Team Update #13

[dlavery]

Team Update #13 is out and available here. This should hopefully fully explain the limits and opportunities of the revised withholding allowance, and let some folks calm down a bit.




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[Brandon Holley]

I think the GDC is being fairly clear here. They do not want the 65 lb withholding allowance to be an entire robot. By them adding the provision in, that if teams wish to bring in a "robot" it must be in multiple unfinished sections sends a very clear message to me of what they want teams to be doing.

[Joe Johnson]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

I think the GDC is being fairly clear here. They do not want the 65 lb withholding allowance to be an entire robot. By them adding the provision in, that if teams wish to bring in a "robot" it must be in multiple unfinished sections sends a very clear message to me of what they want teams to be doing.

I am not sure I agree with you, exactly. It seems to me that they don't LIKE it, they never INTENDED it, but they will ALLOW it (assuming you take the bother to disassemble it into at least two FABRICATED ITEMS before carrying it in* ).

I will not criticize a team that follows this rule to the letter any more than I will criticize a team that is .001" under the size limit or .01 lb under the weight limit. We go up to the line, we don't cross.

Callin' 'em as I see 'em.

Joe J.

*which, by they way, I can tell you truly, I am pretty sure every robot I've ever put in the shipping container would have been able to limbo under that bar ;-)

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

I am not sure I agree with you, exactly. It seems to me that they don't LIKE it, they never INTENDED it, but they will ALLOW it (assuming you take the bother to disassemble it into at least two FABRICATED ITEMS before carrying it in* ).

I believe you misunderstood me Joe. I should have been more clear with my post. The point of my post was to say that it's clear to me FIRST does not want teams to bring in entire robots. The reason I feel it's clear is because of the fact that they want teams to take apart functioning systems and reassemble them at the competition. That seems like a goofy idea (ie: battery cables last year) but it's goofy because they do not want teams doing it

[gburlison]

I am just glad this update was published before before we shipped our robot.

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by gburlison

I am just glad this update was published before before we shipped our robot.

Even if you didn't, you're still fine. As I replied to a Facebook post about it:

This is so not an issue. Remove one FABRICATED ITEM--a hose from your pneumatics system you've cut to length, a bracket, a panel you velcroed on for sponsors--and you now have, as quoted from TU13, "a collection of two or more separate FABRICATED ITEMS in a less-than-complete state of assembly."

At no point did it say that on-site final assembly had to be hard or significant.

[Bill_B]

I would not be surprised to learn that the major clue to the assembly ruling is to be found in the GDC's comment about union rules at (some of?) the various venues. Stage hands and electricians have worked hard to preserve their work environments. The venues involved with FIRST tournaments make use of that labor under very specific conditions, almost certainly not the same at every location. Perhaps there is a rule about the handling of event equipment at one or more of them that requires the robots to enter the venue in pieces. We might be looking at the "least common denominator" of venue rules for machinery. That is, everyone must split up the robot because one or more events requires it.

[Kims Robot]

Originally Posted by gburlison

I am just glad this update was published before before we shipped our robot.

As far as I know 1511 & 8 other robots were driven to drayage BEFORE this was published. Fortunately, I think all were shipping "ROBOTS"... but I still see this Update as very Muddy... as a regional director I could read that and say, "oh a team CANT bring a Robot in"... as the GDC didnt say "take one fabricated item off your robot and its no longer a "Robot"". I forsee a handful of arguments with volunteers...

Im hoping that all the regionals get a clear email blast that gives an undeniably straightforward answer to this rule, or I still feel we may have a handful of upset teams that think they cant play on the first day on our hands... The volunteers checking people in often dont follow every Q&A or every update, so they will only do as told... hopefully they are clearly told what is and isnt allowed.

Lucky number 13....

[Joe Johnson]

Originally Posted by Kims Robot

... but I still see this Update as very Muddy...

Really? It seems about as clear as it can be to me. I've seen GDC mud before... ...this ain't it ;-)

Provide a case or scenario and I believe that you can make a ruling based upon the text. I don't think you will have any difficulty making a ruling.

Originally Posted by Kims Robot

as a regional director I could read that and say, "oh a team CANT bring a Robot in"... as the GDC didnt say "take one fabricated item off your robot and its no longer a "Robot"". I forsee a handful of arguments with volunteers...

Actually this is what they said:

"For all events (both traditional and bag & tag events), for those few cases where the complete ROBOT weighs less than 65 pounds, teams may bring up to 65 pounds of separate FABRICATED ITEMS which can be assembled into the final assembly of the full ROBOT once you are on-site. But they must be brought to the competition venue as a collection of two or more separate FABRICATED ITEMS in a less-than-complete state of assembly."

So... I don't want to put words into the GDC's mouths (especially since I am on record as liking what they said and how they said it) but, in effect, they didn't say "no robots." They said "no completely assembled robots."

It may not be the rule that you, or I or the volunteers like but it is a very clear rule (imho).

On a personal note, given that my team was snowed out and unable to even get access to our robot for almost 2 weeks while the school was locked down, I think the GDC did a good thing in increasing the withholding limit to 65lbs.

I know that it is not the ideal situation, but we do not live in an ideal world. The GDC had to play the hand they were dealt and I think they did about as good of a job as can be expected.

If the worst thing that happens is a few teams get an "unfair" advantage by keeping their whole (under 65lbs) robot until their 1st competition, I can live with it. I hope that you can as well.


Joe J.

[ks_mumupsi]

I am glad to see this discussion on going here. However, it is disappointing that we have to have this type of a discussion.

I believe in the true spirit of GP, this should not be a questions, teams should understand that this was to allow teams additional development time of systems not keeping the entire robot back to spend more time improving it as a whole regardless of weight. I hope that we do not resort to such a competitive state in FIRST where we are no longer keeping in mind the true philosophy of FIRST - which is to "Inspire and Recognize"... The rest is all sweet candy.

Having gone through this as a student, a volunteer and now a mentor its difficult to see how quickly FIRST is changing and maybe sometimes not for the better.

Its as Dean said in the kickoff speech, we dont want to become like the other college or pro sports out there where it all becomes about winning and loosing.

I hope that we dont have to go to a regional questioning whether a team is bringing the appropriate amount or type of fabricated items or such.

see ya guys on the field.

[dtengineering]

I have a real love/hate relationship with the ship date. I love the sense of accomplishment when a working robot ships. I love people's response when they learn that you did "all that" in six weeks. But I hate having to skip lessons on how stuff works, or why we're doing things certain ways due to the pressure of the ship date. (This year we had just two adult mentors... so we're running a bit shorthanded). And I really hate shipping off a robot that isn't ready to play the game. I don't mind shipping one that isn't ready to win the game... but we owe it to ourselves and our alliance partners to be able to make a meaningful contribution to the game.

But for all that, I do support the idea of a firm and fixed shipping/bagging date.

But I really, really, really like the witholding limit, too. Tonight I was able to sit down with a half dozen students in a fairly relaxed setting (with the Canada-Russia game streaming over the internet, of course... ) and grease up the gearboxes that got delayed for ten days by Canada customs, and show them how planetary gearboxes work, and do a bit of experimenting to get our "ball magnet" roller up and running.

On the "to do" list is to finalize our kicker design (we've had the rough dimensions worked out since the second or third week of build) and attach some IR rangefinders to help the driver find the ball.

As we're in a later regional this year, we'll have a chance to do this at a much more comfortable, relaxed, and enjoyable pace than we would during build.

So I don't think "fixed build date" and "witholding limit" are mutually incompatible. I think they work together to give a pretty good compromise.

I also have to say that while I love the year-long competition for our five VEX teams because it lets them redesign and re-build between competitions (we compete at five different VEX tournaments, each roughly a month apart here in the BC/WA area), a VEX robot rebuild is much less demanding of my time than an FRC rebuild would be.

And, with respect to some earlier posts in this thread, my experience with FRC over seven years has been that it continues to evolve. And thank goodness for that... stagnation would be far worse than a change that some people didn't like. There are many possible ways to extend the build period without burning out... we could start with a three week "design period" during which no tools could be used, and no parts could be machined. Or we could have a longer build period, but require teams to log their time and limit it to 10 hours per week of total meeting and shop time. I KNOW we could get more mentors involved if they only had to make a committment twice each week and could still play a meaningful role in the design.

Jason

[Cory]

I like having a ship date. I'd hate to put as much time in as I do during six weeks for a 14 week period, from kickoff-championships.

[Taylor]

If build season was longer than 6 weeks, I would not be associated with FIRST Robotics.
My wife and kid would see to that.

[JHSmentor]

Jason, you are echo'ing a ton of thoughts that have been going through my head recently as well. I have only been a mentor for 3 years (2 rookie teams and one 2nd year for the first team I mentored). I find it interesting to see how many "veteran" teams appear to struggle nearly as much as the rookie teams - I was originally thinking this was a rookie phenomenon (and maybe it is more of an issue still). The rookie team I am helping this year had absolutely ZERO resources by the time kick-off occured. The team is completely supported by grants - which the money for those did not come in until basically the week before kickoff. We had no material supplies, no tools, and only 2 of us 3 mentors had any experience with FIRST at all. The team has literally been together for 6 weeks (maybe 7 total). I expect there are other teams that are in the same boat.

Additionally, we are Week1 competition team. While the withholding allowance certainly helps - it's not going to be nearly as beneficial to our team as to most. I see that some teams also meet quite often and spend tons and tons of hours building, designing, marketing, etc. We did not have that option. So, in the end, we had probably 3 weeks or so to really do anything more useful than some brainstorming sessions and watching other teams videos on prototypes we were thinking about (and even that was a struggle since the school does not allow for surfing the web). Teaching and mentoring the students on most things has been very limited (basic on the job training) and I have been seriously concerned about how much the kids are really getting out of the program and how much desire they are building to even want to come back next year. There are only so many pep talks you can give and promises of how cool it will be at the competition (let alone the encouragement to work longer, harder, faster, and more efficiently).

Schools really seem to struggle with the idea of diving into this program - and I can see why. Making it a viable long term program for a school is of utmost priority to them - yet it's so difficult and nebulous on how to do just that. Having a larger build season, or some of the other ideas you mentioned may be the ticket. I'm not sure what needs to be done but hopefully some changes will come soon that will make it easier for everyone involved.

Anyway - I could go on and on - so I'll just stop here. At least I am able to vent.

[Jon Stratis]

I just hope teams use common sense here. If it looks like a robot when you're carrying it in, i'm going to call it a robot, even if you've taken off a bracket and technically have two "fabricated parts". If you open up your crate and pull out no robot parts - only bumpers, batteries and tools - then you carried in a robot, even if it was in multiple pieces. Gracious professionalism doesn't include lawyering the rules to beat the intent.