My boy Edward sent me this link. It’s going on for the next 4-5 days and the production and event quality surpasses almost every FRC event I’ve been to.
Just one airship in the center of the field?? Looks like a weird version of steamworks.
Actually though, that looks really cool! The announcing is great, the game looks really cool, but I’m not sure why we are watching the faces of each of the drivers. Lets not incorporate that into FRC or else lots of people would see/hear me and my drive teams yelling some pretty weird stuff behind the glass… (I promise they’re in-match plays, I’m sorry they have funny names)
They also have a cool thing like nightbot which is periodically sending updates on the game and the rules. I read through them and am still pretty confused, but nonetheless its a cool challenge and exciting to watch!
Update: the stream just switched to a camera onboard the robot. That was so cool! Imagine if the stream viewers could see inside 971’s camera while their turret aligns on the boiler or watch from an onboard camera as 254 runs their 2016 2 ball auto. That would be so cool!!!
If robotics ever goes mainstream, it’ll probably be something like this IMO. The game is accessible and the production value is super high.
Oh, it’s DJI’s competition. They are even making a anime based on the competition. Imagine a FRC anime!
I like the DotA/LoL vibe and especially the aspects of eliminating robots. This brings a whole new level of strategy into play, as teammates must be well coordinated, and drivers must have mechanical skill as well as the ability to think quickly in dynamic situations. However, you always play with the same teammates, all the time, so random alliance partners isn’t a variable here. The robots are awesome as well, when I was watching I saw many turrets with some amazing tracking features. One of the robots would rapidly spin around while the turret was locked on to a target in order to make themselves harder to shoot, really cool stuff. Honestly, this seems closer to an eSports livestream than to a robotics livestream, the casting is of the same quality, the UI and various first person camera angles also mimic that, there is bodyblocking, firstblood, assigned robot roles, all that’s missing is a 23 million dollar prize pool (seriously, look it up). I mean the drivers don’t even see the field, they drive just based off of cameras, might as well be playing a video game with awesome graphics. Although it was weird to see all those vectored intake wheels on the drivetrains…
EDIT: Didn’t even realize drones are actually player controlled and part of the match, pretty cool stuff.
What happens when a multi-billionaire of the most successful consumer drone company wants to take on a new goal. It’s been going on for a bit now, with DJI it’s gotten a lot more impressive… Rules here for anyone interested https://cdn-hz.robomasters.com/robomasters/public/static/RM2017CompetitionRulesV1.9.pdf
But is it really necessary to put down FIRST every time something comes long that is better in one aspect. You can’t compare a event run by a mulit-billion dollar company focused on presentation of on event VS a non-profit that is focused on getting into thousands of schools with hundreds of events.
I wouldn’t say it was putting down FIRST at all. I’m simply celebrating the quality of this event. Quality is a subjective term, as I’m sure nobody here would disagree with, and I simply stated that to me this event is of higher quality than most (note I did not say all) of the FRC events I’ve been to. Are the institutions behind each competition different? Sure. I never said they were a fair playing field, nor did I say they were perfectly comparable substitutes for each other. You are 100% correct that it would be unreasonable to expect FIRST to have the same level of production and event execution as this program for the exact reasons you listed, and I assure you I never expressed those expectations.
I am aware I’ve been known to be overly critical of FIRST as a program, but this thread is nothing more than celebration and enthusiasm of my latest discovery - enthusiasm I am hoping to share with the CD community.
I have a feeling that the RoboMaster competitors do not hold to the “Its more than a robot” mantra.
I’m sure those teams use their robots as a ‘campfire’ to gather around too. Building a competitive robot requires a lot more than just building a competitive robot, regardless of the competition.
Let us not compare or contrast the RoboMasters competition to FRC. They both exist and there is more than enough room in the world for more robotics competitions.
Let us celebrate that there are other groups trying to raise STEM to a higher place culturally and that robots are MFD.
I’ve made a couple of Asian friends this summer and, even though they are robotics enthusiasts like me, they don’t know about FIRST Robotics.
Sure FRC is a big thing here in America and we have a few teams from all around the world, but the world is bigger than we imagine.
Being this said, is really cool that there are other robotics competitions that are FIRST-like in other parts in the world, so that everybody can experience what we did.
I think it’s important to remember there is a distinction between celebrating others and putting one down. I don’t think Andrew meant his comment to put down FIRST, only to use it as a comparison to celebrate RoboMaster!
That aside, this looks pretty baller. It’s cool seeing the engineering designs and solutions on a competition much different from FIRST! Petition for 2018 to be a combat game anyone? :rolleyes:
Some fun challenges in this game: bulk ball loading from an open top barrel, a super-rough-terrain defence, moving goals, laser tag?..
I hope they had longer than six weeks to build them, otherwise I’ll feel pretty humbled 
It looks like they give you around 9 months between registration and the actual competition, although the game stays pretty much the same from year to year so there is nothing stopping you from starting before registration.
If we’re going to view every compliment of an alternate robotics competition to FRC as an insult to FRC, there’s no way we as a community can push FRC to new levels of success. It’s important to see what others are doing and trying to emulate what they do well, while avoiding what they do poorly. The Robomaster group is clearly doing a lot right, and simply attributing their success to their financial backing is ignoring and disrespectful of their strategic plan.
There are two ways to compete in this world; you can rise above you opponent, or you can drag them down. I’d like to think that we’re wise enough in the world of FRC to be constantly evaluating ways to learn from others in an effort to rise above. It’s the approach that’s better for everyone in the long run.
This looks like it’s following the eSports model that’s so popular in east Asia. I see that Virginia Tech was in the finals, so I think this is aimed at college-age students, which explains why it’s so elaborate and complex. It’s not appropriate for high school competition.
Here’s more on the RoboMasters: http://content.dji.com/robomasters-competition/
This video from their website was super informative as to what their goals are and what the game is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECr4zgK6cPA.
It seems to be fairly complicated with a bit of everything.
I also thought it was interesting that they are using ROS (see 3:20).
- 200 Universities competing.
- Small Robots
- Large field with plenty of terrain
- Each team fields four different robots, including one quadcopter, and one full-auton
- Matches are 1 team vs 1 team
- The robots shoot at each other and targets
- Sexy video feeds for drivers and the audience
Watching the highlights/explanation video on the DJI website was fun. I certainly give it a thumbs-up.
Maybe there are more than N ways to skin a cat.
Doing some digging through the rules, there are actually very few limitations as to what you can use to build and program the robots. Something interesting about the competition is that they seem to try and simulate many “real world” robotics norms, such as requiring the base robot to be fully autonomous, limiting the drivers’ vision to only the camera feeds from the robot, and (what it looks like from the video) suggesting that teams use ROS to program their robots.
I wouldn’t be so sure. FIRST may have a trademark on “gracious professionalism”, but we don’t have a monopoly on it.
Whether in VEX, IEEE competitions, the DARPA Robotics Challenge, or BattleBots, at every competition I’ve been to I’ve watched firsthand as competitors help each other out in the pits, exhibit sportsmanship and respect for opponents on and off the field, and create a general sense of camaraderie and inclusiveness. (Sure, there have also been exceptions at times - including some egregious examples in FRC - but that’s by far the minority).
Just because a competition doesn’t give out a trophy for things totally unrelated to robotics doesn’t mean that the competition is “all about the robot”.
Yeah, what he said!
At most college competitions (robots or not), while there may be some smack talk, when a team is in trouble other teams will help out. Parts, supplies, “hey where’s our pilot”, you name it somebody probably has something that will work, somewhere. Just start asking.