If you could change one rule

[dlavery]

So far, everyone is takling their personal pet peeve and trying to find a way to make the rule associated with a certain topic/application/mechanism less restrictive. That is fine, and everyone is certainly entitled to riding their own hobby horse. So I will hop on mine. I think that folks are headed in the wrong direction. I think that we should look for potential rules that can be made MORE restrictive, and scale back the "almost anything goes" philosophy that has become associated with the robot construction rules over the past several years. I believe that this philosophy has lead to a lot less true creativity and innovation in the robots, as teams have just gone out and bought solutions to design problems rather than creating solutions from a kit part that was never intended to do the job for which it would now be used. I would be all in favor of adding more restrictions back in to the robot construction rules to bring back some of the real creativity that every team displayed during the early years of FIRST.

For example, what about a rule that says "no threaded fasteners of any type are permitted on the robot."* If it were up to me, I would add a rule like that. Oh, wait, it is...

-dave

* you think I am joking, don't you? hehhehheh

[phrontist]

I am absolutely in favor of more creativity in the competition. It's too easy to buy your way past creative hurdles, so in that sense many rules could be made more strict to force us to come up with creative solutions. That said, the same objective could be reached by loosening some of the restrictions, like my aforemention controls rule/"hobby horse".

No threaded fastners would be very interesting indeed...

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

No Dave, see without threaded fasteners you'd have to allow tape again

Not at all. An amazing amount can be done with welding, brazing, housed joints, polymer-based adhesives, rivets, spring clips, e-rings, Dutchman pins, proper interference fits, pocket hole joinery, soldering, collaring, swaging, pinned tenon joints, etc. etc. etc. There are LOTS of ways to connect one item to another without using the bolt/washer/nut answer that almost everyone defaults to - and without resorting to cheap-looking tape.

I really like the idea of a rule that will really push teams about of their "comfort zone" and into an area where they have to think about ways to solve problems by other than the obvious solution.

-dave

[/me gets off hobby horse]

[Gdeaver]

I'll go with Lavery's wish to restrict the materials and methods. Give the students a box of raw materials that includes all permited parts. This will stress thier brains instead of the teams pocket book.

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by Gdeaver

I'll go with Lavery's wish to restrict the materials and methods. Give the students a box of raw materials that includes all permited parts. This will stress thier brains instead of the teams pocket book.

I disagree.. I don't want to see cookie cutter bots. Although, the financial advantage for a "kit bot, and that's what it would be.. a kit bot, would be a good thing.

But still.. I don't like the idea of a "kit bot".

Take this year for example, I was glad that FIRST offered the kit chassis for teams to use but I would HATE to see the mandatory implementation of that chassis alone for every team. I personally hated working with the kit chassis for the simple reason of loose nuts and screws and washers to affix things together with. When crunch time comes in the pits, a neat robot (custom machined by your team) helps you and loose hardware that is hard to work with hinders you.

While something may be said about keeping the rules fair and making robots uniform for fair play, I think that weight, and size restrictions make that possible.

As for rule changes. I agree with Billfred.. I want to see what teams want to do with the shipping containers and other "currently non kit" things that our parts come in.

I mean c'mon.. we let that tape measure rule slide in 2002 for the reason of "we wanted to see what the teams would do with them." ie: explore creativity.

Why not do the same and make up for that horrible idea for legality of tethers announced so late in build way back then by letting the same apply for the packing materials. But this time let it be known the rules of that on day one of build.

[Rickertsen2]

As an extension to my earlier post, i would like to give a few examples to highlight the absurdity of the pneumatic actuator rules. Last year, we had two 1 1/16" bore cylinders on our robot. When we went up for inspection, we were rejected, because the custom cylinder order form allows only for 3/4", 1 1/2" or 2" bore cylinders. I welcome any attempt to explain the rationale for such a thing. 1 1/16" is between 3/4" and 1 1/2". Does that particular size pose a safety hazard? That must be it.

How about this. For the 3/4" and 1 1/2" cylinders we are required to order them with DP mounting (1/4" pin in the back). If we want to, we are allowed to press the pin out leaving a 1/4" hole, but we are not allowed to order the cylinders with DXP mounting (no pin. just a 1/4" hole). Pressing the pin out and ordering a cylinder with DXP mounting leave you with the EXACT same result, but one is illegal.

There are other useful mounting styles that are prohibited as well such as the D mounting style which allows a cylinder to be mounted by two screws inserted near the front, perpendicular to the cylinder as a whole.

What about rod-less cylinders (picture a pneumatically powered linear slide) prohibited?

How about locking cylinders. These would be a heaven for multi-positioning. Seems like these would lead themselves to innovation to me.

How about multi-position cylinders. I can imagine all sorts of neat mechanisms with these. Again, great potential for all sorts of innovative mechanisms could be made with these.

How about double ended cylinders (a normal cylinder but with another rod sticking out the opposite end)

These are only a small sampling of the prohibited pneumatics actuators available that i think would be of great benefit. I could see logic in restricting parts such as off the shelf pneumatic grippers, but the parts i mentioned above a far from pre-built solutions. They are all very fundamental components.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Rickertsen2

I welcome any attempt to explain the rationale for such a thing. 1 1/16" is between 3/4" and 1 1/2". Does that particular size pose a safety hazard? That must be it.

My guess is that it's because it's part of "leveling the playing field" Bimba offers us a limited number of select bore and stroke cylinders for free. I imagine the reason we're only free to purchase those specific cylinders above and beyond that quantity is so that the team that only is able to get the free ones, and not buy more has the same cylinders as the teams that could buy anything in Bimba's catalog.

If that makes any sense.

[Manoel]

Originally Posted by dlavery

So far, everyone is takling their personal pet peeve and trying to find a way to make the rule associated with a certain topic/application/mechanism less restrictive. That is fine, and everyone is certainly entitled to riding their own hobby horse. But I think that folks are headed in the wrong direction. I think that we should look for potential rules that can be made MORE restrictive, and scale back the "almost anything goes" philosophy that has become associated with the robot construction rules over the past several years. I believe that this philosophy has lead to a lot less true creativity and innovation in the robots, as teams have just gone out and bought solutions to design problems rather than creating solutions from a kit part that was never intended to do the job for which it would now be used. I would be all in favor of adding more restrictions back in to the robot construction rules to bring back some of the real creativity that every team displayed during the early years of FIRST.

For example, what about a rule that says "no threaded fasteners of any type are permitted on the robot."* If it were up to me, I would add a rule like that. Oh, wait, it is...

-dave

* you think I am joking, don't you? hehhehheh

Dave,

I have mixed feelings about this issue. Even though it was fun to be restricted to 20' of timing belt and spending countless hours coming up with ingenious mechanisms actuated only by latex tubing (a lot of them!) and those nice springs FIRST used to supply, I consider that the overall level of competition has been significantly raised since FIRST relaxed the rules concerning materials and parts usage.

One could also argue that this occurred concomitantly with FIRST's efforts to provide teams reliable, quality, out of the box solutions - chassis and drive trains, basically.
Many threads have debated the Inspiration issued associated with those ready solutions, but I will not go deep into that.

I have a feeling (emphasis on feeling - absolutely no "scientific" evidence) that students are more inspired by an amazing robot that is well designed and built (thanks to those "permissive" rules) than by a specific jaw-dropping mechanism devised in a glimpse of geniality.

Of course, that's a moot point when you come to Beatty, because they're (very!) consistent in presenting us with a robot that is all of that.
Then again, I can be very wrong, and maybe that's an issue to be discussed in another thread.

[CONTINUES...]

[Manoel]

Philosophical issues aside...

Regarding restrictive rules, they really force teams to be more creative, but back in the days it was very bad for international teams. The "Small Parts" rules were a nightmare to us. I do believe that, if such rules were considered again, special attention should be taken.
Having to use an 8 pound sprocket shipped from 6000 miles away is insane, and the costs associated with that rule - shipping (and FAST, build season is almost over!), customs (87.2% of the total value!) - could very well mean one less student is able to make it into the USA.

As for creativity and, in your words, "creating solutions from a kit part that was never intended to do the job for which it would now be used", it can also be accomplished without said rules. This year our team used a car jack to tilt our 4m long arm. You can't say that this isn't creativity at its best (and no, it wasn't my idea ), and the jack sure was never intended for that use.

My ideas might be a bit confuse, but there's some food for thought.

PS1 - There are other ways to force teams to be creative. For instance, when your 1/4" tubing bag has a big 20 feet written on it, and you do your figures and... NO WAY we can cover the entire robot with that length. So you proceed to install a solenoid valve on the very tip of you 4m arm, only to wire everything up and find out that the bag was really wrong, and you actually had 20 METERS of tubing to work with. Just leave the manual full of those small typos and teams will be creative, I assure you.

PS2 - Can we have pop rivets as unrestricted on the Addition Hardware List?

[fnsnet]

I must agree with Dave. Teams seem to go out and buy the hardware they need to solve a problem ready made, instead of building a solution themselves.

The problem is, relaxing the presure of overcoming obsticles in the competition would undermind the whole idea of FIRST. The idea is to give students chalanging problems with no clear and obvous solutions. This promises that no two teams will have the same idea to solving the same problem, get every student thinking, and it gets the brainwaves flowing around the room. If FIRST gave the students all the answers upfront, the challange would be gone, and the inspiration part of FIRST would vanish; replaced with an apathy for "building the same old robot." With each passing year, I look forward to hearing what limits FIRST places on the students, and I enjoy watching the minds of the students churn as they sit around talking about how they could overcome; creating solutions.

My moto:
If I can tell any old joe that knows nothing about the competition about the game that needs to be played, and he understands it the first time I tell him, then it's failing in it's mission.

Don't think of FIRST's limits as stupid anoyances, think of them as challanges that you must overcome, together as a team. We are drawing the line in the sand... don't whine about it, step up the the challange.

[Collmandoman]

Originally Posted by Manoel

Dave,

I have mixed feelings about this issue. Even though it was fun to be restricted to 20' of timing belt and spending countless hours coming up with ingenious mechanisms actuated only by latex tubing (a lot of them!) and those nice springs FIRST used to supply, I consider that the overall level of competition has been significantly raised since FIRST relaxed the rules concerning materials and parts usage.

One could also argue that this occurred concomitantly with FIRST's efforts to provide teams reliable, quality, out of the box solutions - chassis and drive trains, basically.
Many threads have debated the Inspiration issued associated with those ready solutions, but I will not go deep into that.

I have a feeling (emphasis on feeling - absolutely no "scientific" evidence) that students are more inspired by an amazing robot that is well designed and built (thanks to those "permissive" rules) than by a specific jaw-dropping mechanism devised in a glimpse of geniality.

Of course, that's a moot point when you come to Beatty, because they're (very!) consistent in presenting us with a robot that is all of that.
Then again, I can be very wrong, and maybe that's an issue to be discussed in another thread.

[CONTINUES...]

One of the best posts I've ever seen on CD. I agree completly; I'll also add to this -- creating even more restrictions will force more strategies/ideas to be thought up by adults.

[Bill Gold]

Originally Posted by Collmandoman

...I'll also add to this -- creating even more restrictions will force more strategies/ideas to be thought up by adults.

This doesn't necessarily follow. However, it does seem to imply that either you don’t have much faith in the ability of your fellow students (high school and college) on teams in this program or you believe that all teams’ actions are already dictated by adults and that there’s no such thing as a student run team. I believe that no matter what the rules are regarding parts of robots will say that the vast majority of teams will have the majority of their robot designed and built by students. This isn’t to say that I abhor professional input, design, or manufacturing. I actually love and am very thankful for what all these amazing engineering role models put into this program year in and year out.

My $0.02 after not having posted anything significant in months.

[Collmandoman]

Originally Posted by Bill Gold

This doesn't necessarily follow. However, it does seem to imply that either you don’t have much faith in the ability of your fellow students (high school and college) on teams in this program or you believe that all teams’ actions are already dictated by adults and that there’s no such thing as a student run team. I believe that no matter what the rules are regarding parts of robots will say that the vast majority of teams will have the majority of their robot designed and built by students. This isn’t to say that I abhor professional input, design, or manufacturing. I actually love and am very thankful for what all these amazing engineering role models put into this program year in and year out.

My $0.02 after not having posted anything significant in months.

Yeah, I didn't explain that too well. I have tons of faith in our students. With that said, every years challenge is not a piece of cake. The existing restrictions make it difficult enough to create a functional robot in 6 weeks. When you add more and more restrictions, the ideas generated by the students one by one become unusable one by one for the team. Mentors/Adults then have to step in and lend more advice(sometimes advice can be the same as building a robot for a student). Our team tries to use the mentors/adults/engineers as last resort materials, because when we suggest ideas it becomes less and less theirs.(Please try to take that to what I mean, and don't argue that lending advice is what we should be doing -- you know what I mean)
Anyway, cause and effect, more restrictions -- keeping the 6 week build period constant - will lead to more adult created concepts.

[Rickertsen2]

If we had a one year build period i might be able to see some logic in the restrictive school of thought. I think that by forcing teams to reinvent the wheel , rather than buying one off the shelf, you cause them to waste time on unimportant and mundane details. Rather than engineering a cool new carriage as a whole they are faced with figuring out how they are going to make wheel spokes. A greater repertoire of available parts lends itself to an exponentially greater wealth of new ideas by allowing teams to focus on what is really important.

[Andy Baker]

(I split off the discussion about eliminating the ship date - however, I mistakingly took Alan Anderson's post with this split-off thread... sorry, Alan. Some other mod may need to fix this split and put Alan's post back into this thread, as I could not determine how to do that.)

Here is the eliminate ship date discussion

carry on.

[fixed the merge, Thanks Andy.]