The Triplet Challenge

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

If your team equates winning a regional with team-success then FIRST is standing on the wrong foot.
.....
When teams feel like losers because they go home without a plastic trophy then we have failed to make them understand what this is all about.

First, good points Ken, especially about remaining focused on the goal - inspiration. "It's still not about the robots".

But nobody said anything about "winning".

Our team placed 61st out of 65 teams in 2005, but came home feeling like HUGE winners, as Rookie All-Stars. Not for the award (just a hunk of plastic!), but for WHY: We were a rookie team, but we reached out to at least half a dozen teams and helped them with their robots, including rewiring & replumbing the robot from the (also rookie) team next to us in the pits. This was unplanned, and not initiated by the adults. The KIDS did this on their own, because they knew that helping others is the right thing to do. The award made it official, but the THANKS from those teams was what made us into winners.

In 2006, we moved up: 34 out of 65 or so at NJ. We still came home BIG winners: Judge's award for "Building Traditions" - the kids went and did the same thing (helping other teams), again. On their own, again. The other teams' gratitude, again.

Turns out, the kids like building robots, and they don't really care whose it is. Who'da thunk it?

That Finalist thing in Palmetto: Honestly, it wasn't from our stellar performance on the field. Our scouting team finally Got It and gave us great strategy, which we followed. Team 16 must have seen us as consistent (we hardly scored, but we seemed to to the right thing a lot), or maybe 16 had temporary insanity (more likely) but they picked us. We rode their coattails, along with 95 with their innovative and awesome shooter.

The point is, I guess, that JVN's comment is something i really believe in, but perhaps the "on the field" part can be taken out without changing its validity. I guess 'teams that are proud of their accomplishment are more sustainable than ones that do not' might be a better statement.


Regarding the 'discouraged' team - well said from a 'good' team. It suchs to think of yourselves as losers, and whether you and I like it or not, they do. Those hypothetical teams you mention sometimes never improve, because the best players put their energies into something else, and (sadly) so does the Administration. I completely agree, it is wrong, and we have failed, but it's still true in some cases. I, for one, am going to help correct that for next year: They also have a need for more, higher-quality mentors. (Anyone in the north-central NJ area thinking about it, PM me.)

Don

[rourke]

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

What I see are warlords, which if you’ll excuse the expression, is downright un-American.

C'mon Jack. You're getting a little carried away with some fear mongering. But you are right about one thing, it is downright un-American. The Triplets are Canadian.

[Koko Ed]

I'm going to stick with Rourke's focus on the concept on the idea of teams working as Triplets and not the creation of the Triplets which is the source of so much controversy.
In a way the Xerox robotics program is similar to the Triplet's design financially. Xerox handles the budget for us, Sparx and XQ Robotix. As for robot design each team is pretty much left on their own with varying results. This to me is an ideal design for a robotic program. The biggest worry many robot teams have is fiances and to have a centralized system to handle the financial needs is essential. Teams can readily share information and design ideas if they so please but are not required to do so.
I think teams can also collaborate on other projects from website design,animation and team spirit if they are lacking the resources to do so on their own but they should be options not requirements.
I do wonder if people would have such a big problem with the concept if the Triplets (actually only 1114 and 1503 have tasted on field success. 1680 has only a finalist award so they haven't been so beneficial of this arrangement as the other two have) if they haven't won three regionals.

[Starke]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

I'm going to stick with Rourke's focus on the concept on the idea of teams working as Triplets and not the creation of the Triplets which is the source of so much controversy.
In a way the Xerox robotics program is similar to the Triplet's design financially. Xerox handles the budget for us, Sparx and XQ Robotix. As for robot design each team is pretty much left on their own with varying results. This to me is an ideal design for a robotic program. The biggest worry many robot teams have is fiances and to have a centralized system to handle the financial needs is essential. Teams can readily share information and design ideas if they so please but are not required to do so.
I think teams can also collaborate on other projects from website design,animation and team spirit if they are lacking the resources to do so on their own but they should be options not requirements.
I do wonder if people would have such a big problem with the concept if the Triplets (actually only 1114 and 1503 have tasted on field success. 1680 has only a finalist award so they haven't been so beneficial of this arrangement as the other two have) if they haven't won three regionals.

Well put Koko Ed. This is also how 340 and 1567 work. We are both Rochester NY areas teams that are sponsored by Bausch & Lomb. We have the option of working together if we would like, but are not required to.

[Ken Patton]

I admire the extra efforts taken by collaborating teams to make sure their schools are each involved in the decisions being made during brainstorming, design, and build. This has got to complicate the build season when you have people at these different locations making decisions.

I empathize with those who are not sold on the collaboration idea, because of where it could lead. This is where we are counting on the great people who are running teams like 1114 to continue to do a great job of staying true to their goals of growing and inspiring without going too far.

I worry that if each team only has to do a fraction of a robot (i.e., you do the base, we'll do the arm, those other guys'll do the software) that it will be seen as a shortcut that gives collaborators an advantage and keeps the team from doing the complete set of elements that all the other teams are doing in this competition.

I would be willing to bet that many people who think collaboration is just fine would change their tune the first time that a team builds two complementary robots (instead of identical robots as we see now). Imagine if a team built one awesome shooter that docked with one awesome feeder-bot. The feeder bot has incredible storage capacity, pushing power, and a collaboratively-designed connection that locks the bots together and allows balls to flow right through. Not simple twins anymore. Siamese twins, one with great eye-hand coordination, and one who has lifted weights his whole life. Sure, you still have to have one of 'em (the "smart" one ) get to be a picker so it can pick the other one, but we know thats possible. You could call one bot "Gretzky" and the other "Semenko"

[stefwitt]

Winning is certainly a motivating factor, but I would be the last one to promote the trend of collaboration in order to create winning teams. If indeed collaboration becomes an economic requirement, in particular the automotive industry, than it doesn’t make it any better to act as this would be the best thing in the world. The German competition may even use this to their advantage, selling more BMW’s with their very individual design.
Here is another example, how a team can win, have fun, learn and become highly motivated.
Team 1414 evolved from one single student, who seeded the idea of FIRST into the Atlanta International School and a body of very individual, multi cultural and multi lingual students.
I had the pleasure of teaching and mentoring these students (15 in 2003/4) in ACAD, electronic and mechanical design, but also grew some gray hair by teaching some tool basics, as most of the students had never used any tools in their young lives. Thanks to other parent mentors and students, I had to learn to ease off in my German attitude to have everything perfect and aligned.
All students, regardless of their technical knowledge and the feasibility of their ideas were involved in the design concept. The prototype drove well forward, but failed miserably in turning. The final robot managed to cap a goal in one event, but the final result was the last place in the Peachtree regional.
After all, team 1414 was fortunate to win the rookie award and even the rookie all-star award in 2004.
With 30 team members in 2005, the team didn’t receive any awards and we don’t want to mention the place in the ranking of the Peachtree regional.
In this season the students designed and built the robot completely themselves.
I would love to get another rookie team going.
Team 1414, now a team of 45 students, did cut each piece of aluminum extrusion very carefully ¼ inch shorter than maximum dimension, but the completed robot didn’t fit the shipping box, because the robot didn’t end up to be square.
At the Peachtree regional, team 1414 succeeded to score all ten balls in the auto mode, ended up in second place in the ranking and won the regional event together with two other teams. On top of it, team 1414 won the Daimler Chrysler spirit award and the ACAD visualization award.
These students may never get any CNC tools in their shop and their robot will be lacking the sophistication of the triplets for example. Needless to say that these students are very happy about their success, they don’t care about the triplets at all.

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by Ken Patton

people who think collaboration is just fine would change their tune the first time that a team builds two complementary robots (instead of identical robots as we see now). Imagine if a team built one awesome shooter that docked with one awesome feeder-bot. The feeder bot has incredible storage capacity, pushing power, and a collaboratively-designed connection that locks the bots together and allows balls to flow right through. Not simple twins anymore. Siamese twins, one with great eye-hand coordination, and one who has lifted weights his whole life. Sure, you still have to have one of 'em (the "smart" one ) get to be a picker so it can pick the other one, but we know thats possible. You could call one bot "Gretzky" and the other "Semenko"

I'd be fine with that, since such a robot would be useless at an actual competition. They'd only get paired together maybe 2-3 times during qualifying so they wouldn't make it to the top 8, and it would be practically impossible to pick both of them as part of your alliance because someone else would pick the other one before you do. Also, you'd be taking a pretty large risk picking the two of them as your alliance partners since you may have only seen them playing together 2-3 times.

Such a collaboration would be taking a ENORMOUS hit in practicality and chances-of-winning just so they can collaborate, which I doubt would anger anyone, and would be pretty cool to see in the few matches they'd have together.

[jonathan lall]

Originally Posted by Ken Patton (emphasis added)

I empathize with those who are not sold on the collaboration idea, because of where it could lead. This is where we are counting on the great people who are running teams like 1114 to continue to do a great job of staying true to their goals of growing and inspiring without going too far.

What worries me is those cooperatives that might surface who might not follow these ideals. To whom is a collaborative alliance accountable with respect to Ken's statement? Going back to the idea I borrowed from international relations in my earlier post (sorry if you feel a whoosh), on a team this accountability is to FIRST, its ideals, other teams, and its own constituent students and mentors. As a unitary actor in FIRST's eyes, there are quantifiable sanctions for not acting properly. As we create a new level of analysis (that is, the cooperative alliance level), this becomes very blurry and relies more upon the responsibility of those in charge of the alliance. We can all conceive of a cooperative that has 6 teams that go to the same regional, each of whom having six weeks to design only a small fraction of the robot, each of whom pairs up only with another in the finals, where they all face each other. This would be terrible, and would create a huge compulsion for teams to start picking sides (I suppose for rookies I could liken this to the woes of new inmates). Still, my concerns are mainly functional; will teams still have the holistic educational value they used to under this new model? At this very moment, my inclination is to say there are numerous forces that point collaborative alliances away from this, especially if we try to grow into the model with haste.

Originally Posted by Ken Patton

I would be willing to bet that many people who think collaboration is just fine would change their tune the first time that a team builds two complementary robots (instead of identical robots as we see now). Imagine if a team built one awesome shooter that docked with one awesome feeder-bot. The feeder bot has incredible storage capacity, pushing power, and a collaboratively-designed connection that locks the bots together and allows balls to flow right through. Not simple twins anymore. Siamese twins, one with great eye-hand coordination, and one who has lifted weights his whole life. Sure, you still have to have one of 'em (the "smart" one ) get to be a picker so it can pick the other one, but we know thats possible. You could call one bot "Gretzky" and the other "Semenko"

This goes slightly beyond the scope of this thread so I'll be as brief as I can muster. I would argue that the complemetary robot possibility is definitely one of the most intriguing possibilities that might occur, and is one that has not been fully realized. I'd further argue it's fundamentally different from simply sharing an identical design as the Triplets do, because in theory one would only have to neccesarily share and standardize certain dimensions and characteristics while perhaps keeping other aspects unique and/or secret. Teams could cooperate on a very limited basis in terms of design but on a wide scale in terms of participants, and this is just another one of the many side effects we are bound to come across in the future that compel me to reserve judgment on any sort of inter-team collusion and by extension Mr. Rourke's call.

Indeed, people might argue it will further perpetuate a two-tier system of elite versus 'normal' teams. Perhaps it would be too difficult to implement as Bongle suggested, but I disagree. My personal thoughts on the matter go as follows: I see this new mentality of collaboration as an opportunity. If a few teams were to standardize some mechanism in the first two weeks of the build period, robots that were paired up and followed this regime would be at a decisive advantage, and this is easier to pull off than some might think. I had a defeated idea on my team to make a not-very-mobile but accurate shooter that could plant in position and had receptacles for balls that were similar in size to the corner goals; such a design did one thing very well, and would make all corner goal bots (that is in general, rookie bots) potential shooters and eliminate the possiblity of the opponents shutting them down on D. It was very easy to do in this game, but in a more involved game (say next year's), a collaborative alliance clearly could be beneficial to rookies in this manner without 'giving away' a robot design. This thread is about using collaboration as a means to draw in rookies, and I've just presented one of many possible ways this can be done. Again, this is an opportunity, but I'm not entirely sure just yet whether it's a good one.

[Lil' Lavery]

One question. Why do people assume identical robots, no matter how good they are, are the best alliance structure?
1114 picked 1503 at their regionals, because as mentioned by Karthik, they had the best fit for their alliance. In 2005, they did not pick 1503 or 1680, why?, because they did not fit their alliance as well.
3 amazing robots != 1 amazing alliance

[seanwitte]

You need to caveat your challenge to include a statement about long-term support. If a rookie team is given a competitive design their first year they will do well, have fun, and be ready to come back the next year. If the handouts suddenly cease and they field a bad robot that does not work and is not competitive they will probably fold. Where are you then? Inspiration does not equate to a bunch of smiling excited kids. They have a winning robot, of course they're excited! When they're still excited through the rough times, then you have something.

I've been to a regional with a robot that was not competitive and it was extremely frustrating and stressful. It was no fun for the kids cheering when the robot didn't move in many of the matches. Say what you want about FIRST, but the regional is all about the matches. Bust your butt for six weeks plus, then drive three hours to watch a paperweight. If the team did not have some fantastic mentors and an army of organized parents and teachers that team would be long gone.

[Kims Robot]

So I keep reading through this thread, and I was brought back to Lindsay's post and the posts of several people who have "met the triplets"

Everyone keeps saying how inspired the team is, how inspirational they are, etc... And maybe this goes off topic a little, but I would like to hear some stories of how this collaboration exactly "inspires" in a DIFFERENT way from normal teams (yes we are all driven to beat the best of the best, yes we all learn how to use tools we never would have touched outside FIRST, yes all of us gain confidence to meet others, to work with other teams, etc), so what is different??

I'm really glad that Lindsay, and the other students are "inspired" but from everything I have read (and no, I really haven't met their students), I think many of us would benefit in knowing EXACTLY how they are inspired... give us some of the crazy/cool stories, show us how collaboration is different... why the teams chose to continue collaborating this year, what the rest of the world can gain from this.... help us learn all this, instead of just bickering back and forth, "my way is better" "no my way is better".

What I am looking for is the "above and beyond" stories... for example, we end up talking a lot with our janitors late at night... one of them got so involved he came to the local regional last year, and again this year... by the end of this year, he told us that he now wants to go back to college because of all he has seen with us! (Yes I know this has nothing to do with "collaboration", but I'm looking for the stories that make the collaboration different from just "mentoring" rookie FIRST teams like most other teams do.)

I think these stories (because I'm sure they are there) would be incredibly effective in convincing this forum and many others of the true effectiveness of the collaboration... because I think everyone here is getting too defensive/offensive because we don't know the real deal. Everyone keeps saying "well go talk to us/them in their pit" ok ok I get that, but its not going to stop this thread from escalating...

[Jay TenBrink]

I’d like to explain why and how the Martian Twins happened this year.

History: Team 70 was a small veteran team operating out of Kettering University that was about to disband. Their mentor was retiring and there was nobody to take his place. Our team did not have mentor resources available to send there to keep the team going. We did, however, believe we could mentor two teams, 494 and 70, at the same location.

Mentoring: Our team leader and another mentor secured sponsorship for this second team. All the other mentor tasks that are mostly invisible to the students were done by shared mentor resources: registering for events, travel and accommodations, ordering team shirts, ordering raw materials and components, meeting with school administrators, book keeping, etc. All of these activities are essential, represent a lot of mentor time and energy, and can be done in bulk (for multiple teams) more efficiently. These aren't’t tasks generally associated with providing the inspiration or recognition to our students.

Membership: Students from surrounding high schools were invited to join. Currently we have students from two other area schools and expect to have more in the future.

The student experience:
All activities for brainstorming the game and robot are done as a combined group.
Building of mock-ups and “mules” to prove out concepts is done jointly.
Construction of the robots, programming, etc. is done jointly in our modest shop, which is the balcony above the gym that we share with the cheer leading team.
All students participate in fund raising.
Each team has a distinct pit crew and drive team. Scouting is a collaborative effort.

The bottom line is this: Mentor resources are limited and burn-out is a real danger in FIRST. Collaboration was essential to keep this second team in existence. There simply were not mentor resources available to sustain it on its own. Nobody was cheated out of their inspiration or handed a Pre-built robot or a complete design, it was all done together. This project was not undertaken as part of our plan for Martian domination of planet Earth, but to the best we could with what we had to work with. I sincerely believe this was and will continue to be good for FIRST.

Jay

[Jack Jones]

What Jay didn't mention was that 494 and 70 stretched themselves even further by fronting team 1213 $4k in order for them to make the initial payment deadline. They went further yet to organize a raffle where the two teams worked together/separate to pay back the Martians' kitty. Neither 70 nor 1213 would have been in the hunt this year without 494.

Maybe next year 1213 will wise up and ask to borrow Jay instead of the cash.

[Freddy Schurr]

I would like to give my 2 cents on this topic

The Triplet Challenge sounds like a fun and innovative way to get more students into FIRST and partake in an engineering competition. However, I believe that it would not happen for several reasons. One, it sounds boring to have a same design for 3 or 4 teams. I like it when I go to a competition and see how everyone has approach the game from a different angle. “Who did this?” and “How does the mechanism work?” are some of the questions that I asked myself when I looked at about 400 robots all season. Everyone has a different approach to the game and it is more interesting when you get to see how they will affect how the game piece is use. Second, it may be a disadvantage to teams that make one robot. 2-3 Teams that have the same robot design and are effective enough to get the job done can outlast any one robot team. Lastly, it causes more problems when it comes to paying for everything; you got the competition fee, and then everything else on the outside. You basically got to spend you whole entire pre-season doing sponsorship if you don’t have a corporate sponsor. As a mentor on Team 204, I am dealt the task of finding money with students for us to go to the competition and other matters. Now try doing not once, but twice. It is a difficult challenge. Do not get me wrong, we actually have looked into doing a “Niagara Triplet” kind of thing here in South Jersey, however it is a difficult challenge to try and get everyone on board.

Just giving a little feedback to CD.

[rourke]

Originally Posted by Freddy Schurr

It is a difficult challenge. Do not get me wrong, we actually have looked into doing a “Niagara Triplet” kind of thing here in South Jersey, however it is a difficult challenge to try and get everyone on board.

Freddy raises a valid concern with respect to beginning a collaborative growth strategy similar to what was done with The Triplets. In a previous post, Karthik promised to make this the subject of a post-season paper. In the meantime I will outline what I believe are some prerequisite requirements based on our experiences. More to follow in the post-season.

Prerequisites for a NiagaraFIRST style collaboration:

• Mentor consensus on the growth strategy.
• An established, experienced, and capable base team.
• Mentor diversity and single-point leaders – with mentors having different “lead” responsibilities for elements of the collaboration, as well a lead mentor that represents each school team’s interests.
• A new team(s) whose teacher (and any new mentors) prefers to learn from an experienced team.
• Acceptance that all teams will share resources and facilities. There must be a vision for how these resources or facilities can be shared so that everyone can be involved.
• A common organizational framework for each team to facilitate communication and to keep the collaboration aligned.
• Education and training materials for all aspects of the project delivered in the pre-season.
• A web based bulletin board and forum for communication and information exchange.
• A disciplined project management, scheduling, and review process for each team.
• A weekly forum where all mentors gather to discuss progress, lessons learned, and improvement opportunities.