what did you think of the 2002 game

[Andy Baker]

Originally posted by Nataku
the fact that the game was a design contest with pulling force had a very negative affect because some teams had engineers design thier transmitions : ( this made the game very un-fair for those teams and took a lot of the fun out.

How is this unfair? This program is about inspiration. It is not a science fair project where students do all of the work. This program is a partnership between students who want to learn and engineers (and other technically-related adults) who want to mentor them. If you want a student-only design contest, go enter BBIQ or design a killer science fair or great 4H project.

Our team's transmission was designed by me... yes, I am an engineer and I design automated machinery for a living. However, many people on our FIRST team had a part in this transmission, from the concept portion, fabricating the parts, assembling them together (many times), and finally to the preventive maintenence. We all learned some good lessons (design and other) from this experience, and it was definitely a "team effort" (notice all of the names mentioned on the shift-on-the-fly gearbox white paper).

Unfair... I think not. A challenge to compete would be a better way to say it.

Let me put it this way... do you want the engineers to do none of the design? Do you want us to just teach the students CAD, give them a SPI catolog and let them do all of the design? From my experience, if you said yes to this, you are in a small minority of FIRST students.

Realistically, if this took place, many design developments in FIRST would not have taken place. There would be no "crab" or "swerve" steering on FIRST robots, no gear switching drive bases, no custom circuit board boxes which monitor traction or amp usage, no 10 foot tall inner-tube placing machines, no 15 ft. long monkey bots, no auto-balancing robots, etc. Granted, students have made these designs, but only after seeing engineers do it first. For example... many teams use "crab" steering now, even some student-designed teams... but who developed it? Yep.. some pretty smart engineers.

For those teams who don't have engineers who can help with the design... I challenge you... go out and get help. This competition is not easy, and you know it. Go into a local machine shop and say "we need your help" and tell these machinists and engineers that they will get to compete with some of the best machine designers out there, along with mentoring great students.... you will find some takers.

Don't get me wrong. I have great respect for robots that are entirely student designed. My hat is off to you students who do this. The students who design these robots are learning lessons that their peers are not, meeting great people in the FIRST program and developing skills that will affect their careers... but put these same students next to an experienced design engineer and the situation just gets better.

The whole point behind our team's push to publish designs (starting two years ago) is to provide assistance to teams who don't have the engineering resources that our team has. Many teams have used these designs and their teams have benefitted from them... they simply say thanks and we are happy. They never say anything about unfairness of engineers doing designs.

OK... I'll get off the soapbox.

Andy B.