Practice bot morality

[DR3381]

Our goal on Droid Rage 3381 is to have the students build the second robot completely untouched by mentor hands between ship date and competition. It is essentially our test to see if the students have picked up everything that they were taught over the course of the build season. Students go so far as to wrap it in police tape to make sure that no adults touch this robot for any reason.

Last year, the students completed the drive platform and we were running the robot around the shop, but we ran out of time before competition before the students could complete it fully. It was never a useful as anything but a learning tool for students, but hopefully they will work harder and have more time available to them to complete the second robot this year. Its great for us as mentors to see students teaching other students and a robot being built from scratch without us. Maybe someday they won't need us at all!!!

[pfreivald]

I read the title of this thread as "Practice bot mortality" and thought, "yeah, heh, we beat the crap out of ours, too!"

If NCS can build practice bots, any team can. "Fair" is a four-letter eff-word; it belongs neither in school nor in your brain. It's fine to think, "Holy crap, there's no way we can beat the Thunder Chickens/Simbotics/Wildstang/Poofs/[insert so many other teams here]", as long as it's followed up by, "but we're sure as heck going to try!"

With FIRST, it's not "put up or shut up" like in sports... it's "put up and shut up". Don't brag, don't complain, don't whine, for GP's sake don't talk smack -- just do the best darned job you possibly can, every single time. Don't settle, and get better every week and every year. Talk to Paul Copioli if you really want to get inspired about what and how a team can go from zero to intimidating, state-of-the-art FIRST monsters through sheer effort, drive, and smarts. Legacy teams didn't become legacy teams through luck, and they sure as heck don't *stay* legacy teams through complacency and some kind of unfair advantage.

1551 isn't a FIRST powerhouse. I'm not even sure we aspire to be a powerhouse -- we just aspire to be better than we were last year, by as much as we can possibly manage given our resources. But I can assure you that we don't waste one synapse-fire on wondering whether or not what other teams are doing is fair, right, moral, ethical, or just. FIRST isn't about beating the other teams, it's about beating yourself. If you happen to get the occasional blue banner in the process, that's pretty cool, too.

To whit, if your practice bot can't be the same as your regular bot due to money or other limitations, make it close enough -- plywood instead of aluminum, toughboxes instead of planetaries, regular mecanum instead of octocanum... ...and for God's sake don't wait until your regular robot is done to build it -- wham-bang it together as fast as you can and give the protobot to your programmers as a test bench, then replace mechanisms with whatever's closer to "real" if/when you can.

Can't manage even that this year? Then focus on one or two mechanisms. Build 'em, refine 'em, and when you get to competition use your 30 lbs to replace 'em... And do that practice bot next year.

A healthy mind has no place for envy.

[ebarker]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

FIRST isn't about beating the other teams, it's about beating yourself.

our biggest challenge is beating our selves personally and collectively as a team.

Bingo !! -- nuff said.

[jvriezen]

Originally Posted by DR3381

It was never a useful as anything but a learning tool for students, but ...

If it was useful as a learning tool for students, it was HUGELY successful.