FIRST Robotics Wish List

[Gui Cavalcanti]

Here are my thoughts... don't know if they're worth much.

- Inspectors who have kept up with the rules updates and know their stuff, and who can recognize a van door motor from a chiaphua. A more comprehensive electrical and mechanical checklist would be great - their favorite words were "file those edges", and that was it.

- More judge coverage. I know there are only so many judges, but having only two spend 2 minutes with a team doesn't do many teams justice. Maybe a bit longer, or more judges patrolling the pit areas? I never saw too many...

- Enhanced pneumatics, I definitely agree. My pneumatically-driven Internal Combustion Engine model on a FIRST robot is still quite a ways away. More tanks, cylinders from anywhere... maybe a better compressor? Either that or a "black box" compressor that you don't have to mount with rubber feet (thanks goes out to the team members who decided to put the feet on with locknuts right before the chassis had to go to the welders...).

- More small electronics. The game is still virtually entirely based on the mechanical competence of the team - programming and electronics are wallowing in the dust. Let custom sensors be anywhere on the robot as long as they follow the FIRST rules of electrical systems - no grounding to the chassis, no open-air electric surfaces, etc. We could've done incredible trigonometric calculations with those optical sensors with a secondary basic stamp, if the sensors didn't have to be in the "black box" to be part of the package. And up the money level on those digikey parts.

- For crying out loud, change the playing field. Carpet has been mastered by the veterans and the rookies are generally left in the dust.

- Open up the default materials some. Aluminum and steel are fine, why are they restricted on types (i.e. 410's C steel)?

- Bring back the featherweight award! Teams need to be rewarded for how light they can make these robots, considering most of us are drilling holes while a select few stand back and watch with a smirk.

- More servomotors! Servomotors are excellent ways to control your robot's smaller parts, but only a few are allowed. There are tons of PWM outputs that remain unused...

That's all I can think of for right now.

[sanddrag]

The rules need to be a lot more enforced. My team spent hundreds of dollars and many hours on making a telescoping pole extender that was 25 feet long and would never touch the ground only to find out that they were now allowing "entangling" devices like tape measures to be used as an extender. We actually lost a match because the goal we were pushing got caught up on a previously illegal tape measure extender. All the rules need to be there from the start so there is no room for questioning or argument.

As for the game, Robotica on TLC was really cool. I wish that FIRST could make it more like that and not just a flat, rectangular piece or carpet. We need some ramps and small stairs and sand pits and narrow turns and other obstacles. That way, the robots with their "slammed" bodies 2mm off the ground would be useless. I'm talking big tires, 4wd, massive ground clearance and perhaps suspension. Now that would be cool.

Just please no walking bots, at least not yet. The thousands of years old wheel is still rolling strong.

[Dan 550]

Lightweight award, here here! I would love to see that come back. No holes drilled in the robot rendered over yonder <-- that weighed in at 104.9 lbs; not the lightest robot that hit the carpet, but far from the heaviest, and quite possibly the most sturdy bot in Jersey. No welds either, but I won't step near that today.

Lowriders, like ours, work well on FLAT surfaces. I'd like to see the flat surfaces go away, maybe in favor of a moving floor (Naw, too expensive and BattleBots-like...) or a craggy surface. A rolling surface (~~~~~~~) would be neat too. Hey, how about a giant waterbed! Talk about making a skilled drive team mandatory...

Lemme think... Oh yes, FRC Chat. Chief Delphi and weekly updates from FIRST blow that idea out of the water. Calling FIRST up works better, and quicker too.

Lower-cost additional regional registration would be really nice. I would like to see that come into play. Just a bit lower, like down to half the regular registration.

LLLLLLLL... Well, that kinda ruined my theme, but anyway... Sending the animation software early is an excellent idea, and it really helps to be familiar with the software before the season's begining. And Autodesk's renderings of all kit parts are a good idea too. But FIRST should make an effort to make sure the shipping is quick and all teams actually recieve the software at the time that it was intended to arrive. And it should be made easier for teams, specifically the animation team members, to access Autodesk's rendering library.

Well, it's late, I think I'm pretty much done for now.

[Dan 550]

Eliminate all dimensional limits except the maximum shipping crate size and weight allowable. This would let in the real-world horror of engineering your own team out of competitiveness!

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Put yourself in the place of a team that has a nearly dead or limited function robot. (maybe a rookie team with just a few students and adults) Wouldn't you like the random chance to play with a robot that would run up your qualifying points, or complement your strategy and function? Of course, and that idea doesn't beat down teams or make it hard for new teams to get excited about the competition. Knowing that any team can make it into the finals really makes it exciting for the competitors. I was here when it was 1 vs. 1 vs. 1 and it wasn't that much more exciting but it was demoralizing for some teams when their perception was they couldn't possibly win. After all the hard work they had put in on the robot, they still had no chance to come close to the finals. It is easy to learn when you are excited and pumped, but you don't want to do anything when you are depressed.
I am still undecided on whether to announce all alliances ahead of time or just give teams 2 minutes to figure out strategies and then play. Their is an advantage for large teams to have many students scouting and planning in either case, but it seemed more exciting for me not knowing who we were playing with until right before the match. Any other ideas on this one?

[rlowerr_1]

I know this sounds dumb but it makes sense . . . to me

I would like to have the music turned down when matches are playing.

Two reasons for this:

- Its very hard for friends, family members, and other teams to talk to each other with music blasting. Nothing like yelling "what!" ten times when the person is just trying to tell you to move over.

- Also it’s very hard to really concentrate on a match with the music. When you are really trying to study a robot the last thing you want is to hear a song that you absolute loath and see people dancing to it.

[Dave Flowerday]

More small electronics. The game is still virtually entirely based on the mechanical competence of the team - programming and electronics are wallowing in the dust. Let custom sensors be anywhere on the robot as long as they follow the FIRST rules of electrical systems - no grounding to the chassis, no open-air electric surfaces, etc. We could've done incredible trigonometric calculations with those optical sensors with a secondary basic stamp, if the sensors didn't have to be in the "black box" to be part of the package. And up the money level on those digikey parts.

I completely agree. FIRST took a big leap forward this year by allowing the custom circuit and I think that was an extremely positive move. However, being able to place sensors outside of the housing would really open up the possibilities in regards to what we can do with the custom circuit. The $100 limit definitely should be raised. As Al said, $150 or $200 would be nice.

I would also like to request that we be allowed some other way of enclosing the custom circuit. That BUD Box was rather heavy for what it was. Also, why limit the size of the custom circuit by requiring that it fit in a certain size box? Perhaps a rule that requires the custom circuit to be contained in a non-metallic casing would be appropriate. This would allow teams to buy or build an enclosure that would be appropriate to their application.

[Andrew Rudolph]

I also liked it better when you didnt know who you were with untill right before the match. I was kinda disapointed when we got our matchs and we were already paired up. I think it ads an element of really knowing what you want to do when you get up there and having to comprimise quickly with the other teams. Either way the alliances definetly need to stay in place.

[sanddrag]

Originally posted by rlowerr_1
I know this sounds dumb but it makes sense . . . to me

I would like to have the music turned down when matches are playing.

Two reasons for this:

- Its very hard for friends, family members, and other teams to talk to each other with music blasting. Nothing like yelling "what!" ten times when the person is just trying to tell you to move over.

- Also it’s very hard to really concentrate on a match with the music. When you are really trying to study a robot the last thing you want is to hear a song that you absolute loath and see people dancing to it.

Makes sense to me too. They usually have a good choice in music but often its too loud to hear anouncements. It also makes it very hard to talk while driving:

"The goals are coming!"
"What about the plumbing?"

Even worse was at the LA regional where a team brought their huge drum set. Everytime any robot changed direction the drums were pounding. I lost my voice by the end of the first day shouting over them. Sorry if anyone who reads this is on that team but it was just really loud for everyone. Any other sounds besides the drums were nonexistant. I'd just like to be able to talk to someone without ruining my vocal cords.

[Rich Wong]

I would like to see different weight limits.

1. Keep the 130 lbs. limit but allow 20 lbs. over with penalty points. This will allow teams from going crazy with the hand drills.

2. If the robot is 100 lbs. or less give bonus points. This will
allow new teams or small schools with simple designs be become more competitive because their lite robot's bonus points.

The penalty and bonus points will be determine by FIRST.

[Neal Probert]

A better controller robot controller. It's time for the BS2P to be upgraded dramatically better. I'm seeing all sorts of competitors with faster and better alternatives to the BS2P, including more memory and i/o capability.

PBASIC is not the best programming language to learn. I'd like to see people writing code in Java or C/C++ as those are the languages that are being used in industry.

Linux and/or Macintosh tools. Not everybody loves Windows and a lot of schools are Macintosh equipped. More and more Linux is happening because schools don't have the funds to pay the steep M$ licenses. Linux also plays much nicer on older hardware as well.

I'd also like to see a requirement for an electronics enclosure. I've seen many times during construction and competitions that the exposed electronics get damaged and that hurts the team.

I like the bud box approach. Make it bigger and raise the budget limit for it. Combine it with the above enclosure and simply set a budgetary limit for the whole electronics package. Allow people to drum up their own controllers.

Make the dashboard capabilities more accessible. Currently, you cannot see all of the input variables right there on the operator interface. Allow people to design their own packets to feed robot controller data back to the operator interface.

Switch to 802.11b or bluetooth wireless networking for RF communications between
robot and controller. This maybe a bit of a stretch for now, but it opens the door to a lot of possibilities. The gear is much cheaper off the shelf than the current RF system.

Btw, animation needs more time, like starting in the fall and ending just before the National finals.

[Nate Smith]

Originally posted by Neal Probert
Switch to 802.11b or bluetooth wireless networking for RF communications between
robot and controller. This maybe a bit of a stretch for now, but it opens the door to a lot of possibilities. The gear is much cheaper off the shelf than the current RF system.

There is a new radio system that IFI is testing...i'm not sure if it will make it in this year or the next, but it would basically be integrated into the RC, eliminating the need for a separate radio on the robot. There is a possbility that the new system would be set up such that you would no longer need to bring an OI radio to the field(integrated with the arena controller perhaps)...

[Wayne C.]

Some $ considerations-

1. do everything possible to get free shipping from Fedex again. It saved thousands of dollars.

2. since the kit has been "abbreviated" and there is no more Sm. Parts stipend, reduce the entry fee for the contest. If nothing else do not raise it past the 2002 season figure - only fair since the odd teams were largely left out.

3. offer a direct contact e-mail link on the FIRST website for posting of events. Our team is still waiting for a post requested two months ago- there is no direct link to the site evident other than FRC engineers.

4. Continue to use the same shell playing field. Offer a link to the manufacturers so teams can purchase fields for regional events. These regional fields could be left near the sites of regionals and used in the off season for local competitions. I am willing to bet that consortiums of teams would invest in setups if they knew they were a constant from year to year.

5. making the Chairman's Award due at the end of the building period makes great sense.

6. continue to maintain the dimensions for the starting size of the robot. Years ago the footprint was greater than 30" and robots couldn't fit through the doorways at venues. The 30x36 footprint is fine and allows reuse of shipping containers.

7. Increase publicity on a region to region basis via the parent organization. How about some magazine ads in trades based mags to interest sponsors? Progress is being made but more could be done.

8. Have ladies only rounds at all regionals as a small sub event. It would definitely encourage teams to get more girls involved.


A few things to chew on...

WC

[team222badbrad]

Did anyone notice why they added those gates this year???

Because Dean had to drive his Segway in the field ah haha They even made little ramps!!!!!

I say either get rid of those gates or make them longer, I found them more of a pain that anything else!!! because they were to short and there was allways a line waiting to get out.

What do you think????

[Renzorocks]

Originally posted by gwross

Renzo,
Care to explain what you mean?

some part of the robot has to be build out of recycled materials