The Triplet Challenge

[nuggetsyl]

We talked to a team in Las Vegas and next year there will be another team with a 25 drive train lol. The west coast may never be the same.

Shaun

we are not going to build it for them we just gave them our drawings and they are going to try to reproduce it.

[Steve W]

Stephen, you know that I respect you and the team. I am also known to be against collaboration. I will admit that the triplets have improved and that there has been more student involvement. I will admit that there has been a lot of inspiration from your robots.

However I have seen only 1 robot for the past 2 years. I have not seen the inspired students and schools splitting off to form their own teams. These are the things that need to be addressed. If every team was sent a copy of plans and had all of the machining done so that they just needed to assemble, would there still be inspiration. If GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Mazda, Nissan etc shared and built from the same plans were would the diversity come from? How do we stimulate creative juices if we do not think individually. Many teams mentor other teams but do not build the same robot. The creativity is shown with individual accomplishments that inspire. We also learn from our mistakes and those of others.

I believe that we must stand out and be seen. We need to inspire others to exceed our potential, to use their own creativity and ideas. Heck to coin a famous phase " To boldly go were no man has gone before". This is FIRST. Is there anything wrong with a lot of strong teams staying together and being the best? That I cannot answer but I know that eventually all of the "Mom and Pop" teams will disappear as they will be unable to compete against the mega teams.

I work in a field that specializing on products is slowly increasing. This has caused the problem of narrow areas of knowledge and abilities have become diminished. We should be doing the exact opposite. Expanding our areas of knowledge and abilities. By doing this I believe that we can find new and exciting solutions.

[Tim Delles]

Guys I see this thread somewhat slowly turning into yet another dumpster of is collabaration a good thing or bad. I'm not pointing fingers at anyone for this, but while reading Stephens' post remember that this would be for rookies or for say a team that has just lost thier major sponsor. These teams could always use help.

Also do we go around and pick apart Dean's homework? No the reason is because we understand that it is important. As I believe the things that Stephen point out are important. Never should an idea be ridiculed, because ideas are exactly that just an idea.

[artdutra04]

Stephen, you have many good ideas in your pitch for collaboration among teams. Helping to start new teams and keep existing teams in the game is a very important task, and anything that would assist teams is a winner by my books. However, let's not forget that old mantra about "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you'll feed him for a lifetime."

I am not against total collaboration, but if two or three teams decide to work they should also each still have some autonomy. I would actively encourage the teachers / engineers / parents of the teams to try to help each other, but let each team still create their own ideas. Once each team has their own ideas, let the other team(s) conduct a "peer-review" where each team can critique the other team's ideas to help refine them. This way, you still have teams collorabating and you will still end up with two or three different robots.

Creativity, not cloning, is the mother lode of successful innovention. (And yes, I just combined invention and innovation into one word. )

And after all, what fun would the competition be if we had 1000 indentical robots?

[Jherbie53]

Just handing a school a robot design isn't a good idea. If I were starting a new team and knew that another local team wanted to give us some designs for drive trains and manipulators, I would have to decline. Helping us with brainstorming, designing, and fund raising I would gladly accept. We would need to be our own team, which the triplets all are. I think having a unique design, not just in the robot, is what would get people interested more.

Also having students from other schools come and be apart of your team until they get enough support is great, We are currently doing that with Furitport and Zeeland High schools. Furitport is about 45 Min's north of us, and they don't have enough interest from sponsors to start a team. When a team does get started there we will help them with anything they need.

Collaborating with other teams on how to play the game, on where to go for competitions, on a problem they are having, and all the other things besides the robot should be done. I would like to see the local Holland and Zeeland teams get together and go too all the same regionals. This would establish that we work with each other, but we would all have different robots. We need teams helping each other, why do you think there's a Sportsmanship award. Helping other teams is #1 on the list of FIRST, because spreading FIRST and getting kids interested is #1 and helping other teams does just that.

Working together is great, we have all said that, But a team has to have it's own identity. I'm know it sounds like I'm bashing collaboration, but I'm not. I'm all for it, to some degree. Anyhoo, lets not make this a bashing discussion, because that get us nowhere.

[pakrat]

I have to agree with stephen on this one you guys. Think about it for at least 5 minutes, and really think.

What i came up with is a worst/best case scenario:

Single Team with no collaboration:
Worst : NO students inspired or learning
Bad: Few students inspired and learning
Good: All students actively learning and being inspired to do great things by mentors, themselves, and other teams and companies.

Multiple teams with collaboration:
Worst : NO students inspired or learning
Bad: Few students inspired and learning
Good: All students actively learning and being inspired to do great things by mentors, themselves, and other teams and companies.


But the difference was: when there are more students total, then it is more likely that x number of kids will become inspired. Plus, giving kids a chance at first and a chance at inspiration is more than worth it to me.

So the way I interpret the challenge is this:
FInd some kids, show them the robot. Get them to understand how cool this stuff can be and begin to inspire. Once things are looking good, try to help them start a rookie team. Offer them straegies for brainstorming, work strategies, and whatever else they may need (including but not limited to funding, workspace, travel, registration). Help them to design their own robot if they want. If they aren't comfortable with that, Offer them your robot design. Have them manufacture things if possible, but i guess you can make it for them if they can't. Bottom line, do everything to get those kids and hopefully some potential sponsors excited about FIRST and about engineering.

I personally don;t have a strong opinion about the ethics or whatever else behind collaboration, but I'm never going to do anything that keeps me from inspiring my peers or students next year when i become a mentor, and I hope that many of you feel the same way.

-Rich Ross

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by pakrat

Single Team with no collaboration:
Worst : NO students inspired or learning
Bad: Few students inspired and learning
Good: All students actively learning and being inspired to do great things by mentors, themselves, and other teams and companies.

Multiple teams with collaboration:
Worst : NO students inspired or learning
Bad: Few students inspired and learning
Good: All students actively learning and being inspired to do great things by mentors, themselves, and other teams and companies

One more:

Three teams with light collaboration:
Worst : NO students inspired or learning
Bad: Few students inspired and learning
Good: Three seperate robots created, and all three teams learn the pros and cons of all their designs. A wider variety of skills are needed and learned among the teams that are helping each other. All students included are exposed to three times as many design problems and solutions. Information sharing among teams allow all 3 teams to learn about and suggest solutions to problems that other teams are having.

It's not complete collaboration or complete isolation, as many posts in this thread has shown. There is probably an optimum point in between those where more people get inspired, more problems are solved, and a greater variety of robots are created.

Personally, I think full out copy-collaboration isn't great. The 'virtual team' idea seems much better as far as starting teams. You get the same increase in your team size for designing or building, the same inspiration for other schools and liklihood they'll start the next year, and the same sharing/critiquing of designs. The participants in the virtual team will come out knowing all the pitfalls of the design/build period, and has none of the bad aspects of copy-collaboration.

[Joel Glidden]

Originally Posted by Steve W

... I know that eventually all of the "Mom and Pop" teams will disappear as they will be unable to compete against the mega teams.

This is the single greatest reason that I'm still "Watching and Waiting". I know, I know. It's not about the robots, and it's not supposed to be fair. But I enjoy competing. The students I've worked with in the past enjoyed competing. If FIRST is to become a competition for some and merely an exhibition event for others, then it's just not for me. I'm extremely discouraged to see the direction FIRST has taken regarding manufacturing alliances.

[MGoelz]

My team, Cyber Blue, is currently in the process of working towards a similar goal as suggested. Lack of interest caused a potentially all-girl team to never quite start. They would be the POWER team. We decided that the best way to get people interested was to build a second robot, similar to ours that they would be able to use over the summer at the IRI. What better way to promote FIRST, than to take a small group of people, give them a "loaner" persay, robot, and let them experience a FIRST competition for themselves?

All in all, a great way to promote all aspects of FIRST.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by MGoelz

My team, Cyber Blue, is currently in the process of working towards a similar goal as suggested. Lack of interest caused a potentially all-girl team to never quite start. They would be the POWER team. We decided that the best way to get people interested was to build a second robot, similar to ours that they would be able to use over the summer at the IRI. What better way to promote FIRST, than to take a small group of people, give them a "loaner" persay, robot, and let them experience a FIRST competition for themselves?

All in all, a great way to promote all aspects of FIRST.

It would be cool if you didn't quite finish that robot and had helped the new team finish it so they could gain some good hands on experience. They would also probably be more attached as it would be part theirs, not just a loaner...