I am realizing that I only have one more year that I can be a student on a FRC team. I know that I could come back as a mentor after I graduate, but what other robotics competitions are there that are NOT like battle bots but are more like the FIRST competitions?
Well, this will be the second year of the C.A.R.D. level robotics for colleges. You can find more information about the program here.
I’m participating on a Lunabotics team for a competition NASA holds every year, I’ve also been a part of the robotics club on campus and made a Wall-E, and also helped out the solar car team some. Feel free to spread what you’ve learned in FIRST, don’t just stay in the safe bubble.
http://http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/centers/kennedy/technology/lunabotics.html
NASA’s Lunabotics competition Lunabotics Challenge - NASA.
There are also the IEEE competitions, SAE’s Collegiate Design Series (5 competitions of various types), and all sorts of OTHER engineering competitions. Bear in mind that most of them are full academic year-long competitions.
Wow! That looks very interesting. Thank you! Is that the only college level robotics competition?
That sounds awesome! Thanks for sharing!
That’s even BETTER! Imagine FIRST…for a WHOLE (academic) YEAR!
This is a bit off topic, but I recommend against mentoring FRC during your freshman year, and very strongly recommend against ever mentoring a team that you were a student on.
Ill throw out a good word for formula SAE. Its not robotics but its quite an intense engineering challenge that feels a lot like FIRST.
why so?
i understand the whole not mentoring as a freshman, but why not the team you were a student on? One of our mentors is the team captain from 2001, and she does great!
I think that if you wait 4 years to go back to your high school team you will be fine. After 4 years all the kids you knew on the team as peers will be gone and you can assert yourself as an adult and mentor easier.
You land lovers…
Build a robot that flies. (MIT puts on a competition, not sure what it’s called)
Build a robot that swims. (NURC)
Or build a robot that does both. Hah.
ATV bot? I’m digging it.
I half agree. Mentoring the team you were a part of is bad for many reasons.
I mentored this year in a different state than my hometown team (as a freshman in college) and felt very satisfied. It definitely takes a shift in mentality, but it can be done.
What are those reasons?
If you go straight from being a senior on a team to being a mentor on that same team the next year it is difficult. The reason it is difficult is because you have now gone from a peer working with the students to their mentor and they are now your “subordinate”. The relationship is completely different and it can be hard for both the new mentor and the current students to be seen in a truly authoritative position. You might have been the team captain as a senior in high school but that isn’t the same as being a mentor and being in charge.
swimming robots? sounds like a challenge. i heard and read about it a lot before kick-off this year, but what are the chances of FIRST actually throwing a water game at us? it would definiatly be a surprise. Has there been any tries at getting FIRST to start a water or air division?
That you are not exposed to different attitudes, methodologies, or management styles. Also, you will be viewed as a student still.
I’ve been on a few different teams and had the chance to watch numerous others, I’ve always learned new methods for running teams or mentoring from them. Why deprive yourself of the opportunity to learn from another set of mentors and share your experiences with a group that otherwise wouldn’t?
There are some individuals that successfully mentor the team they were on as a student, but I’ve seen it fail much more often.
The issue is that you have to make the distinction between first-year mentor and 5th-year senior. They are wildly different roles: You aren’t there to make a robot, you are there to help the students. This transition is always difficult. Staying with the same team makes it even more difficult, as everyone still sees you in your old position. Again, some individuals are mature enough to overcome this, but they are a very small minority.
Your first year as a mentor is like your first year as a student. You are suddenly thrust into a situation that requires new skills and new viewpoints, and it is frankly overwhelming to watch the seniors navigate the list of responsibilities. Experience as a student helps, but the skills learned as a student are a small subset of the skills to be learned as a mentor. I knew how to tune PID loops, but it took me 8 years to learn how to guide a brilliant but shy student into someone who can tune a PID loop under a competition stress environment.
I mentored a team as a freshman, and in retrospect I personally wasn’t prepared for it. I could handle the engineering just fine. What I couldn’t handle was the classroom management, the student growth management, the lesson planning and adaptation.
I was fortunate to get my butt kicked at Olin. My professors were very talented in finding the things I needed to improve and bringing a harsh spotlight onto my flaws. They were some very hard lessons, but I couldn’t be an effective mentor without them.
TL;DR: Wait a year or two and then join a team with an experienced mentor group. Its a heck of a trip.
was it easy for you to mentor other teams? is it possible to mentor more than one FRC team during the same season? or is that something i should not even think about?