If you could Breakaway all over again...

[davidthefat]

Throw the KISS mentality out the window. I believe that mentality has made the team feel competent; feeling competence is not good. We must get better everytime, or we will never be able to compete at a higher level. Even though I am not the team leader this year, I will strive for perfection and never feel satisfied. Never ever be satisfied with your performance; there is always someone that will out practice and out perform you.

[Garret]

In short, any team that couldn't even push a ball into the goal failed. FIRST gave them an out of the box solution to most of the problems they faced.

I have to disagree. I really do not think the goal of FIRST is to score points and win matches. I have always believed that the goal of FIRST was to Inspire students. This kind of statement is hurtful and definitely a clear example of what FIRST does not represent.

My team was one of those teams that did not score every match and had a hard time doing so due to the shape of the front of our robot. Did my team fail just because we couldn't score? I would think not. If you saw our robot you would see that it had its flaws but still had a unique drivetrain and very effective drivetrain for traversing the bumps. I think that a team that does not learn anything or does not at least make an effort to inspire others is the team that should not compete not the team who did not make a competitive robot. I feel sorry for any team that measures success purely on the basis of winning because that team will never succeed and will never be able to really enjoy their FIRST experience.

My team has some things we want to do better next year, but we are always striving to improve and never give less than our best. My team had problems with money this year and we had to build the robot on an extremely small budget. As such we decided to buy cheaper materials rather than sacrifice functionality. Looking back if we had bought higher quality parts our robot would have done better. We could have gone with a basic kit-bot chassis that we built and hooked up in the first few days, but would we have learned as much? No we would have made a robot that was boring (no offense to anyone who used kit bot).

I understand your frustration, but seriously FIRST is more about Gracious Professionalism and Inspiring than building the best robot.

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by Garret

My team was one of those teams that did not score every match and had a hard time doing so due to the shape of the front of our robot. Did my team fail just because we couldn't score?

Yes, by definition you failed at the challenge being able to score. No you didn't fail at the mission of FIRST. I'm fairly certain that Andrew's point was related specifically to the game challenge, not the mission of FIRST.

[EricH]

David, there is another saying that applies as well as KISS.

"Keep it as simple as possible, but not simpler."

If, to meet your goals for a robot, a complex mechanism is required, simplify it as much as possible. Multi-speed drive? Use an off-the-shelf shifter, unless you also want multi-traction drive, in which case there may be more elegant ways to do both. Multi-joint arm? Is there a way that a single joint can do almost everything the multi-joint arm would need to?

Just a couple of ideas.

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by Garret

I have to disagree. I really do not think the goal of FIRST is to score points and win matches. I have always believed that the goal of FIRST was to Inspire students. This kind of statement is hurtful and definitely a clear example of what FIRST does not represent.

[Yada yada]

I understand your frustration, but seriously FIRST is more about Gracious Professionalism and Inspiring than building the best robot.

With all due respect, Andrew wasn't referring to you. There's a distinction to be made between those who failed on their own and those who failed attempting to nuse the kitbot. It sounds like you did the former.

What I believe he was saying is that if you can't make a kitbot run, you probably couldn't have succeeded too much in inspiring your own students to engineering. By deciding not to use the kitbot, you opted out of his example entirely.

I apologise if I misunderstood or misinterpreted anything.

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Garret

I have to disagree. I really do not think the goal of FIRST is to score points and win matches. I have always believed that the goal of FIRST was to Inspire students. This kind of statement is hurtful and definitely a clear example of what FIRST does not represent.

My team was one of those teams that did not score every match and had a hard time doing so due to the shape of the front of our robot. Did my team fail just because we couldn't score? I would think not.

Andrew is discussing robot specific issues, not FIRSTs goals/mission. If you see the rest of the comments in the discussion they almost all have to do with how a team would tweak their robot to better play the game.

Would you consider your robot successful? I'm not talking about was your team successful in being inspired, but would you consider your robot to be a success? Did it accomplish what you set out to do? What would you change with the knowledge you have now as the season has ended? These are the questions this thread is asking.




I agree with Andrew's points. I saw many teams this year unable to complete the challenge FIRST laid upon us. The kitbot gave a very capable system right out of the box and it was disappointing to see many teams not able to even cross a zone or herd a ball into a goal.

I wonder how as FIRST veterans we could help to combat these issues with incomplete/ineffective kitbots before they get to competitions?

-Brando

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

I wonder how as FIRST veterans we could help to combat these issues with incomplete/ineffective kitbots before they get to competitions?

I believe the only effective measure would be for FIRST to require rookie teams to accept help from veteran teams when that help is offered. Too many teams don't know what they don't know.

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

I believe the only effective measure would be for FIRST to require rookie teams to accept help from veteran teams when that help is offered. Too many teams don't know what they don't know.

This is too true. A friend of mine was mentoring a rookie team last season as the only technical mentor and found himself ignored by the students most of the time, despite his 7 years of FRC experience.

Some teams/people may just need to fall, and fall hard, before they accept any help. All that we can hope for is that a team or individual doesn't get completely turned off from FRC/FIRST before they seek support.

[JVN]

Originally Posted by Garret

I have to disagree. I really do not think the goal of FIRST is to score points and win matches. I have always believed that the goal of FIRST was to Inspire students. This kind of statement is hurtful and definitely a clear example of what FIRST does not represent.

Hi Garret,
As many others have said...
You need to think about this from two perspectives: "success within the competition" vs. "success within FIRST itself"... though many people will immediately dismiss "success within the competition" as irrelevant, I feel that is an ignorant, and naive thing to say.

The robotics competition itself is the mechanism which FIRST teams use to inspire students. As you know, this robotics competition provides a "problem" which students are supposed to solve by working with mentors using an engineering design process. The first step in any engineering process is to define your problem -- what are you trying to do?

Now each team answers that question differently. You need to determine what your team values.
Most people say: "We're trying to win a World Championship!" (148 does this) and centers the design process around solving the problem of: "How do we win a World Championship?" -- Lots of teams use this as their ultimate goal.

To me, it is the obvious choice... FIRST gives us a game, robot rules, scoring criteria, a tournament structure, a series of regionals, and a World Championship. At the most fundamental level, the "problem" we are presented is: "Design a robot to win this game." The cool thing is, this is a fun and fulfilling problem to solve! Not only that, but it is an easy problem to engage students in (you can trick them into getting excited about engineering, because everyone is naturally wired to love competition).

When it comes to FIRST (you've all heard the cliche) -- we're all winners.
When it comes to the competition: to the engineering design challenge, we're NOT all winners -- some solutions are better than others.

Do people really believe it is hurtful to acknowledge failure in the engineering process is possible? All engineering SOLUTIONS (the robots are our solutions) are not created equal -- in the real world, or in FIRST. If you remove the potential to achieve excellence, you remove a goal to strive for, and you encourage mediocrity.

So... why is it bad to say: "We failed to achieve at the highest level..." ?

On 148 our goal is: "Do everything we can to achieve excellence."
We're not disappointed if we don't achieve excellence, so long as we did everything we could in our pursuit of it. You always want to make sure you leave everything on the table. We're constantly searching to improve such that we can move toward this end. I think that is the magic in our process, and I believe our students have really latched onto it. This philosophy works at all resource levels -- it doesn't matter what your team has..

It is NOT possible to fail within FIRST.
It IS possible to fail within the competition (whatever your criteria for failure may be).

Disappointment is different than discouragement.
A little disappointment at failing to achieve your goals is (imho) a healthy thing. It will make you try a little harder next time. It will force you to evaluate the process you used, and work towards improvement in the future. As long as you're not discouraged... rock on!

I think this is some of the BEST of what the competition has to offer... on 148, we celebrate failures as opportunities for improvement.

So here comes the controversial part:
Teams have NO excuse for setting their goals so low in FRC. This drives me NUTS!
It doesn't take a whole lot to be a competitive team with a competitive program. If you set your goals high, if you work towards those goals, if you take advantage of the PLETHORA of widely available resources and if you're smart about it -- I believe any level of team can play on Einstein. Instead of just figuring out how to build a custom drivetrain, how about you focus on the problem FIRST gives us, and figure out how to win a world championship with the resources you have?

Originally Posted by Garret

My team has some things we want to do better next year, but we are always striving to improve and never give less than our best. My team had problems with money this year and we had to build the robot on an extremely small budget. As such we decided to buy cheaper materials rather than sacrifice functionality. Looking back if we had bought higher quality parts our robot would have done better. We could have gone with a basic kit-bot chassis that we built and hooked up in the first few days, but would we have learned as much? No we would have made a robot that was boring (no offense to anyone who used kit bot).

By neglecting to use the kitbot you've done yourself a terrible disservice. The engineering challenge presented to us involved scoring points in a goal, not building a custom drivetrain. Maybe if you had used the kitbot, you could have used your (self described) limited resources to build a better mechanism for playing the game. Maybe you could have had time to modify and expand on the kitbot foundation to better play the game. There are plenty of opportunities for learning in this type of design...

Originally Posted by Garret

I understand your frustration, but seriously FIRST is more about Gracious Professionalism and Inspiring than building the best robot.

You've got gracious down, but where is your professionalism?
Striving to build the "best robot" is a fine goal -- don't hate on it. Pursuit of this goal will result in plenty of inspiration. Probably more inspiration than pursuit of a lesser goal...

-John

[Garret]

You need to think about this from two perspectives: "success within the competition" vs. "success within FIRST itself"... though many people will immediately dismiss "success within the competition" as irrelevant, I feel that is an ignorant, and naive thing to say.

The robotics competition itself is the mechanism which FIRST teams use to inspire students. As you know, this robotics competition provides a "problem" which students are supposed to solve by working with mentors using an engineering design process. The first step in any engineering process is to define your problem -- what are you trying to do?

I have looked at it from both perspectives but I apologize that my post only reflected one. I do agree with what you said.

So here comes the controversial part:
Teams have NO excuse for setting their goals so low in FRC. This drives me NUTS!
It doesn't take a whole lot to be a competitive team with a competitive program. If you set your goals high, if you work towards those goals, if you take advantage of the PLETHORA of widely available resources and if you're smart about it -- I believe any level of team can play on Einstein. Instead of just figuring out how to build a custom drivetrain, how about you focus on the problem FIRST gives us, and figure out how to win a world championship with the resources you have?

We don't set goals low. Our goal was to build or at least make an honest attempt to build a robot that could do every part of the challenge. However due to inexperience within our team we were unable to make it great in every part, but we could still do most of the things our robot just had a trouble pushing the balls because the part of the front of the robot got damaged and as a result the robot kind of stunk at pushing balls into goals.
Just so you know we have a team of 30 students (with 80% of them being first-time participants) and only 1 mentor who could come to every practice and only 3 more who could show up on weekends (sometimes). Our advisor came to only one practice and a student handled all of the administrative/fundraising by himself. We also had to build out of a garage. Our machine shop this year consisted of a 12" bandsaw and drill press, with some (mostly my family's) hand tools. The students did everything with minimal help (with exception of aluminum welding because we had a sponsor who volunteered to do that).
Yes our resources were minimal, but when it comes down to it our students (including me) learn a whole lot and that is what matters. I apologize if this sounds angry (I am not) but I do not like when people generalize their own situation and good fortune and assume that it is the same for everyone.

By neglecting to use the kitbot you've done yourself a terrible disservice. The engineering challenge presented to us involved scoring points in a goal, not building a custom drivetrain. Maybe if you had used the kitbot, you could have used your (self described) limited resources to build a better mechanism for playing the game. Maybe you could have had time to modify and expand on the kitbot foundation to better play the game. There are plenty of opportunities for learning in this type of design...

Yes this is true, but our robot was not only about using a "custom-drivetrain" that was our main feature but our robot did have parts for every part of the challenge, we did end up removing parts for suspension and ball control due to weight. Our robot was competitive but was not as competitive as others because of some unwise design decisions to to a lack of knowledge.

You've got gracious down, but where is your professionalism?
Striving to build the "best robot" is a fine goal -- don't hate on it. Pursuit of this goal will result in plenty of inspiration. Probably more inspiration than pursuit of a lesser goal...

I apologize that my post reflected this belief. I am not hating on building the best robot or trying to win. I am not hating on anything. I am just saying that measuring success only on scoring points is wrong. I sincerely apologize if I have offended anyone. I understand your points I am really sorry that I let my own frustrations come out in my post.

Also here is a picture of my teams robot just so you can see where I am coming from.

[kstl99]

Garret, I am happy you posted your opinions from that point of view. It must have been difficult to complete a robot with a small budget and so few mentors.

I would think it wise to do all you can to get a mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer and a programmer to help. As an electrical engineer I have learned through seeing my mistakes and those of others and can predict where problems can occur and find quick, easy and inexpensive solutions to many problems. As long as I am explaining why things need to be a certain way and answering questions the learning will happen. An experienced mechanical engineer would have been able to tell you where you can safely use cheaper materials and where you really shouldn't.

I do realize that getting mentor help is not easy but I think the rewards for your team would be great, not just in being more competitive but in learning more, enjoying it more and in keeping the team together.

[Garret]

I do realize that getting mentor help is not easy but I think the rewards for your team would be great, not just in being more competitive but in learning more, enjoying it more and in keeping the team together.

Definitely true. As a matter of fact we have been doing just that. Over the summer our team went through a complete restructuring and we have developed a plan for a sustainable program. We have already secured several thousand more dollars in funding several companies are already saying they want to supply mentors. We also have managed to secure a build site at one of the schools. We are expanding our outreach and are trying to restart the FLL programs at the Elementary schools.

[kstl99]

Originally Posted by Garret

Definitely true. As a matter of fact we have been doing just that. Over the summer our team went through a complete restructuring and we have developed a plan for a sustainable program. We have already secured several thousand more dollars in funding several companies are already saying they want to supply mentors. We also have managed to secure a build site at one of the schools. We are expanding our outreach and are trying to restart the FLL programs at the Elementary schools.

That's great to hear. Sounds like you can look forward to an exciting season.

[davidthefat]

I want to ask all of you something: What are your average budget you guys have for building the robot every year? Excluding registration fees and ect, just solely for building the robot. We still need tons of money this year, we want to get a 2nd regional, so thats an extra 5k. I think there has to be an easier way to get money. More productive way too

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

I want to ask all of you something: What are your average budget you guys have for building the robot every year? Excluding registration fees and ect, just solely for building the robot. We still need tons of money this year, we want to get a 2nd regional, so thats an extra 5k. I think there has to be an easier way to get money. More productive way too

Budget: ~$1000 to build robot. $5000 for registration. $4000 for MSC.
Mentors: College Mentors: 5 Professional Engineers: 1 (only made weekend meetings)
Students: 5 (One of whom was a German exchange student and a rookie, 2 others were just rookies)

Record: (21-21-3)