The title asks the question. But I know of some teams that have two robots which allows the drivers to keep practicing after the 6 week build period. Are any teams doing that this year?
We might. But itâs not decided on quite yet â Weâre worrying about the competition 'bot first.
based on the number of bearing blocks in their pic I suspect that 254 and 968 are this year just like last year.
I know that our team is planning on building two different drive train designs so that we can both decided which is best and so that we have another bot to practice against before ship.
Iâve been on three different teams - 201, 830, and now 121. Two of them (201 and 121) never have/had a second robot. One of them (830) built a second robot every single year.
The two biggest issues are cost of materials, and additional fabrication time. First, you have to buy every single part in duplicate, which can add up, even if you use (like we did) relatively inexpensive parts. If you have a decent budget, or work really hard to raise the money, it can be done, though.
The far bigger concern, though, is the amount of time and effort that it takes to build everything twice. You do get some efficiency and savings from doing the same thing twice, but it still takes about 75-80% of the man-hours to build the second 'bot. There are also a lot of repetitive tasks (16 pillow blocks for drive shafts!) that can be frustrating. Finally, the hardest thing ever is motivating your team to finish both robots by ship day. Two of the three years that I did it, the practice robot didnât get fully finished until after ship day. We just didnât have time to finish both in time to ship one, and once ship day was over, nobody wanted to put in time to finish the second!
This also has the insidious effect of making people think âhey, we donât need to finish the robot until right before ship - we have a practice 'bot to do driver practiceâ. Needing that last few days or week to practice gives a great motivation to finish early. Plus, your programmers will thank you for that time
All this being said, itâs been a lifesaver at times, and a handy thing to have at others. You get a chance to practice how to make all your parts before they go on the real thing, drivers who never got to drive their machine before ship day can get much-needed practice, and when something breaks at the end of your first regional, you have a copy back home to look at and get ideas for how to fix it (or test out parts you make in the Fix-it Window!)
So, my conclusion - there are some really good reasons for and against building a practice robot. If youâve got lots of time, money, and manpower, you can really get some benefit from it. Otherwise, it can become a drain on all three. I may miss the benefits this year, but I think Iâm glad I donât have to deal with the downsides, either.
Last year the TechnoKats finally carried through on the perpetual promise to build a duplicate practice robot. Weâve typically tried to build every major assembly in triplicate, making one for each 'bot plus a spare. 2007 was the first year we managed to put absolutely all of the pieces together for two substantially identical robots.
I hope the team decides to do it again this year. As the lead programming mentor, I was very happy to have a system to use for developing and testing software during the fix-it windows.
Team 228 is planning on building twin robots this year.
114 will be fixing the missing link in our chain, and thatâs driving. Weâre making two full robots. With the team we have lined up, expect to see something frightening from 114 out on the field, driven by folks who know their stuff.
The main reason weâre making two this season is due to new man power, so we actually have enough people to make two. Weâve had the money for years, but never the manpower.
Our team is going to try to build two robots, we will see how it goes.
This is my first year involved in FRC as an adult adviser so Iâm learning everything as I go. However, what I have been told is that, in the past, a few key senior guys tend to do most of the work and there are a whole bunch of other students kind of standing around.
If you build two robots at once, it seems to me, that you can institute a mentoring system so that a junior student is always mirroring what the senior student is building.
Of course this might make things take a bit longer but, then again, those seniors will all be gone next year and this kind of hands-on mentoring is absolutely required to leave the team in good shape for the next season.
Well, that was my thinking at least. We will see how it turns out.
John
We donât quite have the supplies for two bots. However, weâre using a previous bot so our drivers can at least practice driving. This wonât exactly help with maneuvering whatever arm we decide to use, but at least theyâll have some familiarity with driving this yearâs robot.
1529 plans to make two 'bots in parallel - one for competition and one for prototyping and practicing. Weâve finally got the resources to do so. Hopefully it will pay off well in competition.
Team 195 started to build two robots last year for a couple of reasons
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It allows our drivers to have much more time to practice and get more aquanted with the robot.
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It allows us to teach the younger students how to machine products and it gets them much more involved in the program.
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Having a second robot is just really cool.
This year we are definitley planning on building a second robot to help practice with this highly dirver centered game.
Yeah, the ĂberBots are planning to do that this year. Weâve done that for several years now, and it helps with figuring out if anything needs to be changed on the bot when you get to the regional, as well as driver skill from practicing- this is part of what helped us to win our regional last year.
It sounds like to me we need to have seperate regionals for teams that build two robots and teams that build 1 robot. I am curious if all of these teams building two robots actually have the students doing 80% or more of the work.
We will try again to build 2. Weâve done that now for about the last 5 years and it really helps the drivers practice and learn what the robot can do and what it canât do.
The main thing is to plan it out so you only set up the machines once when you cut, drill, or machine. While making both sets of parts we also make spares at the same time - same thought process - set up once, so your parts are more likely to be true duplicates.
And the students do 80% or more of the work, because we have so many parts to make - someone has to do the cutting, drilling, and machining so it might as well be them.
Our Team hasnt officially decided to build two of the same robots but we took a quickie vote and it was an overwhelming vote for building the 2nd.
We would stagger it so that our first Robot that actually gets shipped is still the highest quality possible but the extra practice will be valuable not to mention having a spare part for pretty much everything!
Looks like weâll be building two ourselves. Which means weâll have robots running around the cage like crazy. Itâs a very scary thought. At least until the shipping date. Then weâll only be down one. Which only gives us a couple (our new one this year and a robot of old, if not two robots of old) to drive for afterwards practice. We were all pretty happy about the decision to build two. Practice is gonna be a huge thing.
what we do is we start building our robot at the beginning of the season, and we use it to try out different ideas and see if they work. This robot is called âdemo botâ. once we settle on a final design we build the final version of the robot, without all the holes in the 80/20, without the eyeballed measurements, and it works a lot better than the demo bot." we then practice driving that robot after the ship date, and we bring it to the regionals so that, if something like the arm got completely destroyed in competition, we could just go out to the trailer and take it off of demo bot and it would work on the final bot. that way we have a duplicate of the robot in case something breaks.
The difference is only really noticeable at the first competition. And our team is 100% student built and run.
We have been building two robots since 2005 and its been a noticable difference in our on filed performance. I highly reccomend it.
I wouldnât say we have a 100% student built robot but if you look at our photo album on our website (just click the sig to get there) our kids at least do 50%. One secret to our success is we use the same drive base year after year (with some modifications)⌠We also have a very detailed plan of when we want what done. It also helps that every single person on the team works thier behind off.