[FIRST EMAIL] Stop Build Day Survey

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

Related thread: Zondag steps up to the plate and knocks it out of the park.

Dr. Joe J.

Nah. Not so much.

Scoring points in matches is simply not the correct proxy/metric to use to gauge the success of FRC teams.

There are at least two kinds of people in the world. I am one kind.

Side note, I'm really, really growing weary of seeing the words "competitive" and "elite" in discussions like this. To me they are red flags. YMMV.

PS: I hope FIRST soon realizes the survey's results will be worse than useless. They will be harmful, not neutral or helpful.

[dirtbikerxz]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Do you currently not feel pressure to work on your WITHHOLDING ALLOWANCE past the stop build date? The rules in place today allow all teams to continue to work on the robot. The rule book encourages development of programming software after the "Stop Build Day" after the date as well.

We do work on the allowance, but it does limit the teams, instead of allowing free reign on the bot. With some of the withholding allowance we made this year, it took us most of the thursday before a regional to get it properly mounted and tested on the bot. Which costed us valuable practice time. We effectively traded practice time to add more functions to the bot. It would not have been the same "challenge" if we were allowed to work on the bot the whole time.

[Hitchhiker 42]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Do you currently not feel pressure to work on your WITHHOLDING ALLOWANCE past the stop build date? The rules in place today allow all teams to continue to work on the robot. The rule book encourages development of programming software after the "Stop Build Day" after the date as well.

The difference here is that no auto testing/driving practice can be done, which is typically the bulk of what needs to be done towards the end of build season.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by dirtbikerxz

We do work on the allowance, but it does limit the teams, instead of allowing free reign on the bot. With some of the withholding allowance we made this year, it took us most of the thursday before a regional to get it properly mounted and tested on the bot. Which costed us valuable practice time. We effectively traded practice time to add more functions to the bot. It would not have been the same "challenge" if we were allowed to work on the bot the whole time.

Of course it would not be the same challenge, that's why we should get rid of the bag, because it's an artificially harder challenge for lower and mid tier teams than it is for the best teams in the world. Having more money, members, mentor, and resources makes it possible to build longer and produce a better robot.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Taken from Jim Zondag's excellent paper. Discussion on the paper is here.


Claiming six weeks when so many teams use the WITHHOLDING ALLOWANCE, practice bots, multiple competitions, and more to extend their build season isn't just PR cover up, it's a lie.

OK. Change/fix it by eliminating those things.

Eliminating SBD is hardly the only course available.

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by gblake

OK. Change/fix it by eliminating those things.

Eliminating SBD is hardly the only course available.

No, but eliminating SBD is the one that is probably the least-disruptive to existing team build schedules and the one that is least-likely to continue to impact teams in a regressive way.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

To the previous comments, I'm not trolling anyone. I truly believe that FIRST (HQ and the community) needs to stop telling people it's a 6 week build season.

For an example of this, I recall that 254 loaned HQ their 2014 World Championship robot to be put on display in Manchester. With the knowledge of that paired with the idea that FIRST touts the idea of the 6 week build season in marketing endeavors, imagine someone pitching a potential supporter of FIRST and including in the pitch

*points*
"Can you believe kids built that in 6 weeks?"
*disbelief on part of potential supporter*

In reading 254's documentation, you would know that disbelief at that quote is well-founded.

We have the habit of telling people how this will be the hardest thing their child will have ever done in their educational career (even though they go to one of the most rigorous schools in the country, the greater your participation on 422, the greater difficulty a student will have at succeeding at much else besides the robots and school). We are still able to bring together a large, strong, and passionate team that performs less bad every year for the most part.

More power to teams that actually tell potential stakeholders you only meet for 45 days plus events and actually stick to that. If you are a team that tells potential stakeholders you only meet for 45 days for build plus events and then you don't, and you keep doing that? You are part of the problem.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by gblake

OK. Change/fix it by eliminating those things.

Eliminating SBD is hardly the only course available.

Please feel free to propose other courses of action.

[asid61]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Please feel free to propose other courses of action.

I believe Jim Zondag's paper had something in it about giving all teams 8 hours of unbag time each week, to offset the advantage teams get from working on the bot at competitions.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by asid61

I believe Jim Zondag's paper had something in it about giving all teams 8 hours of unbag time.

He was suggesting eliminating WITHHOLDING ALLOWANCE, and other ways that teams are able to build longer. I don't believe he was suggesting other ways to expand robot access. I believe Zondag's proposal would be a great step forward.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Please feel free to propose other courses of action.

He did.

Let's start with the Witholding Allowance. 30 lb? .25 robot? Nope. Particularly with the amount of COTS items these days, that's a LOT. 12 lb, or .1 robot, would make teams think a lot more about what they're holding back to work on. No limits on raw materials/COTS items--but, you know, you do need to do work on those at the event for them to be useful, even if it is just duct-taping them to your robot. (That's just an example weight, BTW--could be 15, 10, 5, 0... less than 30, though.)

Eliminating multiple competitions is an answer--but, TBH, the howling would pretty quickly convince HQ that that was a very, very bad idea. The "obvious" alternative would be districts for everybody, mind you--not that I'm opposed to that. (Since X cannot be eliminated, it shall henceforth be required, and all that.) BUT, you'd have to get rid of the unbag time before events. (Or count it as part of build season--as in, we have a 6-week build season, plus some quick check time right before competition.)

Practice robots aren't going to be easy to eliminate. There's practically nothing that can be done other than to specifically tell the teams that "We are putting in a rule that says you cannot have a practice robot, and we are making you sign a legally binding document at inspection that says that you adhered to all the rules." And then, of course, trust that they follow the rule. (And I would take a pretty good gamble that if Frank made THAT announcement, the Team Advocate--and Frank--would be swamped within 47 minutes by angry team emails.) Wouldn't try that.

Eliminating Stop Build isn't the only course of action. But continuing to insist that it is means that you've got blinders on.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Please feel free to propose other courses of action.

Hmmmm, maybe return to some of the the previous rules that governed robot construction, give or take some tweaks different from the current tweaks?

Maybe, implement some suggestions I proposed in other similar discussions.

This is an old topic that is a magnet for specious arguments, and is a long dead horse; constantly rehashed here on CD by a tiny, egregiously-lopsided fraction of the total FRC participants.* I haven't spotted a single new idea or argument in this iteration of the conversation.**

Surely neither I nor any other proponents or opponents if SBD/etc.need to repeat what has already been said a zillion times before. Instead this entire thread should be just a collection of hyperlinks to past posts.

What the subject needs is some rigorous, properly-conducted research by an unbiased investigator(s), advised by the people who created, and still guide, the program.

Doesn't that sound reasonable? It's hard to argue against asking for good science/engineering experiments; but it's easy to argue that this thread isn't going to turn into one.

Blake
* I'm painting myself with this broad brush, along with painting the rest of us.
** I read many posts. I skimmed through many posts. I might have missed something novel among them. I'm human, and not perfect.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by EricH

Eliminating Stop Build isn't the only course of action. But continuing to insist that it is means that you've got blinders on.

The course of action we are talking about is a way to make claiming "robots built in 6 weeks" be the truth. "Stop Build Day" is a separate issue at this point. Unless we can actually stop all robot building and not allow changes on the robot at around Noon eastern time 42 days after kickoff. I don't see how we can do that. There are other possible options, we could magically have everyone compete right at the end of build season, it would require 100s of simultaneous events world wide. I don't think its in any way realistic but at that point I could see "6 week" being the truth.

A bigger point, it shouldn't matter. Very few teams meet every single of day of build season anyway. "6 weeks" is a talking point that has become a sales pitch and a false belief for new teams, mentors, and members. We don't need to hold this "6 week" thing so near and dear. It's not special. Building a ~150lbs robot in around 4 months (113 Days last year) with a group of high school students and mentors is still very impressive.

[fresh_prince]

Originally Posted by dirtbikerxz

In all honesty, given extra time, would a team (no matter what they say about liking stop build day) actually stop building based on a internal bag day?

Originally Posted by nerdrock101

we do spend time after stop build working on code and other small projects. However, it is with a much lower intensity than working on the actual bot simply because it is small projects.

Looking at these two quotes (and some of the discussion going on in the last ~2 dozen replies), it seems there was a bit of a ships-passing-in-the-night going on with the whole discussion about "6 weeks is/isn't a lie" and self-imposed limits.

Part of the argument that Allen presents in his 34 slides is that the 6 weeks (his 45.5 days) is already a sort of "super" internal limit. "Super" in that there are some hoops to jump through, but it is still in many ways an internal limit: each team chooses how much time and effort they put into development after Stop Build Day. Some teams choose to actually stop, some teams (as nerdrock mentioned above) choose to work on small improvements and modifications. Some, however, choose to make radical changes eg rebuilding entire robots at competition (speaking from experience, under Allen's mentorship myself and the other members of the 3847 pit crew completely changed our robot at the 2015 Arkansas Regional).

This is what's being referred to as the "myth of the 6 week build season" - the idea that it's as long and grueling as you make it.

If the man-hours given to development are already a matter of self-regulation and evaluation of a team's own response to that "competitive pressure," and if each team already responds in a different degree, there's no reason to expect that to change if we #BanTheBag. Teams will continue to respond to the same competitive pressure, albeit with a barrier removed that improves convenience. A team that already wasn't driven to bring in a new subsystem or some spare parts under withholding probably won't be that much more likely to actually go through with those plans under a Bag-Free regime, it just makes it easier for the teams that already wanted to but found it difficult to do so (lack of resources to test on practice robot, difficulty in preparing modifications for a robot you can't test them on, etc.).

[efoote868]

Originally Posted by fresh_prince

If the man-hours given to development are already a matter of self-regulation and evaluation of a team's own response to that "competitive pressure," and if each team already responds in a different degree, there's no reason to expect that to change if we #BanTheBag.

Parkinson's law says otherwise, "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". If my team has an 8 week build season, we will use all 8 weeks of it. Furthermore, I speculate that we would require the entire team to participate for all 8 weeks, which would prevent students with other activities from joining the team.

The stop build day is the end of our build season. If the stop build day was removed, we would probably spend that extra 2 weeks prototyping, so that the final assembly gets done the night before competition, or early in the morning that very day.

Originally Posted by fresh_prince

Teams will continue to respond to the same competitive pressure, albeit with a barrier removed that improves convenience. A team that already wasn't driven to bring in a new subsystem or some spare parts under withholding probably won't be that much more likely to actually go through with those plans under a Bag-Free regime, it just makes it easier for the teams that already wanted to but found it difficult to do so (lack of resources to test on practice robot, difficulty in preparing modifications for a robot you can't test them on, etc.).

In my humble opinion, the pressures (and relief!) a team faces isn't the same without a stop build day, which is why I want to keep it.