OP robots this year

FIRST
#1

Is it just me, or are all of the robots this year (posted in reveal videos) really, really good? I know there is reveal video bias, but just in general it seems to me like the robots this year are alot more polished and on average better. What do you guys think the reasoning behind this is?

I think no bag is starting to pay its dividends to the teams that didn’t get much programming time historically (my team included). But all of the reveal videos seem like they haven’t had much time to take advantage of this time, so I don’t think that is the reason (yet).

2 Likes
#2

$5 says its just bias. Chances are, we’ll see the normal amount of robot quality spread (or imo, a spread more towards “not as competitive”) once actual match play starts.

37 Likes
#3

Everyone had a deadline in the previous years, my take on this is that most aren’t finished, and the ‘‘good ones’’ like you say were still present last year, but flooded under average reveals

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#4

Some of it could be the fact that this year’s challenge has game elements that have been done many times before, even when just looking at the past 4 years. Teams have had a lot of effective designs to iterate and learn from.

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#5

Another thing to consider is some teams are opting not to build a second robot. This may allow them to further prototype and iterate and polish designs that they may not have felt they had time to under the bag rules.

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#6

My take on it - Teams that have their robots done by now and have the capability to create a reveal video are good at planning and didn’t expand their build season due to no-bag and now have a completed robot with too much time on their hands. Good planning=Good robot.

18 Likes
#7

IMO, I think that the game piece manipulators this year are a bit simpler than normal, and many teams have extremely similar designs.

#8

The combination of being very sticky and having 5 of them has made power cells one of the hardest game pieces to manipulate (In my opinion) since I joined FRC.

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#9

Perhaps any team with a robot at this point in build season

1 Like
#10

The actual matches have started…

After the first day of quals at Israel #1 the average penalty score is higher than the average teleop power cell score. (Assuming the insight page on TBA is correct).

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#11

I think this cant be overstated enough. In a reveal video its easy to hide all the times the balls jammed in indexers, or you picked up a ball that had been ran over and now has a chunk missing so it doesn’t roll well. Consistently dealing with these oddities will be the real challenge in this years game and real matches will tell the true tale.

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#12

It’s probably because you now have a longer amount of time to shoot reveal footage. No one wanted to have a reveal video featuring their ugly practice robot. They want the glossy, powder coated one with nice bumpers.

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#13

Sure, but almost every team has a hooded shooter and a horizontal intake.

#14

Even with no bag day we still don’t get powdercoat :slightly_frowning_face:

#15

Similar solutions does not equal similarly good solutions.

The challenge this year is to not build something to play the game, but to play it well. There will be lots of teams that play the whole game, but wouldn’t play any part of it well because they haven’t put the design time into building a better intake. The unique differences in teams that matter this year are not flashy big ideas, but minutiae optimizations that will lead to wins completely unnoticed.

4 Likes
#16

I completely agree, but I think that it is obvious that many teams have at least come up with similar ideas for how they want to ideally manipulate the game pieces, and many of the best teams who will be able to execute this will create great robots. Look at how many different ways teams manipulated the game pieces in Deep Space; many teams had incredibly unique designs which creates more room for error.

#17

We typically make 2 bots due to bag day. Not having the stress of fitting in a second build let us take the time to refine things more. The general mechanics are very similar to things we’ve done over the last 13 years. We’re able to build off that experience a lot more this year. We feel better positioned than previous years.

We went to a week 0 scrimmage event. Almost all the bots we’re not ready to actually scrimmage. There were maybe two of us ready. No one played a match before we left. They were all still working out basic things on the field. There will be plenty of bots that are not as polished and as incredible as some of these reveal videos.

Bearbotics 2358

1 Like
#18

Every year robots look OP in reveals but do not pan out in competition. For an example, see all the comments saying 4613 was going to win worlds on their reveal. It is easy to overhype and overestimate where teams will be and what is actually good or not until competition season truly starts. Also, any team that does a reveal will make sure to highlight their robot and make it look as OP as possible.

That being said, there are some really cool robots already showing up this year. And OP or not, it’s going to be fun to see them perform.

#19

The No Bag day has no bearing for teams already competing Weeks 1 and 2. Time constraints are still the same.
Lets see what teams come up with at their first event in later weeks. Ask them if it made a difference? I would assume so.
I"m looking forward to Champs. Will teams try to recreate elite type robot designs now in time for champs? If a team only does early Weeks of competitions, they will have a good 6 weeks to build another robot in time for Detroit Champs.

1 Like
#20

It seems to be mostly tech fouls too – I’m not really liking that, it seems like a lot of G10 and G11 calls at first glance, and I don’t want those to decide matches like Climb Roulette or 2019’s G20 spam.