FAHA: Green Paint

[Ken Leung]

How do you deal with teammates who just want to do the wrong thing in this competition? How do you deal with people who just don't get what Gracious Professionalism is? We often try to promote our ideals in this program, but not everyone understands them. There are people who do what they want at the expense of others... How do you make them understand what's right and wrong?

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Ahhhh! I'm sick of it. Every time I work on the camera, I get 5-10 people coming over and telling me we should paint the robot green to confuse other robots. I can't take it anymore, these are people who should know better.. seniors, engineers, etc. Do they not realize that other teams are putting just as much effort into the camera software as we are, and that painting your robot green to match the vision tetra's is not GP!!!

There's no way to deal with them. They just don't understand.

I really hope that no team is actually planning on this for malicious reasons (I don't mind the teams that have green as one of their colors, because I think most of them will actually use a different shade.)

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[Billfred]

I see three solutions:

a) Continue to explain that painting the robot green would be against Gracious Professionalism.
b) Ignore their comments as a joke, and wait out the remaining week for the robot to be shipped--painted any color but green.
c) If things really annoy you, call the group together (preferably with a teacher, mentor, or the most inspirational person on your team, as these people tend to draw the respect of others) and have one final reminder on why the robot will not be green.

Hope this helps!

[Kims Robot]

I get a lot of the same thing on my team now, it is either the paint, or trying to find ways to "legally" tip other robots, or ways around the rules... but for me, I can chalk a lot of it up to us being a rookie team. My kids/mentors haven't seen the true spirit of FIRST yet...

So are your people new? if they are, I would say just hold on until the first competition when they really see it. They will most likely get it.

If they arent new, well then I would question your team's methods of portraying the message. At competition, have those kids go talk with other teams, help out some rookie teams, or teams that are having problems. Show them that on CD, nearly all the teams share their ideas. We are trying to share and help eachother, rather than just win the game. In the end we all end up with cooler more advanced robots because of it. Show them something on your robot which was copied from another team, then explain that it was "given" to you, rather than you "stealing" it. They need to see that it is much more gratifying to win based on a good strategy or good drivers than it is to win by knocking someone over or confusing another robot. But there are some people who may just never get it. Just dont let them affect anything that would change your strategy or color... put them on other tasks where they can be more useful, but less malicious

Maybe years down the line, once all of us have really figured this vision thing out, it will be cool to try to confuse everyone else's robot, just for the challenge of overcoming it ourselves... but I agree, with this being the first year, lets just all get it working, and then next year play around with more defensive manuvers.

[kpugh]

You should also point out that not only is it non-GP, but the robot(s) that you screw up could potentially be your alliance partner(s).

-Kristin

[Mike Betts]

I posted on this subject over a month ago here.

I have not changed my opinion or what I intend to do.

FIRST has (IMHO quite correctly) allowed teams to paint their robot any color they wish. If they wish to be viewed as arrogant or ignorant, so be it. I would encourage everyone to apply peer pressure, face to face, with any mentor who would allow his/her team to pursue such a hideous display of stupidity and vulgarity.

[Rombus]

Well, i just considered this:
Who wants to partner with a bot that could possibly screw up there vision system? Use that as an argument. Personally (as if i had a choice) i would choose to partner with a bot that was not painted green just to avoid that issue.

[JamesBrown]

We didnt use our camera all that much this year but with the experience I did have with it I noticed it seemed to be far more sensitive to things that were closer rather than far away thus making your bot more of a hinderence to youyr alliance. I haope that your problem worked out and your team shipped painted a different color.

[Andrew Y.]

yes, our team color is green, but we ended up taking our dressing around the robot off.


To deal with these kind of thingsm, we ususaly have meetings outside with the whole team and have kind of a "pep talk." this usually helps and everytihng is good.