Changes over the years?

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

This changed everything: how the match played, how marketing and scouting took place, how people acted in the pits... everything.

I have read about and heard about the significant changes that occurred with the introduction of alliance play with the 2 vs 2 competition. Your post piqued my curiosity, Andy, and I'd like to learn a little more about how people acted differently in the pits then, than they do now. That brings another thought - I imagine many of us take a lot of things for granted that the earlier people and teams couldn't or didn't even dream of. Would anyone care to share some examples in that area?

[ay2b]

Originally Posted by Francis-134

In 1998, the control system was made by Motorola. The name of the system escapes me right now though. Starting in 1999, FIRST used the IFI control system which lasted till 2008.

1992 was tethered; I'm not sure about 1993. 1994 was wireless. I think the control system was from Motorola then, so I'd guess it was probably the same system from 1993 or 1994 until 1998. In 1994 you had only 6 control channels, each of which was Forward/Stop/Reverse -- no speed controllers, no sensors, no programming.

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

I think over the years, the parts rules have become significantly less restrictive, while the game rules have become significantly more restrictive.

I'd certainly agree with that. The entire 1992 game manual was only 10 pages long!

Size and weight went up very quickly at the beginning, but have been more-or-less the same for quite a while

year / size / weight
1992 / 38cm x 50cm x 34cm / 11 kg
1994 / cylinder 38in high x 36 in diameter / 65 lbs
2000 / 30in x 36in x 60in / 130 lbs

I can't verify other years, but I think 1993 was somewhere between the 1992 and 1994 sizes, and I think the current size has been around since 1998 or 1999. (I'm approximating 30x36 and 28x38, and 130 w/ battery and 120 + battery as the same.)

[ay2b]

Also, "back in my day", there was no time between build and competition. The build season was the same 6 1/2 weeks that it is now, starting on the first Saturday in January, and going until ship day, on a Tuesday in February. That Wednesday, the teams flew out to Nashua NH, and the competition was Thursday, Friday & Saturday (in the high school gym, with the pits being in the cafeteria). As it is now, you might spend as much time between ship date and your competition as you spent between kickoff and ship date.


While it's interesting to see what all has changed, it's also quite interesting to see what all has stayed the same -- singing the National Anthem as part of opening ceremonies, teams shaking hands right before what could be the very last match, mascots & team cheers. I think someone who's only seen "modern" FIRST events who got transported back in time to see the early FIRST events would certainly recognize it as FIRST.

[Collin Fultz]

Originally Posted by EricH

That's another game-changer, though they might not agree with me: AndyMark. Before they came along, there were very few COTS/shifting transmissions used, mainly DeWalts from the NBD drivetrain or custom team-built ones. Once they came in, any team who had the money could buy a 2-speed tranny (or a one-speed), or some other cool toys like omni wheels. They're now almost a one-stop shop for KOP items, as the IFI store was previously.

Completely agree. In 2006 I mentored a rookie team who met out of a converted copy room on the second floor of their school. We had a portable bandsaw, drill press, and grinder that we bolted to a couple of tables. We had one CAD computer and only 1 student that new how to use the software.

That year, we had shift-on-the-fly transmissions and traction wheels, all thanks to AndyMark and IFI.

[Justin Stiltner]

I am surprised nobody mentioned the 4vs 0 year!!! that was 2001 For all you youngsters check that one out!

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Burmeister #279

I'm pretty sure that OSHA rules state that two people can only carry 150 lbs max [75 per person] and that adding a 3rd person to carry the 'bot on the field is unlikely so I'm thinking it can't go up again.

[Citation Needed]

Joking aside, in as far as I can recall these are just guidelines and are not enforceable. If you can find the rule though by all means Ill eat my words.

[Chris Hibner]

Joe Ross beat me to almost everything I was going to post. Almost everything...

Here are a few ways things changed:

-Prior to 2000, you took your robot home with you after each competition and kept it until Tuesday at 5 p.m. You were free to do whatever you wanted with your robot during this period.

-In 1997, the base size limit was 36 x 36. As you can imaging, that made it very difficult (if not impossible) to get the robot through a standard door, so FIRST changed the size limit to 30 x 36 starting with 1998.

-Robot height was limited to 48 inches in 1997, 1998, and 1999. The current 60 inch limit started in 2000.

-2001 had a HUGE change, and I'm not talking 4 vs. 0. I'm talking the beginning of divisions at the Championship Event. Prior to this, you had 200+ teams in one GIGANTIC competition and you somehow had to scout all of them so you knew who to pick. Back then there were 16 alliances in the eliminations at the Championship.

-2002 was the first year of the current single-coach system. Prior to 2002, there were two coaches per drive team.

-From 1999 through 2003, wins and losses were not counted in qualifying - it was all via qualifying points. The ranking points were as follows:
1999: winning alliance qualifying points is 3 times their own score in the match, losing alliance QP is their own score (no multiplier).
2000 and 2002: winning alliance QP = losing alliance score x 3. Losing alliance QP = losing alliance score.
2003: If my memory serves me right, Winning alliance QP = Winning alliance score + 2 x losing alliance score. Losing alliance QP = losing alliance score.

-Prior to 2003, there used to be "qualifying robots" and "elimination robots" (no, each team did NOT build 2 robots - I mean this in a strategic sense). Because of the QP system based only on loser's score, teams would typically decide if they wanted a high scoring robot that could manipulate the loser's score (i.e. a "qualifying robot"), or a team that could just win matches and not worry about the score (an "elimination robot"). Just to be clear, there was no rule, it's just that team figured out that various robot designs were better suited for quals or elims, but not usually both.

-Due to the above "qualifying"/"elimination" robot scenario (it was often the case that the good qualifiers were ill suited for the win/loss/score-doesn't-matter eliminations) there was a lot of talk on these boards how we wanted the eliminations and qualifying to reflect the same strategy. In the biggest "what, that's not what you wanted?" move of the century, FIRST made the eliminations just like qualifying, by having you play two matches and whoever had the most QPs after the two matches advanced to the next round.

-Following the above elimination SNAFU everyone on these boards said, "wow! you really misunderstood what we wanted - we want quals to be like elims, not the other way around. What we meant is, make qualifications be wins and losses - just like the eliminations should be wins and losses." Thus, the current qualification ranking system was born in 2004.

-Of course, 2002 was the last year at Disney World's EPCOT. 2003 was in Houston for a single year and 2004 was the first year in Atlanta.

Wow, that was a lot longer than I thought. If I can think of anything else, I'll post it.

[Chris Hibner]

I remembered a few more interesting changes through the years:

-In 1997 it was legal to intentionally detach parts of the robot during the match. Many teams took advantage of this, including the National Champion Team Hammond - the Beatty Beast. They placed a bunch of inner tubes (the scoring object in the 1997 game) on a device and they would then lock that device on the top of the "tree", thereby locking those tubes in place ensuring that they would score.

-Prior to 2004, BASIC was the language used to program the robots. It was very limited and made you have to think up creative ways to do some simple math.

- Remember the 7.2V backup battery on the IFI control system? That was a result of the ultra-rugged 2002 game. Many teams experienced electrical current transients so large that the main batter voltage would drop below the stay-alive voltage of the microcontroller causing a control system "brown out", temporarily disabling the robot. IFI implemented the backup battery the following year to prevent this issue.

Wow, it's really fun remembering all of this stuff. I never get tired of thinking of games gone by.

[EricH]

Chris, I distinctly remember no backup battery in 2003. Those came on board in 2004, when C did.

Oh, yeah, and with those rankings, how was 2001 scored?

And, I seem to remember hearing about the early years of the alliances, when the eliminations were picked differently.

Oh, and who can forget the backup robot rules from the turn of the millenia to 2004, when you picked 3, and 2 played at a time. Those were the days... Then in 2005, it became Thou shalt play the three robots you have at once. If thou needest a spare, you get the highest rank left, and only one of them. Your broken robot shall not play again this event.

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by EricH

Chris, I distinctly remember no backup battery in 2003. Those came on board in 2004, when C did.

Oh, yeah, and with those rankings, how was 2001 scored?

Dang, I could have sworn it was 2003 with the backup battery. The given reason behind the backup was the controller brown-outs - I'm pretty sure of that, but I thought they happened in 2002, not 2003. Oh well.

In 2001, all of the teams got their alliance's score for the match with one exception: the big multiplier balls. Every team was assigned a color prior to the match. If your team's large multiplier ball (the large balls were colored to correspond to the 4 robot colors) was on top of a goal, your team got a bonus for that match. I want to say it was an additional 10%, but since my team didn't handle the big balls that year the bonus wasn't that important to me (at least that's how I'm explaining my poor memory).

[Nate Smith]

Originally Posted by Francis-134

In 1998, the control system was made by Motorola. The name of the system escapes me right now though. Starting in 1999, FIRST used the IFI control system which lasted till 2008.

The Motorlola rNet radio modems were used prior to the IFI system, along with a custom made programmable control system that also allowed for PBASIC programming, similar to the initial generation of the IFI system. You also had to return the control system to FIRST after each competition year, so it could be reused the next year (there was a provision to keep the system after championship if you wanted to use it for offseason, but it had to be back in time to be checked out before the next season). FIRST folklore says that the system was hand built by FIRST engineering staff, and they would spend time after each championship checking over each system, resoldering components as needed...

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

Dang, I could have sworn it was 2003 with the backup battery. The given reason behind the backup was the controller brown-outs - I'm pretty sure of that, but I thought they happened in 2002, not 2003. Oh well.

In 2001, all of the teams got their alliance's score for the match with one exception: the big multiplier balls. Every team was assigned a color prior to the match. If your team's large multiplier ball (the large balls were colored to correspond to the 4 robot colors) was on top of a goal, your team got a bonus for that match. I want to say it was an additional 10%, but since my team didn't handle the big balls that year the bonus wasn't that important to me (at least that's how I'm explaining my poor memory).

You're right about the reason and the timing of the controller brownouts, but I think it took a year or so to work into the system, plus they did a "major" overhaul at the same time to switch to C.

As for the multipliers, I think you're about right, but it was 10 points, IIRC. (My old team--before I was old enough-- could handle 2, and place both on goals while balancing the bridge, just before killing the power.) It was enough to set you apart; not enough to do much.

I've noticed that many of the robots from yesteryear appear to have a much more "home-grown" feel to them; by that I mean they don't look nearly as professional as some today look. Even some teams that are legends looked kind of poor and student built in the earlier days of FIRST. Even my team, which is not noted for having many (if any) machining capabilities, has nicer looking robots nowadays then in previous years.

[Burmeister #279]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

[Citation Needed]

Joking aside, in as far as I can recall these are just guidelines and are not enforceable. If you can find the rule though by all means Ill eat my words.

No need for eating of the words, it is just a guideline from what I've read--mostly assumptions and interpretations, due to the fact i couldn't find any actual osha regulation that says anything about it-- but still odds are it won't go up any time soon even with the 2009-on controls being heavier than previous years.
</sidebar>
I'm not surprised to learn how much FIRST has adapted and changed. FIRST is its own fertilizer and is definitely growing.

[Collin Fultz]

Originally Posted by EricH

As for the multipliers, I think you're about right, but it was 10 points, IIRC.

From Wikipedia (which, as any former or current college student knows is ALWAYS accurate):

"A team multiplies its score by 1.1 if its large ball is on top of a goal. Scores are rounded up to the nearest whole point after applying all multipliers."

Also, I believe that year there were only 4 alliances that made eliminations. And wasn't the first "pick" automatic with 1 getting 5, 2-6, 3-7, and 4-8?

Also, that year didn't you only get your alliance half an hour before the match, or something like that?