So this has always been on my mind and now having spent 75% of my life in FIRST and being on a perennial powerhouse team to being on a lower competitive bracket team, the way the two teams attacked the brainstorm and robot design has been total opposites. On my old team we designed with the idea in mind we will be playing “after lunch” on Saturday at the regional and be the near the top offensively. On the the past team and now current team we don’t look for the same stuff in the game instead we focus on the smaller tasks and try to be the third pick bot,utility bot, or MCC to say the least. We also before building now look at the teams at our competitions we attend and build to the needs of the teams we think will be top teams just so happens we have 254 and 987 at our first regional so logic says to build a robot to accompany them. Is this how most teams do an outlook onto the build and competition season and is this a bad way to build?
No, it’s not a bad way to build, per se. You won’t necessarily seed well, you understand, but if you can move in auto, drop a cube or two into the switch, and shove cubes into the Vault you’ll be looked at pretty strongly…
…But you darn well better make sure that what you decide to do, NOBODY but NOBODY can beat you! That means build as quickly as reasonable, and drive the robot like you guys stole it from those top teams’ labs, because you will want to practice practice practice practice your wheels off!
Basically, if you’re going to play complementary, be the best complementary robot out there.
It’s rule one or Karthik’s Golden Rules: build within your resources. Perennial powerhouses know they’re perennial powerhouses. They reach high because they know it is within their capabilities to achieve it.
Moving to a team that recognizes it is not a powerhouse team, your resources are inevitably going to be lower. I think more teams out there should be thinking like it sounds like your team is. The best teams on the field want to pick robots that can fill in the gaps in their strategy. I think it’s absolutely a good idea to focus on smaller tasks. Build simple and get all the practice in that you can, and you’re likely to go pretty far.
What you’re suggesting is not a bad approach by any means. Over the last few years, I’ve heard a number of times that it’s always better to do one thing super well than do a mediocre job at everything. In your case, I would pick one thing that you think would complement the powerhouse teams well and do a really good job at it.
Our design using crayola cad is done, we have the chassis done in cad as well they opted out of the KOP chassis as a rookie team which was a surprise to me but the design we came up with seems pretty sound. Our first design choice was for us we don’t need to hang, and if we are not going to hang we should stick low to the ground so scale scoring is out. We will hang rather “levitate”, so we wanna stick to just being able to get past the auto line and place a cube in auto then in teleop place 2 on our switch then play the other side of field placing cubes and getting in the way. From my outside perspective they have alot of resources onsite that rival most top teams(CNC Plasma cutter and Waterjet table), I do want a finished built robot by midweek 2 and then 2 built and programmed by week 4.
My team thinks of as many ideas as possible and then as a group try to decide on one. If the team is divided on the design then we spit into groups that make accurate blueprints with real decided measurements and design and get into as much detail as possible. We then present the designs to the team taking turns and we mention the pros and cons of each design during each presentation. The presenter(s) discuss the pros and cons but the rest of the teams do as well so its not like a presentation where you argue that your design is perfect. YOU know most accurately what is wrong with your own design and what it is best at. Then we all discuss and eliminate designs we do not like. If we still remain divided then we repeat the process but we also build functional prototypes of the designs and if we somehow still are divided then we ask our mentors. Our mentors rarely talk about students designs because FIRST is about student learning so more students pursue STEM fields. Mentors already are pursuing STEM fields and they know a lot already so it is about the students. When the mentors say their opinion, we are never divided. Sometimes if we are low on time then we ask the mentors before we make prototypes so that we can save time. This whole process takes a lot of time but it helps us think of very good designs. Usually we get compliments on our design but the only problem we experience is money and our design is rarely the problem (unless we make a change last minute which we do to often.) That sounds arrogant but it is accurate in my opinion. But one of our money problem can make us use some wood or repair things using zipties. This year may be different since we have more money this year but I am still worried but I am digressing. Anyway the point is, design TOGETHER, build TOGETHER and get funding TOGETHER and let students do as much as possible because that is what FIRST is about.
Ultimately is up to the team … what I try to do as one of my roles is figure out by day 2 after reading the game manual and all the rules looking for loopholes etc. “What attributes will win in eliminations and get us to the worlds again” and present that to the team (or rather guide them to that solution step by step) so they learn how to do this analysis in anything they do. We did that over a couple hours on Sunday. I take into account this year having a new driver for the first time since we started as well.
There will be pushback and yes as you identified , some team members would rather be a very good partner to a captain than be the captain. I certainly don’t get that mindset now , yet I do appreciate it as it can be a winning strategy as well. We have been both throughout and quite close to our goal after our rookie season. Some are fearful that we can pull it off and rightly so. These are normal responses to any challenge. That is why we will decompress for a week then decide. Let people process. What attributes get us there? At the very least everyone in that meeting pretty much gets the game and where the scoring opportunities and challenges are. You can’t design if you don’t know.
Ultimately, its what the team wants overall that we will build. I know which attributes give us the best chance (so do they now) …its up to them to decide if those attributes are what they want.
We as a team will know what we are building by next Sunday on top of our drivetrain…after we all agree on one
There is definately a valid path of being a unique design, unique wins out sometimes. In our rookie year we went simple most durable …perhaps best in game at LG defense and that is the only time we went to the worlds , so there is no shame in that for a young low experience low resourse team. In fact we constrained ourselves that year day 1 to keep its simple (KISS)
In the meantime we are developing several ideas of which we will decide on as a team to get total buy in then do it.
We are not a high resouce team so probably similar your current team
Aim to be one of the most consistent at doing what your team is aiming to do. This is what the team I mentored in 2017 did and they made it to Elims for the second time in their history. This time they were the first pick instead of the second pick. Since they were a low-resource team, I had them focus on refining their mechanism and practicing a lot to become one of the best and most consistent at what they could do.
How manufacturable is their chassis design? How accurately can they fold sheet metal? How much experience do the team members have in making the type of parts needed? How serviceable would it be (change wheels, motors, gearboxes)?