I have been racking my brain trying to figure out why FIRST has decided to limit the making of spares.
While FIRST seems to be generally rational, this ruling seemed inexplicable. I kept asking myself, “WHY? Why did FIRST make this rule change?”
Last night on my way home, the scales fell from my eyes. I have a theory…
In numerous ways over the last year FIRST has indicated that they feel that containing costs for the sponsors is one of the keys its long-term growth and survival.
I think that this no repairs rule is one of the ways that FIRST is hoping to help sponsor contain costs.
Think about it this way, by limiting the build time to the 6 weeks, FIRST has limited some to the frantic re-designs that have happened over the 3 days of “repair time.” With this new rule, FIRST has saved us from ourselves in a sense.
Even with this new theory about why, I still don’t like the rule, but at least now I can perhaps accept it a little easier.
As you know, I have been a strong advocate of having a rule that limits redesign of a robot after the competition starts. Last year a team attending three regionals could extend their build time by 18 days, which made a mockery of the six week rule. Before regionals, you “run what you brung” and if it broke and you couldn’t fix it during the competition, so be it. Adding regionals complicates things.
I don’t have a big problem with the new rule, but my own preference would be to limit the redesign allowed by limiting a spare to a “similar function” rule and let professional ethics take it from there. This way you could build spares at your leisure and if a ratio needs changing or an arm needs to be stronger, no problem. It is disturbing when a new device or major chassis redesign suddenly appears at the next regional.
The problem is that some people will use the cover of repair to add functionality. That is clearly unfair. I don’t think anyone would have a problem with replacing one part with another that was the same. But where do you draw the line between this is the same, this is mostly the same, this is just a little different, and this is different? Who is going to monitor all this repair?
I like the idea (I think you - Joe) proposed earlier of a repair by petition. If something wierd happens a replacement part can be made. If that was rare and done with special notice than it can be more easily monitored.
Wants to make it easy on themselves. Because of this rule they do not need to sweat about where the robot is. All they care that it is out of teams hand. At the regional it is easy to do you pack and ship all the robots right then. But if you take the robot home how would FIRST be able to tell you shiped it after 3 days and not 4 (what if you pay the guy at the shipping company a little extra?). And the final reason is i think that first is going to have FedEx ship most, if not all, robots from the regional and that is WAY Easier on FedEx.
OK. Heres how I see it as a possible solution. At the regionals we submit a parts list to the members of FIRST and then they inspect our Machines for safety and illegal parts. AT that time each team could submit four photos one of each side of their Robot along with their documentation.
At the end of each regional if a team has damage then a photo of that damage would be also submited. This then would be the only item a team would be alowed to repair, no other improvements would be permited. At the next regional that a team attends the people from FIRST would check the prior photos against the repaired Robot. Any robot that was shipped direct from one regional to another would be exempt from this inspection.
Any team that takes a Robot home with them would be responsible for all costs to the next event. This would also aply to the Nationals.
3 days is not going to make any difference to FIRST but it could be a huge difference ( Monitarily and psycologicaly ) to a desperate team in trouble. After all isnt Insperation a main goal, how insperational is a destroyed or damaged Robot sitting in a trash box going to be for next years teams.
Nick
we would be wasting more money ($4000-$8000 depending on how many competitions you go to)on the new ruling than to ship it to your place if you damage it. Say you’re damaged severely during your first competition, what do you say to your sponsors and school after you can no longer compete because youre damaged? there’s going to be more trouble if you don’t let teams repair their robot than if you let them ship it home.
i think FIRST should go back to the old way and let us ship it home to repair. it will help the competition.
Having worked a few regionals last year, there are a few things from FIRST’s standpoint that make this ruling regarding shipping direct from one event to the next considerably easier to understand. At both of the events I volunteered at last season, there were at least a few machines that did not arrive with the shipment from the drayage site on Wednesday. In some of these cases, FIRST had no knowledge that the team was going to be bringing the robot to the event site themselves, and went into a panic mode because of a missing robot. Also, as Joe mentioned, it may be a way to help cut costs for the sponsors. Re-engineering costs aside, consider those teams who attend two consecutive events:
Saturday: Leave event, bring robot home
Tuesday: Robot shipped to next event
Tuesday: Robots loaded onto a truck from drayage to the event site.
Wednesday: Truck from drayage arrives at event site, robots are unloaded.
In essence, the robot has to leave the team’s hands and arrive at drayage simultaneously, in order to arrive in time to be taken from drayage to the event.
However, my feelings are somewhat mixed on this issue. My personal feeling is that we should be able to make repairs(not improvements, unless necessary to correct a chronic malfunction) for the normal 3 day period after an event, however, I do not feel that we need the robot to be able to do that. I know the “no improvements” rule is a hard one to enforce, however, I feel it is one of the areas where gracious professionalism comes into play.
I still don’t like the rule. It is creating more problems than it is solving.
By making a rule that disallows repair of damaged or chronically malfunctioning mechanisms, there are going to be a lot of broken hearts.
I also don’t think this is going to cut as many costs as some of you think. While there will be no more redesigning costs, some teams will forking out extra money to make spare robots and spare systems in the 6 week period so that they can continue if thier robot breaks at the regionals. This is yet another rule that favors the high budget teams.
FIRST should allow teams to reconstruct whatever is damaged or weak before the nationals but not allow redesign. I don’t think this has to be monitored that closely (of course someone could go around and check up a little that the robot it pretty much the same), but if someone shows up with a totally different robot, whoever was at thier regional will undoubtedly notice and complain. With a threat of disqualification for infringing the redesign rules, I doubt many teams would even consider breaking it.
Joe i really dont agree with you. Limiting the money a sponsor spends is really not a large matter. If they are putting out 5k for entrance then what is another 500. But i do think that this is a good rule and that teams should only be allowed the 3 days.
Nate i also have witnessed one team at socal regional PARADING in with a part that they made outside of the 6 week build period. It did affect there performance, but they got a big dose of robotics Karma in the end right before the team party. Having to drive back to a
In the end it all breaks down to Gracious Professionalism. If a team wants to cheat there is really no way FIRST can watch all teams. We as a comunity just have to hope that all of the teams have the same morals as the teams on this board.
Joe i really dont agree with you. Limiting the money a sponsor spends is really not a large matter. If they are putting out 5k for entrance then what is another 500. But i do think that this is a good rule and that teams should only be allowed the 3 days.
I never said that it was an effective strategy to limit costs or even that it was in important goal to limit costs.
What I KNOW is that FIRST is convinced that costs to sponsors has to be controlled for the good of FIRST.
What I THINK is that THEY think that this new rule (perhaps old new rule if Raul the magnificent has got it right – see his message else where) will help control costs to teams (and thus sponsors).
Actually, I was just posing it as a theory to explain the method to FIRST’s madness. By and large, I have found FIRST to be reasonable and logical folks. They don’t often do things without a reason.
Up until I came up with this theory, I could think of no reason at all for FIRST’s new ruling. This theory at least gives me a hook to hang my hat on, if you will. Perhaps I will have to toss the hat in the garbage after all, but for now, I think I will hang on to my belief in the reasonableness of the fine folks at FIRST.