Lessons Learned - The Negative

[sdcantrell56]

A more likely scenario for the discrepancy in sizing would be that your robot shifted during shipping. The crates are handled, less than cautiously, and if your robot is bot very structurally sound you could have frame members shifting in the crate. Not to mention, after one regional and countless hard-hits, a frame can easily be tweaked enough to through the superstructure of a robot outside of the box.

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by RoboMom

The sponsors "banners" were put on the screen as video banners this year. I believe this change was due to finances.

I could believe this. That said, with regard to the video screens:

-On Curie, the team numbers on the scoring display were completely unreadable. The alliance selection screen wasn't much better (and, in the 87-team division, cut off the lower-ranked teams).
-The way of displaying the final score could be refined. It took me until the later part of Bayou to figure out that the red background to the match number meant the score was final. I'm not sure that someone just walking in would figure it out that easily.
-I miss the days where the seeding was shown on the screen. Showing sponsor logos is important, but a screen for a few minutes once or twice a day with the information would be great for those of us stuck to the stands.

[BuddyB309]

ANIMATION!! nobody knows how hard it is.....

[sgreco]

Originally Posted by BurtGummer

Well, being a rookie team, it was our first year in Atlanta.

But once again I will bring up the topic of a rookie team. From this weekend, I see FIRST defining a rookie team as a team with a number from 2700ish to 3100ish. AKA a number chosen this year. So I have a question. Is team 2753 a rookie team who has never participated in FIRST? What about 3091? 2753 was almost exactly the same as 399, and 3091 sounds like several teams just recombined into one, making them a rookie team. Can anyone clarify this for me? If they are in fact rookies, who have never done FIRST before, then who built the robot? I can guarantee it wasn't the students. I am not saying that we should of won by an means......I would have been happy if any real rookie team won.

Second.....rules. First off, regionals need more control. We fit easily into the measuring box at the LA Regional, but somehow our robot grew 3/8 of an inch between then and Atlanta, and the frame was not bent. In fact, I cut off a piece that was a little too high on Thursday morning just because I didn't like it sticking up. It fit that way into the measuring box at the LA Regional, but after cutting it off, it didn't fit in the boxes at Atlanta. If you are going to be so specific about something, the equipment measuring it needs to be precise as well.

Wiring colors? I'll be honest, I had no idea because I didn't have the time to sit down and read a rule book, and other students assigned the task did not complete it. But with that aside, why does it matter what color a wire is? Gauge is of course understandable, but the color? I've been working with electrical 'stuff's for years. IMO, it's a rule that is not necessary. Rules are normally for controlling the robot entries from having extra advantages (Size, Weight). But wire color? Come on. Don't pull the safety card on this either. Knowing a wire is ground or hot shouldn't decide how you work with it. You treat every wire like it's hot, just like you always treat a gun like it's loaded. On top of that, our wire coding was not correct at the LA Regional either, but none of the inspectors noticed. It would definitely help if we knew about it then, rather than at the Championships.

Third. Mentor involvement. Some of the teams I see have robots that you just KNOW that high school students didn't build, because when you go to the pits, you see a mentor fixing it, not a student. If your students are not capable of building a high caliber robot, then don't. Build a kitbot. They'll get more experience out of building that than some other complex robot. When awards were given out at the individual divisions, I saw several teams with parents/mentors getting handed the awards, with the students following behind them.

Match scheduling. If you want people to 'watch the monitors' make them visible! Being next to FTC, the only thing we saw was FTC. Being 8 minutes ahead of schedule, in my opinion, is unacceptable. If times are given out to the minute, then that schedule should be stuck to. Sure, fall behind, but getting ahead? We had to fix a bent frame from a match right before, which took A LOT of work, and then we show up at the field 8 minutes early and the match had already started.

Overall, I see a lot of unnecessary control in places, and not enough/no control in many others. I agree on several other things in this thread, like G14 and the control that human players had. Having a good human player could easily win the match for you, not the robot. But I won't elaborate that stuff.

I will say that I am glad I went to Atlanta and had the opportunity to experience it, because it will be much harder to get there after our rookie year. It had the fun parts.....and it had the parts that made me steaming mad. Some improvements can definitely be made though.

A couple comments.

I'm not going to claim that I know anything about 3091, but it sounded like in the awards that the kids came from different towns, not different prexisting teams. (Correct me if I'm wrong).

As for 2753 and 399, they are from completely opposite sides of the country. The fact that their designs are similer seems random to me. It is very possible for rookies to dominate. 2753 is a good example of this. It doesn't mean they aren't really rookies, it just means that they are good. My team's most successful competitive year was our rookie year. All I'm saying is, just because a rookie is really good, doesn't mean they aren't really rookies.

About the mentor involvement. Mentors are crucial. Students need to work to learn, but they need mentors. Kids can also learn by watching mentors do things. (I'm not advocating it, it still teaches kids). Part of the real world is designing things and sending them off to be made. I'll be completely honest, my team had a student and mentor designed swerve drive, we sent away the CAD models and had the parts machined for us, it's just the way it is. I may not have operated a manual mill to make the parts, but I learned about 4-axis CNC machines, which in many ways can be just as valuable. Even if you don't make all the parts on the robot, you can make them for other things like prototypes. I learn just as much from prototypes on manual machines as I do from the computer made final product. Even though the final product is professonally made, it doesn't mean I didn't learn a ton of things along the way. Mentors shouldn't do everything, but sometimes they need to do certain things. FIRST is about learning and if kids are doing everything themselves, then they likely aren't learning as much as they could be.

About the rules. If you aren't happy with the rules of inspection, specifically the box, go out and prove them wrong. In Boston last year, my team's robot didn't fit in the box, we got out a measuring tape and showed them that their box was actually 3/8 of an inch too small. We passed inspection. If in fact somehow your robot did grow, and they have an accurately sized box, then that's something you have to find a way to deal with. In the real world, if they tell you to make a 4 foot wide robot and you make 4 feet and 1/8 of an inch, you get fired, if it's 4 feet, you get a raise. The rule book may be long, but someone has to read it. Someone on my team always reads the entire book each year just ensure that we know what we are doing. It's just one of the things that you have to do. All of these things are learning experiences, and honestly, there isn't a better place to learn than FIRST.

[Vikesrock]

Burt,

First of all, being an FRC rookie does not mean you have never done FIRST before. FIRST runs both FLL and FTC both of which can provide extremely valuable experience to a group of individuals who would still be FRC rookies. Team 2753 was made up of students from last year's FTC Champions so they definitely had some FIRST experience. You can also search around for posts by the user "Lowfategg", he is a student on 2753 and after seeing some of his posts here I am fairly confidant that students did a lot or all of the work on that machine.

With regards to mentor involvement, you would be surprised at what students can do when they have experienced knowledgeable mentors guiding them and assisting them. Many of the machines probably have much more student involvement than you think. Having said that there are no rules regarding mentor involvement (other than driving) for a reason, FIRST knows that different teams will choose to run in different ways and has decided not to regulate this. Some teams will have mentors doing all or almost all of the work. Some teams will have students doing all the work with no engineering mentors at all. Most teams will fall somewhere in between. If this is a problem for you and/or your team there are many other Highschool robotics competitions that are limited to participation by highschool students. There are many other topics on this subject already and I suggest you search and read through some of them. Many others have done a much better job of expressing some of the points I am trying to make.

I agree with your point regarding the measuring box, it is important for the measuring instruments and scales to be consistent between events.

With respect to inspection consistency. It is and always has been the job of your team to insure that your robot meets all the rules and you sign a sheet expressing that to the best of your knowledge you meet the rules as the last part of inspection. Inspectors are volunteers doing the best job that they can.

While many of the rules are put in place for safety and to prevent teams from gaining a competitive edge others are put in to ease inspection and to instill good practices. If you have been working with electrical stuff for years then you should know the value of respecting the common standards for electrical wire coloring. Using consistent coloring allows for easy visual inspection of electrical systems to insure that they are wired correctly which benefits both the team and the inspectors. I'm sure Al has some even better insight about the reasoning behind this rule. If he doesn't wander in here and see this I recommend you post in the electrical forum or send him a PM.

[davidalln]

Originally Posted by BurtGummer

...and 3091 sounds like several teams just recombined into one, making them a rookie team.

Just to clarify this, as a member of one of the teams that was involved in 3091, they were a completely new team who consisted of completely new members from two different high schools in Atlanta sponsored mostly by the 100 Black Men of Atlanta. Several Atlantian teams, including us, helped them get started (as in, helped them become an official team, watched over their build season and helped out when possible), but their Rookie All Star award was all due to their dedicated work.

[RoboMom]

Originally Posted by BurtGummer

Well, being a rookie team, it was our first year in Atlanta.

But once again I will bring up the topic of a rookie team. From this weekend, I see FIRST defining a rookie team as a team with a number from 2700ish to 3100ish. AKA a number chosen this year.

FRC has a definition of a rookie team, which can be found here:
http://www.usfirst.org/community/frc...t.aspx?id=6632

[BurtGummer]

Originally Posted by Vikesrock

Burt,

First of all, being an FRC rookie does not mean you have never done FIRST before. FIRST runs both FLL and FTC both of which can provide extremely valuable experience to a group of individuals who would still be FRC rookies. Team 2753 was made up of students from last year's FTC Champions so they definitely had some FIRST experience. You can also search around for posts by the user "Lowfategg", he is a student on 2753 and after seeing some of his posts here I am fairly confidant that students did a lot or all of the work on that machine.

With regards to mentor involvement, you would be surprised at what students can do when they have experienced knowledgeable mentors guiding them and assisting them. Many of the machines probably have much more student involvement than you think. Having said that there are no rules regarding mentor involvement (other than driving) for a reason, FIRST knows that different teams will choose to run in different ways and has decided not to regulate this. Some teams will have mentors doing all or almost all of the work. Some teams will have students doing all the work with no engineering mentors at all. Most teams will fall somewhere in between. If this is a problem for you and/or your team there are many other Highschool robotics competitions that are limited to participation by highschool students. There are many other topics on this subject already and I suggest you search and read through some of them. Many others have done a much better job of expressing some of the points I am trying to make.

I agree with your point regarding the measuring box, it is important for the measuring instruments and scales to be consistent between events.

With respect to inspection consistency. It is and always has been the job of your team to insure that your robot meets all the rules and you sign a sheet expressing that to the best of your knowledge you meet the rules as the last part of inspection. Inspectors are volunteers doing the best job that they can.

While many of the rules are put in place for safety and to prevent teams from gaining a competitive edge others are put in to ease inspection and to instill good practices. If you have been working with electrical stuff for years then you should know the value of respecting the common standards for electrical wire coloring. Using consistent coloring allows for easy visual inspection of electrical systems to insure that they are wired correctly which benefits both the team and the inspectors. I'm sure Al has some even better insight about the reasoning behind this rule. If he doesn't wander in here and see this I recommend you post in the electrical forum or send him a PM.

I'm not blaming the volunteers, I'm just saying that some of the ruling is unnecessary. I am an individual who uses whats available. If I had the option of buying red and black wire at home depot in the correct gauge sizes, then I would have, because I do understand wiring codes. I used blue for black (not an uncommon practice for common/ground). They didn't have the red or even black wire (both surprising and not surprising in a way for Home Depot), so I used what I could buy. Having wire is better than none at all. Home Depot was not our only stop either.....electrical specialty shops no longer exist in our area.

The measuring tape idea from Sgreco is one I wish I would have thought of. Great idea, and I'll be sure to do that if we ever have this problem again.

Rookie then, should be defined, and maybe separate awards. Just an idea I'm throwing out. A team with robotics experience against a team with none at all has a large advantage, whether it's FTC or FRC, or some other robotics experience. Those are two completely different types of rookies in my opinion.

[Billfred]

Foreword: I've posted in a similar style to this post times before; there are very legitimate questions Burt asked in this one. This one is similar to some of the other discussions in construction only.

Originally Posted by BurtGummer

Well, being a rookie team, it was our first year in Atlanta.

But once again I will bring up the topic of a rookie team. From this weekend, I see FIRST defining a rookie team as a team with a number from 2700ish to 3100ish. AKA a number chosen this year. So I have a question. Is team 2753 a rookie team who has never participated in FIRST? What about 3091? 2753 was almost exactly the same as 399, and 3091 sounds like several teams just recombined into one, making them a rookie team. Can anyone clarify this for me? If they are in fact rookies, who have never done FIRST before, then who built the robot? I can guarantee it wasn't the students. I am not saying that we should of won by an means......I would have been happy if any real rookie team won.

FIRST has a definition of what makes for a rookie team. Some rookies are always going to have better resources--2753 had a dominant run in FTC, 2815 has such mentor help that five years' experience still makes you a youngin'. I can't speak for anyone else, but 2815 remained a "real" rookie team through the conclusion of the Championship. Mentors drove our design this year, which I have absolutely no problem with--they had the experience. With time, I expect our kids to step up and work with the mentors to pick up some of the techniques and wisdom we've amassed.

Second.....rules. First off, regionals need more control. We fit easily into the measuring box at the LA Regional, but somehow our robot grew 3/8 of an inch between then and Atlanta, and the frame was not bent. In fact, I cut off a piece that was a little too high on Thursday morning just because I didn't like it sticking up. It fit that way into the measuring box at the LA Regional, but after cutting it off, it didn't fit in the boxes at Atlanta. If you are going to be so specific about something, the equipment measuring it needs to be precise as well.

If you think the measuring box is off, ask the inspectors (politely) to measure the dimensions. The sizing boxes are shipped with the fields, so damage isn't impossible, but you're really best off breaking out the tape measure on this one.

Wiring colors? I'll be honest, I had no idea because I didn't have the time to sit down and read a rule book...

And there's your first mistake. Just like the trailer hitch rules, or the team number sizes, or the display of schools and sponsors, it's a specification handed down by FIRST. You have to read the manual to be sure you find them all.

...and other students assigned the task did not complete it. But with that aside, why does it matter what color a wire is? Gauge is of course understandable, but the color? I've been working with electrical 'stuff's for years. IMO, it's a rule that is not necessary. Rules are normally for controlling the robot entries from having extra advantages (Size, Weight). But wire color? Come on. Don't pull the safety card on this either. Knowing a wire is ground or hot shouldn't decide how you work with it. You treat every wire like it's hot, just like you always treat a gun like it's loaded.

You might be fine, but other teams aren't so lucky. I've seen some genuine rat's nests over the years--with no wire color rules, I'd have no chance of figuring out the issue. I imagine Al Skierkiewicz or another one of the electrical know-it-alls can expand on FIRST's logic here.

On top of that, our wire coding was not correct at the LA Regional either, but none of the inspectors noticed. It would definitely help if we knew about it then, rather than at the Championships.

That the LA inspectors missed it is unfortunate, but it's not a free pass down the road. Your team is ultimately responsible for ensuring compliance with all the rules.

Third. Mentor involvement. Some of the teams I see have robots that you just KNOW that high school students didn't build, because when you go to the pits, you see a mentor fixing it, not a student.

There's no rule prohibiting this, and several awards celebrate partnerships between students and mentors. Partnership would imply that both groups are putting in their fair share of the work, not sitting quietly on the side and making sure the other group doesn't kill themselves.

If your students are not capable of building a high caliber robot, then don't. Build a kitbot. They'll get more experience out of building that than some other complex robot.

...or they could be working alongside mentors, learning the process that goes into producing an effective machine. I've been on both sides of the high-caliber coin; the kids seem much more inspired by the latter. If you've got a mentor that can show the students what you can do with a certain construction technique, why not let the kids discover what it takes to do it?

When awards were given out at the individual divisions, I saw several teams with parents/mentors getting handed the awards, with the students following behind them.

Many times, judges will give one award to a mentor and one to a student. I know this was the case when we received our Rookie All-Star award at Palmetto.

Match scheduling. If you want people to 'watch the monitors' make them visible! Being next to FTC, the only thing we saw was FTC. Being 8 minutes ahead of schedule, in my opinion, is unacceptable. If times are given out to the minute, then that schedule should be stuck to. Sure, fall behind, but getting ahead? We had to fix a bent frame from a match right before, which took A LOT of work, and then we show up at the field 8 minutes early and the match had already started.

I agree that matches running early can be perilous, but shifting deadlines are a part of life. I'd suggest sending a person next time to keep watch on the schedule screen and give you proper warnings to give you time to get to the field. We had a scare at Bayou with the match schedule--we didn't see that we had the second match back from lunch, resulting in our drive team having a quarter-mile sprint back to the arena. One of our partners wasn't as lucky, and no-showed the match. You live, you learn.

[JesseK]

I've never seen such a huge FRC crowd be so quiet as the one watching Einstein matches. While I appreciate the game's dynamics, and love how it opened up the doors to creative ideas in ways to do drive systems, it was downright boring to watch. Many of the regulation matches during regionals wound up with clumps of robots and trailers. It was difficult to tell who was doing what scoring, then all of a sudden the group would break apart and there would either be a pile of balls on the floor or a trailer loaded up. Without watching specific bots, it was hard to tell. It was a great game to design for and play though.

The fields weren't completely consistent regional to regional. We gave ourselves a 1/2" clearance...yet the bots sank 1/8" into the regolith, you needed another 1/8" to get over the seams (varying regional to regional), and the Atlanta fields were put onto a soft plastic floor which caused even more sinkage. Combined with another 1/8" reduced clearance to due material fatiguing (yea, our fault), Atlanta just left a bad taste in our mouth. We could take our bot to the practice field and fly around, yet on the Galileo field we kept getting stuck. I understand it was already very difficult to manage field setup this year in this regard, so I'm not sure if there's room for concern or if I'm just venting here.

I believe that next year we will have to help this year's rookies along if the field surface is highly tractive. There were several atypical drive train designs (crab/swerve) that simply will not work on carpet due to axial loading ... or at least they won't work for very long. I also expect to see some 2nd year teams with 4 wheels on the corners of their robots wondering why they're having difficulty turning.

I also don't think it's a coincidence that there were so many Michigan teams on Einstein this year, percentage-wise. I don't begrudge any of the teams who were there, and I applaud FIRST for finding a format that cuts costs and increases field time. It will be highly disappointing if this format is only used in Michigan again though.

I do not agree with the 40-lb allowance for future years. It's supposed to be 6.5 weeks, and it's supposed to be hard for a reason. Of the 3 competitions I attended it was only enforced at DC, and even there it was only sporadic checking.

[EricH]

I can respond on the wiring colors. It's happened before, on occasion, that teams have shown up with wiring that is all one color. You'd think that that wouldn't be a problem. But, it is. It's a lot harder to trace. That makes it dangerous. You see, if you wire something backwards and don't have the standard colors, something could easily be destroyed when that isn't caught.

[MrForbes]

After reading all these posts...I still have nothing to add to "The Negative" thread

[AlexD744]

Originally Posted by martin417

After my second year of involvement with FIRST, I still have the same complaint. I understand that while COOPERTITION is way of FIRST (now trademarked and patented), this is, at its heart, a COMPETITION (otherwise, why keep score?). I understand that it's not about winning, but teams DO want to win the competition. Besides punishing teams for doing well (G14), there is the random, or "luck" factor. If a team works hard, and makes a great robot that meets the goals of the competition better than other teams, they should be rewarded. At every regional I attended, including championships, The seedings did not reflect the ability of the robots or the teams. If FIRST wants this to be a "sport", and be as popular as football, they need to come up with a better way to rank teams prior to alliance pairings. I have no problem with the serpentine draft and the no refusal rules, I see how that can prevent "super alliances", and make scouting important. I do have a problem with some of the best teams not even being in the top 8. Throughout the season, I saw teams that could not score at all ranked as the number one seed, while top scoring bots were not even in the top 10. Perhaps the seeding should be done based on the scoring of the bots rather than a win-loss record.

I don't have all the answers, but the questions remain. As many smart people as there are involved with FIRST, I am confident that they can come up with something better.

Thank you for saying this. This was what frustrated our team during this championship, I think we ended up ranking 54 because on our first day we were with some of the worst teams against dome of the best teams. Because we didn't have a name with any of these teams (except Bacon, and 179, who also got gyped by the rankings), we were not picked despite how well our individual robot performed. Maybe a system where the average of your scores determines, I don't know I haven't sat and thougt of how to rank teams, however, I do know that luck is way too prevalent in the current system. I might only feel this way because we got the short end of the stick on it, but other than that, I saw alliances such as 67, 111, and 45 in qualifiers. Most of 71's matches had another powerhouse against not that good teams. It just irks me that we had a robot at a high caliber and then lost because of random luck with alliance selections.

p.s. keep in mind that I am not being biased about my robot, our average scores for Friday, the day we didn't win a single match, was in the 80's (If you disclude the match were we got a DQ due to field issues). Sadly, the alliance pairing consistently gave us a pairing with teams that could barely make a score and against teams that could put scores above that number, it seemed unfair that this happened every match (except for Saturday after the teams had done their scouting).

On a different note: BRING DISTRICTS TO FLORIDA!!! It seemed to work great in Michigan, and that would increase the competition of the regional. SPeaking on a purely financial note however, paying for the initial districts, and the state competition might leave our team high and dry for Championships, but it would cost less than two regionals, which we have been thinking about.

[FRC4ME]

To everyone complaining about the withholding allowance and GP; how is this any different from previous years? We used to have the two build sessions, and teams were on the honor system not to spend any more time than that building things. Now, we're on the honor system not to build more than 40lbs worth of stuff. In fact, at least the withholding allowance can be weighed if necessary; in previous years, it was not possible to tell if a team had spent more than their two sessions working.

[Andrew Y.]

- G14... i agree that im not the biggest fan of it. I know it was in good intentions, but if the real time scoring is going to be off? How can a team be penalized? One match the ending score was 55-32 us. Then after everythig is re scored, it was 122-32. We got a tripple G14....

- I was working the front gate at championships on wednesday night. It really did tick me off when mentors, not students, are yelling at me because we wouldnt let them take 8 people in. or take multiple trips. This has been the way for a LONG TIME. The way i see it, FIRST could easily say "just unload thursday" Remember, most volunteers there wednesday have been working tuesday 7am-11pm and wednesday starting at 7am. READ THE RULES

- about the wire colors... hate to be crude, but you gotta read the rules or suck it up. sorry. "i didn't have time isn't an excuse to me...

- Practice field was not run properly. Schedualing team for 10-10:10 then 10:10-10:20 does not work. You gotta leave a gap for unload and load. Also seemed to me the volunteers running the fields had no idea what they where doing. Example, letting 3 robots run with over 5 people on the field. I watched 2 kids get hit too. People running the field didn't seem to care.....
(i know...first i defend volunteers, then i bash em)

- I agree that awards such as spirit, animation, ect. can go friday. That way, chairmans, rookie all-star, EI, and competition stuff cna be done saturday, with time ti spare. O.....speeches should be cut down....