Should teams be pushed to make higher quality robots?

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by C.Roberts 1089

Sanddrag - If you're saying Cory doesn't have the right to "advise you how to spend your time," then you don't have the right to advise others.

I suppose not. I only offer my opinions. Take them however you please. I am not a licensed practitioner.

Originally Posted by C.Roberts 1089

Since you obviously didn't appreciate him giving you suggestions, what makes you think anyone else wants to hear yours?

Did I ever say anyone else wanted to hear (read) my ideas? I don't post because people want me to, I post because I want to. And maybe once in a blue moon someone will like to catch a ride on my one man caravan.

Originally Posted by C.Roberts 1089

Isn't that a bit hypocritical of you?

See above.

Originally Posted by C.Roberts 1089

Why is Cory offering you a suggestion any different than you offering some to anyone else? You apparently felt it was appropriate to do so, so what makes it any different when Cory does it?

umm, nothing? no difference. did I say there was one? suggestions flying all around. Some liked, some diskliked, some useless, some on the contrary, some in accordance. Did I miss something?

Originally Posted by C.Roberts 1089

Only difference that I can see is that Cory's got a year of experience on you, which argues more for him than you.

Experience? So by your logic my four years of experience would invalidate anything a 2006 rookie has to say, right?

[Elgin Clock]

Wow.. congratulations dude.. you know how to use the quote feature..

ANYWHO...

I think "teams should be pushed to make higher quality robots" in the name of safety, not in the name of vanity.

Deburr all metal parts, sand all wood parts, properly shield all moving parts from hands, watch the pinch points, use safe wiring methods.

I think that would in turn kick it up on the quality factor when making a robot, and also make the robot safer.

I think that is more important than "making a robot look pretty so some outsider can say.. ooooh.. perdy".

Who cares about them in those terms? Sure if ya build a pretty robot and you are at a competition you may catch the eye of a news crew and find some fame on the news, but that's not why we are inolved in this program are we?

I think a lifetime of learning properly and then teaching others and inspiring the youth is more important to myself at least than being on the news for a couple seconds during a voice over*...



*Don't ask.. bad experience. lol

[Tyler 783]

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

Wow.. congratulations dude.. you know how to use the quote feature..
I think "teams should be pushed to make higher quality robots" in the name of safety, not in the name of vanity.

Deburr all metal parts, sand all wood parts, properly shield all moving parts from hands, watch the pinch points, use safe wiring methods.

For the saftey aspect everything you have mentioned (except for shielding moving parts) I've seen an inspector turn down a robot for not having done. It is in fact a rule that there are no sharp corners on your robots. With the case of the moving parts isn't a real concern because normaly common sence tells you when your testing the robot to stand back, well away from the entire robot.

[Wayne C.]

Maybe the title of this should be
"should we push CD users to make higher quality posts....."


(from a guy with a LOT of experience)

WC

(PS- every team makes the best robot they can based on their abilities. It doesn't really matter about the robot. It is the team that they build that is the important accompliishment....)

[sanddrag]

I used to approach robot building with the "just cut it here" or "drill it oversize so it'll fit right" attitude but no more.

I have been enlightened by the teams who create these professional grade masterpieces and now I'm on a quest to do the same, and hopefully have a few others join me.

I don't look down upon the "popular" teams with all their fancy anodizing and whatnot. Heck no. I look up to them and think "hey, that can be MY robot. I CAN DO THIS!" All it takes is a little determination.

[Andrew Blair]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I used to approach robot building with the "just cut it here" or "drill it oversize so it'll fit right" attitude but no more.

I have been enlightened by the teams who create these professional grade masterpieces and now I'm on a quest to do the same, and hopefully have a few others join me.

I don't look down upon the "popular" teams with all their fancy anodizing and whatnot. Heck no. I look up to them and think "hey, that can be MY robot. I CAN DO THIS!" All it takes is a little determination.

Ultimately its your own experience which pushes you as a person, not neccessarily as a team, to build a better robot. What makes a robot look pretty is time and precision. Quality also gets improved through these virtues. When a person, not a team, gets fed up with cruddy parts, they spend a little more time on things. Trust me, in crude situations, I have seen a $20 drill do work that rivals a mill. Now, the neat little "306" machined into everything is a little harder.... So it really does come down to inspiration- in this case the inspiration to do better work! Functionality rarely has anything to do with aesthetics.

[C.Roberts 1089]

Sanddrag -

If you feel it's your prerogative to offer advice to others, then I'd love to hear your explanation on why you also feel justified in telling Cory he does not have the right to do the same. We are all equal, are we not?

If you think people aren't going to want to hear or read your ideas, wouldn't you refrain from posting them out of respect for others? I mean, this is man of the best-of-the-best theory here.. so why post something that isn't the 'best'? And of course, it must not be, if you feel others wouldn't be interested in its content.

Apparently, you missed the fact that you criticized someone for doing the exact thing that you had just done. Most people consider hypocrisy an undesirable trait.

I never said anything about experience meaning anything, in this situation or another. I merely stated that that was the only difference I saw - meaning your justification for criticizing him could not have been that you have far more experience or anything of the sort. If I felt that one year of experience was that big of a deal, I would not consider myself worthy of stating my opinions in this thread, as I'm still a highschool student in my third year with a lot to learn.

[Stephen Kowski]

plz someone move this to moderated discussion b4 it spirals outta control....

[sciguy125]

I'm going to say that I partially agree with Sanddrag on this whole thing. By that, I mean that I think it would be a good thing, but I don't think that it can be implemented/enforced.

I would love to see more professional looking robots. I would especially like to see it on my own team. 1351 has been trying to take measures to outlaw "ghetto fab" (that's what everyone calls it, but I don't remember what our official documents call it). We've had problems with people just trying to cobble things together with a near complete disregard for quality. When people look at the robot in this condition, it makes the team look bad.

As I said, my team has been trying to make rules to improve quality. One of the proposed rules was to force everything to be CADed. Another (thus far, unwritten rule) is to make sure that nobody uses tools if they have not been properly trained to do so. Aside from safety, it also ensures that they are using the tools properly to do high quality work.

While these specific rules probably couldn't be instated FIRST-wide, I don't think it would be a good idea to create many quality control rules. Many such rules would depend on a team's resources. Have you ever tried to make a straight, clean cut with a hack saw? It's pretty hard. It's not practical for my team to have everything done at the machine shop. We make drawings and send them out. For a 6 week build period, this process has a relatively long turn around time. If parts come back and need to be modified, it's not practical to send out the new design. It's also a waste of time to send out for small brackets that can be cut with a saw or a dremel. These parts obviously won't look as nice.

There is also an issue of skill level. We are a student-run team. Mentors are only supposed to step in when asked to help or to avoid serious problems (bodily harm, damage to equipment, decisions that will lead to total failure...). When unsolicited, small suggestions or hints are alright, however. "Do you really need that collar?" is alright, but "Maybe you should use this bushing here and move the collar there, then add a spacer here" is pushing it. There are some students that don't seem to like help. They get a little perturbed when suggestions are given to them. Sometimes, they'll ignore the information even though they know it'll help them. They tend to get the job done, but it's usually not as good as it could have been.

Then, there's also people that just don't learn. I'm sure you know kids that will keep taking the candy no matter how many times you smack them. I've lost count of the number of times that things have been or were going to be damaged because people don't use limit switches. I'm starting to get tired of correcting them all the time, but not doing so is expensive (in more ways than one). Granted, most of them are newbies, but they usually have veterans working with them that should know better. Some seem to have taken the "measure once, cut twice" philosophy. However, this usually becomes measure once, cut twice, measure again, then cut a few more times. I've seen the same types of problems come up over and over again, but people just don't seem to learn from them.

Our workmanship seems to have a trend. As time approaches the end of the deadline, quality approaches zero. It's not that people aren't trying, it's just that quality has to be sacrificed to work faster. When 10 people are trying to get on the robot at once, you have to get in and out as fast as possible. Having a shoddy robot that might be cleaned up later is better than having a nice looking robot that's still being worked on in the field before your 4th match. Yes, the poor quality makes us look bad, but unless it's a MOPE (Monstrosity Of Poor Engineering), we shouldn't sacrifice all prior work on the project because of the last few days.

To sum all this up, I agree that professional quality work would be great. However, it might not be practical for everyone. There can't be a FIRST-wide quality standard. Possibly guidelines, but not much more than that. I feel, however, that each individual team should set their own quality standards. These standards, of course, will vary from team to team. If you're working with a $5 cordless drill, a hack saw, and someone's foot for a vice, you obviously won't have the same standards as the team with the in-house CNC, water jet, and welders. If you're the team with the $5 drill, it's measure twice, cut once; not the other way around. If you've got a CNC, you probably don't want people trying to eyeball things then making a cut with a hack saw. As long as you're doing the best with what you have, you're doing just fine.

[jason_931]

Maybe FRIST could start a award that highlights the creativity and design of a robot. Of cores you want functionality out of your robot. How about creating something that appeals to the eye and shows of the creativity of your team. Maybe making fancy robots will help bring more spectators to the competitions most people are afraid of gears,chains and sprockets. Its not difficult to polish up the chassis and smooth out the rough edges. Teams should not be pushed but encouraged!

[Cory]

Originally Posted by jason_931

Maybe FRIST could start a award that highlights the creativity and design of a robot. Of cores you want functionality out of your robot. How about creating something that appeals to the eye and shows of the creativity of your team. Maybe making fancy robots will help bring more spectators to the competitions most people are afraid of gears,chains and sprockets. Its not difficult to polish up the chassis and smooth out the rough edges. Teams should not be pushed but encouraged!

Xerox Creativity Award.

Motorola Quality Award

GM Industrial Design Award.

[AmyPrib]

I hope all further comments are on topic. There's at least one conversation in here that DEFINITELY should be in PM, not here.

>>There's been a couple posts between the last one I read and me writing this...>>

Anyway - I think every team should strive to better themselves every year, regardless how big or small those steps are. You can't change them, nor can you assume what they do or don't care about, but you can help them if they accept it. Inspiration comes in many forms (this debate has been done before), that's something I'm sure about.

[Bcahn836]

I'd say the rule about actually touching the loading zone triangle was pointless. It made so many nice robots look very cheap with zip ties and junk hanging off the front.

I agree with sanddrag.


We did not know that we would have and issue until our first competition in New Hampshire when we started getting penalties that our base prevented the refs from seeing that our robot was touching the triangles, I mean we were over top of the things and our omni wheels were on the corners of the triangles, the zip ties were just a quick fix to prevent penalties to a decent robot. I mean in six weeks not all teams can find solutions to every single rule or even consider what the refs will call on the feild. But ever since the fix with the zip ties our team hasn't gotten a penalty, so our quick fix worked, now if we would have known that would have been an issue we would have done something about it while building the robot.

I don't know maybe my team isn't to the level yet in nit picking and completly finding every single rule that in competition will affect our robot based on ref calls. In the build season we didn't think that our robot would have the any penalty issues, but I guess we were wrong.

[JohnBoucher]

What an interesting and timely subject.

Team 237 hosted a rookie team (1784 Litchfield HS) at last nights meeting. They are a startup with very limited exposure to this wonderful process called FIRST. They joined based on somebody taking their ears off about FRC and attending UTC last year. Their mentors are all new to this process. They are worried about being able to pull this off.

We had a wide-ranging conversation about how to build, what tools you really need, how to fund raise, what comes in the KOP and what their expectations should be for their rookie year. It was a great conversation. You can learn a lot by talking to rookies.

What do we all expect to get out of this? It's about the process. It's about compressing life into 6 weeks. It's about doing. It's about learning to fail. It's about gracious professionalism. It's about releasing the limitations that we all put on ourselves. It's about thinking outside of the box. It's about growing.

Perhaps we all need to talk to rookies, they are the ones that see this for what it's about.


Also For those that did not read all of Waynes post this is what you missed

It doesn't really matter about the robot. It is the team that they build that is the important accompliishment...

[nehalita]

Although I agree that robot's should look professional, I would like to point out that there are teams out there without the means to make a more professional robot. Who's to blame? Perhaps "we don't try hard enough" but I feel that something like this cannot be said without viewing what any particular team goes through.

It is true, as someone brought up previously, that there are students on teams that do not "care." Sometimes, I get frustrated at my own team because I get the impression that the effort is evanescent. But when I look at each individual student, I realize that it's not always their fault. It's no "one" person's fault. Building a team is hard work. It's harder than doing a fundraising activity, it's harder than building a robot, it's harder than finding the time and money to sustain the team. Building a team calls for effort from everyone's side and leadership from a dedicated few as well. I think building a "real" team is more important than striving for a higher quality robot.
In fact, if a "real" team is formed, slowly, the rest of the problems will be solved (of course the teams will still struggle).

This, of course, is my opinion. I had no intention of insulting anyone else's opinion stated here.