Wednesday, November 11, 2009
something to think about while I’m off for Veteran’s Day
Good Morning Teams,
I’m excited to announce that this year, FRC is offering a Coopertition™ Award. Details will be in the awards section of the FRC Competition Manual coming soon. Also new in 2010, the Driving Tomorrow’s Technology Award will become the Engineering Excellence Award (still sponsored by Delphi) and Autodesk will retire both the Visualization Award and the Inventor Award in order to introduce the Excellence in Design Award (with expanded software options).
If you’re getting excited about the 2010 season, you may want to tune in. WPI will be hosting a webinar on the 2010 FRC Control System on Saturday, 11/14, from 10AM to 3 PM EST. Webinar participants will be able to ask questions directly of some of the system developers. Participation is free. More details can be found at http://first.wpi.edu/Workshops/frccon932.html.
Back, on September 29th I posted a link to the rookie/veteran kit variations document on the usfirst.org website. Today I can clear up the TBD. The 2009 robot radios have been proven to work with the new system so veteran teams will be asked to reuse last year’s radio.
And don’t forget to visit the safety page of our website where the new FMA contest is posted.
Design Excellence, to me, would definitely focus on the Inventor side of Autodesk’s products and I’m not sure how animation would fit into this. We won’t know for sure until the awards description is released, but I hope to see the animation component stay for this award. Maybe they’re going to relate the animation aspect to specifically animating robot-related things. But you can do that in Inventor, so who knows - guess we’ll see soon enough. I’d like to see the animation competition stay, it attracts a unique group of students to FIRST.
I am EXTREMELY happy about this. There are too many teams who use pro-e and solidworks (both which directly support FIRST) to just ignore them. I think this will make the judging process very interesting but I think it is definitely a step in the right direction.
I meant specifically the Coopertition Award. Say 1714 collaborated mutually with Other Wisconsin Team next year. Coopertition at its most extreme. Who gets the award in a mutual-gain exercise in coopertition, rather than a “haves helping have nots” system?
I’m stoked to see this happening. Its like FIRST is actually listening to teams now:yikes:
Chris, just wait until the award documents are released. There’s no use in assuming things about the award and discussing hypothetical situations when 1.its not a big deal and 2. the specifics will be out soon.
I might be wrong, but I seriously doubt Autodesk will allow competitive software to be used in a contest they sponsor. What’s more likely is they’ll post a general design challange and let teams use any combination of Autodesk software (Inventor, 3ds Max, Maya, etc.) to create their entries.
Realistically I could see this happening, but if autodesk really believed in inspiring youth to learn science and technology it shouldn’t matter what software students learn CAD on. In the long run engineers will use whatever software the company that hires them uses. And anyone who really knows and uses CAD on a regular basis understand that the techniques to make a proper use able model don’t change software to software. When you play in the Parametric modeling realm the differences stem from the locations of the button, the order of operations, advanced features (which most free seeds don’t include) and the subsequent linked packages (CAM).
If you REALLY know cad, it does not take much time to move from one piece of software to another. Teaching students the techniques and basics should be the goal, not worrying about which icons they hit to get there.
Yes, it DOES seem that we are starting to see more and more examples of transparency from FIRST.
Perhaps, but the guys holding the purse strings aren’t so easily convinced.
In some cases the software you use at work depends on what the company owns, but there are plenty of examples where employee X convinced management to buy software Y because s/he was familiar with it and knew it could solve problem Z… <Ka-ching, another $ale>
Great! Now just collaborate with a another team, and have one of the twins go to the other team during the competition and act like this- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4-O-tLsCDo
I’m guessing, since Autodesk is still the sponsor and since they’re giving us more software this year, that we’ll still be using only Autodesk products - we’ll just have a wider array to choose from.
I am also concerned about what is happening with animation. We have had a strong annimation team in the past, and many students eager to work on it this year. We also have been accumulating equipment for the purpose and are working on a render farm.
“Coopertition™ Award
The Coopertition™ Award celebrates the team that best demonstrates the ability to help their opponents compete. In the inaugural year of the Coopertition Award, the award will be granted to the team that earns the most Coopertition Bonus points during the competition.”
