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#16
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Half and Half
There are so many parts in building a robot including but not limited to....
1. brainstorming 2. designing 3. testing/making components of the robot 4. building the chaise 5. wiring 6. programming 7. testing robot under real conditions 8. Beautifying it I know that almost at least a student worked on one part, expect for the programming, because it is really hard and no time to learn PBasic, even though I know a lot of Visual Basic. A lot of students beautifying their robot to make it look presentable. Remember there is an award for the most attractive looking robot. |
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#17
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On team 69, the Students Come up with the concepts, and General Design. The engineers help figure out how to get it to work, then as a team we build it. The Students doing most of it, with the More Experienced Students (program veterans) and the engineers Due the More Complex Work, and the Machinists due the aluminum welding and other such trade skills not had by students. Building Wise, Id Say it leans towards the Students just because there is so much work that’s not extremely complicated (until it all goes together).
But Keep in mind that the Rookie teams have it tougher, it would be like upcoming Freshmen, there Skills aren’t there yet, and they need someone to help show them. So when you hear the rumors about a freshmen team, it could be true, but don’t expected it the next year. |
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#18
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On my team, the work is equally shared in many aspects. We've always had a great deal of students who about live to design, build, and test our bot.
Our engineers mainly do the design, but they take any and all suggestions that students come up with in designing the bot. Pretty much, we come up with ideas, they explain why or why they wouldn't work, then all of our ideas are put on paper by the engineers (mainly b/c most of the people with ideas have never even used CAD or AutoCAD in their life). Once it gets down to building the bot, things are a little different. Until this next season, we've always had two adults machine most of the parts, do to a lack of equipment that we have access to (due to age and location). Some parts students make, but the actually heavy machining is up to the adults. Building the bot itself is everyone's job, whether they want it to be or not. It's not like we're forced to put something together but if you're in the SPAM Pit with nothing obvious that you're doing (generally if you're not on the programing team or doing the newsletter/site), you are, um, highly encouraged by one of the adults to help out. Each year a few specific students will take over and do most of the work. In those last about six hours, when all of us students are home asleep after being at the SPAM Pit for 12 plus hours straight, the engineers finish up the last minute things (which usually involves screwing everything together and getting rid of extra weight). So. Yeah. We all build it. It could be a bit better about students getting a say in the design of the bot, but it's good as it is. ~Angela who just realized she's been too hard on her team's engineers in the past |
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#19
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There has to be a balance
The first year that I saw the Delphi teams, I almost fell over in amazement.
In a team's first year it is hard to even imagine what the capabilities of a robot, designed and built in just weeks, could be capable of. And my first impression was whoa who built that, the skunk works? But then I, like many others, realized that asking almost any student on the teams left you with the impression that they knew how it was designed, how to drive it and how to repair it. And on top of that there was no feeling that anything was hidden. Just look at the technical knowledge handed out on this site alone. I sometimes feel bad because the attitude on our team seems to be its ours or its yours; some feel the sponsor is just a source of funds. The worst thing for me was to see a design get built that was an obvious disaster that spent valuable time and money when something better could have been made. Experience from parents and engineers can highlight design errors that aren't obvious especially to people without a background in mechanics or electronics. My personal opinion on FIRST is that it is designed to get students excited about engineering, see whats possible, and to maybe become the scientists, engineers and Technical Graphics superstars of the future. I don't think the goal was for students to build robots and give parts to engineers to have machined or welded. Working together to come up with the slickest design, the most robust and efficient design, that’s the goal. One of the reasons people get so upset on this topic is because some people (like me) are a little jealous at the time, design, and execution that some of the teams are able to pull off. I leave the competition each year amazed at the features, construction, and in general the attitude of the teams that come there to win. Remember the word TEAM, it's the buzzword in every corporation right now. |
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#20
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Who turned that bolt? Who welded that joint? Who drilled that hole? Now that's INSPIRATIONAL!
The point that Dean is trying to make with this very complex experience, (which includes everyone involved) is that Inspiring students to CONSIDER the Science, Math, and all of the Technology fields does NOT demand student building the robots. Its not even about Learning about robots, all that is a BONUS. The confusion is in the interpretation of "HOW to INSPIRE!" Its NOT about WHO built your robot! It's about - Did we inspire the students to either continue or consider a future in the areas that we all know and love (Engineering, Math, Science, Bio-Medical, Computers, etc) Successful programs accomplish this regardless of Who Built the Robot - instead of this question why not ask, "Did we successfully Inspire the students? What is our track record? How many are interested enough to continue their education in a related field? How many student team members would be willing to say that they continue to be, or are now committed to pursueing a degree because of what they witnessed by participating on the FIRST team? That to me is what is important - by the way, I also commend ALL of the teams that are 0 to 100% student built robots - But, Don't confuse the ends with the means. |
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#21
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Right on the money Meaubry
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#22
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more robot build comments
After having particpated in FIRST the last few years, and having looked around and seen how other groups operate, I've formulated my own opinions. I have to agree with the arrangement that team 308 has, and that's about how team 677 operates (though I'd like the numbers to shift more to the high school students). It is extremely difficult for us to go over certain topics in an appropriate level of detail, as not all the students have the math and physics background needed to make the disucssion worthwhile. This was extremely difficult for us this first year, since the HS student knowledge base simply wasn't there. There we times when we would toss out the words moment or torque, and then realize that we needed to explain what those were first. It's not like our girls are stupid - far from it - they just lack the knowledge base to design and build a robot from scratch. But..... our hope that this by having them build with us, and looking over our shoulders while we design, they learn by watching, and then by doing (we had the girls design a cart for our robot this year). If you couple that with an effective fall program (I'll post my written documents on what we do eventually, but we're trying something different so I'd rather wait until I see how it works before I suggest our methods), you've got the pieces in place to change that 80%/20% ratio. Granted, this will take 2 or 3 years to build the good knowledge base among the HS students so that their junior/senior year the students can do some design, but it can still happen.
However.... I'm not saying that by the end of 4 years the robot will be built entirely by HS students - that's just not feasible. Sure, they could probably design and build something, but I'd fear that too many failures in the process would make cynics out of them and turn them off of engineering. And... time is another factor (as already pointed out). As a team of college students, and not having "real jobs" or "a wife and kids" or "needing sleep", we have the luxary of pulling the late hours during crunch time if we need to (and this year we didn't really need to - we only stayed to 2 or 3 AM 2 or 3 times - a complete first for us. In years past, with another team, we spent crazy hours - I had a 50 hour day once). However, I think you could realistically make that ratio 60/40 engineers, and still produce a quality machine that could be competitive (depending on how luck dependent the game is that particular year). |
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#23
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My team didn't really have any active engeneers. It was designed and built completely by highschool and college students. Our only active engeneer came into the picture after we had designed everything and was basically a machinist (and a dang good one).
I think designing and building is everything compaired to knowing how somthing works. Look at your car. You know how it works, but given a bunch of parts could you design and build one just as good? Greg |
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#24
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Greg T you bring up an excellent point.
Which is exactly why you wouldn't give a 'bunch of parts' to someone that just started building cars and expect them build a world class product. It takes years of experience and training. New engineers learn with more experienced engineers until someday the student has become the teacher. This comes from my own personal experience designing and building cars, I mean trucks. (Right now I am in OKC launching the Trailblazer and Envoy XL SUV's) I didn't just start at GM and just go launch a bodyshop, it wouldn't have worked. But now after a few years I understand things better, what works and what doesn't, yet I still have alot to learn. Almost every engineer will continue to learn for their entire life. The only way to go in FIRST is to be a TEAM |
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#25
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Matt/Greg,
You bring up some good points. If I read this right, you are agreeing in saying that it is difficult at best for the students to try to put something together on their own, but that they can with help. At what point do you think that the students can begin taking ownership of something, and become the teachers? In our old team only seniors were allowed on the team (which I thought was silly), so this will be our first time of having repeat customers, so to speak. I'm interested in what teams have done long term to keep the student interest high. What I'd ultimately like to do is have some design component, however small, be done entirely by the students, though it would probably be the "older" team members (those that have been around 3+ years, with a select few who are around for their second year). One of my concerns is student retention. We have a pretty agressive fall program that was a carry over from out 128 days. What happens when a student sees the same thing 3 time? I can't make the labs more challenging, or I loose the new students. I can't run separate sessions, or I add division to the team. I'd probablly like to have the older students run some of the labs - that might take care of the issue somewhat. But...then this just carries through into the winter - I don't want to push the girls so much that they get burnt out, and to the point where we don't turn out a quality product. But... at the same time I don't want to dumb things down to the point where the girls loose interest. How have people remedied this in the past? Or, is this a non-issue? Erik (PS - we are also an all college student team (with the exception of 3 parents that help out and do some great work for us) - I just have a gripe about the "college student is not an engineer" designation, espeically for older college students - I've met plenty of people with engineer in their job title that don't have engineering degrees...... but that's a whole different topic that I'd rather not get in to) |
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#26
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#27
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yes, it is
Sorry about that - I have a tendancy (that I need to break myself of) of refering to them as "the girls." Yes, this is an all female team (well, on the HS side of things anyway - we work with Columbus School for Girls, but the number of characters displayed in my mini-profile on the sidebar is too small to show that). Didn't mean to make any sexist generalizations or anything - just a bad habit.
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#28
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We have no mentors, and our "team coach" is just the science teacher who acts as a front, he isn't involved at all, and I don't think he reallly knows anything about the competition. Basically we just got some money, and we've taken care of the whole thing. Our robot isn't the best, or really that creative, but it was built 100 percent by kids. (most of which have no experience) We've just used the forums to find answers for things. You'd be suprised as to how resourceful kids can be in getting things done.
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#29
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we have a machinist, an engineer who throws out ideas, one who has a lot of contacts, a person who supplies us with metal, a company with a watercutter (we have yet to use them) and a cool machinist who makes our tranny plates from the autocad drawing we supply him with. everything on our robot is student designed and built, with the exception of tranny plates because they do need to be very exact and we have no milling or cnc machines at my school. everything else on the robot is completely student designed and built. thats where our motto comes in, 'student built, engineer approved'. our engineers are basically there to guide us not to make something impossible to build with our resources, and to take mcmaster parts numbers
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#30
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One thing I like about my team is that the engineers just kind of point you off in a direction and the students pick up on that point and expand. In the early design stages, every student comes up with at least one drawing (done on a transparency to be presented on an overhead) of a robot or robot component they'd like to see on our 'bot. These aren't CAD drawings or anything close, they are just sketches. The team votes on the pieces we want, and then try to come up with an assembly for those pieces that will make the most sense.
The engineers come in and work a little ProE magic (since most of the students haven't even heard of CAD software) and come up with a base plan. Since we don't have any welding facilities on site, the only parts we get welded are done by an external fab shop and that is limited to major frame components (no sub-components unless they are of special importance - this year no sub-components were done off-site). Then the students work closely with engineers and our AWESOME machinist to make parts for the 'bot. If the job was done poorly, or doesn't look nice, the job is used as our "prototype" and then the "final" is produced after the student knows what the part needs to look like. We basically only use the engineers as a quick reference for drill sizes (they usually respond, "Look at the chart. We have a nice chart RIGHT NEXT TO THE DRILL with drill sizes. I EXPECT THAT TO ME MEMORIZED BY TOMORROW!"), material recommendations, and their contacts for the different material vendors. Its funny because some people will come over and ask if a given part was done by an engineer just because it looks like a professional machined it and the person that built that part will point to their initials punched into the part. We are very proud of our work and the engineers & machinist don't let us get away with poor craftsmanship. |
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