Officially we are doing Robot in 3 Days again in 2014. More details to come on that later.
We want to know what you liked, disliked, want to see and any other feedback you can offer to us. Either post here, hit us up on Facebook, or tweet us @robotin3days
32 Days till Ri3d and a new season of FRC!
More cute baby.
Man, I love you guys. Break a leg! 
I’ll be watching!
You guys did some awesome stuff last year.
Looking forward to the new season and new Ri3Days
You had made Mine, and many others’ rookie year! Everyone LOVED it
Andrew, I attribute the extremely high level of play we saw out of rookies in 2013 directly to your efforts. We saw robots using your concepts at every regional we attended. We even saw them at the World Championship.
Frankly, it was a huge service to the entire FIRST community, and I think Robot in 3 Days is something FIRST as a organization should directly support through finances and resources.
Can’t agree more! While the game itself was aimed more at robots playing different roles over the common “master everything” that we have seen for years, I wholeheartedly agree that RI3D greatly contributed to the success seen by many teams!
Can’t wait to see what you do this year!
We too used some of what we saw. One such thing was the use of the same 2 wheels.
As for Feedback…I loved the constant videos and kept waiting in anticipation for more. I understand that you have a robot to make so its a bit difficult to make more videos so possibly some high quality pictures or 10 second video clips would keep people informed of your process.
I know you’re limited on man power, but it would be great if you could document your first phase of prototyping, including what you thought of, how you ruled ideas out (and why), and why you chose the design you did. Your work last year greatly aided a ton of teams, but I know quite a few teams who did things “because Ri3D did it”, and released documentation of your decision making through your prototyping and design could definitely help teach teams exactly WHY you made the decisions you did, and help them make more educated decisions for their teams.
Like others have pointed out, your concepts were everywhere last season. Not full robot clones, but the concepts. Iterations had clearly been made, and many mechanisms were changed or swapped for others. Having a fully competitive robot ready in just 3 days is great for grabbing peoples’ interest, but the real takeaway is the parts that make up that robot.
You also helped show teams a kind of strategy that is extremely under-utilized in FRC. Advocating for a simple and reliable design helped a lot of teams, especially since there was the allure of building a 30 point climber that wouldn’t serve many teams well, being an “all-or-nothing” point scorer. Reliability is king in FRC, after all.
My feedback would be to focus a lot on all the prototypes you make, why they were designed the way they were, what does work, and what doesn’t. Talk about the various strategies you see emerging in the game that year, and the merits of each. Prototyping and strategy are two of the hardest things for inexperienced students to learn, and last year you did a great job of teaching it.
I think reinforcing this concept to rookies and teams with little technical support or knowledge is a great takeaway from your efforts.
RI3D revolutionized FIRST last year.
One major change would be to include more of the brainstorming process in the videos you post during the build. As I look through the videos on your Youtube channel, there’s really only one 2 minute video where you discuss game strategy.
Of course, this could all depend on the game next year and it could prove to be something not necessary next year (ie. the only idea in Ri3D to me upon the reveal that struck me, at the time, as an interesting decision was that, when building what is implied to be the MCC of the game, discs weren’t picked up). Basing off 2012 and past games, it was a given that 3-point goals would be the primary scoring method and 30 point climbing was clear to be extremely difficult to implement.
typical jumbled thoughts from me while procrastinating on HW
Greetings,
I think you are doing a great service for FRC and FIRST in general. My question for you is: what can we do to help you out this year? Let me know and folks will bend over backwards to help you out.
I’d definitely advocate making your brainstorming/design sessions more visible, as that’s something a lot of us could use improving on. It’d be nice to see how exactly you handle downselecting from a large pool of ideas to a single design - that’s always been tough, in my experience.
I second this.
You did a great job last year, keep it up!
A lot of people are requesting that they go more into the design process, but I’m not too sure that is a great idea. Remember that they are building a robot in 3 days, so for them the general design phase is probably about 1 day long. There is no way that you could hold a proper discussion with things like weighted objective tables and solid, methodical analyzation of the game, plus prototyping in that type of time frame. These guys are experienced mentors who know enough about FRC to look at the game and figure out the MCC without too much difficulty or mulling over how things will play out. And that is perfectly fine for their purposes, but do we really want them to set this example for inexperienced teams?
I’m crying. The fact that you’re doing robot in 3 days this year is enough of an improvement. But maybe this year include more about the preparation that went into getting everything for the robot.
This is part of what I was trying to say at the end of my post; the value in adding this depends on the game compared to previous games. Scoringwise, 2013 was very similar to 2012. I’d even argue that there are similarities with 2011 also.
Now, a game like 2008 where there were a relatively larger amount of ways to score goals (lapbots, laps while holding trackball, sending trackball over rack; ie. a much grey-er area as to what the MCC is) could see value in going more into analysis. Also, my limited knowledge of strategy towards 2004 and 2005 makes me feel like those are the types of games that would see benefits in this.
So, having never really seen something like Ri3D happen, it’s hard for me to provide good criticism. Last year, there really wasn’t anything that made me go, “I wish they had done that differently.”
Personally, I’d like to see more of the process. I loved the occasional videos, but if you want to, you could do a lot more to bring people into the process.
Consider bringing on board a media manager that will spend three days documenting, logging, and releasing more regular videos. It may very well be over the top, but a log of what you guys are thinking every 2-3 hours would be helpful, and it would let people in FRC not only follow along, but even provide some feedback.
Just a thought,
I’d love to see a more in depth analysis about what kind of strategies this type of robot would employ in a match. IE, how many points actual drivers could score in a practice match, how it would play around defense (including a bot actually playing defense on it), etc.
As everyone else has said already, fantastic job, and I’m really excited that it will be continuing next year.