FIX-IT WINDOW Proposal

[Mr. Van]

It has been suggested that the Fix-it Window restrictions be removed and teams be allowed to work on whatever they wished for any amount of time up to the competition. I am very much opposed to this for several reasons:

1. FRC is a competition. It is much more a sports-like competition than a contract bid competition. It is artificial by its very nature. In sports, there are game rules, sallary caps, divisions based on team resources, and other restrictions. FRC is the same way - there are attempts to level the playing field to facilitate competition. The Fix-it Window is one of these rules.

2. There is a very good reason that FRC has a "Build Season" of limited time. Many mentors, teachers and other volunteers are able and willing to commit countless hours to teams for a restricted time period. If teams are allowed to work endlessly on their robot until the final regional or championship, the Build Season effectively stretches for three and a half months! Even now, the Fix-it Window extends Build Season by up to 70 hours over a month and a half. This becomes a MAJOR issue between "have" and "have not" teams - those who have multiple mentors who are able to give lots of time and those who are being held together by a single mentor/coach who also has a 70 hour/week day job.

3. If there is no "put your tools down" time after the robot ships, why ship the robot at all? Why not simply allow teams to bring the robot to the event in whatever way they can. Why have a "ship date"? (For that matter, why have a restriction on the number of motors a team can use?)

4. FIRST already has a program that allows for endless work on the robot: FTC. There are also many other programs (BBIQ) that similarly have no restrictions on build time.

In the end - either eliminate the Fix-it Window and not allow any work on the robots OR keep it restricted.

-Mr. Van
Coach, Robodox

[Mr.G]

Originally Posted by Mr. Van

It has been suggested that the Fix-it Window restrictions be removed and teams be allowed to work on whatever they wished for any amount of time up to the competition. I am very much opposed to this for several reasons:

-Mr. Van
Coach, Robodox

I completely understand your point, but your case does not apply to the all teams. Many teams have a lot of mentors, parents, teachers, engineers that can split the time up.

I am in a similar situation as you, we are a very small team (1 teacher and 2 main engineers with ~20 students) if one of us can't put the time in the others show up. We do the best we can for the students, and that is what they get.

Some teams can get the students more involved and have them help run the team. I don't beleive the learning time of students should be limited/restricted by the team that has the least amount of help to work on the robot.

I am more willing to work with the students for more months and put in less time per day. Work all day and night for 6 weeks is what kills you. Over the years we have become good at limiting our time per day, but meet every day. We used to meet 3 days a week for longer times and that was harder to me. We average 3 hours a day of student work time. In the 7 years that I have been doing this, that is what has worked for us the last 2 years.

Cheers

[Mr. Van]

Originally Posted by Mr.G

I am in a similar situation as you, we are a very small team (1 teacher and 2 main engineers with ~20 students) if one of us can't put the time in the others show up. We do the best we can for the students, and that is what they get.

Where does your team work? Because our team is a "school activity" a certificated teacher MUST be with the students whenever they meet (regardless of location). For many teams this is a single person - who must be at every meeting and worksession. Some teams have schools that limit when and how late students can meet. If we effectively extend the build season, more and more teams will have difficluty with these legal/administrative issues.

If we don't want to limit the build time, I ask again, why have a ship date?

-Mr. Van
Coach, Robodox

[Mr.G]

Originally Posted by Mr. Van

Where does your team work? Because our team is a "school activity" a certificated teacher MUST be with the students whenever they meet (regardless of location). For many teams this is a single person - who must be at every meeting and worksession. Some teams have schools that limit when and how late students can meet. If we effectively extend the build season, more and more teams will have difficluty with these legal/administrative issues.

If we don't want to limit the build time, I ask again, why have a ship date?

-Mr. Van
Coach, Robodox

We work at the school we have never had problems with anything you have mentioned. We usually meet from 2:00 to 4:30-5:00. We always have an adult present. I believe that we haven’t had any problems because the robotics students are usually the most behaved in the school.

Why have a ship date? Because Fed-Ex is a sponsor and we need to ship something.
In all seriousness I think the ship date works because it gives the students(especially the new ones) a deadline. It also gives every team the same target and a time for the main build to complete.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Mr.G

We work at the school we have never had problems with anything you have mentioned. We usually meet from 2:00 to 4:30-5:00.

I don't think you're in CA. The CA teams have a tendency to not get a lot of school support. (Note: there are several notable exceptions.) I can think of one team that went into VEX and FLL primarily due to school issues.

On the topic of "unlimited FIX-IT windows" and eliminating ship date, the ship date elimination has already been discussed here. Unlimited FIX-ITs are too close to eliminating the ship date for me; I'll stick with what I said in the referenced thread.

[Kate00]

Originally Posted by Mr. Van

It has been suggested that the Fix-it Window restrictions be removed and teams be allowed to work on whatever they wished for any amount of time up to the competition. I am very much opposed to this for several reasons:

In the end - either eliminate the Fix-it Window and not allow any work on the robots OR keep it restricted.

The difference between the build season and the proposed after-ship date elimination of "fix-it" windows is not really comparable to extending the build season for another month and a bit. The two biggest reasons I see for this is that you don't have a robot to work on, and you can’t make unlimited amounts of parts. I know that with my former team, we didn't really utilize these windows, except to make one or two replacement parts, because we didn't have a robot to work with, and we didn’t have the resources to work with CAD drawings. There are teams that have those resources – more power to them.

You are still restricted on the amount of parts you can bring into a regional, and the type you can bring in - a very fair and enforceable rule. I think that this levels the playing field enough. A team can’t remake their entire robot – they can only bring in 25 lbs of spare parts, and those parts can only be SPARE and REPLACEMENT parts.

The biggest reason I have for eliminating fix it windows is that it is an unenforceable rule. Mr. Van, what you are proposing is that teams can’t work at all on spare parts between the ship date and competition. Let’s say the majority of teams follow this rule – say 90%, and 10% of teams being spare or replacement parts in. There is no way to prove that the other 10% of teams broke the rule. Those 10% of teams have a huge advantage over the teams that actually followed the rule, and I don’t think this is fair, at all – teams are punished for obeying the rule, and obeying by the credos of FIRST. To me, that doesn’t add up.

I disagree, in that there needs to be limits on how much teams can do during the competition season - otherwise teams going to the NJ regional (1st week) have a disadvantage over teams going to, say Manhattan (5th? week) - specifically, 5 extra weeks on which to perfect a mechanism that was only conceived after the team actually got to see the Game being played.

I completely disagree with you. If a team has a mechanism that doesn't work, do you want to force them to work with it for the rest of the season, because they didn't realize that it didn't preform up to standards on the playing field? As well, if a team wants to better their robot with help from resources at competition that they didn't have at their workplace, do you want to stand in the way of the incredible potential for inspiration?

Teams who go to Week 1 competitions will always be at a disadvantage, what with being the pioneers for the gameplay. I'm sure they completely understand this, and, ultimately, it's their choice to go to a Week 1 regional. If it bothers them enough that they don't have the same chances to change mechanisms, why don't they try to raise some more money to be able to go to a different regional or an additional one? FIRST should not artificially attempt to level the playing field to cater to the choices of teams.

[=Martin=Taylor=]

A rule that cannot be enforced is a moral. Enforcing morals is madness.

I Vote Other:
Lets advise all the teams to be fair, and remind them not to focus on winning-at-all-costs. Why build two robots for yourself when you could build another robot for a team, which is barely getting by?

But lets not make a rule.

[vivek16]

Our team has not utulized these sessions besides thursday during the Milwaukee regional.