MCC (Minimum competitive Concept 2015

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by IKE

Previous years are located here.

Each year I am amazed by what teams come up with to compete in FRC. Teams have a ton of wonderful ideas and some even see good execution of those ideas.

I would like this thread to focus on the "Minimum Competitive Concept" for a robot for 2015. It is often easy to identify all the possible tasks you could have a robot do. Prioritizing those tasks, and realizing it in the form of a competitive robot is in my opinion much more impressive.

If you haven't watched the Simbotics Strategy Presentation, please do before responding to this thread. Especially review the "Golden Rules 1&2".

Assumptions are that one of the primary goals of the MCC is to play in elims (not necessarily win on Einstein), and your team has mid-pack to lower fabrication resources.

Please list your assumptions, strategy to seed high, estimate of a winning score, and what robot design elements would achieve this score.

I personally usually assume for this thread that the goal is to seed high enough to be either a Alliance Captain or a pretty early pick. I would appreciate this year if we kept towards that philosophy as opposed to getting into a KOP Robot/Cheesecaking discussion. Not that it isn't a viable concept, but I think it has been covered at length elsewhere.

Minimum competitive concept for 2015 - reliable can burglar. Note I didn't say fast, I said reliable. At most events (at least in NE) this would have been a first round pick due to not wanting to deal with playing at a disadvantage with cans.[1] Now, likely this would not have resulted in playing very deep into eliminations. But, if my math is right being picked twice in the first round and making QFs would likely get you to DCMP.

What would this involve? A flow controlled cylinder and some either fiberglass rod or pvc. Oh, and the KoP drivetrain. Which, even accounting for my constant pessimism about the abilities of teams, makes this the cheapest to implement MCC I've ever come up with[2]


[1] There's a discussion to be had as to whether this was a rational decision, I'd make the argument that most teams picking can burglars first round were being irrational as the majority of alliances at district or even NE DCMP were NOT constrained by cans. BUT the fact remains that these picks were consistently made through the first 5 weeks.

[2] I don't think I did one for 2010, which would have been cheaper as I would have said "a drivetrain that doesn't involve those AM lift kits and drive practice"