I have only been around for a year now and I can tell you that this is taken very, very seriously. After all that’s why there is a huge forum just for Robotics. 
Honesty and integrity should always be taken seriously. It’s the lubrication that makes the world go round.
True, but remember, there are at least 8 programmers this year. I’m the only one attempting the automation, I’m sure all the other guys can write the robot code fine. Now that makes me sound like the black sheep but honestly I can say that I can write the full human controlling code in less than a week. May be I am selfish for trying this automation thing. I do not believe in failures. Even if I do not accomplish my full automation, there will be a big platform to work with during the automation mode. Also I learn from that experience that I can apply later on. And when my full automation does work as intended, the code written by the other programmers might not ever run because the robot would be stuck in the automation loop. May be I am just quixotic and being too idealistic. In my eyes, being idealistic is better than beating your self up because of your lack of self esteem.
About the guinea pigs that I call my alliance members. They are not the only guinea pigs, my whole life is a guinea pig.
Taken from JaneYoung’s signature.
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering
can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
Helen Keller (1880-1968)
My whole life is a learning experience, it is inevitable that there will be people that are going to be guinea pigs in my life experience. May be I am stating it too harshly but this stage in my life is just a stepping stone. Its not the zenith of my life.
We are all guinea pigs for each other. From the experiences we all share, we all take something different from it.
edit:
I honestly don’t care if we win a single match. I believe that this competition is about what we get out from the experience that matters not the win or loss. Because 30 years from now, it won’t matter how many matches we won, what kind of costume we wore or any of that. What will matter is what we learned and how we use it.
We seem to have hijacked the OP’s thread. :o
David,
What I consider to be a great part of the competition aspect is strategy. Many teams study each other via the Blue Alliance and videos and communicate with each other throughout the season, networking and building a strong foundation of respect and understanding. In my opinion, ChiefDelphi serves that purpose: building respect with one another.
Granted, there are teams that wing it - stumbling through build and the competition season without fully preparing as a competitive team that can be viewed as a prospective alliance partner by other FRC teams. Sometimes, it takes years to gain respect and to learn to understand the opportunities that avail themselves to those who pay attention, are willing to learn from the best, and dig deeper into understanding what it means to be a competitive FRC team. True, there are members of teams, and perhaps, whole teams, who are in it for the experience, regardless of how well they compete. If you think about it - a lot of money has been spent just to have an experience. At some point, the individual and the team, as a whole, has to step up to the plate and take some well-practiced swings, focused on hitting one out of the park.
There are robotics competitions that switch out drivers in each match. BEST is one of those events. What we have learned when competing in BEST - is to have the driver selection process in place and enforce it. When the drivers have garnered their positions - then they have to commit to serious practice times before each competition, learning how to work together as a team in order to support each other and compete well. The robot doesn’t drive itself - even in autonomous. It takes brains, know-how, strategy, practice, and communication in order for the robot to perform well and consistently in every aspect. The guinea pig time, if there is going to be any, should be in the shop, not on the field.
I love the quote in my signature and I’m glad to see it quoted. That said - it has to be applied to the discussions that you like to generate. It’s about digging deep and learning from the process. It is not about staying in one place, spinning your wheels all the time, generating noise.
One more thought - in this competition you have the opportunity to work with, compete with and against, and learn from the best in the fields of science, technology, and engineering. That is no small thing. They should not be considered guinea pigs by any stretch of the imagination. They should be considered role models and leaders who are very knowledgeable and experienced.
Take time to absorb some of the responses made to your posts, David. Absorb them, think about them, and look at them from a different perspective. They are gifts.
Jane
May be guinea pigs were not the right words to use, but thanks again for your input.
You are always welcome. Think of some better words and let me know via pm - we can talk about it if you would like.
Jane
Keep in mind that anyone can learn from their own mistakes. Learning from other people’s mistakes may be more difficult but that is how we truly advance.
As a team going to both of our regionals with 589, I’m a bit worried.
David, you may want to make a fully autonomous robot, but to attempt to do so and field a noncompetitive robot is disrespectful to every other team there.
My team (and your team) pays a lot of money to compete, in a competition, and we plan to win. To field anything but the most competitive robot is inappropriate.
They say it’s not about the robot, and that the lessons, etc. that result are what are important; well, if you don’t put the most you can in the most competitive robot you can, you won’t get the lessons out of this program you should.
In engineering, it’s important to use the appropriate tools and not more resources than are required. Building a completely autonomous robot for a teleoperated competition may be cool, but it’s bad engineering. A robot with many automated and autonomous portions to make it easier on the drivers (while maintaining driver control), is good engineering.
I could keep going, but you’re unlikely to consider these words anyway.
I take that as a challenge: see you at the regionals. I will do in the best of my abilities to program a very competitive, fully autonomous robot.
Well… Good Luck then, and a Very Merry Christmas!
I am not going to judge on what one team does or does not do, but I will provide an example.
In 2009, we were grouped with teams 1051 and 1746 in the eliminations. During the semi-finals. We won the first match, and lost the second match. In the third match, I noticed the referee throw up a penalty flag in the middle of the match, but was surprised to see that no penalty was assessed in the score.
It wasn’t until about 10 seconds later that we found out that our alliance had been disqualified because the coach on one of our teams touched the controls. The team in question ran three separate drive teams, and the coach on the drive team in during the match in question happened to be the driver in another drive team set, and when he noticed something wrong, his instincts took over and he reached in to adjust a potentiometer.
Now we don’t blame this team at all, they performed extremely well and we were grateful for everything they did, but one can’t help but think of what could’ve been.
Of course, I’m not against substituting a bad driver or a driver who seems to have a lot going on in his or her mind, but I do like consistency, especially when it comes to developing skills and general know hows of a robot and a game.
Anyways, enjoy the break, and here’s to a good 2011 for everyone!!!
- Sunny
David,
Your failing to see the point. Adam suggested that you use your programming skills to help the drivers and the **TEAM **. With your abilities you could:
-Create a competitive autonomous routine
-Allow better control of the robot for drivers
-Implement more sensors that would provide valuable feedback
-Design a dashboard for you team.
-Automate tasks that would be hard for drivers (such as re cockk the kicker after kicking the 2010 soccer ball and having the kicker go to a desired position).
There are so many different and valuable things you can do to put your team in the best position to win. I believe there was a thread talking about how missions to the moon/mars are not fully autonomous and require some sort of human interaction.
**A fully autonomous crappy robot isn’t really that amazing, a well built winning robot is hands down much more amazing.
**
Its very foolish for you to ignore the advice of very talented and respectable CD members. To be honest, my team has worked all year long. Even in the off season. If my team was in the top 8 and we lost a spot cause our alliance partner used us as a “guinea pig”, I would be very very upset and so would many of our parents/mentors.
Taking everyones advice here on CD as a challenge makes you look quiet stupid, it doesn’t hurt for you to stop an say “Man I was wrong” and take a new direction.
Adam said it best:
“In engineering, it’s important to use the appropriate tools and not more resources than are required. Building a completely autonomous robot for a teleoperated competition may be cool, but it’s bad engineering. A robot with many automated and autonomous portions to make it easier on the drivers (while maintaining driver control), is good engineering.”
Also take some time and think about the posts, don’t reply back right away cause you **HAVE **to leave a reply.
-RC
While I, in David’s position, would take your advice, I don’t necessarily agree with this. A fully autonomous robot that actually played the game, though not necessarily very well, would be rather impressive, at least to me.
By playing the game, I don’t mean, followed a ball until it’s picked up, then turned towards the goal and shot. I mean intelligently finds the closest or easiest game piece to grab while avoiding obstacles, knows not to shoat with an opponent in the way, and finally but precisely finds the goal with the game piece. Anything less than that really isn’t playing the game.
Yes, that probably wouldn’t be the greatest use of human resources, to use a talented programmer to recreate the most basic human driver, but that is award winning (Innovation in Control…) and a valuable experience for the programmer in question.
That said, it would probably hurt the team to a certain extent, and I can’t imagine a potential drive team would be happy to see their places taken by a less competent AI. So David, if you really are going to try this, which I believe you will, if your AI is worse than a human driver, don’t expect it to be used. However, if it is actually better, then that is a significant accomplishment.
Did his entire post go completely over your head? Seriously?
It’s your duty in FRC to your teammates and alliance partners to put the most competitive robot possible on the field. A fully autonomous robot (assuming you do it, as literally hundreds of posts about the difficulties of such a system have again gone completely over your head) will in no way be better than a teleoperated robot with only 6 weeks of work.
Though honestly, you’re lacking something far more important to your alliance partners than a good robot: good listening skills. Though, hey, everyone else in the world is your guinea pig anyway, you won’t need to coordinate with them.
David. Talk to 33 or 111. They have some of the most automated robots in the competition every year. They could probably make a serious run at a fully-autonomous robot if they wanted to. They don’t. There is a reason for this!
33 has automation built into a lot of functions. A filter they wrote years ago went onto a sponsor’s vehicle a year or two later with little modification. They were one of the first teams to do shift-on-the-fly–with a 4-speed gearbox that shifted smoothly. They write the automation code so that the operator can tell the robot what device X needs to be doing, and the robot just does it with no further input, if it can be done safely. Read the 2007 Behind the Design book.
111, same thing. They’ve built some complex robots, and the code to match. They did a 4-5 joint arm a few years back. (See the same book.) If they didn’t have some form of automation, they’d be crazy.
1024, back in 2008, ran a full avoidance program (until the sensors smoked and flamed). They could avoid just about anything autonomously.
To run a fully-autonomous robot and run it well, you need to combine the avoidance code of 1024’s 2008 robot with the automation of 33 and 111, along with the decision-making of a human and the drive code of your robot design. If you can’t do that decision-making, settle for automation. Make it so that your driver or operator says, I need X at point Y, and the robot does it quickly and smoothly.
Very few robots could run fully autonomously these days. The last game that was practical was 2003: Drive up the ramp and lock down. 111 was one of the World Champions. This was also the first time automode came into play. 2002 would be even easier–drive straight, grab goal, drive straight, park. Imagine if 71 had run autonomously that year: Drivers hit “go” and watch the robot win the match every time (as opposed to drivers drive the robot out, shift drivetrains, and win the match).
Listen to JVN. He’s been on three good teams and learned from many more. If he says that he does not want to be paired with you, without even hearing about your robot, you might want to listen to why.
On the same note, I’d want to pair with 33, 111, 71, or 148 any day, no matter the game and no matter their robot. There’s a very good reason why, or several, and some of them are above.
Wrong sir. Very wrong. There is absolutely no duty whatsoever to field the best competitive robot a team can, absolutely not. It is your opinion that putting out a good tele-operated robot would be better than an autonomous one to work with, but that is just YOUR OPINION. The fact that others may share you opinion does not mean that it is going to be a fact, as it’s still YOUR OPINION.
Going back to the FIRST acronym, For INSPIRATION and Recognition of SCIENCE and Technology, a working, functioning autonomous robot is hands-down the best way, IMO, to get people to be inspired by the competition. Interfacing with a human operator is a fine thing and all, but forcing a robot to run on it’s own, and run well, is pure science and pure inspiration. People will respect that better than any winning robot that can do some things neatly and win, because FIRST and the FRC isn’t about winning.
If he can convince his team that this course would suit them well, and they feel like it’s in their most inspirational interests to do so, they should. It’s why they are building a robot, after all.
Nice, good luck with that, but I would recommend you don’t discard the advice given by some highly respected FRC members. From a programming perspective, that would be awesome; however, from a strategist/scout I would never pick your team in eliminations. Looking back, our team with some more controls and sensors could have probably programmed our 2008 speed racer to run laps autonomously.*** Would that have been cool, yes. Would it have been the most effective strategy, no. Why? Because when we did compete with it during the off-season we used that lap bot to not only run laps, but our driver would play defense at the same time such as knocking balls away/out of grabbers and stuff like that making it a highly obnoxious opponent. I was behind the glass during a few of those matches and found the on the fly choices genius.
Another note, how many FRC robots have successfully completed their autonomous program repeated in the exact same way every match? Along the same idea, how many robots have done the exact same things in each and every match? FLL robots compete on tables with no other robot interaction and most of them cannot pull off 400 points consistently every round all the time.
I am not doubting your programming skills, it is A match strategy, but it isn’t the ONLY of most EFFECTIVE strategy. Consider the amount of time it would take to program/test/debug all of that code in 2 minute matches. I would rather take all that time to train drivers how to play the game and react to different strategies.
1519 has done the usual driver for the chassis and moving the robot, operator for the manipulators, coach for direction, and human player to do the human player things. In 2009 we gave the control of picking up balls to our driver instead of our operator too ease communication between the two.
Merry Christmas!!
Thanks to all of you that responded to my post, but now lets get back to the topic:
I suggest that you have the maximum number of persons allowed at the box at all times. You never know, what if the driver cramps up his forearm an cannot properly drive? Somebody has to come in and replace him. Ok far-fetched example, but I am exemplifying something. Always come prepared. You would never go to the regional without spare parts, tools and a computer to program the robot with. Why step onto the ring without a backup? Ben Franklin once said that failing to prepare is preparing to fail. You never know when your driver passes out during the match due to dehydration or his arms cramp up. Always have depth in your rosters.
I was right with you until we got to this part. There are lots of threads in CD that discuss this part and in those threads are a lot of opinions and a lot of opinions expressed using wisdom. If it were not about winning, it would not be called a competition - but FRC is much more than winning a competition and therein lies the magic of infinite possibilities. Some include how a team wins which could touch into some of our higher ideals such as playing with integrity and honor. Some can include the honor of the win or the loss, recognizing the importance of going the distance and never giving up. Some include the teamwork developed between students and their mentors, pushing us into areas of innovation, creative problem-solving, and hands-on applications. Some can include the doors that open to educational and careers opportunities that would otherwise not make themselves available or remain undiscovered. Sometimes, there is nothing sadder than a dormant or undiscovered opportunity when it is actually right at our fingertips and we aren’t paying attention.
It is about winning and what that can mean.
Jane
Pay close attention to the other two letters you ignored there. We’re not just talking FIRST. We’re talking the FIRST Robotics Competition. If you are going for “impressive” at the expense of “competitive”, it’s my opinion that you’re being unreasonably selfish.
That’s even before considering the increasingly obvious fact that the programmer in question (and his entire team, for that matter) has more than a few other things to work on before getting to the point where a fully autonomous robot is anything more than a fantasy.