If you could change one rule - eliminate ship requirement discussion

[Sepsis900]

sorry for having little faith in humanity, but an honor code is really unreliable. Some teams may follow it if their robot is done, but most teams will continue work if there's something they think they can improve. It would be fantastic if everyone just played nice and worked with what they have after 6 weeks, but honestly, it only takes one cheating team to mess up an entire regional. While 39 teams are playing on even grounds, one has an unfair (but not illegal) advantage, and that hurts everybody.
If you're going to loosen up shipping rules, you really have to put other limits in to keep cheating from happening.

As for the free shipping: if it happens, then great! If you want to attend a second regional, though, it'd be cheaper for you to drive the bot around yourself. Nationals, though, are a whole different story. I doubt someone will spend 4 days driving a truck from California to Atlanta and back. If FedEx offers free shipping anywhere, it really ought to be to Nationals.

Most people build their robot close to a regional competition. Our regional is literally 20 minutes by car away from our school. If it comes down to paying FedEx $600 or renting a truck for $80, I'd pick the truck. Rural areas are different, though, where you might have to drive 3-5 hours to a regional. Economically speaking, it's still much cheaper to rent a truck, but it's really up to the individual team weather or not driving for a day is worth $400.

[KenWittlief]

something else that no one has mentioned yet:

one of the goals of FIRST is to have a team at every HS in the country. The only way this would be possible is with local area regionals. "local" teams can always deliver the bot to the local regional with little expense (keeping the present 'ship date' the way it is)

so getting rid of the ship-date requirement puts us in a situation that most likely will revert back when FIRST grows larger.

One other thing, there is a real feeling of accomplishment and completion when you put the bolts in the crate and the forklift driver hauls it to the loading dock. Maybe im being sentimental, but you are not going to get that same milestone by saying "ok, its 5PM, everyone put your tools down".

Many teams have people staying up 24 hours, 48 or even 72 hours straight to get the bot ready to ship - and the weird thing is, we LOVE it!

Shipping is a milestone, its a goal, its an event - its a huge part of the FIRST experience.

[Andrew]

As I've read this thread, it seems that FIRST is a robot building competition. I thought that FIRST had different goals. Perhaps I am mistaken.

Goal One. Inspire pre-college students to pursue careers in science and engineering.
Goal Two. (a subsidiary to goal one). Make FIRST competitions more spectator friendly, so that folks who are not currently participating in FIRST get fired up and want to become part of FIRST.


The Ship Date obviously does not contribute to either of these goals. If you could spread the build phase further, most people would have the time, physical, and emotional resources to provide better mentoring to the pre-college students on the team.

If you reduce the wasted costs, you allow teams to spend those resources in a manner which may more effectively allow them to achieve their real goals. You also allow FIRST to reduce its costs. Those wasted costs include:
1. shipping - Mostly FedEx (could they put this money to more effective use?)
2. drayage - Mostly FIRST (could they put this money to more effective use?)
3. crate, time to build crate
4. tracking crate, getting it redirected to the proper site when it goes astray.
5. spare robot
6. emergency shipping of purchased parts when you realize you need a Potrzebie TOMORROW!!!
7. cost of scrap parts because you did not have enough time to prototype or think through all aspects of the design.

What happens to most teams when they hit the ship date? They down tools and go back to their lives. You may not see any of your pre-college students (as a mentor) or mentors (as a pre-college student), until you get on the van/plane/hotel for the first competition. If you extend the fabrication date, you will have more calendar time to mentor. This may not work for every team but it would certainly work for ours.

So, Goal One would be directly impacted in a positive fashion by removing the ship date.

Even if you lay down your tools on the ship date and attend the first week regional, Goal Two will be improved, simply because teams will learn the "features" of their design by having their drive team drive it for a week. This will allow teams a better opportunity to know exactly what tweaks to make in the pits. Better tweaks, more drive practice = more spectator friendly competition. Hence, more people are likely to get fired up about participating in FIRST.

Jack Jones made a very good point, which seems to be misunderstood or disregarded. Waste, as directly measured in dollars, will result in a marginal, unnecessary decrease in resource available to teams. Which will result in a marginal decrease in teams.

On a final note: Fairness. Who cares? We ALL benefit when someone who has a good idea has enough time to execute that idea. If teams then copy this idea or emulate this strategy, then better, more spectator friendly matches occur later in the season.

The Technokats had a great "big ball" manipulator in 2004. Baxter had a neat cork-screw tetra pickup in 2005. Those ideas are now in MY tool-bag, for future application in other arenas of life. I am richer for those teams having spent resources to bring those ideas to fruition.

[KenWittlief]

keep in mind, no where in the rules does it presently state engineers are only allowed to mentor students during a six week period.

Mentors can work with students all year if they have the time and resources. During the fall you can build base-model practice bots from the left over parts from last years kits, do experiments with the edu bot, learn to use machine tools, cad programming, C programming, learn about the engineering design cycle, data-driven analysis to analyse the game and your bots performance, learn about PID control loops, Power, energy, force - how physics applies to robotics...

then at the kickoff meeting you hit the pavement running

there have been so many excellent FIRST robots over the last 14 years, how can anyone say that 6 weeks is not enough time?

one could easily point at any aspect of FIRST and say "this is a waste of time, money and resources" - travelling expenses, hotel rooms, uniforms, the animation, building the crate or a practice playfield.... from one persons point of view other things are not important, but they might be a very important part of FIRST to someone else.

[skimoose]

Andrew, you also missed one of the really big points of the six week build cycle. Out in the real world we face deadlines every day. Good engineering isn't always building and testing to the "Nth" degree. More times than not, it's getting the job done in adverse, some might say hostile, conditions. It means keeping a cool head and coming up with the best solution that can be accomplished within the time and resources that the situation allows. The engineers of Mission Control didn't get extra time to save the lives of the Apollo 13 crew. You work with what you're dealt.

[austind27]

After reading through this post I understand everyone’s arguments. The thing I find most surprising is everyone is saying that at the end of the six week period everyone returns back to their normal lives. In every year that I have done FIRST I can't ever remember a year that life went back to normal once we shipped the robot. In all four years that I was involved in FIRST we built a practice robot. The thing with a practice robot is, you want it done before your first competition so your programmers can program your autonomous modes, and your drivers can get some practice in before you get to the competition. This means that you have about a week to build/finish an identical robot to the one you just shipped away in the crate. That means there are a lot more long hours put in after the ship date. The solution to this problem, eliminate the ship date, so the need for a practice robot would also be eliminated. I can say that in my 4 years of FIRST and 2 years with the Oakland County Competitive Robotics Association (OCCRA), the system that OCCRA uses is a lot better than the system FIRST uses. OCCRA uses a system where your first competition is your build deadline. You show up that day with your completed robot and compete. Once done competing you take you robot back home and you can continue to work on it/improve it up until the final competition of the year. I understand I'm kind of comparing apples to oranges here, but if FIRST could eliminate the ship date and say show up Thursday at your first competition with a robot that is ready to compete, I feel it would be better. Then when you’re done competing, you could take your robot back home to fix it and make whatever modifications your team sees fit to be more competitive. I feel this is a lot better than shipping your beat up robot off to the next competition and showing up with spare parts and zip ties to fix your robot. This would mean that come the championship event robots would be at the peak of their game which would make for a lot better and more exciting competition.

[Andrew]

skimoose,
Most of what I posted is true if you do away with the ship date but down tools at the end of six weeks (i.e. have a Completion Date deadline).

However, FIRST has increased the scope of work since the original inception of the ship date, without providing a new deadline. In the "real world" this means that teams have to allocate more resources within the six weeks to accomplish the same goal. These resources have to come from somewhere. This usually means increases in costs and decreases in "non-essentials."

I also have to respectfully disagree with your " best solution that can be accomplished within the time and resources that the situation allows" since FIRST has stated again and again that they want to see more spectator friendly competitions. Which means robots that are more tweaked out.

KenWittlief,
I didn't say the rules forbade us from mentoring outside the six weeks. I said that most of our students, especially the ones who are "on the edge" (which is the prime pool that we want to reach) vanish outside the six week build phase. If we can extend the "reach time" through regionals and nationals by having a focus point (continued build OR practicing with the robot), we will probably increase the number of students who might come to the extra activities that you have described.

[skimoose]

Andrew,

I agree FIRST wants more tricked out robots (don't we all), that's why programs shouldn't hybernate after, or before, the six week build. This forum shows people actively designing, if not building, new drive train components off season. That's what should be going on with sensors and autonomous, too. We can never master everything during the build season, it's just not feasable unless you're a team with more engineers than students. We are not one of those teams. We have been trying to work on robot designs off season. If we can become more proficient during the off season, we can more easily complete our tasks during the build season.

We're also one of those teams that regularly lose build days to snow. We'd love to find a way to reverse that problem, but we live with it. As far as shipping costs, yes that should definitely be addressed. Perhaps someone should design a standard shipping crate which is light weight, can be easily dismantled for storage, which is completely reusable and modular. I think the over-weight drayage charges are a bit steep, too. Our crate's volume to weight ratio isn't nearly as heavy as most shipped materials. We try to use the same crate each year, but it does take build time to get it out of long term storage, reassemble it, and build new tie downs for the new robot. That's time that would be better spent building the bot.

There are certainly many rules that can be tweeked, but overall the system isn't that bad. If anything it's fair, or unfair, to almost everyone.

[Denman]

it would be a bit hard for the internationals.... for example i don't think they allow a 60kg or whatever it is robot in hand luggage and its a bit big to fit in the hold limits....
but i can see the advantages too...

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Ya know....
If we eliminated the ship date, moved the kickoff back a few weeks and provided a random drawing to insure that the early regionals were well attended by rookies and veterans, then teams might be able to attend more regionals. Since there is an abundance of post season events, it is obvious you all want to continue to play throughout the year. By spacing out the regionals attended a team will have less impact on the academics of it's students missing school for regionals all in one semester, etc. Rookies would have a much better first year experience if they were able to work on the robot after seeing other designs. I am not saying I agree with Andy yet, just mulling over the possibilities.
There still is nothing like seeing the robot finally in the box and the last screws going in while it is dragged to the loading dock.

ed. If we were to spread out the regionals, there would be less expense on the playing field shipping since there would be less needed and there would be less of a burnout factor on the FIRST and IFI staffs if they didn't need to be on the road constantly.

[Steve W]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

ed. If we were to spread out the regionals, there would be less expense on the playing field shipping since there would be less needed and there would be less of a burnout factor on the FIRST and IFI staffs if they didn't need to be on the road constantly.

There would be more costs for shipping the fields if they went to more events. There would also be more events for staff to attend. There is also the issue with volunteers. Some events have great difficulty in providing volunteers as it is. Key positions would also prove harder to fill with more events.

I still feel that the "real world" feel to FIRST is what makes it so special. Everyone have the same challenge and the same time frame to complete. For those that don't like it, well, think of schools that have exams and you can write them whenever you want. You can watch others write theirs and see what their answers are before you write your exam. Lets have a race. you go first and I will go when I want and use what ever mode I wish. We will see who wins.

Right now everyone works to the same deadline with basically the same resources. Some have more money and some have less. Some have professional engineers and some have none. Teams are still competing and some have better robots than others. I will say though that some of those with less money and/or less engineers learn more than some those that have everything given to them. We have a great program with built in limitations. If some teams want to spend more time with a second robot then let them. I have a better idea, ban second (or practice) robots. That could save a lot of money that could be used to help other teams.

[Wetzel]

Originally Posted by Sepsis900

The only requirement is that the robot has to be at the competition site within, say, 24 hours of the ship date. You'd also have to drop the robot off in its crate and everything, so that it's no different from robots dropped off by UPS (or whatever shipping company you picked).

The crates get shipped to drayage. They get stuck in a warehouse during the time between ship and your competition. Very few, if any, of the venues have the space to store 50 crates for weeks.


I've mostly seen the biggest hardest challenge of FIRST as being one of time management. I have some thoughts on how time management is equally available to most teams, rich and poor -cash, shop capability, engineers available. Unfortunately, I'm still a little blitzed by my child psych and nutrition tests so you will have to think it through like I did.

Removing the ship date removes that.

Wetzel

[GaryVoshol]

In regard to ship date, the biggest difference between the "haves" and "have-nots" is the second robot. Those with the resources to have a clone get a definite advantage in the post-ship/pre-tourney timeframe.

Shipping costs vs. bring-with-you costs probably have minimal difference overall. (YMMV based on your distance from and how many Regionals you attend.)

I enjoy the OCCRA season where you essentially use the earlier competitions as a trial, then bring your robot home again to tweak (or completely rebuild, in some cases). But that is not how FIRST Regionals are organized. Each Regional stands alone in terms of competition.

Sure, our team (and many others) could benefit having between-Regional rebuild periods. I'm not sure I want to make the trade for a longer build season, though - essentially Jan through April, 15 or 16 weeks!

[Jim Zondag]

Andy, Thank you for finally starting a legitamate discussion on this topic. I have been bringing this up for 10 years.
Personally I am and have always been fundamentally agains shipping.
I have yet to see another example of a rule like this in another machine sport. No other league I have ever seenever takes you machine away from you. The true costs of doing this far exceed Andy's conservative numbers.
I am the exact opposite of Dave Lavery. If it were up to me we would deregulate everything except a very few key items:
size, weight, battery, air pressure, control system.
Infinite choices yield infinte possiblities.
If you look back in time, with each step FIRST has taken to deregulate the robots have gotten better. All you old timers, get out you 1996 robot and compare it to you 2005 robot....which would you rather watch on TV.
Anything FIRST does to allow us to create better, faster,taller, stronger robots is in the best interest of all of us. Please give us the time and the resources to build creations which will make the public stand in awe and want to be like us.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Jim Zondag

Anything FIRST does to allow us to create better, faster,taller, stronger robots is in the best interest of all of us. Please give us the time and the resources to build creations which will make the public stand in awe and want to be like us.

Nobody's stopping you from taking as long as you want to make an awesome and inspiring creation -- just don't compete in a FRC match with it.

Seriously, to the extent that FIRST is about competing with robots, I think having a firm deadline for creating a robot does promote a more balanced competition.