My wish? make the BuildBlitzs/RobotIn3Days projects go away...

FIRST General Forum
1

I’m not sure how this opinion will be received by the community, but I have to get this off my chest.

I have a lot of respect for the people doing the 72 hour build marathons after kickoff: they are all experienced FIRSTers and engineers, well known and admired in the FIRST community.

However, I think that the build marathons are detracting from the creativity and challenge of the FRC competition.

  • The marathons are probably going to stifle the creative process. If teams choose to watch they can easily be locked on an idea and be unable to shake it from their mind.
    Showing 5 working robots after 72 hours is going to probably cover most bases in terms of basic ideas for the 2014 season. This will rob teams of the sense of accomplishment which comes with brainstorming and deciding on your own robot.
  • An obvious retort to the above point would be “just don’t watch the marathons or look at their results”, but we all know it will be hard to avoid. Also, there is a dillema here: these are robots built by professional FIRSTers, are you really not going to try and learn from them when you have the chance?

Catch 22 here:

  • if you watch or look at the robots, your creative process is disrupted and you will probably lose some (if not most) of your pride in your creation.
  • If you don’t watch or look at robots (assuming that’s even possible while still browsing CD and Facebook), you are putting yourself at a possible disadvantage when compared to other teams.

In the end, the only real solution (in my mind) is not to have these marathons exist at all, but I don’t really see how that can be achieved without the marathoners themselves bowing out… :frowning:

FRC is for kids, can’t we keep it that way?

2

I suggest this post be merged with this thread, which holds the same discussion and responses to it.

3

I struggle with this. On one hand, 90% of engineering is using ideas and designs that other have created to solve a problem. However, the other 10% is inspired designs, being creative/unique to push the design envelope.

In a commercial industry, there’s production environments and research environments. Production tends toward conservative approaches - i.e. using established methods and avoiding risk because you need to get a product out the door.
But there’s also research and development. This is where new ideas are tested – where radical designs are allowed, where failure isn’t always bad thing, because it increases knowledge.

What is the point of FIRST? I think it’s both, but Ri3D pushes toward the former.

One thing I guess I’d add to spur discussion: would people’s opinions change if someone released “FLL Robot in 24 hours”? Is there a reason the answers should be different?

4

How many teams built Ri3D hangers? I can’t name a single one off the top of my head, but I suppose there were a few. While I would not be surprised if Ri3D style shooters were the most common in FRC 2013, I bet the bucket alliance had the largest percentage of hoppers and the most common hanger was either a pair of pistons or the inverted ramp camp.

Even if teams aren’t coming up with novel concepts on their own, they are still stealing from the best and inventing the rest. Wholesale copying is extremely rare, and does it really matter? If the teams that are building exact replicas are inspired, who are we to say "You’re being inspired all wrong?!"

5

While I agree that the build marathons may give teams tunnel vision I don’t think they should go away. The goal of FIRST is to inspire and what inspires many is success. I know my time as a student were more inspired by the great memories achieved from competition but that may be just me. I don’t think one needs to reinvent the wheel every year to achieve inspiration. Otherwise we may need to get rid of COTS parts so we can be inspired by designing them ourselves.

6

Yeah. I think that there can be some changes made to the RI3D. It should be at least 3Days after kickoff (I don’t know whether they get the game earlier or at the same time as us). That way, those ideas will come later, after most teams should be done/finishing brainstorming. Also, their robots are quite minimal. However, we developed a little of out linear shooter idea from what they did. We just redesigned it a bit.

7

I am glad that Leav had enough guts to start this thread. I thought about starting this same thread, but decided against it because I was afraid of the reaction. Let’s try to keep this discussion on topic and not turn into another one of those closed thread because they got too heated.

I hope that some well-respected FIRSTers like JVN, Karthik, Andy Baker, Joe J. will reply in this thread as well. These are men that are inspiring to me and would love to know their side of the story.

Background on me: I am a 12+ year member of FIRST who started as a high school student and am now a Technology Teacher that runs a FIRST Robotics team. I love FIRST and no matter what happens I am “hooked” for life. I love the program and what it does for young people.

This is the main idea that I struggle with with Ri3D and BuildBlidz.

Q: As an educator, what is my overall goal for students?

A: I want students to come out of my classes being problem solvers. The content is important yes, but I want them to be able to use the content that I share to solve life’s issues. They will probably never encounter the exact problem that I gave them in class. However, I want them to be able to take the situations and content that I give in class to solve any problem that comes at them.

Q: Does Ri3D and BuildBlidz allow students to be problem solvers with the challenges ahead of them?

A: Maybe not. Once students see an idea that is functioning well (especially when it is built by well-respected people in FIRST), it is hard to get them out of it. Add on that there are now 5 different robots being built, they are able to “pick” the robot design that they like the best.

Engineering, by definition is, “the work of designing and creating large structures (such as roads and bridges) or new products or systems by using scientific methods” (Source). Are these builds taking the designing our of FIRST?

Q: Should we just ignore the builds?

A: See Leav’s comments on this:

Q: Are we creating problem solvers or fabricators?

A: Looking at these builds, I could see that we are creating more fabricators than problem solvers. We are showing students how to pick a part “off of the shelf” and follow instructions on how to build it. In my opinion, this does not have as much problem solving experiences as make something “from scratch.”

Q: Are fabricator skills important?

A: Absolutely. The skills of how to use tools and machines are very important. They will stay with them forever.

Q: What am I saying?

A: I am not sure. I am struggling that we may be going too extreme with “elevating the playing field” and are now “leveling the playing field.” While doing this, our students may not be learning the same problem solving skills that they used to in FIRST.

I love all of you and I would love to have your input on this internal struggle that I am having. Personally, I love these builds and I am not asking them to go away. I am just trying to analyze the situation and help my student’s learning.

Matt

8

Maybe they should have picked the last 3 days of build season (do not start until Feb 16th and have the same stop build deadline as everyone else).

Although I bet FIRST likes having the Robot in 3 Days because it unveils potential game rules flaws and workarounds that would require a rules update.

9

I don’t understand, who would this benefit?

10

Akash, what I don’t understand is this: who benefits from the current model of the build marathons?

I can see rookies benefiting, but I think rookies have been doing fine since before these marathons.

And I won’t shy away from saying this: AndyMark and VEX definitely stand to benefit commercially by demonstrating how to build successful robots with parts available from their stores.

Satrke, I really agree with this and I think this is mostly what has been bothering me with these builds. For me the off-season is the time to learn from other people and the build season the time to work on you own and tackle the problem as a team.

11

I think I saw less rookies with just drive bases this year than I have before so I don’t think rookies as a whole were all that better before Ri3D.

12

I don’t think anyone is oblivious to the fact that this is an awesome way to market their products. I, in fact, like that this is a way to show off to teams how to use COTS parts. There are a TON of teams who don’t even know about all of the COTS items available to them. Maybe I like the free market and capitalism, but I don’t see anything negative about this.

As for rookies “doing fine,” why is it a bad thing to want to raise the level of competition in the process of marketing a product? Should we, instead, maintain the status quo? [Edit] Also, I saw a few weak veterans do well this year due to what they learned from Ri3D. It isn’t just about the rookies. Ri3D affected teams at almost each level. Rookie teams and weak veterans got ideas of how to tackle the task or gained confidence and reassurance in their own ideas, while mid-level teams had a great baseline achievement to evaluate the performance of their own robots against. [/Edit]

In the end, I don’t see it as a huge deal. I pretty much stated my opinion in this post, but I will re-evaluate after this season is over.

I think of it in the sense that you can really only control what actions your own team takes. Rather than asking for the resource to go away, make a plan of how to react to the videos and incorporate all of this information into your own build process.

Past those points, feel free to discuss via PM, since I don’t have much more to add to the discussion. I want to just wait and see how it all works out.

13

These build marathons are great in my opinion.

First of all, it’s obviously beneficial to rookie teams. For new teams, it’s hard to go through the design process completely, and for many just making a robot is an accomplishment.

But, for more experienced teams it is still a great resource. After watching the Robot in 3 Days final video last year, we really got hit with inspiration. We incorporated some of their features of a linear shooter, but in the end made a robot that looks nothing like theirs. We took what they had made and built off of it, ending up with a completely unique product that everyone felt proud of.

14

It would be silly if a team said “we don’t look at old designs because it stifles our creativity.” In an era where often times the game has an element that’s similar to the past (tubes in 2011/2007, foam ball in 2012/2006, etc.) there’s a plethora of examples of manipulator mechanisms (in addition to the drive trains and electrical techniques) that teams look to for design ideas. Innovation will not move as quickly if teams are continuously reinventing the wheel rather than using the intellectual property that they have at their disposal. I feel like the Ri3D/Build Blitz projects are similar in that they set a base line where teams can build from and actually encourage creativity and innovation.

Additionally, even non-rookie teams stand to benefit significantly from second hand prototyping. Are you home designing and want to know if something will work, but you don’t have your shop on hand? Ask one of five teams that is more than willing to do some testing for you. Remember how excited teams got when the Ri3D team showed that accurate full field shooting was a possibility?

Finally, I think a major element of these Build Blitz type projects is understanding how to approach strategy. I’ve seen a number of teams that either don’t value strategy or don’t know how to derive a strategy, and having a number of methods to observe will help these students understand the game that happens in those first three days.

Overall I think the 72-hour build projects benefit the community.

15

This + let’s be honest, was it really groundbreaking to teams that a wheel could be used to shoot something into a goal? No. But Ri3D’s prototypes allowed a lot of new teams to work out the details of a shooter more quickly. Not all teams have the funds to buy things to prototype with, and rookies especially don’t always have an inventory of old parts to use and work with.

Okay I’m done now lol.

16

Agreed. This plus all of the items that teams post on Chief Delphi that get used by other teams. The skid plates in 2012, Spectrum’s two wheeled versa planetary & banebots shooter, and the passive angled hangers took off after a few teams posted their prototypes and were some of the most popular mechanisms in 2013.

To say that the three day robot challenges are stifling innovation is crazy. Team’s have a big enough problem already with tunnel vision where they pick a robot concept, vote, and use it through the off-season even when it doesn’t work.

Team’s are in FRC for various reasons, if your team is in it to be innovative and foster creativity go right ahead this is good! If you are trying to field a competitive robot every year, Ri3D is there to help you cross the bump to field a competitive robot on a small scale. I love this.

17

I’ll offer my two cents as a former member of young team. Keep in mind as a prelude that I have only known of FIRST’s existence for 2 years. This will be a hindrance on my overall experience with the program, but it will also allow me to offer perspective as a part of a rookie team.

At the start of the 2012 season (my team’s rookie year), none of our members or mentors had any FIRST experience whatsoever. Our shop consisted of a table saw, band saw, drill press, lathe and some hand tools. I say this to show we had plenty of tools to build a quality robot. We attempted to construct a design that could shoot and manipulate the bridge. Neither of these mechanisms ended up working by competition. So we went through the games with a chunk of metal on a drive train that was less than perfect to say the least. As a part of the drive team, I would have to tell our alliance partners that all we could do was move and get out of the way and maybe help go for a double balance if one of them could lower the bridge. We could not play defense that year because of the stupid bump, and we couldn’t help offensively either. Basically, we would drive to the corner and wait for the match to end most of the time. Needless to say, we ended up 58th in the competition. It was still cool to see all the robots, but the competing itself was far less than enjoyable.

Fast forward to the 2013 season. We all have 1 year of experience under our belt and I came across ri3d. We watched them build a strong shooter design and we mimicked it with success. At competition, we could accurately score in the two point goal anywhere from 8 to 16 times in a match. Furthermore, we also added some plywood to block disks. This time, when asked what could do by alliance partners, we had something to say. Competition was substantially more fun. We were seeded 19th (up nearly 40 slots!) and got picked by the number 1 alliance as their 3rd pick.

So what does this mean? Well, the point could be made that we would have had this success simply due to the year of experience. However, the fact that we were still crunched for time (finishing the building on bag day) suggests that without the immediate inspiration, we could not have finished in time. So my point is this, ri3d helped us build a better robot which in turn, made competition more fun. This enjoyment is what will drive students to pursue science and engineering. For this reason I think ri3d is a great thing. Obviously, FIRST was a popular and fun for lots of people before ri3d, but I think a fair point can be made that the project has made the experience better for more teams.

I want to say that I don’t think those of you with lots of experience are wrong in what you have said, in fact I hold your thoughts with incredibly high regard. However, I fear sometimes as time increases between the present and when someone started, some sight of just how hard it can be to field a functioning robot for a young team is lost.

18

Everyone benefits. You get to see some ideas that others are trying out that maybe you had dismissed or do not have the resources to try out (only so many hours in the day right?)

How is this different from teams referencing past robots from previous seasons and gaining inspiration for their current robot? Let’s be honest, very few teams are re-inventing the wheel here. We’re all developing something from another idea, another concept, it’s (almost) all been done before by someone. Instead of segregating everyone into their own team silo’s, technology now allows our community to collaborate and share ideas throughout our teams’ design processes - in real time. I love how this is changing the build season and can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with.

19

Let me share a little about how we experienced Mentors know exactly how hard it is to build something with little experience…

Roll the clock back to 2003 to MY rookie year. We didn’t have predesigned and prefrabricated kitbots. We didn’t have AndyMark, nor Vexpro to order gearboxes from. We needed to do all of that ourselves still within 6 weeks. So we do understand just how hard it is. I think that having these premade frames, gearboxes and such allow us to focus on the creativity in meeting the challenge and less on the fabrication of components. So yes we do know and do understand just how hard it is.

Now back to the thread itself. I find that these RI3D challenges do take away from each teams individual experience in meeting the challenge.
I saw a great number of “copycat” machines last season. Where’s the creativity and thinking outside the box in that?

20

To be perfectly honest, the only teams that built exact copies of the RI3D shooter (as in, linear shooter with 2 cims and 2 pneumatic wheels) were teams that definitely would not have been able to come up with their own workable solution. Every other team I saw that was inspired by it used elements of the design and then prototyped on their own, changing it when they felt they could make improvements to it.

No one gets this outraged when teams in 2012 copy ideas from 2006, or when teams in 2011 copy ideas from 2007. Is RI3D really different?

You guys talk about “stifling the creative process”, but all these “creative” robots you saw low resource teams building instead of RI3D variants didn’t work. Teams that know how to pull off creative still did it anyway, and teams that didn’t had a starting point to work off of. I really just don’t understand how anyone could think RI3D made 2013 worse.

The thing that also gets me is that people are commenting about how other teams copied the RI3D. How exactly does anyone have the authority to say how much of the experience was taken away from these teams? We say “live and let live” when it comes to mentor involvement, but when it’s RI3D stuff suddenly we’re all experts on how other teams run…