I’ll admit the FRC Administrative Manual isn’t much of a page-turner, but it’s packed with information you need to know, along with many helpful tips. Even if you’re a veteran team with many years under your belt, you should read it through completely.
This year, it includes a new section on Robot Displays, Section 5.4.3. To help with marketing and community outreach, teams will be able to show off their robot for short periods, out of the bag, after Stop Build Day. No work or practice may be done during these show times. You should read the rest of the rules in this section for yourself, I don’t want to spoil the ending.* We had occasionally granted these requests on a team-by-team basis over the last few years, it just made sense for us to include this in the manual and give the option broadly to all teams. Just make sure to follow those rules!
Hope all of you who are celebrating holidays this week have wonderful ones!
Frank
*SPOILER ALERT. If you can’t wait, I’ll tell you the end. Tom Baker makes an appearance as the museum curator.
I’m excited that teams now have the options to take robots out of the bag for demonstration purposes.
Time to pull our GP out of these “Robot Displays.”
What constitutes “practice?”
What if something broke on the robot that was working fine when it came out of the bag? Could we fix it then?
I just see a whole host of ways to abuse this. I hope those who use this clause will not only follow the letter of the rule, but the spirit of it as well.
There is no instance of the term “Tom Baker” in the administrative manual. He came in as the museum curator at the end of the 50th Anniversary Dr. Who special.
Back Story, he was the 4th Doctor from Dr. Who.
Game hint anyone?
…I’ll let this blow up somewhere before I post more of my thoughts.
Teams already had that option, now it’s just more formalized.
In MAR the process involved contacting Ed Petrillo and asking permission. We did it in 2012 and 1143did it last year.
It’s better to have it in the rule book like this so more teams know that it’s available. It also seems like you don’t need permission this year, which makes it somewhat easier.
So, as a team that’ll be competing under the District System for the first time…
What does your team usually do during the “Robot Access Periods?”
How do the rules for a “withholding allowance” relate to the rules for the “Robot Access Periods?” (i.e. Can you choose if you use your witholding allowance at the event or in one of your robot access periods?)
I like this addition. It allows us to show our robot off to companies and sponsors more closely to the time when we’re demanding money and services from them. It allows us to demonstrate the sponsorship -> robot -> competition process.
I dislike the debate that’s attached with this rule change. Hopefully FIRST clarifies in greater depth what “demonstration” is, so we don’t have to suffer through another 1,000+ post thread. (cue 1,000+ post thread)
This is a worthwhile discussion, but I don’t think it belongs in this thread.
These “Robot Displays” are not like “Robot Access Periods”. No work is done on the robot and no drivers practice during one of these displays. They are completely different.
If you were going to cheat, why would you record it on your Robot Lock Up sheet as a “Robot Display”? Wouldn’t you just keep it a secret? We already have to deal with teams following the spirit of the rules in the current system. The addition of “Robot Displays” changes nothing.
Dr. Who (I think relates to time travel), just like the incorrect date…
Does the game have to do with time?
Also, I’m a little confused with the access period too. From my reading, it looks like there’s no mention of the withholding allowance, so is there a rule that we can open the bag, take the old robot out, and put a new one in, or taking out the old robot, removing 95% of the stuff on it, and replacing it with new stuff? Or will a later rule clarify that we can only change 30 lbs of robot?
I think people have a pretty narrow view of how cheating works. Very rarely is it a group of people going “yeah, we want an advantage, let’s blatantly just break the rules!”. It’s people bending little things, overlooking small things. “Oh, we don’t need to unbolt the CIM from that mechanism to make the withholding allowance, it’s pointless if we’re just going to put it back on”. “You know, we machined these wheels in December, but why waste the time making new ones?” It’s small decisions at the fringe of rules rationalized by individuals somehow.
It seems like it would be a lot easier for teams to rationalize giving their arm operator twenty minutes on the sticks at a demo now than before, no? Or giving the programmers time to debug and update the code - “yeah it’s technically work but the robot has to look good for this demo, right?”
I’m not overly concerned, but it’s more of a possibility now than before.
Seeing as their example of “not practice” is explicitly stated as having non-drive-team members drive, not really. But yes, I do see what you’re saying.
Regarding the clue, I think a more rational guess is some sort of phone-booth-door type mechanism that has to be manipulated on the field.
I understand the distinction between the brand-new “Robot Displays” that apply to all teams, and the “Robot Access Periods” that have existed in Districts since they began… I just wanted to talk about them since they’re part of the 2014 Administrative Manual that was just provided. I’ll start a new thread, since it probably merits its own anyway…
I like the Dr. Who game hint idea… maybe the rules and game strategy will be so convoluted and confusing that we won’t figure out what is going on until Championships?!?
As to interpretation of the new rules, they’re pretty clear. You can unbag your robot for a short period of time so people can get a good LOOK at it. I like it, but they’ll have to include a lot more zip-ties in the KoP.
At the end it talks about Tom Baker. After seeing that, I did some research, it may mean nothing to you, and I might be wrong, but somewhere it said it was the 50th anniversary for Dr. Who. With the 2009 Lunacy being an anniversary and 2011 Logomotion both being anniversaries, Dr. Who could be quite a big game hint, or have something to do with it. Tom Baker was the 4th doctor in the late 70’s, I’m not sure what all these typos (2013 instead of 2014 and 3013 instead of 2013), but with the reference to Tom Baker, it seems like something has to do with time, whether it just means the match is longer or shorter, or if there’s something specific in Tom Bakers’ episode of Dr. Who with him being a museum curator. Also, on wiki : History of Doctor Who - Wikipedia It talks in the end of the 2nd paragraph about Tom Baker, that they wanted to remind the people that he wasn’t human… and didn’t have human characteristics… Along with that, it also says Under the control of_____. I thought this was an interesting coincidence, probably doesn’t mean anything though
Let’s try to keep the game hint discussion out of this thread, and in this one. I don’t want any valuable discussion about the administrative manual to get lost in waves of game hint speculation.
I like this change, especially as a rookie team but also in the rip-out-the-cRIO era. This ensures teams have a robot to show more or less year-round when it’s needed. (I recall a time that Dean came to South Carolina for a fundraising dinner years ago. He spoke with teams in the afternoon probably a week after ship day. He asked “Where are the robots?!” and I replied “We shipped 'em all!”)
Will some folks stretch it? Probably. Could they stretch it without this rule? Certainly.
But if an event is big enough to break the robot out of the bag, hopefully teams will be recording and photographing anyway. It’s hard to say “Redateam totally had driver practice!” when the video from the school board meeting shows them teaching the superintendent how to drive it.
First of all, I think that this is very cool. I’m always a little bummed that between build season and competition season seems to be the only time anyone ever hears about robotics, but coincidentally is the only time when they can’t see the robot. I’m excited that we might be able to have a pre-competition demo at school or for our sponsors.
Second, as Chris pointed out, this opens up a lot of opportunity for cheating, especially inadvertent cheating. With Bag n’ Tag, cutting the tag and taking the robot out is a very clear violation of the rules, and while it may be self-policed, it’s very clear when its being violated. Allowing teams to unbag for demos within the rules brings in much more of a grey area. Is changing the bumpers working on the robot? Is plugging in the battery? Is plugging in unplugged motors? Is downloading code a violation? How about new code? It’s not clear, and it’s pretty easy to convince yourself that whatever you’re doing with the time isn’t cheating. This certainly should be covered in more detail in the Q and A.
One thing people haven’t mentioned is that this could be one small step on the path to eliminating Bag n’ Tag entirely.
If you look up Philip Hinchcliffe’s Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Hinchcliffe) his first work on Doctor Who was on a story called Robot, he also worked on The Ark in Space a year later. I find that very interesting, but I will let everyone else work it out.
Other notable works of his that caught my eye: Total Eclipse, Pyramids of Mars, and Target
