Multiples 2007

[Beth Sweet]

Now that CD is being flooded with photos, I'm noticing a trend that I can't help but talk about.

Last year, there were the Niagara Triplets. I was incredibly supportive of this rookie-starting venture because I thought that it was a good way to get them through a season and give them a chance at survival. This year, I'm a bit confused with some of the twins and triplets.

The twins and triplets that I see this year seem to be old veterans teaming up with old veterans. I'm curious as to the motivations behind these collaborations.

If some of the double/triple veterans would like to talk about why they decided to collaborate this year, I'd be interested to hear some of the reasons behind them!

[efoote868]

I can't say that I've noticed that, but I have noticed that all the robots seem to have the same designs (although I haven't seen my team's design yet, for which i'm worried, and thankful at the same time)
For the triplets and twins, I'd say that it is great that teams are branching together. I can imagine that in real world engineering, different teams will have to work together, on the same object; perhaps different companies even. I'll all in favor of collaborative efforts, and if it produces a better, more competitive robot, then all the more reason to cheer. I love watching really competitive matches, its the next best thing to building your own.

[SPurekar]

Team 226 formed a collaboration with two other teams because they didn’t have funding or mentors to build their own robots and we wanted to help them out. We decided that it wasn’t feasable for our engineers to build three separate robots, and never considered leaving the other teams to cope for themselves without mentors, so we built three identical bots. I’m guessing other teams were in similar situations and had a lack of resources, so they had to pool together.

[Conor Ryan]

1403 didn't participate in any collaboration efforts (unless being gracious and professional counts). What I'm thinking is happening is that teams are recognizing the success of the Niagara Triplets beyond the rookie factor. Besides producing top notch robots, the teams were able to pool resources resulting in much more complete and deep teams. Some teams have better fabrication capabilities than others, some have better programming, so why not team up and create better robots?

My next question is, how long will these collaboration robots last?

[Tom Bottiglieri]

I can certainly see where collaboration can be helpful, but at the same time I really think there is a better solution.

For example.. Team 125 designed and built their own robot this year, just like 99% of the other teams in FIRST. On top of that, we decided to mentor 3 rookie and second year teams. We brought the high schoolers from these other schools into our lab, showed them our design process, then went out to their schools and held brainstorming sessions with them. Each school had a different goal, and we designed two more robots to fit the high schooler's ideas. From there we split our resources in two, half going to our own robot and the other half going into fabricating parts for our rookies. At the end of the build we had 4 different robots, all fully functional. While they might not all be the best, prettiest robots, each robot had input from their high school of choice, and is more than just a "cookie cutter" robot. I think the students from these schools will appreciate this more than if we just handed them a robot to play with.

[Lil' Lavery]

I think Beth is proably alluding to the "triad" of 384, 540, and 1086, the Exploding Minotaurs (1369 and 1902) and possibly also the continuation of the 254 and 968 partnership. I havn't noticed any other collaborations posted on Delphi (I know of one other though, both 3rd year teams).
While I may not know the motives of each collaboration, there is a definite and distinct difference between most of these and a NiagaraFIRST-type scenario. The 494/70 scenario seems to fit the NiagaraFIRST bill pretty well though, and the 340/424 is a unique situation, and not really a robot collaboration.

[Alex Cormier]

im sure the 340/424 boys and girls and confirm and add more to this post.

424 is a rookie team, based within the HS. They just were given a recycled number.


But other then that, i do agree with that was said before this post and a lil confused as well.

[Mike Starke]

340 and 424 are both based out of Churchville-Chili High School. " A chicken in every pot, two FIRST teams in every school..."

424 is a team for rookies, new to the FIRST program. 340 is a team for students who have been through the program. SO next year, kids on 424 this year, will be on 340 next year.
Both of our teams brainstormed together about how to accomplish the game, but then went our separate ways to decide on how to accomplish it. We realy wanted to make sure we didnt make similar robots. But even if we did, it would because the two teams came up with it on their own. Even though the title of that picture says "GRR Twins", were not really twins in any sense, except that we both have orange bumpers. Unless like Ed said, we're fraternal twins. The drives, lifts, grabbers are all different on the two robots.
It was really cool to work side by side with other students, but totally working on two totally different robots.

[Josh Murphy]

Also, you have 1902, 1369 together and the martians did it last year with 70 and 494 and will probably do it again this year. Best of luck to everyone.

[Tetraman]

I'm seeing more similar designs than more exact designs.

[Jeffrafa]

I don't think I've noticed any startling growth in collaborating teams over last year. A number of teams, including ours, posted pictures of identical robots that could be mistaken as collaborating teams if it wasn't realized it was just a second practice robot for their own benefit.

As Tetraman stated, there are definitely more similar designs to be had, but this dosen't necessarily mean collaboration. I could search for 5 minutes or less and come up with pictures of 10 - 15 robots that are either direct replicas or clear derivatives of what is now being referred to as the "West Coast Arm", yet I know of no pair of collaborating teams using this system this year.

I doubt we'll see the current collaborating alliances breaking up any time soon. Its a different way of doing business, but arguably no better or worse. In order to pull off such a successful collaboration over a distance like 254 and 968 have there must be some comprehensive designing being done before they even set out to build the components of their robot, something our team just more thoroughly utilized this past year - our 4th season. Also it more closely replicates what is witnessed in the real world this day in age. Very rarely anymore does a company build a system completely from scratch - they outsource manufacturing of various components to companies specialized in that field. I'm impressed that two FIRST teams manage to build their transmissions and wheels hundreds of miles from the production of their frames (not to mention countless other parts of their robot) and they are organized and coordinated enough to have everything fit together and work when the time comes - to me this is a pretty astounding achievement and a testament to the design work that must go into these two robots.

- Jeff

[miketwalker]

I can say that with 1902 and 1369, the collaboration was mutually beneficial. Both teams had quite low budgets and time limitations with college mentor classes. We still built 1902's robot in Dan's garage, we still built the majority of it with hand tools. This year's game required an autonomous that took several days to code and in doing a collaboration permitted the first robot to be done early for programming. To say that 1902 was just collaborating for an ungracious reason would be silly. I can say that I personally have spent more time with 1390 then 1902 this year, and I know that we have worked with the majority of the Orlando-area teams in one form or another helping their programs. 1902 has also worked on securing funds to help sponsor all the teams in the local area. The code that was developed for this collaboration has been taken in pseudo-code bits and shared with local teams in need of help.

In response to Tom's comment, I know that 1369 and 1902 both built their own robots. Sometimes 1369 would put extra resources into one area (for example, the drive base assembly) while we worked on something else (in this same example, the arm assembly). Neither team handed a robot to another team, not in any way. The photo of the 2 robots taken together was the only day I ever saw the 2 robots in the same room in fact. 1369 came to Orlando to work in Dan's garage on a day where the school couldn't allow them to work and both teams made a full day out of it. Several students drove over from Tampa that day. 1369s programmers also met with 1902s programmers at a house in West Orlando every weekend working in unison on the sensor testing and code design. There is no way we could say that one team built the robot and handed it to the other. 1369 built the base first, learned some lessons and told us before we put ours together. 1902 put the arm on the base first and passed on the lessons to 1369. We learned to use the assembly-line process to our advantage to increase efficiency and make much better use of our time.

Without the collaboration none of that would have been possible, I wouldn't have had the time to donate to 1390, the code wouldn't be in a position to help other teams, and we certainly wouldn't have had the first robot done a week and half early. Veteran teams pairing doesn't have to be a selfish act, and from what I saw this year was one of the best changes 1902 made in it's approach to expand. I think that you will see the Orlando area teams greatly benefited from this approach since we have been able to share our resources even though both 1369 and 1902 had small teams with small budgets.

[Allison K]

Like Smita said above, we have triplets this year. It wasn't so much planned as it just happened. We have a 9th year team, a 7th year team, and a 4th year team. 226 found out on kickoff that the first team needed help, and on the Monday after kickoff that the second one did, and there wasn't much decision making involved. It was either a collaboration or no team at all. Mentoring wasn't a workable option because we didn't have the resources to divide between two teams, much less three. It's been a really great experience for all three teams though, so I'm glad it happened. All three teams worked together to design one robot and build three of them. We didn't assign robots to a team until the day before ship, and even then all students worked on all three robots. I don't have the energy to look up the thread (my brain is still melted from last week) but I recall a conversation about how to help flailing veteran teams. Maybe the veteran collaborations is an example of this issue.

In any case, Larry, Curly, and Moe are looking forward to a reunion at West Michigan!

[mtbkr5]

Originally Posted by mtbkr5

Our Triad was mainly formed to share mentors and resources and most importantly, brains. We are 3 schools within a 5 mile radius in an area that is not a mecca for industrialization. Finding a shop to help us out is not an easy task. By forming this Triad, we shared shop time, held meetings at either school or shops. In the pre-season, we looked at many different drive systems, arm systems, feeder systems, and some students were concered about making the bot water-tight fot the possible water game . 384 has always been ahead of schedule and on time, something that 1086 has had problems with in the past. One of 384's mentors is a Physics teacher at their school and a former Air Force engineer, who gave us the military perspective of the design process which we implimented as a fly-off of which team's design prototype we would use for the competition. One of 540's student's dad owns a fixture corp. who made a full rack to be used by all three teams, designed and made an awesome control board and crate for all three teams. 1086 shared their machine shop and warehouse space with the 384 and 540. Engineers who work with vacuum systems for their paletizing robots everyday, helped the student design team understand air flow and pressure to get max yeild for the Venturi vacuum. This process of colaboration is not about winning, but about the local teams getting a better engineering experience from FIRST.

I posted this in another thread concerning the idea of a colaboration. Its about geting local teams together to better the experience from FIRST.

[JaneYoung]

I can think of reasons for teams to do this, if even once.
- As miketwalker and Allison K have mentioned, helping/aiding each other. Lack of resources can make things like collaboration a successful learning experience for everyone involved.
and
- curiosity - Working together for one robot is fun and challenging enough - teams working together brings new challenges and ways of working together - expanding the pool of talent, resources, opportunities

There has been scattered remarks about veteran teams and their struggles, some dying out. This is something to look at - as FIRST expands creating more rookie teams, we need our veteran teams around to help support the rookies with experience, knowledge, and the can-do attitude to help them get through build and the competitions and to help them understand FIRST. That is why our Hall of Famers are so valued and important.