Full Field Practice Facilities - How?

FIRST General Forum
1

I’ve seen many reveal videos of robots practicing on a full-size practice field, which, while maybe not competition quality (plywood alliance stations for example) is certainly a world above flimsy mockups of field elements.

What isn’t clear from these videos is if said facility is a permanent fixture in the team’s arsenal, or something they have to set up and tear down frequently.

I know 1114/2056 and the other teams in the Niagara region share a year-round practice facility in a closed school’s gymnasium.

I used to think that such things were a rare occurrence that only the top teams like 1114/2056 had the resources for, but its starting to look like (or perhaps more teams are sharing them and it is deceiving) more and more teams have such a facility at their disposal.

An FRC field with some extra space around it for alliance stations and supporting hardware (a computer running FMSLight for example) occupies an area about 40’x70’, or 2800 sqft.

Where are teams finding 2800 sqft that they can use for cheap/free? I don’t know of any closed schools in our area that we could ask to use, and the only other idea I can come up with is some vacant industrial spaces in our town, whose owners we might be able to convince to let us use the space until a tenant comes along. (They’ve been vacant for years)

I presume some teams with big name sponsors like NASA have large facilities owned by their sponsor that are going mostly unused day-to-day, and are allowed to use that space.

Ideas? Experiences? Suggestions?

1 Like
2

I’m not sure what the arrangement with the building is, but the Girls of Steel (3504) generously hosts a practice field for local (Pittsburgh) teams to use. The information on that can be found here: http://www.girlsofsteelrobotics.com/2013-pittsburgh-frc-practice-field

It seems that the building was either provided to them by a sponsor to use for the duration of the season or they paid to rent it for the season. It may be worth sending an email and asking for the specifics on it.

3

Hi.

I’m a mentor for FRC Team, 1629 GaCo.

We have access to a full size field, year round, in our small rural community of western Maryland.

After joining the team as a mentor in 2006, I realized that building and practicing in a small temporary room was a serious limitation to the team’s ability to produce a robot that was field ready. We shot out a lot of low ceiling tiles with our Aim High robot. Despite this limitation, we performed very well that year, but a LOT of time was spent on practice day just getting autonomous running.

At the end of that season, I made it my goal to find the team a permanent home. While discussing the problem with another mentor (who worked in the local Dept. of Economic Development) I found out that there was a building owned by the local county that had been empty for 2 years, with no immediate sign of a new tenant/owner.

After a quick site visit it was clear to me that this would be an excellent space for an FRC field.

A group of mentors got together and pitched an idea to the county commissioners at one of their weekly meetings. - To use part of this space for a year-round robotics facility.

We had several business leaders, educators, and myself (a robotics guy) present a strong argument that no-one would expect a youth football team or band to practice on a temporary partial field, so why the robotics team? These same leaders were able to speak to the strengths of the program and the benefits to the community in terms of career advancement, advanced education and local pride. We could already point to some great successes with FRC and FLL, which only bolstered our pitch.

We proposed starting a Non Profit and initially using the space for the FRC Team, but to quickly follow up with summer tech camps and other STEM activities. Since the area we were asking for was only 5000 of over 25000 sq. ft., we proposed that one day the remainder of the facility might be utilized for mainstream adult education or career training purpose.

The commissioners agreed unanimously to allow us to lease the space, rent and utility free for 5 years, on the understanding that we could be asked to vacate on a months’ notice if another buyer for the building was found. It’s been 7 years and a lot has been accomplished in that period.

The original 5000 sq ft is run by the Garrett Engineering And Robotics Society (GEARS) Inc. and the facility hosts a range of programs including FRC, FTC, FLL, Seaperch, MATE, 4-H Robotics, Summer LEGO camps, and a year-round grass-roots program called SuGO (SuGObot.com)

Our program has been so successful that the county government shows us off to visiting dignitaries like senators and governors. The other part of the building was recently revitalized to be the county’s new Career Technology Training Center and is run by the local community college.

It’s taken a LOT of volunteer effort and community support to get us where we are today.

It is undoubtedly a huge help to our FRC and two FTC teams that get to practice on full-size fields.

So, to recap…

Our approach was to show that there was a need in the community that could be solved by allocating some underutilized space for robotics. We showed that it would be a win-win for all parties involved, and we’ve worked very hard to make it happen.

Phil Malone.

2 Likes
4

The Lee’s Summit R7 Alliance (1730, 1986, and 1987) have individual build spaces on the campus of the Lee’s Summit High School. These are year-round; each team has their own private space and a 4th room that’s common. During build and competition season we’re allowed to set up a practice field on the stage in one of the older gyms in the school. This isn’t close to full size, but we have enough to have drivers’ stations, a pyramid, and driving space.

During the last bit of build season we get to set up a full field on the gym floor. We don’t have any electronics for the field; just plywood elements per FIRST drawings. Some things carry over from year to year; others we build each year. We were able to build a complete, steel, pyramid as well.

We invite other teams in the area to use the field before bag & tag; this year I think we had 10 or so teams show up.

Edit: I should add that we were able to get the build spaces funded thanks to a bond issue a few years ago. We had a tiny portion of the total amount ($1M each for 3 football fields’ turf replacement, iirc) but it was bigger than zero and we have fantastic spaces with decent tools thanks to the community’s vote.

5

Our head mentor is the co-founder of a non profit organization called Playing@Learning, dedicated to helping FIRST and STEM grow in Northern California.

Recently, the non-profit acquired a 13,000 square foot building dubbed The Play Space. It’s sole use is for FIRST purposes.
In addition to having space for an FTC field and multiple FLL tables,it has a spot for an FRC field, and has even housed an official FIRST field for a while.
The plan is that a California field will be located inside at some point.

The Play Space in the future for teams to practice. For the time being, some field elements were built by my team, and we keep the space open to all teams for practice when we practice.

If you want more information, you could PM me and I can direct you to our mentor.

6

Awesome info 1629. Great story too. I’ll see if I can find any vacant-ish buildings that might belong to local government.

7

Since someone posted about this I’ll go ahead and ask: What teams in Georgia have built their own practice field, and are willing to let other teams practice on it? My team (4188) would really appreciate using it, as would many others! (Yes, Peachtree has already passed, but there is still a lot of time before Grits!)

8

I know that Walton, 2974, hosts Destination Einstein, which has the official practice field for Peachtree. We went there a couple of times the week before our regionals, and it was really helpful.

1 Like
9

We found a school that had been closed down in a neighboring school district and then went to the county office of education and arranged a facility used agreement for all four FRC teams in the county to use the gym in that school for three months. We setup a makeshift field and carpet and gots lots of good practice in. It’s all about finding creative solutions. Also the district with the closed down school can now say that it is being used for educational purposes which alleviates some of facility issues with the state… Apparently you can’t write off expenses on a school if it’s closed down.

1 Like
10

Our region (capital district of NY) shares a practice field set up in a mostly empty building at a local college’s tech park (RPI). Having multiple teams come together to help build it and set it up is great, as it lets all area teams have access to practice space regardless of resources. It’s used throughout the year, though only really by 20 and 2791 after May.

I would figure out if you can get access to any vaguely weatherproof enclosed structure to leave as little as half the field up. You can do a lot of valid practice with a half field in many random places. Ask around, particularly at local community or four-year colleges, and you never know what you might find.

11

We lost our space a few years ago at the school and wound up forming our own non-profit as well as partnering with our communities Community Foundation for our 501©3 status. We now lease a storefront in a local mall for a fraction of the normal rental fees and have full use of all public spaces. We setup our practice field in the center court of the mall and while practicing we have many onlookers from the mall walkers and shoppers. A great way to expose new people to FIRST and to get our practice in. We have to tear down and setup each week for another event that is scheduled each Wednesday night. But the wooden practice field goes up very easily, especially with 15 - 20 students.

12

In conjunction with Ga First, we have the Peachtree practice field set up in our build site. (Kennesaw GA) Aside from regular scheduled Destination Einstein events, teams are welcomed to use the field with prior arrangements. We are still sorting out what this means, but we are very flexible. In the mean time Email me at Frank.jarrell AT waltonrobotics.org for arrangements if you want to come up.

Big thanks to GA First for seeing the value of making the field available for practice.

Big thanks to the Ga First volunteers for building the field elements every year.

Really Big thanks to Kimberly Clark for their continued sponsorship of the field.

13

We tried the ‘get local government involved in helping to get a building’, yet the political partners didn’t get involved in executing enough before they moved on to other things. I can’t tell how much the local school system interfered with that particular effort (bit of a story behind that). So we’ve (and by we, I mean the leader) refocused the entire community outreach of the team from a community STEM center to a more grass-roots effort.

In the meantime, our faculty member has made robotics so popular in the school academic program at the high school that she has two very large classrooms to teach 1 FRC block, 8 FTC teams in a couple of blocks, and then her usual database/IT courses in her other blocks. We have (roughly) a 1/3-size FRC field (using mockup components and good measurements) and a full FTC field, adjacent to our shop. This year it fit the full pyramid with high goal. We only wish it had carpeting and a higher ceiling (for errant game objects), yet considering what we’ve gone through we feel blessed to have it.

We know it’s working. We’re getting letters from realtors and developers (Toll Brothers) telling of people who want to move into our high school’s district solely because of the robotics program.

1 Like
14

That sounds awesome! How long do y’all plan on leaving the practice field up? My team was hoping to get some practice in sometime soon, as well as before Grits… Will the field still be there by that time?

15

Currently our plan is to leave the field up until Grits. That can change with a lot of factors though. Probably have a just for fun scrimmage or 2 in the summer/early fall.