The Quest for Einstein

[MrJohnston]

Everybody has their opinions about what it takes to reach Einstein each year. Many teams make that their annual goal. Most don't make it. A few make it regularly. We often refer to those teams "elite." Each year we can't wait to see what sort of " robotic genius" teams like the Cheesy Poofs produce.

Two years ago, 948 made it to St. Louis for the first time ever - in its 11th year. We then had a very strong run through Archimedes, losing only one or two matches and earning an alliance captaincy. Of course, we met the Poofs in the quarter-finals and watch the rest of the event from the bleachers...We had a fantastic year and now realize we *can* compete at the highest levels. This year, our eyes are set on Einstein again... We are not "elite," but would like to develop our team so that we can annually compete at an elite level.

I know there are many teams out there much like ours. So, I'd like to pose the question:

What do folks think it takes to to annually compete at this level? What should clubs like mine do in order to accomplish this?

[wesbass23]

I have never been to Einstein myself so I cannot really speak from experience but there are a few things I think it takes to compete consistently at an elite level. The first thing is good mentors that come back every year. You need mentors who understand FIRST and who are able to devote their time each year to the team. Alongside this you need the full support of your school/community. You cannot constantly be dealing with roadblocks set by your school administration concerning things like fundraising or the number of days of school a student can miss. One of the final things is having a second robot to practice driving and work bugs out with and a place to practice driving. If the first time your students are driving the robot is at a competition, you are going to have a difficult time. Alongside this is having a drive coach or strategist who has been around FIRST for a while, a good robot will only get you so far without good strategy and playcalling. Something to remember is that a good robot looks bad with a bad driver, while a bad robot looks good with a good driver.

Obviously not all of these are necessary, there are teams who consistently do well without these things and there are teams with these advantages that do not do well.

[who716]

Originally Posted by MrJohnston

What do folks think it takes to to annually compete at this level? What should clubs like mine do in order to accomplish this?

1. money- lots of money

2. engineers- lots of engineers

3. Equipment- lots of equipment

4. populated student body with interest- lots of students.

[Whippet]

Originally Posted by who716

1. money- lots of money

2. engineers- lots of engineers

3. Equipment- lots of equipment

4. populated student body with interest- lots of students.

5. Time- looooots of time. Two hours a day won't even begin to cut it.

[who716]

Originally Posted by Whippet

5. Time- looooots of time. Two hours a day won't even begin to cut it.

good edition!

[dodar]

6. Corndogs - Lots of Corndogs

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by who716

4. populated student body with interest- lots of students.

Trust me they have that one covered, with more than 100 students last season.

[who716]

Originally Posted by dodar

6. Corndogs - Lots of Corndogs

AH yes the infamous corndogs.

Originally Posted by Mr V

Trust me they have that one covered, with more than 100 students last season.

I cant imagine being on a team with over 100 kids that sound like chaos, my team is 9 members

[Knufire]

Originally Posted by who716

1. money- lots of money

2. engineers- lots of engineers

3. Equipment- lots of equipment

4. populated student body with interest- lots of students.

I don't necessarily agree with these. Are they extremely helpful? Yes, but I think the amount of resources (human and material) of several "elite" teams would surprise you.

Student interest, however, is absolutely necessary. If you truly inspire your kids to want to be the best, they will put in the required effort and time to bring the program to that level.

On a seperate note, I think one of the biggest differentating factors between the upper-mid tier of teams and the elite teams is drive practice. Built an identical robot, find space for a practice field, and be practicing 5-7 days a week from when you finish that practice robot until the day you leave for the championship event. Not only will your drivers be using your robot to it's absolute potential, but the many, many hours of runtime on your practice robot will let you discover failure points of your robot well before they ever occur on the competition robot. This allows you to preemptively fix these failure points before they ever occur during a competition match.

Don't be afraid to iterate mid-season, even drastically. Always be improving performance of your robot.

Meticilous attention to strategy and match prep. Look no further than 1678 last year to see exactly how this should be done.

Make friends. You'll never know when you'll need a helping hand or a piece of advice.

Seasons are often made or broken in the first week of build season. 1114 wouldn't be repeatedly giving their strategic design seminar if it wasn't that important. Recovering from misreading the game is extremely hard.

The typical solutions you see around you year-to-year aren't the only ones. Don't be afraid to break out of your location's norms. FIRST games are played quite different from region to region. Try new things during the off-season.

Don't get discouraged. Developing a consistent program takes time. If you think the elite teams have made it and are just crusing along, you're mistaken. Competing at an elite level in FRC is extremely hard; an old mentor of mine claimed that FRC was much harder than his senior automotive engineering position, due to the time requirements. Build season will force you to work harder than you thought possible. It won't always be fun, and sometimes it will be very much the opposite. Stick it through, and you might be surprised what you can accomplish.

[JesseK]

1. Replace 'money' with 'focused creativity' and a team can make it to Einstein.

7. Attitude. It takes mental discipline, supporting families and willpower to do what it takes to adapt to the higher levels of competition, especially after a Regional.

8. Scouting, or Experience. The best teams in the world get wrecked without good partners or a good gameplan.

[MrForbes]

Face it, it takes some type of magic that most of us don't have quite enough of.

When you figure out what the magic is, or how it works, please let us know!

[BrendanB]

I think the better goal here is how to move forward to become a consistent high performing robot at the Championship not just a goal of being on Einstein. Let's face it there are many, MANY amazing robots and teams each year who don't make it to Einstein because so many little elements determine where you seed, what alliance you end up on, and who you face.

Something to remember is you have to be able to make it to the Championship. You can't compete at an event you aren't qualified for which starts at your first event. Many teams who are quoted for their amazing designs that end up back up on Einstein or are consistent favorites for deep in elimination runs like 67, 148, 254, 1114, etc. have HOF or Legacy status that gives them an invitation to the Championship each year. This means they have the "net" that they can go a little more complex than you because their goal is to win the championship (in addition to every event the attend) but that goal doesn't ride on them having to qualify at a regional/district in order to get there. Many teams bite off more than they can chew because they are focused to deep in the season.

Drive practice and committed students are HUGE. Its one thing to have a practice bot. Its another to have a group of students who strive for perfection and the best performance possible. A very high majority of teams are held back because of their drivers not the mechanisms they built.

You need to iterate through the season to make your robot perform better and like it was said before you can't be afraid of drastic changes. Many robots can hit a cap on their performance which some drivers will hit during practice or have a robot that can't adapt well to the higher levels of play we see at the Championship. Sometimes its iterating your mechanisms, your programming, your strategy, or how you drive the robot but never settle for "good enough".

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

....to have a group of students who strive for perfection and the best performance possible..

This is the part where magic is involved.

Some folks are magicians, and can consistently make this happen.

[c.shu]

Some things my team tries to focus on:

Pick a winning strategy - Directly after kick-off we try to pick a strategy where we think we can seed high at any level of competition. This is usually based on how many points we can score with a given strategy.

Stick with it - Once we have chosen our strategy, we do what we can to not deviate from it. You don't have time during build season to be indecisive or change your mind halfway through.

Keep it simple - Building a simple robot is extremely important. The more things you have going on with your robot is just more things to fail during a match. Try to keep it down to just a few simple mechanisms that can do a lot instead of a lot of mechanisms that do one thing. Our robot last year was about as simple as they come, but it was very effective.

Don't reinvent the wheel - If there is something out there that works great for what you need, use it. Maybe you can modify it to better suit your situation but generally you don't need to come up with something brand new to be competitive.

Keep improving - Just because build season ends doesn't mean improving your robot goes with it. In the past we have used our withholding allowance to replace entire mechanisms because they were better than the originals.

Good Scouting - At competition it is crucial that you know what every robot there is good/bad at and how they compliment your game. Even your weakest partners are useful for something, it just takes a little creativity to figure out how they can best help win a match.

Hope this helps

[Vupa]

Luck. For lower-tier teams luck plays a large role. This is luck in design (stumbling upon the right design early), luck in build season (stars align and your build season goes smoothly), luck in competition (match schedules, high tier teams noticing you, etc.).

Of course luck isn't everything, but it definitely is something. The points everyone else has mentioned are all very important (maybe not the corn dogs), but to overcome the luck barrier means that you need to have a ginormous base of skills and knowledge. Even great teams fail to beat out bad luck with raw robotics expertise.

The only way to overcome luck (besides being lucky), is to eliminate places where luck may play a role. Although impossible in some places such as match schedules and certain aspects of competition a lot of the time you can replace luck with large amounts of dedication. This is dedication in literally everything: design, strategy, driver practice, scouting, learning, etc.

In example, build season has started and your ready to go, to eliminate luck in design, you need to put the effort into prototyping every mechanism you find viable, this means having a crew of people working around the clock to find the right design for your resources and skill level. Look through concepts on Chief Delphi, watch all of the Robot in 3 Days videos, study resources that teams put out (like Simbot Seminars).

To be a Einstein level team you need to eliminate the places where luck exists and replace them with a base of knowledge and skill and a base of dedication.