Alright…
Few things: First, I think everyone needs to chill a little bit; Chris27, it might be a good idea to read your posts before you hit “submit reply”, and consider how they might be offensive to some individuals. Everyone else, consider the fact that Chris27 and his team were disappointed with the result of their regional, and that their experiences and response are thus coming through a biased, slightly distraught lens.
Chris27, I understand your frustration, and we totally experienced it last year; my team built a robot that had the ability to cap higher than all except for two bots at our regional, and perhaps ten or twenty bots that I saw at nationals could cap higher than us; what we didn’t reckon on was the development of strategy and driver skill; we built a robot that, with a properly developed strategy and actually making some practice matches, would have been stupendous. We didn’t do these things, and we didn’t play the game well; that was our fault, and that is why this year we planned on playing the game.
We are one of those robots that will play primarily defense, although we will probably be able to score in both the high and corner goals. We collect balls, we shoot them, and we dump them, but what we do really, really well is push other robots wherever the hell we want to. This is a valid strategy, and while you claim a lack of “innovation” in these bots, I draw your attention to what we were forced to do to maintain scoring capabilities while being a very strong defensive bot:
-We had to design and run a belt drive from our window motor to get it moving a roller at 400rpms, without a gearbox, because we don’t have the facilities or knowledge to design and fabricate custom gearboxes.
-We had to design and build the entire upper section of our robot(read: non-drive-base) using only 45lbs of weight (note that this includes collection system, hopper, dumping system, electronics, etc…).
-We were forced to compensate for our lack of strong/fast motors by developing systems that functioned without an extremely fast or strong motor.
Additionally, we put alot of time and thought into the drive-train and base, and how to make it do what we wanted, the way we wanted to do it. Perhaps we didn’t create a shooter with adjustments on 3 axes that dynamically tracked the target and determined motor speed & etc… based on trigonometrical distance calculations.
But we didn’t need to- we designed and built a functional robot that will contribute to each and every alliance we are on no matter what the opposing alliance’s strategy is. Our innovation, as valid as yours, was partially rooted in strategy and gameplay, not solely in technological achievements.
Which brings me to my next point: This is a thread about whether or not robots win or lose, and whether or not their gameplay fits with various preconceived notions of what “FIRST intended the game to be like”. Ahhhh, intent, what a word…I’d ask how any of us know FIRSTs intent (other than inspiring individuals to do something bigger and better with their lives than previously planned) in anything, but it would probably create an uproar(the answer is that we don’t; FIRST designs the game, and we interpret that game and create an experience out of it; a robot is a byproduct of the build season). This experience is what really matters; the skills you develop over the 6 weeks, or the competition, or just in thinking about the robot is what really counts; it is the change that each of us experiences, the ability we develop to deal with disappointments and successes, and our relatively amazing ability to adapt our notions of the way things are and enact a positive change based on these refined realities, that really matter in the long run.
My team has never won a regional; hell, we’ve never even seeded high than 30th(I think, and this is in a field of 46 at Drexel). What we have done is learned things. We’ve learned what we want to do with our lives, what a creative mind and some raw materials can create, what the true meaning of teamwork is, how to manage our time effectively, how to multitask, how to write software, how to design & assemble an electronics board, how to use a variety of tools, how to design and complete an engineering project, and, most of all, we have learned how to take what we though was our limit, our top, our best, and exceed them all. We’ve dealt with failure (see our rookie robot that was 40lbs overweight, had a pretty much non-extant dewalt drivetrain, couldn’t turn easily, and our functional arm we were forced to cut to make weight), and success (see our website award in 2005 and our Rookie Inspiration Award for showing up at the regional, awed and inexperienced, and putting our time, effort, sweat, and blood into fixing that robot when we weighed in [no accurate scale at the shop- not enough money] and found out about our weight issue), and each of these experiences has taught us things. On the surface these lessons were about robotics; we learned to weigh our components and final products obsessively, to KISS, and to choose something we could do and do it. When you delve a little, however, you find that these lessons taught us about teamwork, goals, planning, and every members personal abilities in the shop, on the field, and in life.
Chris27, it sounds like you are disappointed in the outcome of this year; you have every right to be so, if you so choose. You built what sounds like an amazing robot that I am very envious of, and you didn’t garner the expected win. I challenge you to look past the disappointment, and to remove it from your thoughts; look beyond the loss of this year (and the win of last year), and ask what the experiences can teach you and your teammates, other than how best to build a winning robot. Once you realize that in the end, while winning is fun and awesome, it isn’t everything, you have realized what FIRST is really all about, and what they intended the competition to do; if even a single person on your team can come away from this experience having learned something they would not have otherwise learned, then you have done well.
There is probably not a single team in FIRST that could not have done better, given more time/thought/money/ideas/sponsors/facilities/luck, but if each of the 40,000 students (and mentors, while we are at it) comes out of the experience having learned some lesson about life, and having developed a broader, more realistic knowledge and experience base, then FIRST, and every team in FIRST, has accomplished what their basest goal should be. To educate, inspire, and drive everyone involved in this amazing program.
Just my $.02
-Dillon Compton
Team 1394
and only three matches to regain our dignity on Saturday