We are wanting to display robot after bag day at some local events to hopefully attract new sponsors and for fundraising. The primary purpose is to attract attention for our program as well as selling raffle tickets for a boat we are raffling. Our review of the rules seems to allow displays after bag day for theses types of activities but we want to see if other teams have had any problems with doing so.
As long as you keep your bag and tag list up to date with the extra tag(s), you will be fine. There’s a column for explanation, and write something along the lines of “demonstration” there. We’ve done displays for school assemblies after bag day for two years now (this year will make 3), and we’ve never had any issues with the lockup form.
We displayed the robot last year, but wanted to drive it for a school rally, so for driving we had our Pit lead, who was not a part of the drive team, do it. There were no issues for us at the San Diego and the Orange County Regionals. Just make sure you are unbagged for the minimum amount of time possible. For us the event was an hour itself, so we could justify that we needed to take it out 20 minutes before hand to connect wires and batteries.
if it’s going to be out of the bag for more than a few hours per display, it’s good to give a heads up to FIRST to make sure you get appropriate approvals and documentation for everything BEFORE the display. IF the unbagging will be more than 4 hours, you MUST get a waiver from FIRST directly.
A number of NE teams had a 3 day display at a big conference for a FIRST diamond level supplier last year and it took a few days for all the documentation and approval to come together.
Thanks for info. We will see if we can get a waiver fir the 4+ hour window. The community has an all day 8+ boat show/sport show that we want to be present for. Our preference is to have the public see the bot rather than have to peek through bag. We will work on a good reveal video to display if we can’t get waiver, and let the FLL kids display their stuff. Probably not as impressive, but little kids can probably sell more tickets.
FRC 4901 and their related FLL teams used to present at USC’s College of Engineering and Computing open house. If you bring the full FLL table out, you’re gonna get a good reaction! (Just make sure there are signs or barriers to keep hands off.)
Alternate strategy: Make the unbagging an event. “Come back at 2:00 PM for a special reveal of our 2018 FIRST Robotics Competition robot! We have a special exception to the competition lock-up rules to display it for this afternoon.” (How special is irrelevant–for many years this wasn’t an option at all in the manual!)
I would not rely on getting the waiver. It’s been denied before. (The waiver mentioned above was probably because this was a big FIRST donor.)
As rookies, this next part isn’t exactly feasible to put together right away… Plan for next year.
Always, always have at least ONE operational robot that is NOT the competition robot that has to be in the bag. That way you can do these longer demos without having to worry about unbag time.
As mentioned you only are approved for for a few hours and limited display…
In this instance, if not approved for a longer than normal display.
You can make a big reveal… Have the FLL demos with your robot in its bag. Lots of signage and poster boards made of it. Pictures of parts, sneak peaks to build interest! Make a bunch of hype about the removal of the robot.
Go even as far as a small flier/button. something that acts as a raffle and if brought back before un-bagging can win a chance to drive it.
We do demos and they are a great way to get into the community.
We have the programmers put a everything at 1/4 speed before we bag, so we are ready.
Unfortunately we do not have an event of this magnitude on our little rock in the Pacific.
So work it.
Look at the event schedule you are attending and pick a window that would have more traffic, if works that way…
This is good for your students to practice as if judges were there…
So much to do with this…
Good luck and Aloha!
Fair warning: Make sure you have enough tags.