[FRC Blog] Stop Build Day Survey Results

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

You can say that the plurality-winning opinion is keeping sbd, but you will also have to point out that a supermajority of respondents think there should be some kind of change to the existing rules.

[jman4747]

My take is most people don't want it to change much or at all (4 & 5 = 52.6%) Most people however want it to change at least a little (1-4 = 65.9%).




Edit: ugh...

[Hitchhiker 42]

Originally Posted by Ed Law

Imagine dividing into more bins from 1-10 instead of from 1-5. Let's say 10 is do not eliminate stop build day. It will even look clearer than the bar for do not eliminate stop build day is much much higher than the other bars.

... or it might not. Consider people who thought it was higher than a 4, but not quite a 5. On that new scale, they'd say 9/10. But on this scale, they put 5. I know that was what happened with me at least.

[Mark McLeod]

I cannot agree with you here Ed.
The middle choice, a 3 in this type of survey is typically the "I don't care either way" or "no opinion" choice.
Only 1 & 2 can be counted towards the eliminate bag day or sort of eliminate bag day attitude.

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by marshall

So a majority of responding teams (2,196) build more than one robot...

This is probably the most surprising result for me. I'm curious about the distribution of on-field performance of the responding teams. Because I am biased to think that 50% of all teams do not build a second robot, I imagine this survey got significantly more responses from teams who excel at competitions. It is tough to quantify how that skew affected the results of the survey.

[mathking]

The wording on the survey was not great, and any detailed survey like this is obviously trying to do a more nuanced evaluation than simply "eliminate or don't eliminate." One thing that strikes me as a statistician is that there is likely more motivation on the part of those favoring getting rid of stop build day. First because the motivation level for "change" events is generally higher than for "remain the same" events. So in a survey like this, I would bet that all other things being equal, the 1s are likely overrepresented compared to the 5s relative to the entire FRC population.

[guniv]

I'm pretty against getting rid of Stop Build Day, but like mathking says above, I would have expected a larger turnout from those in favor of getting rid of it.

Nonetheless, I answered all of the questions truthfully and some could be considered contradictory to my stance, like "managing unexpected events.. drive time... last minute needed parts." I'm not surprised to see that those indeed have a large percentage calling it a disadvantage. I wonder if we ever see the full data, how many "contradictory" answers we might possibly see.

[Rachel Lim]

Here's a visual representation of some of the breakdowns they provided but didn't graph (build one/multiple robots, in regionals/districts, rookie year).

I find it very interesting (and very weird) that teams who build multiple robots are more in favor of keeping bag day.

[Hitchhiker 42]

Originally Posted by Rachel Lim

I find it very interesting (and very weird) that teams who build multiple robots are more in favor of keeping bag day.

On the contrary, that makes sense. If you already have the resources to build a second robot, why change the rule (other than money, but you already have that), whereas teams that don't have enough resources would more likely ask for no stop build day.

TL;DR High-resource teams in general favor the status quo which is understandable.

[Jessi Kaestle]

Originally Posted by marshall

This is at the top of the report:

So a majority of responding teams (2,196) build more than one robot...

Though this number does seem high, we should keep in mind that the question was worded such that the second "robot" did not have to be equivalent to your bagged robot, just that it allow testing of some aspect of your robot while it was bagged.

By that stance if you build a kit-bot on wheels to test programming or a spare arm and use that to test shooting angles, those both count as "second robots" per that question

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Jessi Kaestle

Though this number does seem high, we should keep in mind that the question was worded such that the second "robot" did not have to be equivalent to your bagged robot, just that it allow testing of some aspect of your robot while it was bagged.

By that stance if you build a kit-bot on wheels to test programming or a spare arm and use that to test shooting angles, those both count as "second robots" per that question

You're right, but at the same time, any team building a non-bagged robot is continuing work after Stop Build Day. So every one of these teams is at the very least spending man-hours on a project (and probably money) in order to allow post-bag development of their robot. The bag is such a significant constraint that half of 2/3rds of FRC actively works around it, and is already not observing the "six week build season".

I'm curious to hear from teams that build significant or full practice robots that wish to keep bag day. That's probably where I'll learn the most about this perspective.

[mathking]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

I'm curious to hear from teams that build significant or full practice robots that wish to keep bag day. That's probably where I'll learn the most about this perspective.

That would be us. For the last few years (either six or eight depending on how close a copy you want) we have built a practice robot that is a pretty close copy of the competition robot. Not always exactly the same but very, very close. I have expressed it before, but my reason for wanting to keep stop build day is that we will lose team members (both students and mentors) if we do not. We practice with the second robot, and a few students work on tweaking devices sometimes. But we spend less than 20% as much time and have less than 20% as many students involved in the practice at any one time as we do during the build season. That is a sustainable level of activity for us after stop build day. Over half our team members do a spring sport or are in the spring musical, and we would lose some of them, and some mentors, if we changed.

As I said before, I have no doubt that on the average the robots would be better if there were no stop build day. At least in the short term. There is no reason that adding more time to work on the robot would make robots worse (excepting every once in a while where there is a catastrophic accident) and reasons that at least some robots would be better. Using the same logic I do not doubt there would not be as many participants in FRC, because I don't believe there are lots of people out there not participating because of the limited build season. So for me it is a question of better robots for fewer kids or not quite as good robots for more kids.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by mathking

That would be us. For the last few years (either six or eight depending on how close a copy you want) we have built a practice robot that is a pretty close copy of the competition robot. Not always exactly the same but very, very close. I have expressed it before, but my reason for wanting to keep stop build day is that we will lose team members (both students and mentors) if we do not. We practice with the second robot, and a few students work on tweaking devices sometimes. But we spend less than 20% as much time and have less than 20% as many students involved in the practice at any one time as we do during the build season. That is a sustainable level of activity for us after stop build day. Over half our team members do a spring sport or are in the spring musical, and we would lose some of them, and some mentors, if we changed.

As I said before, I have no doubt that on the average the robots would be better if there were no stop build day. At least in the short term. There is no reason that adding more time to work on the robot would make robots worse (excepting every once in a while where there is a catastrophic accident) and reasons that at least some robots would be better. Using the same logic I do not doubt there would not be as many participants in FRC, because I don't believe there are lots of people out there not participating because of the limited build season. So for me it is a question of better robots for fewer kids or not quite as good robots for more kids.

Thanks for the input; I understand this perspective on how the soft deadline helps limit the flow of work after the deadline.

My follow up is, if we kept the bag system, and added access windows, what do you feel would be the right amount of time to allow, such that teams like yours did not have to build a second robot, but the system of a soft deadline and more limited after-build work is preserved? I feel this kind of compromise is a step forward that more people can agree on than just ripping off the Band-Aid of Stop Build Day right away, and this is where people should focus their efforts on finding common ground.

My gut says... 10 hours a week without competition, 2 hours a week with competition, in addition to any unbag windows provided to District teams already. But maybe that's too much?

[mathking]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Thanks for the input; I understand this perspective on how the soft deadline helps limit the flow of work after the deadline.

My follow up is, if we kept the bag system, and added access windows, what do you feel would be the right amount of time to allow, such that teams like yours did not have to build a second robot, but the system of a soft deadline and more limited after-build work is preserved? I feel this kind of compromise is a step forward that more people can agree on than just ripping off the Band-Aid of Stop Build Day right away, and this is where people should focus their efforts on finding common ground.

My gut says... 10 hours a week without competition, 2 hours a week with competition, in addition to any unbag windows provided to District teams already. But maybe that's too much?

I think 10 hours might be a bit much, but in principle adding some limited time each week with robot access is a good compromise. It would limit the workflow and not require the kind of time commitment the build season entails. I might instead offer some total number of hours over the time period. But I think you have hit the nail on the head with finding middle ground. (One big advantage of an unbagging period might be an increase in the number of robots that are operational for practice rounds.)

Just to be clear, I am not advocating for an un-bagging period as way to ease into getting rid of Stop Build Day. I think it is a reasonable middle ground instead of getting rid of it. I still think that if we get rid of Stop Build Day we will reduce the number of students who participate. (As a side note, we will also reduce the chances for those who opt to stay with FRC to do other things.) I think reducing the participation rate is a bad idea.

[Mark McLeod]

The way that question about 2nd robots was worded doesn't equate with teams necessarily working on them past bag day.
Teams simply strapping a prototype arm to last year's robot during week 2 would be answering "yes" to that question.