A bit unfair...

[Paul Copioli]

O.K., I have read every one of the posts in this thread and have to say a few words. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Detroit Metro Area, let me let you in on a little secret: Many teams from our area (Mostly Northern Oakland and Macomb Counties) come from middle to upper middle class homes with one or both of the parents in a professional type career, however, Chief Delphi (Pontiac Central High School) is NOT one of these teams. As Mike Martus explained in an earlier post, Pontiac Central's student body contains mostly low income (very low) students from underprivilidged homes. Delphi's number one goal is to inspire as many of these students as possible. They do it in a manner which they see as most effective.

Too many times in this forum I have seen teams bashing Chief Delphi and the Big Money Schools and seing these teams as huge powerhouses. Maybe the engineers on Delphi do most of the design, who cares? The students on Chief Delphi are the most inspired students in the FIRST community and ask any one of them how inspired they are and they will talk your ear off.

In addition to inspiring their own students, people like Mike Martus and Joe Johnson have inspired entire corporations. My team (Team 217) got Ford as a sponsor because Mike Martus and Joe Johnson did a presentation for us to Ford. Ford Motor Company has taken Chief Delphi's model and sponsored several underpriviledged schools in Detroit in hopes that Ford can be 1/2 as effective as Delphi has in inspiring troubled youth.

We should not look to Chief Delphi as a Technical Powerhouse, but an Inspirational Powerhouse that we should all strive to become. Someone may choose to inspire differently than Delphi, fine. I won't criticize your method if it is different than ours, because we should be here for the same focus: Inspiration & Recognition.

Mike, Joe, and all the other Delphi mentors & engineers: I applaud your efforts and am proud to be associated with people like you.

-Paul

[-Lori]

Hear hear.........excellent response Paul!
Mike M, Mike A, Joe and all the other mentors on the Chief Delphi team should be applauded for the inspiration they have been to other teams, companies and other mentors as well.

My experience with team #47 has always been a positive one. They have heart, soul, passion (have you seen this team's cheer led by Joe???) and compassion. They are always willing to help other teams...I have seen it SO MANY times in the pit area...their engineers will work with another team as long as it takes to get their machine in running condition. I've seen them work with another team for the entire 3 days of competition...working until the pit closes to help another team!

They have always followed the rules to the 'enth' degree and have always been willing to help FIRST employees and volunteers at any moment.

They have inspired the students in their school to better things, they have inspired Ford to sponsor more teams, and they have inspired me!

Keep up the awesome work!
-Lori-

[Mike Norton]

We been around for 8 years and we are a trade school so we have all the tools needed to build a great robot. We have place in the top 3 % in the last 4 years.

If it wasn't for teams like delphi how would our students ever try to go beyond there own minds.

I say everyone has the chance to make a robot good our bad. and if it is bad look around at other teams and go back and try better the next year.

The only thing I did not like about this year was back in Sept when they told us that we would have to get point to be able to go to the national.

If we had alot of money that would not be a problem. but to make all the last second planning would of cost us to much money.

[Martin]

I did not want this thread to lead to us vs them, but what i simply meant is that by allowing a school professionally manufacture parts seems unfair...if you have engeneers thats fine, but i get the feeling that we are all being fooled by the big man; Dean.
The kits cost $5000 and are worth a fraction of that, all the stuff can be bought only from them....If a school dosen't have a good shop, you share, for instance, my school has a nice shop : 3 lathes, 3 mills, welding and casting facilities. But since we have all this, we had about 5 other schools in our shop on a regular basis. Its not hard to share.......
but that was not my point, all im saying is that FIRST is supposed to be about " motivating young people to pursue opportunities in science, technology and engineering. " (quote from www.usfirst.org) and i don't think that is what happens when a machine shop makes half your robot and the other half is made by engeneers.

[Matt Reiland]

Man you win the award for bringing up the subject that gets so heated every year. I probably should stop posting to this thread since after evey post I get ripped on by more students the latest being a 'fairy machinist' which I think is totally inappropriate but ohh well. Truth is all of the engineers on my team are electrical and most of us have little or no machining in our backround, ESPECIALLY in our daily jobs. I have to believe there are many many engineers out there the same. Machining this thing in my mind doesn't teach a whole lot about engineering. Students and Engineers can both machine out a crappy design to perfection I am sure. I am not qualified to teach anyone machining, if you want to know how to program a framing assembly line of a bodyshop that build Chevy Trailblazers and Envoys then I can help you (We also play with robots that can wreck anything including ANY battlebot that ever existed, cars, walls you name it). The true 'engineering' of this project comes in the design. If you want to be a professional machinist than you have every right to be upset that some engineers are taking your future job. The only reason I help machine on this thing is to learn how to run the machines from the 'master' machinists in the lab (who actually do this kind of thing for their real jobs but leave at 3:00 before the students even get there?!) so that I can build a sweet battlebot for next year (not for FIRST). So I totally agree that learning machining is really cool, but for only SOME people. Many people don't want to stand in front of a mill and crank a handle for 6 hours or sit in front of a lathe and get cutting fluid all over their clothes. Trust me I know alot of them. For the record, our robot was built completely on a regular Bridgeport (non-CNC) mill (shared by three teams) that it sounds like most schools/teams have access to, so we have No advantage over your team.

The biggest problem with this thread and many of the members out there that have this us vs. them mentality is that you appear to be highly motivated, skilled hands on type individuals. Keep in mind that not all of your peers share the exact same traits. Some don't like hands on, some may not be as motivated or want to dedicate as much time, some may have realized that they don't even want to be in engineering.

[dense]

Go Martin!

I'm on Martin's team, We did all the physics and designing of the robot. Our teachers are lazy!! They wouldn't do anything for us. "I DON'T WANNA FIGHT THE ISSUE, IT'S A STUDENT COMPETITION", quote from Mr. H. Luckily our schools had mills and lathes and some of us were proficient at using them. The only things our teachers would do is buy us nuts and bolts, and say if our ideas were possible within the lawa of physics. We got free extruded aluminum, and were sponsored by a our School Board.

I learned alot! Mostly mechanics, i'm a coder at heart. I'd like to congradulate every member of my team on a job well done. We have a xyz robot! I would also like congradulate all other students who worked hard.

Just a thought, perhaps there should be a "Engineers competition" and a "Student competition"?

Just another spin

[jasoni]

I think comparing your team to other teams is not a good way to judge how you fared in the competition.

The team I'm on now has been around for a long time, but we struggle every year with making parts. A lot of our effort goes into keeping things simple. Last year, our robot couldn't place any balls, couldn't go over the rail, and couldn't go under the rail. We could grab 2 goals and consistently balanced. We ended up 19th after the seeding rounds at the Nationals. We didn't get picked, but we were still happy because we had overachieved for a team of our size and sponsorship.

Don't look at Delphi/etc and think "they are better than us", look at your own team and think "we did pretty %%%% good for what we have".

I just thought this was real appropriate to bring up in this thread....


Bill Whitley, former member of team 70 said "I was never on a winning team, yet I got just as much out of nationals, maybe more, than a student that was on the winning team. While my team did not win, I have the pride in saying that I designed, machined, or built nearly every component of my robot in my 3 years on a team. We did not have a first rate, or even a second rate machine shop, and we did not have quality support from anywhere. However, does this lack in final result mean that I put in any less effort?"


Think about it

[Martin]

Shafi...Our teachers were lazy ???
they stayed with us after scool, that itself says something
Our teachers were the best and no matter who says what, there was only 2, the third guy came in once and was putting us into "planning group seminars" dumbo...
well finally its all over, and quite frankly i have no idea what to do with my free time...
well our team had a get together....was grat, tons of multiplayer gaming in the computer lab and wicked (shafi made) food

Bye all, c you at the cometitions...
and in the finals...


Martin
907

[meaubry]

Martin,
I'm guessing that you are a rookie team that has a very strong student run organization (minimal yet essential support of 2 to 3 teachers)
I think you are confused about the idea of "inspiration" as related to what FIRST is about. Please don't try and bring "Fairness" into this conversation as it is NOT relavent. Inspiration has nothing to do with what's "Fair" when it comes to designing or manufacturing parts that go on the robot. Those 2 issues are mutually exclusive.
FIRST is NOT a SCIENCE FAIR. FIRST loves teachers, but teaching is NOT what it is focused on.
FIRST expects that through this experience and ALL of the associated activities, the TOTAL experience will INSPIRE - not just the building of a remote controlled robot. Each team and each student - must decide "How" or sadly "If" that is going to happen.
Our team strives not only to inspire OUR students, but also any student that wants to use us as their inpiration. That's why we have successfully done 6 CDI competitions (You are welcome to join us next year, if you want to)
We will assist anyone that asks and have done so many times - in hopes of not only assisting them fix a problem, but maybe INSPIRING them as well.
Inspiration can come from many places, and in many ways. Our students are inspired by other teams that we have grown to know, admire and respect.
We also recognize that being connected with a large company, can also bring with it alot of negative criticism - and thats okay we accept it. But, the core of the team are people just like everyone else - we put in our personal time because we believe that the overall concept that FIRST has introduced to us has merit. I suppose that is why we are so passionate about our involvement. We love our kids, our teachers, and the fact that our company believes in FIRST too.
So what it comes down to is this - IT DOESN"T MATTER WHO MADE THE PARTS if you are talking about INSPIRATION for Science and technology. IT may matter if you are trying to compare your student created robot with other robots. But, I have never understood, in all 7 years that we have been involved with FIRST, HOW does building parts,WHO built them, and INSPIRATION even get in the same sentence?
Good Luck this year - I hope by our providing a webpage and a place to share common concerns, and exchange ideas, complaints, stories, rumors, and meeting Great new people - continues to INSPIRE the FIRST community at large.

[junkyarddawg]

Martin:

I'm sure by now you have received plenty of feedback on this subject, so I'm responding to the subject in general. This is no more than my heart felt opinion.

This is my 7th year participating in this amazing program and I have worked hard to keep the teams that I work with on the original path for this program. The concept of USFIRST was to create a made for TV technical sport to market education in science and math in much the same way that pro sports on TV markets a career in pro sports. So, the group of young people that this is aimed at, is the noninvolved young people that currently have no interest in science and math and herald pro sports and rock'n'roll stars as their "wanna be just likem when I grow up" idols.

Therefore, one of the most important aspects of FIRST is what the noninvolved spectators see of FIRST. If they see highly competitive machines backed by highly spirited teams, not only do they think "I could do that", but "Iwanna do that" . This is why Dean Kaman once said at a kickoff several years ago, "I don't care who builds the machine, as long as you show up with a competitive team". And, he specifically mentioned complaints about teams sending their challenge out to be professionally built.

Another important aspect of FIRST is what the members of the team get out of it.
1. Everyone gets a chance to exercise genius; no individual is a genius, but all individuals can exercise genius. Oppenhiemer of Los Alamos fame was never a genius prior to that project and was never a genius again after that famous challenge in WW2. Genius is something that happens to individuals when placed in an extraordinary situation with real challenges and a short amount of time and they are forced with all of their heart and mind to focus on a challenge. If you arise to the occasion, you have exercised your genius. For that reason, YOU MAY HAVE GOT MORE OUT OF YOUR EXPERIENCE than another team that were not involved in the design and build of the robot. On some teams, the students primarily spend their time on the animation, community involvement, fund raising, newsletters, website development, chairman’s award and a myriad of other activities and they are left with a rich experience, although not one involved with the design and build of the robot. And in most cases they exercised genius in developing solutions to those challenges that they took on.
2. Everyone gets to improve their teamwork and collaboration skills; another factor in famous exercises of genius, is collaboration. Without which, you would not see the amazing results that you see in almost all FIRST teams. "If one can set a thousand to flight, than two can set 10,000 to flight". This paraphrased saying implies there is an order of magnitude with each person you add to a collaboration." and three can set a hundred thousand to flight".
3. Everyone gets to improve their social skills; most technical people are thought of as being "geeky". This is usually something that results from spending a disproportionate amount of time alone with technical challenges and ignoring the interpersonal challenges of which if you fail at, your not going to enjoy life to it’s fullest. The one skill I personally value the most, is the degree to which a technical person can explain their technology to a non-technical audience. Richard P. Feynman, acknowledged as the “Master of clear explanations”, is probably one of the most famous technical individuals with that skill, as well as Issac Asimov. The value of your knowledge is only to the extent that you can sell it to other people. As a result, people who have a sound technical background as well as exceptional people skills have the marketplace totally at their mercy. People gravitate to individuals or groups that express themselves in away that almost everyone can comprehend. Your idea is only as valuable as your ability to convince other individuals of its value and thereby recruit your team members, and, this takes social skills.
4. Everyone is presented with an opportunity to grow in the most intellectually and socially fertile environment available today; and FIRST will probably be heralded as the inflection point of the next industrial revolution. And this will happen because FIRST provides a High gain/Low risk opportunity for people to open up and share with a group of like minded people and it has a growing support from Corporate America.
5. Everyone gets to receive approval for, and the satisfaction of, being involved in a program that bears good fruit; I can think of no other program that has produced the results and has grown at a steady rate as FIRST the Competition. However, this satisfaction is proportional to your reason for, and your level of commitment to, being involved in this program.
6. Everyone gets to experience “Gracious Professionalism’; Grace can be defined as “showing undeserved favor”, or you could say it is “doing something good for somebody that did not do something good for you first”. That is a dichotomy (something with seemingly contradictory qualities) to the nature of our present (what did you do for me) society. Professionalism is defined as “the conduct, aims, or qualities that characterize or mark a profession or a professional person”. Put those two together and you got some mighty powerful stuff that you cannot get with money, but you can get with love.

The robot and how it gets built, is only one aspect of what FIRST is all about.

I leave you with this: in my third year, we finished roughly 16th out of approximately 170 teams at Epcot and although we did not win it all, we went away with the thrill of having experienced our best effort. As I sat in the closing ceremonies, I could not have been any more satisfied if I had gone up to receive the recognition given the national champion. I had experienced a level of collaboration and teamwork that I hope I can experience at least once a year.

"If you don't go, it will never have happened"

[l1jmx]

Junkyarddawg, good post. I agree with just about everything you said.

Having been one of the founders (all of whom were students), on my team, I feel like I have a pretty good idea of the intention of Inspiration vs. the desire to just win some competition. When I started our robotics team, I honestly couldn't have imagined that our robot could possibly have come out as well as it did. I just wanted to start a new program at my school that would give students the opportunities to learn about and apply engineering skills while having fun at the same time. I wanted all the people that I knew who were smart but didn't have anything to apply themselves to, to maybe find their nitch in making things - that's what engineering is all about, isn't it?

Personally, I think that if the only way for a team to inspire their students is with the help of engineers in building the robot, that there is no problem with that. In fact, there are some things that can only be gained by watching other engineers at work that my team (being completely student run and built) missed out on. And to me, these very cool robots capable of incredible things that will be competing with us are an inspiration to us in terms of a demonstration of the amazing things in general that humans can accomplish.

However, the "unfair vibe" I keep getting off of a number of the all-student people doesn't involve inspiration in the least. And anyone that tries to respond to the issue by saying "this competition is about inspiration and not about winning" is missing the point completely and just making these students more frustrated. I gurantee you that these students are among the most inspired you will come across. They know all about inspiration and are hooked on building more so than a lot of the engineers out there. What I believe most of them feel like they're missing out on is the recogition of being the ones that built the robot. The teams that do well do tend to be the teams that are engineer built, and these teams are rewarded and recognized, in spite of the fact that what they did might not have been any more challenging for them than a typical day of work for their engineers. The students on these teams do come off looking as more competant than the students on other teams and when someone who might not have touched a robot in their life says "My Team won at the FIRST national robotics competition" colleges ARE going to look at these students in a better light than those who say "My team came in dead last but we built the whole robot ourselves." (Granted, I would hope that students could turn this into an awesome application essay, but sadly those of us that are good at building are often not the best writers - but that is a problem with the college application process and is neither here nor there.) What is sad is that some of these students may not be good at anything else and thought "well at least I can show people I'm good at making robots." And now that they are realizing they have been beaten by a bunch of people completely out of their league are wondering what the point was. If you honestly sit down and think about it there is no way you can tell me that a group of students that spent 6 weeks building the robot by themselves, is going to, upon being beaten by a team of engineers, just say "Oh, but the students on the other team were so inspired - they deserve to look better than us." Human nature simply does not work that way. And, the fact of the matter is that the students who build the robot on their own are the most inspired of anyone. Yet what seems to end up happening is that their robot inevitably loses, they get no recognition, and the people that don't take the time to go up and talk to them (because there is nothing exteriorly spectacular about their them) don't even realize that it's a 100% student built team and just assume their engineers weren't quite as good, so the students don't even get credit for what they did do.

Any 100% student team should be an inspiration to everyone. They show us that you don't need an engineering degree, or super fancy tools to succeed - all you need is the desire to build something. These students, if you ask me, are the real superstars. They are not watching engineers and aspiring to be just like them. They have already become engineers and know what they are capable of doing. They have already done what some students are merely being inspired to do in the future. And when these students say that things "aren't fair" give them some recognition, because it's never going to be fair until they get credit for what they've accomplished.

[mnkysp6353]

You complain that your team doesnt have a great sponsor like delphi or ford? The reason teams have sponsors like this is because they went out to find them.
There are plenty of sponsors out there that would be exstatic to help you.
You say you dont have enough money or resources?
There are thousands of companies out there with tons of money. If you say oh there are no major companies around us, well there are your just not looking hard enough.
I know that the first conlcusion to draw from seeing beautiful bots like 45, 47 and 60 is oh that it is 100% engineer built. Thats not true engineers may help but it is unfair to say oh because they have a great bot its not built by students. Talk to the students from those teams and you will see its not true.
We have brilliant students in this orginization and its unfair to them to draw conclusions.

[Anthony S.]

This is a looooong thread and took me forever to read it, now I can post my $0.02. There are many comments about high budget teams and stuff. Well, my opinion is that we don't know what goes on in every team! There may be some high money teams with a crappy robot or a low budget team with a terrific robot. Its not all about money. and its not the teams fault for having a lot of money, I'm sure they worked hard to get that money, saying that I mean you have to work hard for you money, if you want to become one of those high budget teams, get some money. If I were on a team with a lot of money(which I am not) I wouldn't decline lots of money because its 'unfair to other teams', I would take advantage of it, wouldn't anybody else??

And in reply to the person that suggested that FIRST be divided up into divisions based on ability, that idea is ludicrous. For one, what would the crieria be?? Who would judge and how would they know how a particular robot is going to perform? They definitely can't judge by previous years. Now that in my opinion would be unfair, because I would love to work with a variety of teams, even if it means getting my butt whooped I would want to work with the really good teams.

Well thats my $0.02, (maybe $0.05 but who cares )
Anthony Steele II

[Tom Fairchild]

Ah, discussion of what the true meaning of FIRST is. I have been through this many times, at robot demonstrations, competitions, and general chat among FIRSTers. Basically, as said many times before, it all depends on how you want to be Inspired. Yes, I come from a "NASA Team." I find it incredibly unfortunate that "NASA Teams" have that label attached to them. Just like Delphi, we get grouped together into one lump and are sometimes sneered at because we have funding.

Next year I will be attending Georgia Tech and getting a major in Mechanical Engineering. The only reason I decided to do Mech. E was because of FIRST. Plain and simple. Lessons that I have learned while building robots on my team could fill a library. Many of these lessons that I have learned where a direct result of being a "NASA Team." One of our mentors is an absolute God at machining and works in the Advanced Machining Labratory at NASA Langley Research Center. Seeing their 5 axis milling machines etc. was incredible! Afterwords he showed me how to use a simple lathe, which I then used to trim down sprokets for our bot.

Another disappointing aspect is that I get the impression that other teams seem to think that teams with higher budgets (and no, ours is not all that much above average) have robots that are built by the adults and given to the kids. On this year's bot, I did all of the wiring and electronics placement. Another student did the programming and control aspect. A third designed a toe-touch mechanism that would have been perfectly legal but had to have been scrapped for weight. Treads were tested by students. Baskets designed and made. Chasis modifications were designed and done by students. Most of the actual fabrication itself was done by students. Anywhere work needed to be done, a student was there, either with or without a mentor by their side. While this doesn't have to be true in order to inspire, its something that I have been wanting to clear up.

In all (other than this post has grown to be WAY to large ), ya do what ya like. If you can't do what you like, do what you can and then try to find a way to do what you like next time. Big team, small team, high budget, low budget, student, or mentor, we all love to build robots. Isn't that what this is all about?

~Tom Fairchild~, who appoligizes for out living his welcome and will post smaller next time.