[FRC Blog] Stop Build Day Survey Results

[Jessi Kaestle]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

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.

In both examples I gave, the primary purpose of building this "second robot" might not be to allow post bag development. In the case of the kit-bot to text programming my team does that to allow the programmers more than a few days with a drive-able robot to test autonomous code. In the case of a spare arm, it is exactly that, a spare.

I am not saying that teams might not use them to for post bag development but with the way the question was worded we can not infer that that is the purpose of these "second robots".

[marshall]

Originally Posted by Jessi Kaestle

In both examples I gave, the primary purpose of building this "second robot" might not be to allow post bag development. In the case of the kit-bot to text programming my team does that to allow the programmers more than a few days with a drive-able robot to test autonomous code. In the case of a spare arm, it is exactly that, a spare.

I am not saying that teams might not use them to for post bag development but with the way the question was worded we can not infer that that is the purpose of these "second robots".

Ohh, I get it, the NASA method. Build the robot, put it in the rocket, fire it off to another planet, and then work on coding a close facsimile before it lands.

Meh. Build season is a myth! Pop the bag!

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by tickspe15

This survey was clearly rigged.

But will you accept the results?

[Rachel Lim]

Originally Posted by Hitchhiker 42

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.

I guess I was thinking of it more like teams who build practice robots presumably have the time/resources to work through bag and tag (compared to some single-robot teams who may not be able to continue working even without bag day, or who will struggle to do so), and removing the bag could only help. But yeah, that makes sense too.

It is interesting to note that CD is over-representative of people on teams that build practice robots as well as those who prefer to end bag and tag.

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

But will you accept the results?

Only if my side wins.

[efoote868]

If you were to estimate the results by the tone of the discussion in here, I'd put it at 90% want to eliminate Stop Build Day. My takeaway from the survey results is that those on Chief Delphi are a very vocal minority.

[Caleb Sykes]

Originally Posted by efoote868

If you were to estimate the results by the tone of the discussion in here, I'd put it at 90% want to eliminate Stop Build Day. My takeaway from the survey results is that those on Chief Delphi are a very vocal minority.

Already known.

[nuclearnerd]

Originally Posted by efoote868

If you were to estimate the results by the tone of the discussion in here, I'd put it at 90% want to eliminate Stop Build Day. My takeaway from the survey results is that those on Chief Delphi are a very vocal minority.

Very true, but also consider that any petition for change will be heavily biased towards the status quo. People are always afraid of change until it happens. I would say the fact that this survey shows nearly half of respondents voting 1 or 2 is a significant result.

Also, you know, data trumps opinion, and I think there data is pretty clear that bag day is harmful.

[tickspe15]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

But will you accept the results?

I will keep you in suspense.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by tickspe15

I will keep you in suspense.

You've got the best words.

[tickspe15]

Originally Posted by marshall

You've got the best words.

Yeah I'm pretty much the greatest person ever. Only the best words for me

[StAxis]

The results seem to lean toward keeping a stop build day, but I would be curious to see the results of each survey question. Mind you, many of the questions did seem to be biased towards removing it.

Results aside, that looks like a very good turnout of responses!

[Steven Smith]

Originally Posted by Jon K.

I would be interested in seeing the results of the survey of time in the program vs the keep vs stop data similar to how they did team age vs the data. I wonder if it is still as evenly distributed.

In the linked report they broke the data into a few bins based on team age. It didn't seem to have a dramatic impact on the dataset to my eye.

[marshall]

Well... the results are definitely interesting.

I'm not a statistics wizard by any measurement so I'll leave others to nitpick the results. I would love to see the data broken down by team locations as well as by team age though.

I still have my opinion that Stop Build Day should disappear like so many outdated things with FRC but for now it appears as though I'm in the minority.

EDIT: Linked report has some of the data I wanted actually. I skimmed it and missed it on first pass.

[EricH]

Taking my best hack at future predictions...

1) I suspect that the Zondag System won't be in play in 2017. That would most likely class as a "major change" at HQ.
2) After the 2017 season wraps up, HQ will look more closely.

Given that there's a fair number of folks on the Stop Building side, more than the Don't Stop Building side, I rather suspect that Stop Build will stay in place for some time yet. I realize that that's going to be unpopular with the local vocals.

But here's the thing. There seems to be a fair amount of support for Don't Stop Building--getting up towards a decent tipping point, I suspect within the next few years. I don't think this issue will go away. At a best guess, there will be a change for 2018, and I would really strongly suspect that the Zondag System will be the original basis, but there will be some major changes that teams won't like.


There is, in fact, a precedent for the Zondag System. It's the FIX-IT Window, '05-'07ish, and it allowed teams to work on robot parts to be brought to their events even when other work was technically banned (and that was enforced by the robots being in a crate out of the teams' hands). There were a number of elements that teams didn't like, for a variety of reasons. Now taking bets on that system returning, with robot access instead of legal spare parts from after build as the primary benefit.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by EricH

But here's the thing. There seems to be a fair amount of support for Don't Stop Building--getting up towards a decent tipping point, I suspect within the next few years.

Out of curiosity, what makes you think there's motion on the overall attitude towards stop-build? I won't claim to know either way, but we had shipping to regionals through 2011, I think, with a slight overlap with Bag and Tag... that means there's been at least 5-6 years of wide spread bag and tag usage, and even longer of Stop Build day. I'm not aware of other surveys like this one going out to give us an idea of what the community thinks of the Stop Build deadline. I just don't see how we can infer any sort of trends from this single data point.