Teams Changing Their Robot Design

[118 Tech]

Being veterans of FIRST for three years, and having the opportunity to attend numerous regionals and nationals, we were concerned about the fact that although their is a ship date when “robot construction” should be STOPPED, teams are using their time at regionals to redesign their robot. Their have been many teams that have shipped one design that they plan to use and then start on a second one again at regionals. They then use the "create spare parts time" to add on to the new design. Their have been reports from teams that their are other teams who spent the majority of their time at regionals rebuilding and redesigning the robot, this included the team being absent from most of the qualifying rounds. This leaves other teams in the match without an alliance partner. We feel that this is not in the spirit of FIRST and should be stopped. When this happens other competing teams trying their best to advance in the rankings are left at a disadvantage.

We also have another concern. Those teams that have the funding to attend numerous regionals gain an advantage, they gain robot drive time, spare part construction time, de-bugging time, strategy planning time, familiarity with the game and overall just more competition experience. Yes, some of the things that are gained from attending multiple regionals can not be refined to equalize the “un-privileged” teams, yet many of them could be. Time spent working with the robot and the game is crucial, if some teams gain more time by attending multiple regionals then why can’t this time they gain be given to the other teams as well? We believe that the time teams are given WITH their robot should be equalized.

By the way FIRST does limit the amount of events one team can attend to three. Yet look at how much time is gained from one extra regional!!

What do you think????



Josh and Chris

The two of the two radio toting, Leatherman carrying, webpage designing, EE majoring, FIRST junkies on 118's college student Alumni team.

[purplehaze357]

although we did re-design our robot in the pit in Philly we never missed a match...it is their fault, they should go to the match regardless and u should never re-design to the point where your robot doesnt work...

Now this is coming from my team, and all we re-designed is the implementation of a mini-bot

I like the idea of teams not having an extra advantage by taking them home in between regionals...u have to look at it from the teams that dont have sponsors and work out of a metal shop(not us anymore )....i like this rule

as far as limting events that u can attend...why would u go to more than 3..i dont see the point..it can only hurt your robot for nats...ya know

-Joe Troy Jr.
Team 357, Royal Assault
Upper Darby, Pennsylvania

[Joe Matt]

I think teams should be allowed to. It's their time. They can either redesign it so it looks good or they can tune it up or make another one! It's up to them. As long as the holy ship off day is met.

[Rob Colatutto]

we also fixed up our stretch mechanism in our pits but it was never done untill saturday at national, and if you notice every team made a new stretch by the end because everyone had one. teams should be allowed to make anything they want in the pits as long as they don't miss any rounds, i know we didn't miss any

[DaBruteForceGuy]

We had a very low budget, so much that we didn't even have the machine-shop! But we were also rookies, and rookies usually do start from the bottom up. But remember that FIRST isn't all robot, the advertising and finance divisions on the teams play an enourmous part in the overall FIRST expiriance. Sponsors don't just show-up, the teams usually have to earn their sponsers and find them in the first place. So, even though (regrefully) money does play a huge factor when teams are able to go ahead and change their robots in pit and out of pit, it isn't because the just simply have an advantage, they did work for those materials and spare parts. This also goes for the # of regionals they go to.

[mtaman02]

Being a team member of team 522 and a team member just like anyone else involved with FIRST. I have only witnessed a hand full of teams rebuilding / re designing their robot. partly because the robot was overweight / oversized etc. not everyone's prefect and has money to get a 100% working fully functional robot to a competition. FIRST gives us 6 weeks plus the first day (practice day) at each regional to make repairs or to finish building our bot. I think thats mighty gracious of them to allow us to continue to work on our "Creations". As far as tearing one design up and building another at the same time during the actual competition i find that unfair to the teams partners of that match. Teams should only be allowed to make repairs to their robots during the competition. NO major changes in design should be made during the "Competition". You have one day which is unpacking of the robot, finishing building / making adjustments to it, practice rounds. The other 2 days should just be repairs, qualifying ally selection, finals, awards, team party. As far as teams competing in too many regionals and then the nationals are concerned. I see no reason to participate in more then 2 regionals and then a nationals. all you do is hurt the robot by competing so much. these motors that FIRST gives us are not immortal and even though they can be ordered and changed thats time and money being wasted. to perform a motor change on our robot "Dorothy" takes us about 2 hrs. (to pull the chains then motors) and about 50 $ after shipping handling and then the actual price. thankfully this years robot had only 3 motor changes. and if we didnt push so much weight we probably could have kept it to at least 1 motor change. Last yeasr robot we did a change at every competition and we only bought at least 4 sets of motors and reused them at least twice.

Long story short. Teams should take the practice day and use it to fix/adjust/minor redesign their robot and compete with whatever their robot may do for the next 2 days which is when the actual competition starts. even if it just turns in one direction. and Teams should be allowed at least 2 regionals and a national. after that pack up and wait for the summer competitions to start.


Mike - Team Captain Team 522 Robo Wizards

2002 - NYC Regional Finalist
2002 - Imagery Award

[fast frank]

we at team 271 are always working on our robot at competitions, whether its drilling holes for weight reduction, changing motors, replacing broken pins/shafts, finding and fixing holes in the pneumatics, tweaking the program, replacing broken speed controllers, we have practically rebuilt the whole thing in the pits, part by part. we have not changed the entire design, however we have made modifications to certain parts. we have never missed a match. we usually just get it to the point where it can function and then do major repairs later. for example, we broke acouple of motors and shafts at mayhem and we didn't have enough time between matches to fix them, so we simply disconnected the chains and ran on the other motors. this was one of the reasons we chose the multi-motor drive system.

we did add our tether device after the qualification matches at UTC, it was already prebuilt. we actually built it at the bigging of the 6 weeks, but then we found out we couldn't use tape measures so we put it on the shelf, then they said we could use tape measures, so off of the shelf and onto the robot it went.