Did you make a second robot? [POLL]

[hardcopi]

We have 2 bots that are VERY close. The competition bot though is so much better quality. The practice bot has never met Mr. Loctite and is always at the edge of flying apart. Has a ton of extra holes where we tried something, has 2nd hand motors, etc. It also has dents where we determined at what speed hitting the rock wall would actually launch us completely in the air landing with a scary sounding thud.

Poor thing is the abused older brother. The younger competition bot has new motors (just got all new drive motors), everything is loc-tited and only has the needed holes.

[hyperhawk]

Our team tried to make a practice robot this year, but the process for us was very much so disconnected from the building of the actual robot. We intended to build the chassis to practice driving and also to get a head start on the coding. For us, quite possibly since it was the first time with a practice robot, it didn't exactly seem to have a significant impact on the quality of our coding advances or drive training. We seemed to fall behind on the main robot and ended up not adding any of the additional components to the practice robot for testing or any of those things. It may have been a personal thing for our team, and I can definitely see how having the second robot could be better in years to come as we get more experience with it. Some ways that I can see that it could have significantly helped us would be that we could have worked out our climbing mechanism (which was not used until our second competition), while working on other parts of our competition bot. It almost seems as though we forgot that we had another robot. It seems that the most difficult thing about having the second robot would be managing the time around it.

tl;dr Practice bots are a great idea in theory as long as efficient time management is present

[nuclearnerd]

Last year we built a second chassis from an old c-base kit and withheld our mechanism to get a practice robot on the cheap. It worked out really well, but we spent a lot of time during the first day of regionals putting our robot back together.

This year we built two identical robots, and it helped. But when I look at our bills, and I read through this thread, all I can think about is how *incredibly wasteful* all these duplicated robots are! I know the bag rules have been debated to death, but I hope something changes in future to let teams be competitive without having to double their budget.

[TheMilkman01]

We called our practice robot "Bubbles." How that goes with our official robot name "Termite" I do not know.

[Knufire]

Originally Posted by Mike Schreiber

Also poll results show the bias of active teams on CD vs the general FIRST population, because I wouldn't believe this percentage of teams across all of FIRST builds 2 bots.

I'm surprised this percentage of teams active on CD build practice robots. CD is more skewed towards higher performing teams than I previously thought.

[Matthew Levis]

We did last year, and initially we planned to build 2 robots this year, one unanodized and without leds that would be the practice robot. It would also be our first robot so we could see if there was anything to change. Then we didn't get some of our waterjet cut parts in, and had to re-order them. When we were about to get them in and riveted together, disaster struck:snow. Shipping companies as it turns out don't like several feet of snow. So we ended up with one robot, that was meant to be a practice bot... sniff... the lack of pretty pretty anodized metal is sad.... but it was the same robot, and we still had leds.

[Anupam Goli]

We've built practice robots every year since 2013, and found that it has helped immensely in doing design iterations and driver practice.

This year, we built two identical chassis, frames, and intake mechanisms. However, we built only 1 shooter module that we would use our withholding allownace on. We did this so we would only have to tune one shooting mechanism, and we wouldn't have to waste time retuning the competition version when we unbagged the robot.

[JohnFogarty]

I've never been on a team that made a practice robot. Do I want to, yes. Competing in FTC taught me what being able to iterate, practice, and program over the season can do. Problems for my team in SC is that our season is super front loaded, Week 1- 2 usually.

I'd personally like to know what the logistics are in building 2+ robots. Do you build them side by side, is it one is the prototype bot from early in build then the other the competition bot, and how early do you have to build them to get them done fast enough to have one ready for bag...

[P.J.]

Originally Posted by JohnFogarty

I'd personally like to know what the logistics are in building 2+ robots. Do you build them side by side, is it one is the prototype bot from early in build then the other the competition bot, and how early do you have to build them to get them done fast enough to have one ready for bag...

I can't speak for all teams, but on 910 we build our practice robot first and then the competition bot once we've built enough of the practice bot in order to make sure we haven't made any critical design errors. Certain parts are machined concurrently (mostly complicated pieces that require specific set ups on the mill) but for the most part we build one and then the other. This has largely been made possible by the increase in both size and skill of both our CAD and Project Management teams, as it allows us to remain more organized and make multiple prints quickly for the same part.

As for time frame, this is still something we are working on. Our plan every year is to have the practice robot done by the end of Week 3, then to spend the last two weeks churning out a competition bot while practicing and testing. However in reality we usually end up finishing the practice bot by sometime in Week 5 and spend about 5 days frantically working to put together a competition bot.

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by JohnFogarty

I've never been on a team that made a practice robot. Do I want to, yes. [...]

I'd personally like to know what the logistics are in building 2+ robots. Do you build them side by side, is it one is the prototype bot from early in build then the other the competition bot, and how early do you have to build them to get them done fast enough to have one ready for bag...

I think the poll is missing an option for "we would if we could afford it!"

Logistics will depend on your team's capabilities. For us, both robots were based on KoP bases (one AM14U3, one AM14U2). We built and wired the two drivebases (no frame cutting, so they were big squares) the weekend after kickoff so that we could try driving them over obstacles, prototype some designs, and give the software teams something to play with. The results of the prototyping told us how to size and chamfer the frame perimeter as well as to go with pneumatic tires.

Once the design was locked down we fabricated the parts for both at once, but built them in sequence, so that while one drivebase was being retrofitted, the other one would still be available for software teams. We would then hand off the first finished robot to other teams (drive team, autonomous, control software, vision) while the fabrication team took back the second KOP chassis and converted it into the other robot.

The hope was that this build/swap/build sequence would have resulted in both working identical robots before bag and tag. This didn't quite happen of course so we bagged the first complete robot and finished the practice bot by the following weekend.

The practice bot is actually the better built of the two since we made all our mistakes on the first assembly, and the second assembly went much quicker as well.

[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.

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by JohnFogarty

I've never been on a team that made a practice robot. Do I want to, yes. Competing in FTC taught me what being able to iterate, practice, and program over the season can do. Problems for my team in SC is that our season is super front loaded, Week 1- 2 usually.

I'd personally like to know what the logistics are in building 2+ robots. Do you build them side by side, is it one is the prototype bot from early in build then the other the competition bot, and how early do you have to build them to get them done fast enough to have one ready for bag...

At 1648, we start building the practice robot first. However, as subsystems are "finalized", the competition pieces get built in the season. So for example, our drivetrain gets designed fairly early, so the competition version gets built at almost the same time as the practice version. We then continue to design from the chassis, getting to the frame and manipulators. The practice frame is built after the chassis, and there's usually a few modifications we make to the practice frame design before we fabricate it for the competition version.

The last items are the manipulators, since these go under constant iteration. For these mechanisms, we usually don't start fabricating the super structure or manipulator components until a week or 5 days before bag day, so that we can squeeze in as much iteration time as possible before we start fabricating competition pieces. The idea is to have continuous iteration while the competition robot gets built during the final week.

[Citrus Dad]

We went with 2 practice bots this year. Not too much more expense and gave more students opportunities to work on them.

[JohnFogarty]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

We went with 2 practice bots this year. Not too much more expense and gave more students opportunities to work on them.

Did all of 3 your robots have full control systems?

[RoboChair]

Originally Posted by JohnFogarty

Did all of 3 your robots have full control systems?

Yes they do, most of the time. We tear one of the 2 practice bots down for spare parts(KOP and COTS) before we compete somewhere. I forget if we are using the RoboRIO from our 2015 bot(s) or not however.