used a cheesecaked robot in the eliminations.)

But I am a big fan of last year's game, at least in concept (and you can find my posts on that as well). It forced the better teams to work with the newer or struggling teams to achieve an ALLIANCE goal, not just the goal of a single team. I've suggested tweaks to last year's overall game approach that could make it a model for teams to pass knowledge among themselves. Right now the incentive is to work alone in secret, not cooperatively, until we get to competitions. We can make FRC more cooperative which would reduce the incentive to cheesecake.

We've added items to our alliance mates in each of the last 3 years. In 2013, we had an FCS at CVR that had to face cheesecaked pool noodle blockers. We developed a successful counter strategy that we used again at Champs. Without the ability to add those blockers, the games would have been decided by FCS machines as soon as they got to the HP station. Thank God for cheesecake to make it competitive.

In 2014, we worked with teams to improve their ability to pass. This often meant removing their shooting mechanism. Again the teams could become much more involved given that there was a single game piece. We also made several rookie teams competitive at Champs by helping them build intakes with our extra parts that they used in all of their matches other than the ones they played with us.

When we select teams, we have two pick lists for two different roles on our alliances. In 2014 in particular, we could not have 2 shooters or 2 midfielders, even if they were the first and second best at their roles. We had to focus on what roles fit our alliance. I know that means that we are passing over some worthy robots that are particularly good at their targeted tasks, but those tasks don't fit into our alliance structure. You can't ask us to rethink our alliance strategy to fit your robot's characteristics unless it's going to improve our expectations about our alliance's performance.

The GDC can make some big changes that encourage inter-team development, which I won't repeat here. We can make all of us better with just a few thoughtful changes.

[JVN]

Originally Posted by cglrcng

___They started cheesecaking the #41 seeded team early on, and it was duly noted by one of our newer drive team members, and he didn't like the situation personally very much...It was explained to him that it was well within the rules of the game as a game strategic legal method. (In a "Hate the game, not the players!" type of way).

Actually, this isn't true. We didn't start working with 5012 until after alliance selection. All 7 other alliances had the chance to choose them. They were great, and should have been picked much earlier.

[Chris Fultz]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

The GDC can make some big changes that encourage inter-team development, which I won't repeat here. We can make all of us better with just a few thoughtful changes.

Just a thought, but maybe the "all three robots" in the zone for the auto points was to encourage teams to help other teams write a basic auto code to move into that zone?

[T^2]

Originally Posted by Chris Fultz

Just a thought, but maybe the "all three robots" in the zone for the auto points was to encourage teams to help other teams write a basic auto code to move into that zone?

If so, they clearly didn't playtest their game at all, because 4 points per match is not worth any programmer's time to spend on other teams' robots.

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by T^2

If so, they clearly didn't playtest their game at all, because 4 points per match is not worth any programmer's time to spend on other teams' robots.

But if all three teams also push a tote, then its 4 for the robot set and 8 for the tote set.

12 points/match for writing autonomous modes that drive straight forward for all your partners could be huge, especially at earlier events.