Did you make a second robot? [POLL]

[Chris Mounts]

To add to what Marc said, 1188 for the first time this year built a second robot. There were pro's and con's to the effort for sure. I look at it as another step towards having a more successful team.

Pros:

• Having the second robot allowed us some extra practice time before our first event.
• It allowed us to design a completely new intake / arm between our competitions.
• Making a matching robot was possible since we have almost 100% of our robot in CAD.

Cons:

• It was a pretty large distraction having two robots to build. It maxed out our resources and budget.
• Since we played week 1 & 3 the effects were greatly reduced.
• It is currently little more than a chassis at this point.

Overall I truly believe this is a requirement to compete at the highest levels of play. We may have jumped the gun by a year or two but we learned a lot. I suspect not a single robot on Einstein will not have a twin (or 2) floating around in a trailer or at the shop.

[TAlholm]

Team 1991 has for this year. Last year we attempted, but due to snow and school closings, it was only a swerve drive train with nothing else. However, this year we built a practice bot parallel to our competition bot. This allowed us to only make mistakes once.
Wiring them in parallel was the biggest help, especially with this being our team's first year with Java. The programmers didn't have to worry about differences.

[maxnz]

Team 2855 was close to building a practice robot this year, we got a second control system and set up a dummy board to practice programming on. We actually had two boards that were each used to program the robot in separate languages (LabVIEW and Java). This year was a transition year for us. We eventually used Java for the final robot but we kept the LabVIEW team (one senior) programming just in case.

Originally Posted by BrennanB

Keep in mind this is a CD poll and in general is just taking data from "successful" teams.

This year has been our best year statistically since our rookie year. Also, this is the first year we've been active on CD.*
And, we won the Entrepreneurship Award this year**.

*Coincidence?

**We also have a random medal from 2009 that we have no idea how we got

[cadandcookies]

2667 built a practice robot this season. It was finished with just enough time to remove our shooter to put on our competition robot for North Star. Our primary issue was that the robots were built in sequence instead of in parallel, and our process was drawn out too long during build season. We're hoping to transition to building two robots in parallel during the build season next year.

[abigailthefox]

Originally Posted by Chris Mounts

Overall I truly believe this is a requirement to compete at the highest levels of play...I suspect not a single robot on Einstein will not have a twin (or 2) floating around in a trailer or at the shop.

While lots of people seem to believe a practice bot is essential, we won our state championship (Michigan), and our division at champs last year (Carson), and we have never built an in-season practice bot.

We quite frankly don't have the budget for this, it's pushing our budget just to build one robot. We reuse and reduce when it comes to parts, and sometimes that causes us to end up with some sub-par bits and pieces, but we make it work.

Champs isn't just for the teams who have the money to build a practice bot, or who have large sponsors willing to offer up major time, money and facilities. All of our sponsors are local companies--a lot of local machine shops, and the businesses of parents from our team. We live in a small town, we don't have access to a major machining or working facility.

But, we do take pride in what we have. We have great partnerships with local people and companies, who helped chip in when we short of the money needed to go to champs last year. We have a good relationship with our community, we host a district competition here, and work to expose kids in our community to robotics and STEM. We are lucky to have access to a great local machine shop that lets us use their laser cutter and welder so that we can gain experience with custom fabrication.

So we're a team that took mecanums to Einstein...and we're practice-bot-less.

I think we're doing just fine.

If you're a team that can't build a practice bot for financial or other reasons, don't let it get you down. Anyone can make it to the top

[Connor McBride]

We planned on making a second robot but we couldn't afford a second pair of sonic shifters so we ended up making a lessons learned robot. Basically we transferred our drive train and electrical components from our lessons learned robot to our competition robot once we made all of the changes that were necessary.

- Connor

[Mark Sheridan]

I would be curious how many teams made practice bots in the top 50 of Zondaq's FRC Championship History. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/3133

[FrankJ]

In the beginning the practice bot was built second almost an afterthought. For the last couple of years we have built the practice bot first. The comp bot is built from cadded plans and templating from the practice bot at the end of build season. The builder are developing their build skills on the practice bot. That allows the apprentice builders to actually put hands on a robot during build season. The cad model is 60-70% complete which I think is about ideal unless you have a set of Cad mentors that can really guide the students. This method add so much to the program goals, I think we would follow it even if bag and tag went away. We harvest parts off practice bot year to year to help with the cost.

[Charles Boehm]

2175 has built a fully functioning practice bot since 2014. (I'm unaware if we had tried to prior to then) This year we planned to do work on it in the four weeks leading up to our first event in regards to auto and shot aiming. But instead we spent about 3.5 weeks fixing crippling drive train weaknesses.

Had we not have had that robot, we likely would not be attending the championship this year.

[nlknauss]

I'm glad this thread popped up. Recent performance and discussion with my team has led us to think about getting a second robot together starting next year for many of the reason discussed in this thread. We've never built more than robot in the past, but have discussed it.

Can anyone comment on the build and design process involved with two robots?

[Russell2144]

Originally Posted by nlknauss

I'm glad this thread popped up. Recent performance and discussion with my team has led us to think about getting a second robot together starting next year for many of the reason discussed in this thread. We've never built more than robot in the past, but have discussed it.

Can anyone comment on the build and design process involved with two robots?

The way we do it is we have a core group of experienced builders working on the main comp bot so it is at its best possible condition, and the second robot is built by mostly less experienced members so they get a feel for tools, building, cutting etc. And if the second group runs into a problem they can ask for help and we will guide them but not do it for them.

[Charles Boehm]

Originally Posted by nlknauss

Can anyone comment on the build and design process involved with two robots?

The way that we have done it the last few years is begin building the practice bot first. This way we can see major flaws early enough that we can fix them for the competition robot. We try to have the practice robot fully done by no later than 4.5 weeks, but the week 4 mark is the goal. This gives you enough time to work with the practice robot and see flaws and things to change and then assembly of the competition robot goes relatively quickly.

[GeeTwo]

This is our third year building a second robot.

For Ultimate Ascent, we built one wooden-framed and one aluminum-framed robot. We continued to learn from "Woody" (with a wood chassis) even after "Buzz" (all-metal) was in the bag.

For Recycle Rush, we built "twins". We continued to work on the "strafe wheel" of our H-drive system, and our pickup "rake" from bag to Bayou Regional, and again until CMP.

For Stronghold, we again build twin drive chassis, and worked on both our "pickup" and "launch" mechanisms within our 30 pound withholding allowance after bag day.

[evanperryg]

We build the practice robot, find things that are glaringly wrong, then fix them on the competition robot. The problems with the p-bot are either left alone, or fixed with excessive amounts of gussets, bolts, and tape. It's pretty easy to bend the entire practice bot chassis, and its shooter sags on one side. The competition bot has solutions to both issues. Both robots are mostly identical, but they aren't exactly the same. For the sake of programming, driver practice, and basic mechanism design, though, they are the same.