"Spare Parts" Rules Are Broken

[KenWittlief]

I just search all the manual for:
hotel
remove
overnight

and I cant find anyplace that says you are not allowed to take parts from your bot out of the facilities overnight and work on them - was this another one of those rules from previous years that has been dropped?

[Don Wright]

Hmmm....good point... I don't know.

[KenWittlief]

Personally I think it would be a great idea - what a super way for teams to work together if they are able to goto a teams local facilities and make mods or repairs after the pits close at night

seriously, this is chairmans award material!

[Joe Johnson]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

...and I cant find anyplace that says you are not allowed to take parts from your bot out of the facilities overnight and work on them ...

I don't see how you can be reading the same update I am reading!

I am serious. The bit about working on the robot after the ship date is specifically titled "At Events" If this is not enough, it says you may work in the pits or a facility open to all teams. Also, FIRST says you have to meet insurance and others requirements, including using the official desk to request work (even your own work).

It is silly to think that you can have your hotel room meet these requirements.

It seems to me that there is enough to worry about with regard to these rules without conjuring up frivolous ones.

Joe J.

[Kris Verdeyen]

Originally Posted by Ken Patton

We brought our mostly-assembled practice robot to GLR. It sat in my truck. On multiple occasions we went out to the truck and "harvested" parts from the spare robot. In every single instance the parts we used were (1)fabricated before the ship date or were off-the-shelf components, and (2)used only after they were fully disassembled down to individual pieces.

I don't see how this can be considered to be "ok", and here is why:

When the six weeks is drawing to a close, noone (at least noone that has the resources, planning, and skill to make a practice robot) is doing any serious design. The last week or so is tweaking time. It's time to lighten your robot, it's time to add that extra loop of string or extra bolt, or extra timing correction in your code. For team 118, it's the time for the drivers to practice running the robot to death, and when it dies, we fix it. Sometimes the fix is something simple and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes, after fixing something for the umpteenth time, we come across the design flaw that's causing the thing to fail in the fist place, so we fix that. This is what engineers do when we see something broke - we fix it.

My point is, six weeks is not long enough for a team to "finish" their robot. We ship a robot because it's due, not because we can't think of anything more to do to it. When a team has a robot for an extra month after the ship date, there is no way to avoid putting on that extra bolt or weld or hole that will make it more perfect. Is that team drastically changing their design? No. But they are changing it. If the six weeks is not the time period for changing the robot, then what is it?

All that said, I see nothing wrong with doing any of this, as long as the practice robot, and all of its parts, stays back home in the shop. Once you bring that robot, or any piece of it (assembled or not), to a competition, you are competing with a machine that was modified outside of the two allowable times you can work on it: during the six week build, or during a competition.

The bottom line is that a part can either be part of a practice robot, or a spare, but not both. Ship the spares to the competition, practice with your practice robot, and show up on Thursday with your tools, your raw materials and OTS parts, and a smile.

[Raul]

Originally Posted by Kris Verdeyen

The bottom line is that a part can either be part of a practice robot, or a spare, but not both. Ship the spares to the competition, practice with your practice robot, and show up on Thursday with your tools, your raw materials and OTS parts, and a smile.

Kris,
That is a unique interpretation of the rules. Are you implying that all parts on a practice robot are declared illegal simply because they were used on a practice robot at one time?

A part was either made or modified after the 6-week period or it was not. If it was made during the 6-week period and never modified, then according to the rules, it matters not if it resided on a practice robot at one time. If I bring that part into the competition as a single part, I am allowed to use it.

[Kris Verdeyen]

Originally Posted by Raul

That is a unique interpretation of the rules.

It's less of an interpretation than it's a rant on the way things ought to be. I realize that, as it stands now, it is legal to use practice robot parts as spares, I just think that it shouldn't be.

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

In most cases, I agree with your post. However, with Ken's case in particular, you are assuming too much. You cannot just assume that a part on a practice robot was tweaked or modified since kickoff. If it was, then I would bet money that Ken would not bring that part into the arena.

And I wouldn't cover that bet. The larger issue here, however, is one of perception. As professionals, we must avoid the appearance of unethical behavior as vigorously as the behavior itself. How must it look to a rookie, or a even struggling veteran team, to see a mentor on a well respected, well staffed, well monied team leave the arena and come back with whatever part he needed? It looks like it could be a violation. It looks shadowy. Even if you stopped the person, and confronted him or her, and got a great explanation complete with footnotes pointing to specific rules, it looks wrong. That's what we need to avoid, and the only way to do that is to limit what we bring to the competition to raw materials and unmodified off-the-shelf hardware.

[Joe3]

No matter how many rules FIRST writes, a team that builds a practice robot will have an advantage over a team that doesnt every time. No matter what rules they write. Even if they get so picky as to search bags to make sure no spare parts make their way into the arena, these teams will have an advantage. They will have driven this robot, found out strengths, and weaknesses, and found many design flaws incorporated in the robot, and have plans to fix them. Their drivers will have weeks more training, knowing the capabilities of the robot, how in hangles in different situations, and how long it takes to do each task. Their programmers will have had weeks to refine the autonomous programs and create new ones. None of these are against the rules by ANY stretch of the imagination, but they all give considerable advantages to the teams who are able to build the practice robot. Their pit crew walks into the event knowing exactly what they have to do to improve the robot, the programmers simply have to download the new code and check to make sure that it works on the real robot, and the drivers have loads more experiance driving the robot.

As many people have said, the creation of autonomous mode have pushed the benefits of building this practice robot way higher than the cost. It is becoming a near necessity to do so.

Do I think that a team should have a practice robot sitting in the pit next to their real robot and take parts off of it and put it on the real robot when something breaks? Well, actually yes. If I can walk up and ask that team when they built it, and if they say the 6 week build period, thats good enough for me. I also think that FIRST made a mistake getting rid of the 3 day grace period after an event during which a team could make changes to their design. I think that this was a well needed time period for the constant evolution of a design, and the troubleshooting of problems that developed during a regional. If a few teams abused this and worked even after those 3 days, oh well, they can live with themselves. I dont think that more rules are the answer to this problem, as they will always be nearly unenforceable.

It seems like everyone is forgetting what this is supposed to be about. It's not supposed to be a cutthroat competition where everyone is constantly watching to make sure everyone is playing exactly within the rules. We're all supposed to trust each other, and use the honor system, and GP to ensure that everyone plays nice. Let's go back to the system of 2 years ago (teams have until wednesday after an event they participated in to alter designs and make spare parts.) I think it was better for the teams, the engineering process, and FIRST.

[KenWittlief]

actaully every single FIRST team already has a pratice robot

FIRST started GIVING them to us last year

remember?

the EDU bot?

it runs the same code - you can use victors and spikes with it

you can use the same input sensors

you can work out your auton code on it

its not a question of whether every team can afford to have a pratice bot - its only a matter of how close it is to their real one.

[Roland]

A second robot controller like the EDUrobot is a far cry from a second robot, even for autonomous programming. It may be better than nothing, but for learning how to drive a robot, you need something almost identical to the real thing. This is especially important on our team, where we let anyone who wants to drive drive the robot. The EDUrobot is better than nothing, but it's still not really a practice robot.

[Ken Patton]

Originally Posted by Kris Verdeyen

And I wouldn't cover that bet. The larger issue here, however, is one of perception. As professionals, we must avoid the appearance of unethical behavior as vigorously as the behavior itself. How must it look to a rookie, or a even struggling veteran team, to see a mentor on a well respected, well staffed, well monied team leave the arena and come back with whatever part he needed? It looks like it could be a violation. It looks shadowy. Even if you stopped the person, and confronted him or her, and got a great explanation complete with footnotes pointing to specific rules, it looks wrong. That's what we need to avoid, and the only way to do that is to limit what we bring to the competition to raw materials and unmodified off-the-shelf hardware.

(sorry so long for me to respond - was at the Detroit regional watching some great matches)

Kris-

You are simply wrong whe you assume that our competition parts get modified after ship. They don't. If a part gets modified it is no longer a competition part and on our team it doesn't get used during any competition.

Simply having the part on the practice robot is totally within the letter and spirit of the rules.

At Ypsi we had a student totally rebuild a circuit board because the wires were not wrapped after ship - she never got to see one of our lame practices. We resoldered some PWM cables to a switch in a case where the ONLY thing that was not pre-ship was the SOLDER. We follow the rules and it seems our competitors think we follow the rules (thanks for the kind words Andy).

As to the "appearances" complaint, I respectfully disagree with you. I think you are letting the lawyers win when you start nitpicking about appearances in a case where someone has actually followed the rules. FIRST has so many instances where the thing that keeps us within the rules is our own conscience - my guess is they WANT to trust us and want us to trust each other. Its part of the FIRST culture isn't it?

Ken

[Jack Jones]

In my humble (rookie) opinion, the parts rules in conjunction with the six-week build; the autonomous mode; and raising the bar have put rookie and novice teams at a severe disadvantage. They put even the experienced teams in the uncomfortable position of looking for ways to skirt the rules as an alternative to failing to make the show. Worse yet, they turn crunch time into a gut wrenching experience. This was supposed to be fun; it could have been better.

I see no way, nor need, for FIRST to draft a set of Draconian rules on the accounting of replacement parts. On the contrary, I think they should eliminate what they now have. Let us evolve and put the best we can muster on the field. Why make a team feel like criminals for not knowing that what they’ve seen was not what has been dictated? Why make them throw away many weeks of effort for the sake of some under observed, unenforceable, and unobtainable principle?

I can envision the parking lots across the street filling with trailers containing the practice robots, assemblies, and other items that we’re not allowed to “bring to the event.” Is that what we want?

[MikeDubreuil]

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

I see no way, nor need, for FIRST to draft a set of Draconian rules on the accounting of replacement parts.

They are not draconian they are suprsingly simple. It's only those looking to beat the rules that create an eviroment in their mind that they somehow don't understand them and can circumvent them.

The rules in a nut shell:
1. If you didn't ship it, you can't bring it. Unless you have the EXACT same part on your robot.
2. Any team manafactured part you do bring must be as dissasembled as possible.

[Gary Dillard]

Originally Posted by Jack Jones

In my humble (rookie) opinion, the parts rules in conjunction with the six-week build; the autonomous mode; and raising the bar have put rookie and novice teams at a severe disadvantage. They put even the experienced teams in the uncomfortable position of looking for ways to skirt the rules as an alternative to failing to make the show. Worse yet, they turn crunch time into a gut wrenching experience. This was supposed to be fun; it could have been better.

I see no way, nor need, for FIRST to draft a set of Draconian rules on the accounting of replacement parts. On the contrary, I think they should eliminate what they now have. Let us evolve and put the best we can muster on the field. Why make a team feel like criminals for not knowing that what they’ve seen was not what has been dictated? Why make them throw away many weeks of effort for the sake of some under observed, unenforceable, and unobtainable principle?

I can envision the parking lots across the street filling with trailers containing the practice robots, assemblies, and other items that we’re not allowed to “bring to the event.” Is that what we want?

I can say without reservation that we have never been uncomfortable in choosing between skirting the rules or shipping a robot that wasn't competitive. Our team has had up and down years, and more times than I like to admit we've fielded a robot that would move and do little else, because we didn't get it built, tested or debugged in time. Never did we consider starting fab early, using parts from previous robots, cointinuing after the build season - I'd quit the team if that happened. At that point it becomes about the robot and winning and not about promoting engineering as an honorable profession.

This thread has been a good discussion for the right reasons - what do other teams (the FIRST family, not just the FIRST organization) consider the interpretation of the spare parts rules, practice robot rules, etc. so we can all try to apply the same standard to our decisions. Not so we can manipulate them to get an unfair advantage, but rather so we DON'T get an unfair advantage over other teams. I think these forums are like going to mediation rather than to court - if we all come to agreement or at least consensus we don't need FIRST or the lawyers to rule. We police it ourselves.

For those who don't remember, the old rules allowed building functionally equivalent replacement parts to be built in the 4 days after each regional - the big debate then was "what is functionally equivalent?" One year we built a new lift out of a different material, and took it straight to the judges to see if we could use it; if they said no, we were prepared to accept that even though it would have had a major impact to us. I think everyone should weigh all the options available to them for building spares (it's too late to do anything about shipping them at this point), and be willing to accept the decision of the judges at each competition if confronted.

Jack, there is no doubt Rookies are at a disadvantage - that's true anywhere; I would hope my experience counts for something at work. But noone goes into this competition thinking "hey, I think I'll build a crappy robot" - it's usually just a matter of available resources to get things done. I try to encourage every team who shows up, find something positive to say, both new and old teams. Everyone should feel proud of participating.

[Kris Verdeyen]

After some consideration, a ski trip, and the Lone Star Regional, I think I'm ready to dive back in....

Originally Posted by Ken Patton

You are simply wrong whe you assume that our competition parts get modified after ship. They don't. If a part gets modified it is no longer a competition part and on our team it doesn't get used during any competition.

I apologize for impugning you and your team, Ken. That was not what I was trying to do. I realize that you do follow the letter and spirit of the rules as they are now written.

The point I was trying to make is not that teams are breaking the rules (which we can't do much about), but that the rules are structured so as to be meaningless (they are, as the title of the thread says, broken). What is the difference between having a spare robot in the arena and having it in the back of a truck in a parking lot? How does it make sense that one would be legal and the other illegal?

Originally Posted by Ken Patton

We resoldered some PWM cables to a switch in a case where the ONLY thing that was not pre-ship was the SOLDER.

This follows both the letter and the spirit of the law. But it also proves that the letter of the law is really stupid. What sense does it make to have a component that was built legally, then modified after ship, to have to be de-modified and then re-modified at the competition? It's ridiculous.

Originally Posted by Ken Patton

As to the "appearances" complaint, I respectfully disagree with you. I think you are letting the lawyers win when you start nitpicking about appearances in a case where someone has actually followed the rules.

I think that the reason "the lawyers" have gotten such a bad image (apart from Dave Lavery's famous post) is because (of the unfair stereotype that) they don't care about appearances of wrongdoing, and therefore don't appear to care about right and wrong, and focus entirely on the written law and its many unpluggable loopholes.

Originally Posted by Ken Patton

FIRST has so many instances where the thing that keeps us within the rules is our own conscience - my guess is they WANT to trust us and want us to trust each other. Its part of the FIRST culture isn't it?

I'm not sure about the other regionals, but at the Lone Star regional last weekend, all robots in the elimination rounds were weighed before every elim match. This was, according to our head inspector, because during some random re-inspections, robots at other regionals had been found to have gained as much as 4-5 pounds since their initial inspection. The reason I bring it up is not to say that we're all crooks and need constant supervision to be kept in line, but to show that the culture of trust and sportsmanship is slipping. There are hundreds of new FIRST teams every year, and it will be a battle to make sure that every participant on every one of them knows that the rules are something we take seriously. We don't look the other way when a rule is bent or broken, even for established teams.

In order to accomplish that, we need to limit (in the rules) what can be brought to the competition to raw materials and OTS parts. Everything else either comes in the crate or stays at home.

/An edit - excerpts from codes of ethics
The IEEE code of ethics includes:
[We agree] to avoid real or perceived conflicts of interest whenever possible...

The NSPE code of ethics includes:
Engineers shall disclose all known or potential conflicts of interest that could influence or appear to influence their judgment or the quality of their services.