Dealing with robotics regrets

[MaGiC_PiKaChU]

Originally Posted by Munchskull

I feel you man, my biggest regrets are:

1.this years elevator design

2.not making a Frisbee shooter in 2013

I feel you... We had a very nice full court shooter that adjusted itself automatically but no way of feeding the frisbees because our climbing system took too much place... so yeah we did shoot in auto then we would only climb because that took us more than a minute

[RoboChair]

My 2007 robot on 1678, decided to go with a 5ft 110lb robot with a huge ramp. Ramp was too big and had a hard time fitting in the end zone, got many penalties. Should have made a 4ft 120lb bot with a steeper ramp incline so we could fit easy in the zone.

It did manage to go from about 8 ft square as a robot to 45 ft square as a mobile ramp. Had to carefully budget the weight for paint on it >_>

The robot was taken apart long ago except for the ramp skeleton which had the urethane hinges rot away from the elements last year and was finally torn apart. Nobody wanted to drill out 3000 pop rivets or cut the urethane apart(tougher than nails I tell you) Made a great support for our old shipping crate to keep it off the ground and getting a bad case of dry rot.

May you rest in pieces Parking Citation/Origami Go-Kart.

[Chief Hedgehog]

"This too shall pass"...

No matter to whom it is attached, the meaning remains the same. I have been a coach of a few different sports in my time. I rarely regret decisions as they are typically made with sound judgement and with the team at heart.

However, when the season ends and I have to face each of the seniors sobbing, sullen, or stone-faced, this is the only thing that is ringing in my ears.

Nothing I can say can ease the pain. No embrace can take away the sting of defeat. And I never utter those bitter words of "this to shall pass" - because they will know it in time.

There should not be regrets in Robotics. That is the joy of the program. Only learning from failures (see this).

FRC 4607 has been built upon the mantra of fail now, succeed later. We do not allow regrets. I think that every one of my students can attest to this - but I would bet each of us would like to dial back time a bit to right a wrong.

No Ragrets!

[RunawayEngineer]

I am familiar with FRC mistakes. Many years ago when I was a student on another team, we lost the final match on Einstein by a hair. I think that if we had followed a different strategy that we could have turned that easily. Most mistakes are the result of hindsight - but I saw the perfect strategy at the time and pushed for it. I just didn't push hard enough for it and we lost.

But here's the beautiful thing about FIRST: you are supposed to make mistakes. The whole point of a hands-on experience with a competition is for everyone to try things to see what works and what doesn't. You are supposed to wrestle with the technical challenges, the logistical challenges, the quasi-political challenges, the morale challenges, and the emotional challenges and learn from them.
If you are making mistakes and learning from them, then you are getting the prime FIRST experience. Winning feels great, but growth is priceless.

[Kevin Leonard]

Literally every team has regrets- its not just you.

I was discussing regrets with some people on 5254 a few weeks ago and they were ranting about all the different ways we COULD have won the Finger Lakes Regional (5254, 340, and 174 lost to 4039, 3015, and 378 in finals by 3 points).

And I just laughed, because it was going to be the first of many experiences like that for them.
I could complain about WPI 2013, Archimedes 2014, and three different IRI's all day and how if things had only gone slightly differently, each of those events could have gone better.
At some point you have to just learn from your mistakes and move on.

I'm sure 1114, 148, 254, 973, 2826, 2056, etc. all have regrets about their championship performances this year- they're trying to win a world championship, and "if only we placed a stack here instead" or "if only we placed X more totes" are complaints for both teams at the top and teams at the bottom.

Everyone has regrets in robotics- it's how you learn from them that makes all the difference.

[Jon Stratis]

I never have regrets about our robot or on field performance. Simply put, for me it really isn't about the competition, it's about the kids. And that's where, if anywhere, I may experience regret occasionally - when you have trouble reaching a kid, or walk away with the impression that you had a negative impact on them it hurts, and is something that you tend to dwell on for a while until you can make it right. It's one of the reasons I became an LRI - telling a group of kids that their beautiful design is illegal is probably one of the worst experiences they can have at a competition. I hate doing it. But I know that I can approach it in a way to both soften the blow and help set them on a path towards success. And for me, seeing that illegal robot get fixed and then be successful is one of the most rewarding parts of an entire competition.

When it comes to my team, a lot of it has to do with setting expectations and managing the entire process. We have a process in place that lets us analyze the season to pull out both the good and the bad, work towards improvement for next year, and leave everyone excited at the end of the season, regardless of how the season went. I know that students walked away just as excited for next year, even though our on field performance this year was horrible, as they did in 2011 when we had an amazing run to win North Star and go to champs for the first time in team history. And really, that's what it's all about.

[Briansmithtown]

One thing I realized in dealing with robot regrets is to NOT look back after your senior year.

I personally have had a bad time dealing with regrets from how it turned out for us. I also regret never going to a competition (which stinks because i've been doing this since 2009). Its something you have to do. You have to step back a bit, and let it go. Come back as a mentor or help out, but just step back. Take a year off, and kind of relax.

[The other Gabe]

I regret few things that I dont feel are directly my fault; things like our terrible 2013 robot, or our pneumatic failure in 2012 that potentially cost us making it to Einstein, and definitely cost us the quarterfinals on our field (most were learning experiences, especially on the building side of stuff). That being said I regret two things in my two years of scout leading

The Mount Vernon District, 2014: I played my cards wrong during alliance selection, letting 2 of the best wheeled collector robots end up on the same alliance, amongst other strategic errors.

DCMP both years: not selling my team's robot hard enough (fun fact- despite being one of the most successful PNW teams, 2046 has never played an elimination round at District champs

Originally Posted by Munchskull

2.not making a Frisbee shooter in 2013

hey, you guys didn't have a drivetrain before it was cool

[BJT]

Every year, given the benefit of hindsight, I can name a lot of things that we perhaps should have done different. However, I know that at the time, we did the best we could with the knowledge and resources we had available to us.

[Munchskull]

Originally Posted by The other Gabe

hey, you guys didn't have a drivetrain before it was cool

Thanks for the complement. We still make jokes about it.

[Brandon Zalinsky]

2014 NE Champs quarterfinals. We were the first pick of the #8 seed, with 172 the Northern Force and 2067 Apple Pi. Our first matchup: the robot decreed to be the best in New England in 195, the CyberKnights, assisted by 558 the RoboSquad and 5122 the RoboTies.

QF1 we had the only Anderson connector failure in our team's history. 172 and 2067 put up a valiant fight but lost. QF2 we took and forced the rubber match. In QF3, both us and 2067 took hard hits to our internals that knocked our compressor and Apple Pi's drive Talons, respectively. Our crippled alliance just couldn't finish it.

A win there would have, in all likelihood, sent our team to St. Louis, something I really felt the students had earned.

We learned that even though the robot was built like a truck full of trains, it wasn't impervious to little tiny failures that could create big problems.

[bkahl]

Originally Posted by Brandon Zalinsky

195, the Powerknights

I was unaware of this name change..

[Brandon Zalinsky]

Originally Posted by bkahl

I was unaware of this name change..

Wow I screwed up that one. You meant you don't want to be from West High in Manchester?

[ShotgunNinja]

I have a regret as a competition staffer.

At the 2015 Wisconsin Regional, as a Team Queuing guy, I yelled at a VIP to get out of the judges' area without a pass or badge during a match. He got really offended and aggressive with me, and I handled the situation poorly. I should have been complimentary and asked him politely instead of being brusque and direct. Turns out he was a visiting C-level from a sponsoring company, and left his VIP pass with his family or something. I was actually reprimanded informally for this faux pas.

I never had a chance to apologize to him for my actions, either, but I've learned from it, and I try to be genial and polite to anyone trying to make their way onto the field, if I believe they might be entering in error.

[hectorcastillo]

Originally Posted by anonymous_robot

For me it is flawed designs that I did not push back hard enough to get the design that would have worked.

A very similar thing happened with our team this year, so I know just how you feel. A lot of my teammates let this bog them down for the rest of the season, but ultimately, that wasn't going to help us out either. We had to accept that we had no control over the design situation and make the most out of what we had whether we liked it or not. Even though our design this year was very limiting on what we could do on the field, we worked hard to perfect the performance and look of that design, which resulted in us winning a couple of design awards. Even in failure you can still find success, you just have to make the most of the situation.