Kickoff day

[BenGuy]

I was just interested in hearing what people do on the kickoff day both as a team and on their own. Using myself as an example, I participate in 3641's game evaluation process where we dissect the game from about 9am to 4pm. However, as any seasoned robotics person knows, it doesn't stop here. Personally I read the manual all the way through and then do some reading on Chief delphi and then come up with a few ideas. I also leave a paper and pen on my desk in my room the first few nights after kickoff because I tend to wake up sometimes in the middle of the night with design ideas.


What is your process??
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[Chris is me]

I was pretty much responsible for the kickoff meeting on my old team (2791); here's how we did it.

We attended a local Kickoff viewing at RPI as a team, waiting to see the game announcement like everybody else. We then broke off into an empty lecture hall on campus and began reading the manual while eating lunch. I would project the manual on screen and we would as a team read every word of the Game and Robot sections, and also skim the Arena and Tournament sections. Students would ask questions as they come up - veterans would try to answer them and anything we were unsure on we would write down for later. Reading the manual as a team is absolutely mandatory before starting any work in the build season, and this is the only way we could actually guarantee everyone read it.

Afterwards, we would do a brief simple strategic analysis - listing all of the game actions we thought were possible within the game, and making a brief priority list of those actions. We establish this priority list immediately in order to decide where to direct our resources to for prototyping and design, and in order to resolve any conflicts for where to put our attention.

We do not talk about any mechanical design on the first day of build season. Everyone's wheels are already spinning thinking about what robots could look like for the game, but we don't worry about that until Monday. We don't want mechanical design ideas influencing our strategy.

[BenGuy]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

I was pretty much responsible for the kickoff meeting on my old team (2791); here's how we did it.

We attended a local Kickoff viewing at RPI as a team, waiting to see the game announcement like everybody else. We then broke off into an empty lecture hall on campus and began reading the manual while eating lunch. I would project the manual on screen and we would as a team read every word of the Game and Robot sections, and also skim the Arena and Tournament sections. Students would ask questions as they come up - veterans would try to answer them and anything we were unsure on we would write down for later. Reading the manual as a team is absolutely mandatory before starting any work in the build season, and this is the only way we could actually guarantee everyone read it.

Afterwards, we would do a brief simple strategic analysis - listing all of the game actions we thought were possible within the game, and making a brief priority list of those actions. We establish this priority list immediately in order to decide where to direct our resources to for prototyping and design, and in order to resolve any conflicts for where to put our attention.

We do not talk about any mechanical design on the first day of build season. Everyone's wheels are already spinning thinking about what robots could look like for the game, but we don't worry about that until Monday. We don't want mechanical design ideas influencing our strategy.

Yeah, our policy is write down any idea you have with drawings and descriptions, but take no action on it for a few days. Usually you can rule out any a lot of ideas but the good ones stay, already with drawings and descriptions.

[thedude019]

My favorite time of year to be honest! But usually as a team we attend a locally hosted kickoff. We watch the broadcast and afterwards we break into groups with the other teams there and start talking about the best strategy and design for the game. Then the following morning each person should of read the entire rules and start to have a design. The Sunday works where the team splits into groups and designs a whole robot. Then the best qualities from each design are chosen and then prototypes.

[GeeTwo]

We haven't yet settled on a well-defined procedure yet, but we've been making improvements each year. While we've always done some sort of high level strategy as part of the design, in previous years the two processes were intermingled and the strategies were not properly correlated to the actual rules, but the kickoff video. Our first three years, we spent too much time on design (two to four weeks before we decided what the robot would look like), with too little time for construction, but last year we went too far (high level design selected on kickoff day).
competition robot lagging by a few days to a week.
We did one mock kickoff on 7 Nov (based on FIRST Overdrive), and will spend our meetings the week before kickoff going over our procedures for kickoff day through design week and a rough timeline through build season and competition season.
This year, we are inviting two rookie teams (and perhaps other local teams) to join us for kickoff day in our school auditorium; we plan to send a minimal contingent to the kickoff at Stennis so we can get started as soon as we get the password to unlock the game manual. We have a group of self-starters who have been studying strategy and who are committed to an in-depth reading of the rules to determine viable strategies. Meanwhile, other groups will be doing quick prototypes and rough-designing mechanisms and perhaps whole-robot drawings to determine the resources (time, money, weight, current) needed and estimate the capacity to do various tasks.
Around the middle of the first week, we will then select a strategy (with a possible backup), and begin evaluating the mechanisms and designs against the resources and payoff for the selected strategy to select high level design (again, with possible backups). Our plan is to have transitioned to detail design and specific prototyping by the Saturday after kickoff. We will then begin ordering components we don't have, refine the design details, and begin construction of the practice robot, with construction of the competition robot lagging the practice robot by about a week, so we can incorporate lessons learned. The goal is to have the practice and competition robots be functionally equivalent, varying only in decorations and whatever holes we drilled and abandoned on the practice robot.

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

I would project the manual on screen and we would as a team read every word of the Game and Robot sections, and also skim the Arena and Tournament sections.

Just curious, how do you make an exercise like that effective? I would imagine that most highschool students would have a tendency to daydream and end up not paying attention to something as dry as the manual. We usually do independent readings to try to avoid that, but if your way works well I would love to hear how you do it.

[Alex Webber]

In the past, our team has attended a local kickoff about 45 minutes away. This year we are just going to do it at our school.

While going to Kickoffs with other teams is always fun, out team seems to get separated and nothing really gets accomplished there, particularly with the new members. We also do not get cell phone service in the building where it is held, and there isn't any wifi so we are unable to look at Reddit, CD, and download clean copies of the game manual.

At our school, while we do not have service, our district implemented a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) last year, so there is WiFi. We will be able to walk through the design process as a team together, and will eventually split off into groups.

Another disadvantage of our team attending a kickoff, we lose around 4 hours to take pictures, eat, get there and back. Our team members could get 30 minutes of sleep that they wouldn't get for the next 6 weeks.

The only real disadvantage to having it at our school, when we break into groups, friends go with friends, subteams go into subteams, and new people go with new people. If everyone goes into their own subteams group, then that's all they brainstorm for.

We are looking forward to hopefully correct some of these errores either way.

[BenGuy]

Originally Posted by Monochron

Just curious, how do you make an exercise like that effective? I would imagine that most highschool students would have a tendency to daydream and end up not paying attention to something as dry as the manual. We usually do independent readings to try to avoid that, but if your way works well I would love to hear how you do it.

This is something that I think all teams face. Unless you have a core group of a few people, there are bound to be those who get bored and are not as engaged and care about the subject as others. We make sure everyone has the 'opportunity to succeed' by letting them be in the discussion. However, it's like the saying goes, 'you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.' Those who are leaders and are engaged excel and stay focused, those who aren't focused are setting themselves up to be behind the rest of the year.

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

Originally Posted by BenGuy

This is something that I think all teams face. Unless you have a core group of a few people, there are bound to be those who get bored and are not as engaged and care about the subject as others. We make sure everyone has the 'opportunity to succeed' by letting them be in the discussion. However, it's like the saying goes, 'you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.' Those who are leaders and are engaged excel and stay focused, those who aren't focused are setting themselves up to be behind the rest of the year.

It's similar on our team. We try to have every member engaged in the beginning when going over the game, rules, ideas, etc, but only a few remain engaged in the discussions for the whole day. Usually halfway through when game/idea discussions start to become more detailed, large parts of the team break off either to get started on prototypes, KOP inventory, making critical parts of the field needed for prototyping and other stuff along that nature. Usually the drivetrain is decided very quickly(Typically a 6WD Kit) and many students will begin working on getting that up and running. Programming team also starts getting new software and firmware set up. Lots of stuff happen on the first day that's for sure.

While it would be cool for every student to be active in design or strategy discussions, not every student wants to do it. Typically it's the more experienced members or students that naturally have a strategy mindset that are the most involved. Though this is typically only 4-5 students, it's a pretty good number considering the core team consists of only about 18 students.

[Edxu]

Originally Posted by Rangel(kf7fdb)

It's similar on our team. We try to have every member engaged in the beginning when going over the game, rules, ideas, etc, but only a few remain engaged in the discussions for the whole day. Usually halfway through when game/idea discussions start to become more detailed, large parts of the team break off either to get started on prototypes, KOP inventory, making critical parts of the field needed for prototyping and other stuff along that nature. Usually the drivetrain is decided very quickly(Typically a 6WD Kit) and many students will begin working on getting that up and running. Programming team also starts getting new software and firmware set up. Lots of stuff happen on the first day that's for sure.

While it would be cool for every student to be active in design or strategy discussions, not every student wants to do it. Typically it's the more experienced members or students that naturally have a strategy mindset that are the most involved. Though this is typically only 4-5 students, it's a pretty good number considering the core team consists of only about 18 students.

Traditionally, 610 has done a Saturday post-release + short afternoon casual talk in small groups, then we meet as an entire team after thinking our ideas over a night, then we have a large group discussion on Sunday. This year, we'll be making small groups of 4-5 (we have a team of 49 I think), which each includes at least 2 experienced or senior members who have a firm grasp on strategy, and it's their job to explain the concepts to new members, who sometimes come up with extremely innovative solutions.

Personally, I'm really against the idea of people not having input on the robot, even if they don't want to, because if they're dissatisfied with the end product, they may end up blaming themselves for not being more engaged at the beginning with the Strategic breakdown.

[Sperkowsky]

We go to a local kickoff about 45 minutes away so while we are waiting for the bus to come we drop some ideas. Then while on the bus we independently read the manual. Once we get back to the school any one who actually red the manual a few times has a good idea of what is going on.

We then have a few hours of game analysis followed by a couple of prototypes.

We now try to have a full CAD model of vital assemblies done in the beginning of week 2 so going fast week 1 is a necessity.

[Edxu]

We host a local kickoff in our school's Auditorium, and we watch the Game Release as a group.

After watching the release and everyone has the Game Manual unlocked, we move out and break into small groups to discuss our thoughtson the game, with each group consisting of a mix of students in each grade. Generally we dismiss students to head home around 2:30 PM, so that they can think about it independently and mull over their ideas.

Giving people the night to think over their own ideas before doing a team-wide discussion lets them think about what THEY want the robot to do, and it often leads to innovative ideas for discussions the next day.

[sanddrag]

First thing I do after the kickoff broadcast is start typing in my credit card number...

[Sperkowsky]

Just wondering we usually go to kickoff at a college but if we decided to just stay at our school how would we get the KOP.

[KrazyCarl92]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Just wondering we usually go to kickoff at a college but if we decided to just stay at our school how would we get the KOP.

You could send a small group of a couple people to pick up the KOP at the local kickoff and then do your thing at your school while those few people drive back to join you with your KOP.