PLEASE RESPOND: NRLB & Spare Parts at Nats

Competition Championship Event
1

NRLB (or “No Robot Left Behind”) is a program that 1108 Panther Robotics devised after watching the St. Louis Regional and put into use at the Lone Star Regional. The program initiatives include:

1. Having ample spare parts for everyone.
2. Having these spare parts quickly accessible by having a centrally
located list of spare parts by team.
3. Creating commaderie between teams.
4. Offering aid to any team in need of help.
5. Ensuring a fun and competitive competition.

We know that such a large untaking could not be done alone so we enlisted the help of sponsor teams. At Lone Star, both 118 and 476 helped tremendously to make this program work. We feel that the program ran great at Lone Star and would like any feedback from people that were there.

With such success in Houston we knew we had to take this to Atlanta. This is where we need the help of teams on CD. There is five ways that teams can help make this program successful in Atlanta:

  1. Divisional Coordinators - With 4 division and and 295 teams we realize that having one centralized location will not work well. Instead of one we want four locations, one in each division. These divisional coordinator would be extremely important. They would need several members (at least three) to devote to making sure every team in their division knows about the program, collect spare part information from each team, post it in a centralized location, and help teams that come looking for parts and help. **Because of the amount of time, sportmanship, gracious professionalism, and responsibility this post will take, teams interested will need to apply either through my PM or through my e-mail : [email protected] . A paragraph plus about why your team wants to do this and why yout team is qualified will work. **

  2. Program Sponsors - At LSR we had 2 sponsor in 118 and 476, at Championships we will need more. I think 2-5+ sponsor per division would help make the program successful at championships. A sponsor is a veteran team that is known for their gracious professionalism and sportmanship. Their jobs are very similiar to that of the divisional coordinator except they have less responsibility in getting materials out to the teams and are not in charge of the centralized list. This will not require as many students as the coordinators. They are expected to add as much as many spare parts to this list and be willing to help teams in need. If you are interested in such a job either PM or e-mail me : [email protected] .

  3. Share your spare parts - Take all your spare parts to competitions and be willing to share. At a smaller competition we were able to go around Thursday to get spare parts from team. We will still do this but any list of spare part you are bringing to competition before would help this program tremendously. If you send a list keep it general. For example, Team xxxx has spare small actuators, fittings, solenoids, drive train bag, and seat motors. Detailed as possible but don’t worry if it is exact. Again PM or e-mail me any list of spare parts your team will have available at championship (remember a team number) at: [email protected] .

  4. Use it - If you are in need of help and parts in the gallileo division come to 1108’s pit or look for the NRLB stickers. We want to help you. In other division’s look for the NRLB stickers and go to the divisional coordinator’s pit to get the help you need.

  5. Make Friends, Build Relationships - Everyone is here for the same reason. Make friends with other teams and teams in pits next to you. Cheer with and for other during matches. Have fun and help others.

Okay. With less than a week before national I need lots of help from teams on Chief Delphi. Print this off. Show it to your team and decide what kind of responsibility you would like.

Not everyone is cut out to be a divisional coordinator or sponsor, but everyone can offer out spare parts, help others, and make friends and build relationships.

If you have interest or questions please PM or email: [email protected]
I leave Wednesday so please respond before Wednesday morning. I don’t know if I’ll have internet access after that.

Also this is a call for all team going to championships to send me a list of what spare parts they will have that they can loan or give to teams in need. E-mail me these list at [email protected] .

Thanks for anyone who shows interest or helps and to all the team from LSR who helped make it such a success there.

2

This sounds like the service that the Robodox (599) provide at their regionals. And I can testify that this is a great service. I know that the Robodox’s station has come in handy countless times as a true lifesaver for a multitude of teams and this should also be a great service at nationals.

3

Yeah I’ve heard of a couple teams doing something similiar. From the response I’ve gotten teams like it a lot. To do it at national we will need a lot of help though. Any help will be much appreciated.

4

I did something very similar at the UCF regional last year with not-so-good success… I’m glad you guys are succeeding with this, it’s a great program! I’ll have to try again at the UCF Regional next year.

5

This sounds like a really good idea. I’ll go ahead and ask the question since no one else has … for those of us that are going to be working in the pits/on the operator team (or otherwise partially occupied), is there anything that we can do from time to time to help out? E.g., walk to various teams handing out fliers about the program and direct them to the division “headquarters” (primarily for thursday, I imagine)?

Also, would other things besides strictly “spare parts” be put on the list? I’m thinking about things like soldering irons, hot glue guns, and other items many teams seemed to need (I know we lent ours out many times at our different regionals). Another thing that might be included is the IR beacon; I was suprised that not a lot of teams went this route, and so not many have them … and even some teams that use the IR sensors didn’t bring their beacon (again, ours has been lent out … and even just the EDU controller itself without the beacon has been lent out extensively).

6

Yeah, they could. This was built in as a partial job. It seems to work well as part of a scouting program. Go any hand out the fliers and talk to them about the program and also get the information about their robot. A member of our chairman’s committee spearheaded this. So yes you can have another job and be able to help with this. From being on a drive team last year at championship I don’t know how much time you will have to do a lot of other things. I hope they don’t have the long walk thing year though.

Yeah, parts could be included. We didn’t specifically include our parts but had them organized so we would know where to find them quickly if another team needed anything. We are not specific in what we include but add as much we can that team might need so yes the other things could be included too.

7

I hate to do this but to get this to work I need teams to respond. I think we can make this happen in Gallileo but in order for it to work in other divisions we could use some teams that would like to take charge. And spare parts list, no matter how general will help tremendously.

8

Read the top message. Print it off. Show your team and decide if and how you want to help. Then send me a message of how you want to help.

Thanks,

9

Okay. I know. I feel like I’m beating a dead horse here. But nonetheless I continue to ask for help in this.

Unless we can get a couple teams interested we won’t be able to make this happen outside of Gallileo.

So please read and consider helping.

Send me a spare parts list.

This is my battle cry. I will continue.

And as a side note good luck to everyone in Atlanta. And if you need any help don’t hesitate to come see 1108. If not, we’ll find you.

10

Okay. I’m getting desperate here.

So out of desperation I have an offer for anybody.

To anybody who reponses to this I offer a free hug!

This is a one time offer and will be award only at the FIRST Championship in Atlanta, Georgia. To redeem your free hug you will either need to attend the webhug or come to 1108’s pit.

What better deal could I offer.

11

Okay. Okay. Okay. I continue to step up my offer. I feel like a infomercial.

Not only if you respond to the NRLB program will you get a free hug, but now you will recieve an **official 1108 button. **

Included with the button and free hug will be a personal thank you from me.

If you respond not only do you receive these great prizes you get to be part of a program to built to improve the competiveness and fun (if possible) of FIRST.

Involvement is simple from being a main sponsor to supplying a spare parts list. Those interested in this limited time offer email [email protected] .

12

Sorry everyone but due to lack of interest we will be unable to extend this program out of Gallileo division.

We will contact Gallileo teams in the pits on Thursday morning about the extent of the program and what to do to experience the programs benefits. I will still take interest in being a sponsor team or spare parts list from Gallileo teams. Just PM me.

If you are interested in seriously helping outside Gallileo please respond by PM within the next day and we will talk about how we can get this working outside of Gallileo.

Thanks.

13

Okay finally…It’s been a tough week with three test in five days…I decided it was time for me to give an overview of what we did in Atlanta and possible ideas for plans for next year.

First come how everything went.

Thursday mid-morning another team member and I passed out 300 fliers. One to each team documenting a general list of the spare parts we have. A couple times Thursday and a couple times friday a couple of the team members went through the pit and started conversations with other teams. This was part of just learning about other teams from how they are organized and what things they as a team would like to how is the weather, how is your hotel, and are you enjoying your stay. From Thursday to Saturday we loan out 40-50 parts and tools. These included pneumatic parts and cyclinder, transmission parts, motors, velcro and many others. We recieve many request for parts we didn’t have including certain sizes of cyclinders and wheels and motors we had depleted supplies of. And we received questions of how to couple pneumatic tubing to more tubing and patch/fix a flat pneumatic tire.

I was very happy with the amount of people we were able to help but I know there were many that we had to turn away because of lack of parts or expertise is at least one case. Also with the small amount of people we had trouble reaching out beyond our pit area a lot of the time.

This forum is built around improvement so I will offer my ideas for improvement and vision of what is possible and then I would love to hear some response in both what teams needs, how it could be done the best, if my ideas have any merit, and just any other thoughts that you have.

I can’t gurantee any of this happens just because of the uncertainty involved with making the championship and working out of all the details within the team we may not have the manpower. Also, FIRST may have a say in what we can or can’t do. So who knows. This is just brainstorming.

So here is my ideas:

First I think the NRLB could be moved out of our (1108) pit at championships. This would allow more teams to more easily involved. It would probably allow easier access to the NRLB for other teams. My thoughts would be to have a table set up near the real spare parts table. Here you could have teams bring a box of parts that they will not use on their robot and are willing to give or loan out to other teams. Can you imagine like thirty boxes of spares parts not avaliable at the spare parts table being loaned out next to the spare parts table? I think it would make it a lot easier on a lot of teams. It wouldn’t be limited to spare parts either. You could make a short list of tools you have avaliable to loan out and the neat idea I like is mentors that you can loan out. Also since it is out of the 1108 pit we could set up a schedule where other teams could help work the table. This would be set up with match schedule and other things in mind.

This year the building relationship between teams was neglected because of lack of manpower. I’ve thought a lot about how to how we can better encourage this part of our agenda. And I’m a procrastinator when it comes to thinking of ideas so this idea came to me like 30 seconds ago. Maybe a meet your neighbors type of program or for you old guys that know everyone already (you know who you are), meet the rookies. There could be a sheet you fill out to get a prize, special pin, or maybe something more like a drawing for some shirts or something (I give daisy partial credit for this idea). Hmmm… There is more brainstorming to be done in this area which I probably should do with the team but I will look more into improving this.

So this is the short of what I’ve been thinking. I have some more ideas but would like some feedback on ideas and maybe a little more time to brainstorm them out.

Thanks for any input

BTW RogerR and sanddrag I owe you a pin and hug whenever I see you