A thought that might push the tension you are describing into the background (not make it irrelevant, but move it into background) is this:
If I understood them correctly, FRC’s founder(s) told us that FRC was created to attract students to STEM fields.
The methods FRC’s founders chose to use have many fun and valuable side-effects that shouldn’t be absent-mindedly discarded or unnecessarily crippled; but those side-effects aren’t the reason FRC was created, and shouldn’t be elevated to parity with FRC’s core purpose.
If RI3D opens the eyes of initially tentative, or unaware, students to the fact that fun STEM activities and careers are well within their grasp, then I think it’s on-target. If RI3D demystifies building something as interesting and tangible as an FRC robot, then I think it’s on-target.
This makes sense if you start from the premise that FRC was created to attract and inspire new students, and not to give already interested students a blue banner, or an associate’s degree in engineering.
Blake
PS: The FIRST mission statement tries to pitch a very big tent. It alone isn’t the basis for what I wrote above.
Does it even matter if Ri3D fulfill FIRST’s mission statement? I don’t believe they are ‘official’ FIRST activities and most (all?) don’t directly involve any high school students. I don’t think it should really matter if a group of people want to have fun, challenge themselves and show off what they accomplished in three days or if a company wants to do it to help sell their products or whatever motivates these groups.
(for what it’s worth, I do think that generally these groups contribute more positive than negative to the FIRST community).
I appreciate your clarification KSPRUL’s point of view. I am in agreement, however, change happens.
Getting a new game every year is the one constant that keeps my interest in FRC.
The problem is new and the competitions are still about scores of Robots competing for the best solution.
“Absolutely mandatory” works for many teams. For rookies or teams that are struggling to maintain their existence, the options demonstrated by Ri3D can be a godsend.
I still miss the old days before students were given the advantage of a Game Animation, instructional videos on the details of the playing field, and a bandwidth that required you to economize your inputs.
All we basically received was a “spec sheet” of game details in the Manual.
Back then, we were really teaching engineering inspiration the way it was meant to be. :rolleyes:
Ri3D is a signpost of how creativity may now be crowdsourced. Patent lawyer is a valuable vocation nowadays.
A team can choose not to watch Ri3D and their intent of preserving the problem solving aspects sans outside inspiration will remain intact.
The Ramblin’ Wrecks had a great weekend.
I find myself reminiscing about the old days when using a slide rule, showing your work, SigFigs, and units mattered to engineers.
I am teaching the new AP Physics curriculum now and these details are not considered as important anymore.
Time for some secret sauce: if you “just browsed” for the Team Cockamamie answer to FIRST Stronghold, you were in for a bad time. The frame lacked a real bellypan and yielded within a few days of launches over the rock wall, the kicker (which required that minimal belly pan) was inconsistent as heck, electronics maintenance and packaging were lolno, and from time to time we’d lose the boulder sailing over the defenses. I think the radical difference between it and last year’s Garnet Squadron robot speaks for itself.
But perhaps we gave someone some ideas (like how we made the AM14U3 intake kit sit lower than stock), so maybe we contributed a thing or two to the mix.
I will echo these sentiments. The GreenHorns’ robot had a number of good concepts going on, but if you copied it verbatim, you would do poorly. I spoke with many teams at champs that were inspired by our intake/shooter mechanism, but none of them used our horrible drivetrain. It’s difficult to build a durable robot that is sound in all aspects of the game in just 3 days.
I would say that each Ri3D team offered a few concepts that teams could take inspiration from, but no all encompassing solution.
I think alot of the sentiments against Ri3D don’t actually come from the last few years of it. I think alot of it comes from 2013 and 2014, where some seriously competitive robots were built (The two Build Blitz robots come to mind).
My team learned from those years. 2013 taught us what not to do – we have aimed for simple, durable designs ever since.
2014 gave us Build Blitz Team JVN’s over-the-bumper intake and ‘choo-choo’ catapult. We made small tweaks to those, and built them on a souped-up kit chassis. Because we converged on a design concept early, our build season objectives became (1) drive team practice, and (2) finding the robot’s weaknesses. Drive it, break it, fix it, iterate. That robot played 72 matches, including a blue banner and our first trip to CMP. Pretty nice improvement vs. 2013. That trend has continued.
Since then, our team has become more confident about game analysis and setting build/practice priorities. 2016 was a break-out year for the Average Joes, but its seeds were planted in 2014 – and we thank Build Blitz Team JVN for that.
For those who don’t like RI3D, you are free to not use it as a resource. Just like every FRC team that uses it in any way is allowed to as well.
I’m realistic and live in the real world where multi-site collaboration and using as much COTS stuff as possible are viewed as good things that probably 99% of FRC teams should be doing.
Time is ultimately the most valuable resource during a build season and RI3D has saved us a lot of time in the past 3 years. Thank you!
Does anyone know when most of the RI3D videos will come out? I’ve only seen a few posted on chief and I’m very interested in seeing Team Indiana’s reveal. Thanks.
The GreenHorns’ reveal video was done earlier this morning and has been sent to the Ri3D 1.0 guys to upload it to their YouTube page. I love been told that will happen no later than this evening… so soon!
I like that Ri3D generates lots of excitement around the build season and is a great segway (ha) for the energy students have at kickoff.
If some teams use it as a manual for how to conduct their build more power to them. At a certain point they may no longer need the resource as severly as a rookie team with a limited budget.
They will be peppered throughout the next few days. In some cases the teams had challenges getting the reveal video completed. Make sure to subscribe to our channel, Twitter and Facebook to see when new content is produced!
This is the timing we expect to upload the videos:
Week 6, GreenHorns and Zou Keepers tonight.
Indiana’s by the weekend.
Snow Problems early next week.
National Instruments - Friday Night
Tesla this weekend.
Redacted this weekend.
SAIT this weekend.
oRyon Friday
Hey team Ri3D 1.0,
Could you share the brand/model of ratcheting wrench you used for your climber?
I was searching around for folding wrenches but couldn’t quite catch the one I saw in your videos.
In this thread there has been a lot of debate about RI3D in this thread so far. I am of the opinion that RI3D is a great resource. It provides many great ideas as solutions to game problems. Yes, some teams copy them, but thats not always bad. I feel like RI3D has raised the level of competition in FIRST. The other point is that when you look at the middle to top tier robots every season they sometimes have elements of the RI3D robots, but they are not the same. If you don’t like the RI3D robots then do not watch them. That is the reason why I like youtube so much. If you do not want to see RI3D then don’t watch it. It is simple as that. I love watching the RI3D robots ever year.
Personally, I think the way Ri3D models a good design process is invaluably useful to new teams, and the way they are able to prototype some of the more prominent design ideas quickly and effectively is invaluably useful not only to rookies but also to teams who lack finances.
I think that many people who have been a part of FRC for a long time forget what it’s like to not have ANY mechanical or design knowledge, and to approach an FRC challenge completely blind. Mechanical skills and design skills aren’t really taught in the school system, and there are definitely teams out there born out of the interests of students who think that ‘robotics seems really cool’ (it is!!), and whose mentor resources are maybe a few math or science teachers from their school willing to give up some time to supervise kids building robots. Not all new teams have mentors with practical design/mechanical experience, and not all new teams have members with this experience either. Ri3D is different from simply watching reveal videos/reading about past competitions in that Ri3D films the design process and the prototyping process, along with information from team members about why something did/didn’t work. New teams can learn a lot about how to have an effective design discussion, and how the design process works from watching this.
Yes, there is value in the team that goes in totally blind and designs something crazy that maybe doesn’t work. But that’s frustrating to a new team, to feel like they don’t know where to turn for ideas, and it can kill young teams who are struggling to recruit new members and mentors while simultaneously feeling like they don’t know what they’re doing and don’t know where to start or what is effective.
I think the perspective of how seeing a prototype works out from Ri3D has been well covered, but I do just want to say that my team has very minimal funds, and pretty much all of our prototyping activities are very crude and fast. Plywood models built in an hour serve a purpose, but they don’t give us the same estimate of match performance that an Ri3D bot built with actual, game-ready parts by ‘experienced engineers’ would. Ri3D bots allow us to save time and money on prototyping, and help us see how a cohesive bot works with the system, instead of testing individual subsystems.
I agree with the sentiment, and I think most mentors will agree with you and, hopefully, work to put more learning into the program. However, there are always exceptions. My take is that Robot In 3 Days is a resource, a tool which can be used in good ways and bad ways. I’m going to encourage our students to watch the reveal videos now that they have had a week of prototyping under their belt. We’ll discuss the merits of the different designs and the philosophies behind them. We’ve already committed to most aspects of our design, so it won’t change it much.
I can remember once hearing a student from a well-funded, perennially-successful team say, “we were so excited when the engineers from [corporate sponsor name] come to show us how to drive the robot.” What kind of learning is that? But I wouldn’t ban corporate sponsorships, because most teams don’t use them that way.
Have I missed the Indiana reveal somewhere? Post above says it would be released by the weekend but I can’t find anything - just a couple of twitter pictures from mid last week. No video. Help!
