Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'

[GaryVoshol]

Thank you Andy. We could probably close this thread now, except I want to say something.

Experience, money and mentors doesn't always generate success. We've all seen examples of rookies or 2nd year teams achieving great things. Same for small underfunded teams.

Can I give an example the other way? And I don't think either of these teams would object to being the example. What happened between 2005 and 2006 to 67 Hot and 503 Frog Force teams? They didn't lose experience, they seemed to have the same mentors, maybe there were funding issues but not a cut-back to $0.00. Yet when we got to alliance selection at GLR, we were down to the final selection to fill in the 3rd partner for the #1 alliance, and both these immediate-past-Championship winners were still on the sidelines. 67 was selected to play defense only. Should either of these teams have been further penalized because of their experience, staffing, funding, etc, to give the have-nots or rookies a "fairer shot"? Not in my mind.

1188 is a relatively have-not team - we had only one engineer last year, and her day job is project management. We had a programmer engineer/mentor who could only be there a few hours a week. A couple of parent mentors who never had an engineering class in their lives, but were able to help with programming, design and build. We struggled with funding, and were fortunate in the end to get an additional $6,000 sponsor. We also were left on the sidelines at GLR, and were the 3rd pick for the 6th alliance at Detroit - and we knew we deserved it. We would not have wanted it any other way. Yet because of our off-field endeavors, we took home an impressive array of hardware - Engineering Inspiration, Judges, Safety, Website - were we any less successful because we weren't in the finals at GLR or were in a 2-matches-and-out alliance at Detroit? Hardly.

[paldrid]

It took me a while to be able to admire and respect some of the powerhouse teams. I was upset that my team was always at such a disadvantage, with around 10 -15 students and no money. However, every year I was proud that we were able to come up with something at all, given all the challenges the team faced. Last year particularly, things kind of fell apart in the middle of build. I was expecting the team to produce one of our most competitive robots yet, instead, we couldn't drive in a straight line. I was still proud that we were able to produce a robot at all. More importantly, I feel that I learned more last year than any previous year because of the challenges we faced. Even if our robots have a habit of not turning out, is always rewarding to go to competition and see another teams robot, that is nearly identical to our original design, go out and win.

A big part of FIRST is the fact that it isn't fair. Our team worked harder because we knew what we would be up against. Every year we are forced to be more innovative, to learn more, to stay at school until midnight every day for six weeks, just to build something remotely passable. The whole point of FIRST is that it isn't really about winning. Yes, it is really frustrating to not do well in the placings, or not win an award to qualify for nationals, but I after I got home, this always motivated me to work harder.

I do agree that more could be done to help smaller, underfunded (as well as rookie) teams feel less overwhelmed. However, it seems like FIRST is already taking steps to make that happen by doing things like improving the kit drive train.

[Tom Bottiglieri]

I really liked when FIRST released the how-to video for the 2005 kit bot. If you had a hard time reading the drawings, you could follow the directions from the video. I think videos like this would help anyone who would take the time to learn something new. Their robot may not be amazing on the first shot, but over time will be great.

I also think teams need to learn how to properly engineer their robot. I know my old team, and can assume many teams, fell into the trap of designing the bot based on another team's old design. This is bad for two reasons: A) It stifles the creativity of team members, and B) limits the amount of things you can do efficiently because you are stuck to a certain design. Look at Team 195's robot. Do the mechanisms from 2005 and 2006 look surprisingly similar to those of 254 and 33? You be the judge.

An informed engineering process where the design is based off goals, not one where goals are based off design will win 9 times out of 10.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

We can tell that FIRST listens to teams and tries to lessen the gap between the high resource teams and the lower resource teams. Let's look at what has been done to improve FIRST in this area.

Here are some history and facts:


Andy B.

Let me add to that, the unique way the GDC works out the game design so that robots with less functionality using the kit base can be a valuable part of an alliance. 2006 was the best year yet for rookies (and some very young non rookie teams), in my opinion.

[KenWittlief]

There is a forest and it contains many trees. We can walk through the forest all day long and point at trees here and there and say "look how good this one is doing, its only two years old..."

but that doesnt mean the forest itself is growing, or healthy.

People have been asking me where the teams are in this thread who are not happy with the current structure?

I have been on teams that lost their sponsor, and had to find new ones. Ive pitched FIRST to CEOs and had them ask me "Are you crazy?! Are you actually going to do this?"

Ive been on teams that lost their teacher and engineer mentors because they burned out, or it was too much commitment to do year after year.

Ive been part of a group trying to form new teams, at schools where we could not get a single teacher to commit, because the personal demands were too much.

I know of teachers and mentors who have been told by their wives "If you sign up for FIRST again this year I WILL divorce you!" (seriously).

The teams that failed to form are not here to post their opinions in this thread. The small teams that are overwhelmed and do not even know about the CD forum are not here to post. The teams that folded because their mentors where overwhelmed are not here to post.

If we want the forest to grow, to have a tree at every HS in the US, at any point in our lifetime, then we need to address these issues.

Telling mentors and students you have to work harder, you have to do 'FIRST' 80 hours a week during the build season, and you have to be engaged in it the rest of the year as well, is not going to make FIRST grow the way it could.

I personally do not have the free time to mentor a team this year. 3 teams have asked me to mentor. I know of a new team in my area that needs mentors, but I know FIRST is a black hole that sucks you in until you have no time left to give.

It doesnt need to be this way. We should be able to form new teams with 8 students, one or two mentors, attend a local regional, only spend 10 to 12 hours a week during build season and still be able to give the students an idea of what its like to be an engineer

without being trampled at the competition by vastly superiour teams.

I have one person here telling me "Playing with the big dogs is an important part of FIRST"

and someone else telling me "If FIRST is too much then start a VEX team instead"

I think FIRST is big enough that we can cut the big dogs loose, and let them have their own superclass of competiton, and also have a division for small teams, where they can feel some measure of success beyond winning one or two matches a year. Winning a match against a powerhouse team is great, and that could be a small teams highlight of the year

but if they had the chance to be division champions, I think that is what they will put on their college applications.

We could have a Mega Class division and a µClass division at the championship, and even if those teams dont compete against each other, they would still connect and consider themselves to be FIRST collectively.

[Bongle]

I don't think divisions would ever work. I don't think a team's performance one year necessarily implies how good or bad their performance will be the next year*. Especially in a high school competition where losing a team's only programmer, a leader, a welder, a mentor or a sponsor can happen in a snap, I don't think long-term organizing like divisions would be effective.

*I don't have time to do this right now, but a scatterplot graphing a team's percentile placing one year with their performance the next would quickly prove/disprove this hypothesis. If the plot is very tightly grouped around a line, then I'm wrong. If it is very spread out, then I am correct.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

It doesnt need to be this way. We should be able to form new teams with 8 students, one or two mentors, attend a local regional, only spend 10 to 12 hours a week during build season and still be able to give the students an idea of what its like to be an engineer

It would seem to me if that's the limitation imposed on a team, you can give the students an idea of what engineering is, but if you're talking purely about a competitive standpoint, that team that spends 12 hours a week won't even be able to compete with similarly funded teams with similar resources who work at least 2-4x that per week.

Dean has already said the competition isn't fair, and isn't meant to be. Why is this being discussed? I'll print off my post and eat the piece of paper if FIRST moves to Ken's sailing divisions idea. It's just not going to happen. It would be bad for FIRST.

[Bongle]

I did have enough time to make a scatterplot of team performance.

As you can see, a team's 2005 performance has almost no predictive power in terms of their 2006 performance. Teams that came in the bottom 10% in 2005 went as high as the top 10% in 2006. This is using the 51 teams that went to GTR in both 2005 and 2006. Based on this, going to a divisions setup makes very little sense.

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

There is a forest and it contains many trees. We can walk through the forest all day long and point at trees here and there and say "look how good this one is doing, its only two years old..." but that doesnt mean the forest itself is growing, or healthy.

Ken,

Your view of the forest is vastly different from mine. The one I see is healthy. There are many trees in here. You seem to be only looking at one type of tree - FRC.

There are other types: FVC, FLL, BEST, Botball, Sumo, Trinity Firefighting Robotics, Robot-one, Underwater robot competitions, BBIQ, Super milage, etc, etc.

15 years ago, this forest only contained one tree: FIRST Robotics. There is much "new growth" here. The neat thing is, there are no boundaries. New trees will spring up and this forest may be twice as big in another 15 years.

There are tall trees, fat trees, and bushes. We live in these trees. The people on these forums (ChiefDelphi) live in the FRC, FVC, or FLL trees. Some energetic people have homes in multiple trees. That's great for them. For me, I live in the FRC tree. Instead of trying to cut the FRC tree down, go climb another. We're pretty tall at this point and we don't need chopped. Our roots are strong. Don't try to uproot this tree and plant it where BEST is planted. Don't prune us into a BBIQ tree. They have their own branches and roots. If you want to make an impact, nourish another tree instead of chopping up ours.

Andy B.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

If we want the forest to grow, to have a tree at every HS in the US, at any point in our lifetime, then we need to address these issues.

"Those issues" will not help those trees be any healthier. Teams don't fold because they arn't winning. Teams usually fold because of management, funding, and commitment reasons. Whether they are regional champions or last place makes no difference. 64 won the most awards any team has ever won in a single season, including a trip all the way to EINSTIEN FINALS in 2005, yet didn't return in 2006. 16 won the CHAIRMAN'S AWARD and didn't return the next year (but have since come back).
If you truly beleive that in order to help Team A survive, you must inhibit Team B, then you are sadly mistaken.
Ken, the FIRST Robotics Competition isn't a competition about who can "work the hardest" or drive the best. It is about who can build the best robot.
The FIRST program as a whole isn't about winning at all. It is about inspiring the next generation of engineers, scientists, mathematicians, programmers, etc. In many cases, students on these under-funded, under-mentored teams can be just as inspired as the rest of us. When 116 does poorly, we try and learn from it and keep it from repeating.
Another example from 116. In 2003, we had an animation team of 3 students. The year before (2002), they had produced something that, well, didn't exactly sweep anyone off their feet. Each of them had to bring their own computers to work on it. No mentors, no expensive, fancy add-on software, no real training. They worked their butts off for 6 weeks. Their end result was an animation that finished in the top 3 at every regional it was entered in (which was 5 by the 2003 AVA rules...even though we only went to 2), including winning the Lonestar Regional Autodesk Award for Visualization. One of those students is now at MIT, and another interned with the Dept. of Defense helping animate combat simulations.

And building off of Andy's comment. Many years ago, Dave Miller, a mentor working with a certain NASA team decided that he didn't like something with FIRST. At that time, it had no programming aspect at all. What did he do? Found BotBall. He founded a robotics competition that suited his style and what he felt should and needed to be accomplished by it.

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

And building off of Andy's comment. Many years ago, Dave Miller, a mentor working with a certain NASA team decided that he didn't like something with FIRST. At that time, it had no programming aspect at all. What did he do? Found BotBall. He founded a robotics competition that suited his style and what he felt should and needed to be accomplished by it.

Good point, Sean... I'll try to expand on it.

Another guy went off and started BBIQ (Mike Bastoni still is productive within FIRST, although not seen, but that's another story).

Back in the mid-90's in Texas, a group of people wanted things simpler than FIRST and started BEST.

I'm sure there are more. These people decided not to try to change FRC into something else... they decided to CREATE and INSPIRE in a different way by being productive in a new arena.

AB

[Dan Richardson]

To be honest, what is fair? Everything will be slightly unfair, there are inherent disadvantages to every competition. Fair is quite relative and at the same time quite subjective. The only way to be completely fair may be make everyone use the same robot and just make it a driving competition. Thats not the point of FIRST, its not FIRST's intent to be fair, its to inspire into Science and Technology we all know that, this isn't debated.

Granted FIRST, of the aforementioned competitions is probably one that creates some of the largest disparities between highly resourced and highly recognized teams, and the lowest of teams. But this to me is exciting.

FIRST has made great strides of late, I recall when a team was worried whether or not their ally would show up on the field. Now we worry whether or not that they have an effective autonomous mode, or if they'll be able to perform the more complex tasks of the game.

Many make it seem that there is no chance to succeed as a rookie team with no resources, or an underfunded teams. But with hard work and dedication to succeeding anything can be accomplished. At the risk of sounding proud I'm going to share a bit of how 1902 got founded this past year.

Team 1902, was a team started 2 weeks before competition, by 1 mom 3 students and a former high school teacher. They had not raised any money they had no tools, no professional mentors, little to no experience, just a team number and a desire to compete. Their first team meeting was held on the day of kickoff. They recruited college FIRSTERS to help with the team, to do what they could ( including myself ). This team worked out of a mentors garage, with but a discounted drill press, and a chop saw borrowed from a neighbor. With maxed out credit cards all season long the team actively pursued sponsorship, being able to secure a few corporate level sponsor, and a few thousand through innovative fund raisers. The team was then able to go on to competition and do fairly well.

In fact, they were finalists in both Florida and Archimedes division at the championship event, and seeded first with an undefeated record at Houston. The argument was made that often times teams will ride on the coat tails of other powerful teams. It is true with great alliances we were able to go far in competition. However through three events team 1902 attended the team went something like 32-11 ( can not find regional match list results so this is what I best remember ). If thats not a measure of level of competitiveness I don't know what is.

FIRST is not a fair competition. Most competitions aren't, there is always someone that will be better or faster, or more prepared, or have more money, or more mentors, or more tools. But this has nothing to do with competitive edge. 1902 worked hard, and continues to work hard till this day in order to put its most competitive foot forward. But when someone says that because this competition is not fair, that teams just can't compete because of the odds stacked against them I am frustrated, and only that much more determined to succeed. I am frustrated because not only is it possible to succeed its possible to win and win big.

FIRST is a competition, and a big part about this competition is winning. It is after all just that, a competition. FIRST has made strides to level the playing field, they've even started FVC which is almost completely level playing field as far as components are involved. But FRC is a competition, teams will strive to get a competitive edge, as well they should. Because if it weren't competitive, than I hardly believe it'd be as exciting. If FIRST weren't exciting, well It just wouldn't be FIRST, and I know I for one would be doing something else.

[MikeDubreuil]

I think the system is reasonably fair to rookies. FIRST has gone to great lengths to level the playing field between the haves and have nots. A good example of the success of FIRST's efforts can be seen by looking at my teams success, or lack thereof, at regionals. We're plenty well funded and have been around for 10 years. However, almost every rookie beat us at the Boston Regional.

Here's some of the things that I think are not fair...

With the unprecedented amount of scoring software woes from last year I think it would be fair if FIRST made as much software as possible open source. A process should be created to allow teams to contribute bug reports. I would feel better about problems with the software if I had been given the opportunity to prevent them.

Originally Posted by <T01>

Referees have ultimate authority during the competition. THEIR RULINGS ARE FINAL! The referees will not review recorded replays.

I'd like this rule to be clarified further. Specifically, I want "scoring changes made in the overnight" to become a less ambiguous process.

Originally Posted by <G42>

Any discussions regarding rules, scores, or penalties must be between the DRIVERs or HUMAN PLAYERs (pre-college team members) and the head referee.

FIRST is taking our rights away as mentors. My job is to make sure my kids are inspired and the program survives. I can't effectively explain to the kids what happened out on the field if I'm not allowed to talk to an official. I also can't explain to a sponsor why the team didn't do well at competition. I don't think FIRST had their priorities right when they thought this up: encourage animosity among students and leave mentors in the cold?

Originally Posted by Chairman's Award 9.2.4 Judging Process

Interviews are limited to ten (10) minutes with not more than three (3) student team members) to best represent them.

I believe a mentor should be able to attend this session. Smaller teams are automatically at a disadvantage because they have field duties. In my experience students would rather watch the competition than talk to the judges about the chairmans award. The award is a celebration for an incredible team with a strong foundation. This foundation is usually built by mentors from the high school or company/university. Allow representatives from the foundation to be there.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil

FIRST is taking our rights away as mentors. My job is to make sure my kids are inspired and the program survives. I can't effectively explain to the kids what happened out on the field if I'm not allowed to talk to an official. I also can't explain to a sponsor why the team didn't do well at competition. I don't think FIRST had their priorities right when they thought this up: encourage animosity among students and leave mentors in the cold?

I thought this was a great rule, actually.

For the most part, if a team member is going to get in a ref's face and start yelling, it's going to be an adult mentor. I think this really calms things down.

I know last year we were in situations where as mentors we were completely incensed, and it would have been very counterproductive for one of us to have been arguing with a ref instead of a student talking to them.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil

With the unprecedented amount of scoring software woes from last year I think it would be fair if FIRST made as much software as possible open source. A process should be created to allow teams to contribute bug reports. I would feel better about problems with the software if I had been given the opportunity to prevent them.

Actually, there was a precedent for 2006's scoring issues: 2005. (Which only hammers home your point.)

Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil

I'd like this rule to be clarified further. Specifically, I want "scoring changes made in the overnight" to become a less ambiguous process.

Are you talking about the referees and scorers getting together after the end of the matches, and rechecking their scorecards against the records that were entered into the scoring computers? Or do you feel that some officials were deciding to change selected scores based on a discussion and reinterpretation of the calls made earlier? (I would consider the former to be standard practice; I'm not aware of the latter to any significant degree.)