Factory Built Bots VS. Student Built Bots -Something Has To Change!

FIRST General Forum
#48

Hi Bobby,

While I do not think that there is anything wrong with mentors working with students, I also think you are grossly underestimating what students can do by themselves. Since you are in MAR, I think you should know that one of this year’s DCMP winners, 2590, is almost entirely student built. No mentors touched the CAD, and the students built every part in the school. There was no “factory”, just the high school’s tech lab and a lot of extremely dedicated students. I know that the students on the team take it as a huge compliment when someone accuses them of being a mentor-bot.

Next year, I encourage you to stop by other teams pits to learn more about their build process, it might surprise you.

#49

It always irks me how these type of posts always downplay how smart and talented high school students can be. In this day and age of COTS and VexPro, it is not an unreasonable task for high school students with a little mentor support to design and build a clean robot.

#50

I just wanna throw my name into the hat. 2976 has just one professional mentor, and we have a strictly student led, built, strategized, etc team. We qualified to champs this year, and are actually doing quite well for ourselves in Houston. The way we did this was by building within our means, and by building efficiently.

#51

Folks, we need to tone things down a bit. If team chooses student built as the best way that is not disrespecting teams that more mentor driven. Also teams that are mentor driven by choice are not disrespecting student run teams.

Teams choose the way that works for them and we should be accepting that behavior. I have seen much creativity and inspiration in both styles.

#52

Instead of the mentor student built battle. May be we should be focusing on FRC’s dirty unspoken of problem. Take any regional or district competition. Look at the bottom 25% of the robots. They have problems. It’s common for everyone to rave about the top 25% but little is discussed about helping the bottom 25%. If your team is successful, What can you do to help the bottom. We try, it’s hard.

#53

This. ALL of this - this is why we mentor this is why we do what we do.

Some of the best teams, IMO, are those that leave students inspired, empowered, and prepared. I could sit here and name at least 20 (probably more like over 100) teams that consistently win events and have COMPLETELY student built machines, from prototype, to CAD, to build, to program. Yes, these teams have mentors that teach them how to do what they do but THAT IS HOW YOUR PROGRAM DEVELOPS. Students take what they learn from mentors and pass that along for generations, just like families pass on traditions.

These teams I referenced also earn both machine and team awards at events… but that’s besides the point. Everyone else in this thread has said it and I’m going to say it too… when you have students that are motivated you will see incredible results. Because not only will they be motivated to invoke change in the program but they will inspire others to join and those others will have the same infectious spirit.

#54

@OP, I will also have to disagree. My team is not a top tier team by any means, and our capabilities this year were below what we hoped they would be at going in, but our robot still looked nice. And while we didn’t win the regional, we came back from 46th to 21st with no mentor at all present. We encountered several problems with manipulators on our Robot that were not preset on practice day, (being the only day we had a mentor there), and on our first scheduled match we noticed “oh dang we are really underpreforming from yesterday”. After which for most matches day one and the first few of our matches day 2 were lost. putting us at rank 46. After which the team members, without a mentor even being present, managed to fix the problems on the bot and get us up to rank 26, thanks to the help of our alliance teammates and getting the spare RP we managed to climb up to the so called “ideal-range” for rankings. While we were not picked to be on an alliance we still managed to climb up nearly half the teams in rankings without a mentor form our team even present at the compition.

#55

The floor for performance in FRC has continued to rise over the past decade, and many of us are thrilled with how much better the bottom 25% looks today. There are many factors at play here: the COTS revolution; the improvement in game design (Auto Quest, for one); and experienced teams that are organized and effective at empowering in the off-season, the build season, and during competition. There are plenty of reasons to feel optimistic about this issue.

#56

and get us up to rank 21*

Really wish I could edit my posts.

#57

you can’t?

#58

Nope. I am unsure at this point if it is a reputation problem or a post count problem. I’ve had this account a little over a year now and yet I still cannot edit my posts, nor post new threads without the ‘new user’ waiting period

#59

^^ This.

This summer, as well as build sessions, we’re doing a handful of short courses. Most of them have adult mentors teaching, but we have three incoming seniors certified in AutoCAD, and they’ll be teaching that one. Coach Travis and I are among the students in **that **class.

#60

This has become the bigger part of this argument for me. For a very long time, I had to just sort of take the people that claimed you could have a beautiful and functional robot that was largely or entirely the product of student work at their word. We didn’t really have any teams like that in MN when I was a student. We had some aesthetic teams that weren’t particularly good, and some good teams that weren’t particularly aesthetic. That’s changed a bit now, but that’s how I remember it when I was a student.

Last year, I had the opportunity to watch a local team make a Championship winning robot. I am talking about FTC 8686, Height Differential. Some folks from Minnesota will recognize them… it’s a team of four guys, who practice on a field that takes the place of a living room in one of their houses. Last year, through six tournaments, I watched them create this beauty.

I don’t feel qualified to tell their story entirely… I am not a mentor for them, though some of my friends are. I can only speak of what it’s like from outside their team looking in, and being inspired by what they’ve been able to achieve. Yes, they didn’t get where they are without some fantastic support from their mentors… but those kids designed every part on that robot. Many of the parts were milled by them, parts printed, and I can vouch for the fact that their powder coating was also done by them, at the GOFIRST shop. Yes, some parts were machined or printed by a sponsor… but they were sponsors that they visited, learned from, and in at least one case interned at over the summer.

So imagine my surprise when I overhear a team at the Championship complaining that Caterpillar builds their robot. It’s insulting, and it’s offensive to the incredible amount of work those students put into that robot. I’ve never been a member of a team that built an incredible robot for FRC or FTC, but the more I think about people actively and loudly declaring students’ work is not their own, the more is anger me.

This attitude also perpetuates a myth that excellence isn’t actually achievable. It is. Yes, it can be hard to see a path there sometimes. That path can take many a twisting turn. It has hard climbs. It has setbacks. But teams are more than capable of overcoming those setbacks, making those climbs, following the path, and part of the job of mentors is to help teach how to navigate that path that we’re all on. Sometimes that means showing the way, other times it means following.

#61

Any chance of video?

#62

As someone from multiple teams who are often accused of being “Factory Built Robots,” (aka, mentor designed and built) I encourage you to personally reach out to those teams and ask for an invitation to see their shop space and talk to their students face to face.

My current team, 1024, takes pride in how much work our students do. Just look through our Twitter feed and you’ll see some great examples of this. Yet, this year we were accused by at least one other team that we know of, of being “Mentor-built.” If you talked to any of our students, you’d know that’s not the case.

If you happen to make it out to IRI, come find me and my team (the event is hosted at one of our schools). I’d be happy to introduce you to our Pit Captain, Mackenzie, if she can attend the event. She’s a 12th grader and her knowledge of robotics blows mine out of the water, and I’ve been doing this for over 15 years.

Another suggestion: reach out to as many teams as you can and make friends with mentors from those teams. Learn from them. Take them out for a beer or drinks of choice. Making connections in this community opens up your team to so many resources and ideas. Plus it makes mentoring more fun when you’re competing with and against your friends.

#63

I’m an engineer, I joke around a lot that I “make pretty pictures with javascript” but at the end of the day I’m a professional software engineer with nearly a decade of experience building and deploying real software.

A few months ago I was having issues figuring out some structure for a ROS project, you know what I did? I asked a STUDENT on 900. I admit, I asked Marshall first but he didn’t know and told me to ask a student.

Let that sink in.

(I have dozens of these stories, this was just the most recent)

How does it align with the OP assertion that students can’t compete with adults? Students can do a lot of cool stuff, we can learn a lot from them. They can learn a lot from us too. This isn’t supposed to be adults playing with robots but it’s also not supposed to be adults as babysitters. All of the best teams are partnerships where everyone learns together.

#64

I feel like it shouldn’t be an all student effort nor an all mentor effort. It’s a robotics team is it not?

Each party has involvement, both the students and mentors work on the robot. All the good ideas aren’t made by the mentors, and all the good ideas aren’t made by the students either. It’s a collection of both. As stated previously robotics is a learning experience, how are you supposed to learn if you aren’t shown and also do it yourself?

#65

They have. Go read their mission statement, specifically the part about mentor-based programs. https://www.firstinspires.org/about/vision-and-mission

I could go on a huge rant here but it wouldn’t change your views. If you feel like you can’t compete in FRC I’d suggest going to another program like VEX or FTC.

Disparaging the efforts of all the kids on the teams you’re referring to is nothing short of insulting and you should feel bad for doing so. I expected more from 433.

#66

Remembering, of course, that a forum post is a direct thoughtstream from an individual and does not reflect the feelings of every individual on the team.

Re-reading his post, and knowing how long he’s been in FIRST, I can remember feeling the same exact things back in the day.

That said, nowadays, with teams sharing ideas and mechanism designs online, it’s REMARKABLE how much more knowledge students can pull out of these designs, and learn how to use the same techniques to create similar, yet unique mechanisms. The technology has become more accessible that it’s SO much harder to try to assert “yup, designed by mentors” vs “wow, designed by students”. I don’t even try, anymore – especially because the most beautiful and elegant-looking machines aren’t always the ones that win everything.

And again, it’s not important.

#67

I can tell you that as a small team in a rural area that struggles to have both kids and mentors each year, we do wrestle with this question each season. But I have to really question why things are viewed so “binary” as one vs. the other. I came into robotics primarily with some hand tool knowledge and a lot of coaching experience in athletics. On my varsity Bball or Vball team, true we would not be allowed to “touch the ball” in a game, but boy did we touch it in practice!

My point is that if I put a team on the field (Drive team) who has practiced, trained, developed strategy, and bonded together with their team-mates and with their coaches/trainers, we can get close to the best that we have to offer in a given season.

For our team, putting some of these practices in place has bettered us. If our few students bring the desire and time needed to have less “mentor hands” in their area, we do it. In other areas, we may have to do more so the kids have something to compete with…it changes every single year.

We build with hacksaws, a single bandsaw, and far less significant digits than many teams…but our success has always been determined by how bonded together the students and mentors become by the time competition rolls around.

The difference between the teams we look up to (we learned so much from 254 being their third bot in 2016, 1885 who has a robust program and is incredible at sharing knowledge, and so many other superior programs in the Chesapeake District) is how they structure their programs and build more sponsors, mentors, and outreach to students. We try to put some of those steps in place every year and it is slow, painful, and incredibly rewarding.

We still build with hacksaws and students and mentors holding onto the piece of metal…but we no longer expect to lose because of it. We try an maximize the year for whatever it brings us.