For Team 6911’s second year, we have some ambitious goals set.
1. Level 3 HAB climb in under 10 seconds
2. Multi hatch auto
3. Place hatches and cargo everywhere on the field
4. Ability to play defense (two speed gearboxes)
We have been told by some teams to tone down our goals. What do you think?
With only four weeks to go, how far have you gotten designing and prototyping mechanisms that will help you accomplish these goals?
If you are not well on your way to getting all this stuff done, then you probably should seriously consider scaling back your ambitions. Doing fewer things, well, is usually more rewarding than doing several things badly.
You did relatively well last year, especially considering you’re a rookie. However, the classic trap is to try to do too much. You can only do so many things in a match. Your list is very ambitious and what I would expect an elite team to have on their list (minus the ability to play defense). I would strongly encourage you to do a few things well, that is very difficult to do even for elite teams who have tens of mentors, good machining capabilities, a reasonable budget ($35k+, usually much higher), and members who are experienced.
I would doubt you have the resources to pull 3 of those things off well. If you focused your whole season on 2 of them you might be able to do it. MrForbes has a good point, how far are you?
You gotta be you. The goal always has to be to move forward, but my recommendation is to prioritize early enough so that you don’t mess up your chances, and to track your progress so you can constrain goals early enough for them to be achieved. It’s better to succeed at one or two new things than to fail at four new things.
If you have the same goals as the Poofs, and you’re not the Poofs, then I think you should honestly evaluate your teams resources.
I don’t know your team. You might be able to pull it off. But it’s worth taking a step back and asking is this the right path for our team?
To most people running two events I would say pick 2 of the first 3 to do this season, and focus on having one for your first event, and be designing and iterating through the entire season to have the other for your second event.
In your case you have both in the same week. I’d say pick 1 of the first 3 to REALLY focus on, and if you find yourself with time pick another but do not sacrifice 1 to get 0.
I would say number 4 isn’t really a “goal” and is something you kind of get for free.
I agree with the posts above. It will likely be better in the long run this season if you tone down your goals a bit.
Now people say that doing a few things great is better than doing everything mediocre, and they are correct. There are several benefits to going simple. For one, doing fewer things means you are less likely to over extend. The Best way to do FRC is to build within your means, meaning the particular resources and skillsets of your team match the robot you are building without overdoing it. Also if you have fewer mechanisms to focus on the more you can refine them and make them better. And when it comes to picking they would rather someone play a special position (for example, doing hatch panels very quickly) rather than a robot who can play everything on the field but does it much slower. High caliber teams look for consistency, fast cycles, and specific niches.
So it might be beneficial to take a step back and evaluate your team’s strengths and resources and see what will be best for you.
I will side with the team goals, not knowing anything about the team.
My view is to not limit goals , aspirations, function components until it is proven you cannot meet them.
This competition is about inspiration, learning and performing the best you can.
Our team has fought to be the best student led team possible. This year has challenges due to graduating 15 seniors of 30 team members. We lost a tremendous of talent. The challenge is to inspire, teach and motivate this years team to do their best or better.
Limiting goals and robot features to me is not inspiring.
Last year our team bagged our bot 30 seconds before midnight. We had no drive team practice. We had built a good robot, but it had issues. Over the two district events we fixed the issues and kept improving. We made it to MSC and performed great. Because of the we made it to half champs in Detroit. Where we were a 1st round pic in our division.
We have been fortunate in four years we have won 3 blue banners, been to MSC 3 times and worlds twice.
We have had some great young adults on the team that made that success happen. The coaches and the mentors facilitated by not limiting the team.
To the OP, set high goals. Strive to meet them. If you don’t try you will never know. I say go for it.
Coming off a somewhat good year played in playoffs two out of three competitions, and being named the best switch bot in our state, we wanted to focus on the smaller things again this year and do low level rocket hatch and cargo and cargo ship hatches and cargo then play defense and were ok with just getting level 1 HAB but will love to by our third regional get to level 2.
Robot CAD is 90% done. Everything is finalized but our front and rear intakes. Been prototyping with modified versions of our powerup intake which works supprisingly well so we will most likely go with a modified version.
We have machining abilities similar (maybe better due to the fact it is in house except some water jetting) to elite teams, and have budgeted for 2 robots. We have gotten some good mentors, including one who’s job is purely computer vision systems. We have a couple build mentors, one of whom is a literal genius.
In terms of progress we have everything finalized in CAD but the intake systems. Drivetrain machining is almost done and we will start building that Wednesday.
Yep, we signed up for regionals too late and we’re forced to pick 2 that we’re back to back. We are packing up at HVR, and going to the load in at SPBLI. It’s lees than desireable but we will make it work.
I’d have to second that.
Looking at your teams robot last year I don’t see how your four goals are out of reach.
This is just another new mechanism to score and get a RP. Every year has something new.
I see this as the most difficult. Your robot last year had a switch auto. But you got to see other teams using motion profiling and pathfinder to do 4 cube autos. If you were inspired by last year and learned motion profiling and pathfinder then I see no reason why you shouldn’t try for a multi hatch auto. After all, you can chop the multi hatch auto into several smaller achievable goals.
This shouldn’t be too difficult. After all, you did have an elevator last year. Learn from last years robot and build a better elevator this year.
Going from single speed gearbox to double speed gearbox is the easiest goal. This can be copied from just about any good team.
I think that your goals this year were based upon your team being inspired by last year. That’s what FIRST is all about. Be inspired to learn new skills, be inspired to build a better robot and be inspired to build a better team. Hope to see you at worlds.
It looks like your team experience is significantly different from the OPs. It would be surprising if the OP’s team has the resources to have a successful season with those goal, but I suppose it’s possible.
As long as a team has a good hold on their plan and execution, and the ability to cut something and move forward, high goals can be great. But at least in my experience, limiting goals and robot features can be very inspiring if it helps you field a more productive robot.
Literally every FRC team limits their design scope in some way shape or form. Even teams like 148, 118, 254, 1678, etc. If you don’t have a set of strategic priorities that drive your design decisions, you’re literally just shooting in the dark. The best teams will leave their options open as you mention, but they fail so fast that they quickly bring their design objectives into focus. Their tradeoffs are based on data.
I would imagine many elite level teams have already narrowed their design scope, so it would be concerning to me that a 2nd year team (even a super promising one) has yet to narrow their focus. I could keep arguing this point, but much smarter people than myself already have…
Everybody should read JVN’s blog. He’s a pretty smart guy…
It’s much easier to inspire students with a successful FRC team than an unsuccessful one. To me, limiting goals and robot features is extremely inspiring Having a narrow focus and being extremely good at something is very inspiring. I’ll take 4607’s last two years as an example… in 2017, we followed the design philosophy of “do everything well”. We attempted to build without constraints. It doesn’t take much time on TBA to figure out how this went for us. It was one of our worst years as a team and there were a lot of uninspired students as a result. Fast forward to 2018 and we decide to narrow our focus and build within our means. We set out to be the best switch-only robot we could. Ask 1836 how that went for us. We made Division Finals at Champs and had our best season ever.
It sounds like you’re well on your way. I know of a team last year that saved the intake design for the very last thing, and did really well.
Just make sure that you keep on schedule, and keep your priorities in mind at all times. If you have trouble with the basic tasks that the robot needs to do, put more of your effort into fixing that, than the other less important goals.
Definitely agree that this is our most ambitious goal. This goal is in part because we were fortunate enough to get a couple new programming mentors, one of whom’s job is purely computer vision.
I appreciate the input. We are definitely making sure the basic tasks of cargo ship hatch and cargo placement see covered before we attempt to knock down the time it takes us to get to level 3. It’s something that we were not doing in the beginning of the season but luckily a local team gave us a reality check before it got out of hand.
Number 4 comes with some meaningful impacts on design, as you have to be able to retract within your own frame perimeter to play defense. It can definitely impact the design of items 1-3 if you also want to be able to cross into the opposing side of the field.
As a fellow 2nd year team, we wish you the best of luck. I am concerned that my students have bitten off more than they can chew with their goals this year, but they are very motivated and inspired to accomplish them. Our CAD is completely done, most of the practice bot is built so we can see how everything is actually working together before we start construction on the competition bot.
Our goals this year are to have a more durable robot, climb to level 3, be able to place hatches and cargo. The big reach is to be able to lift 2 other bots with us on the climb. If we can’t lift anybody else it won’t be a huge letdown as it is not a primary goal, but the students are very excited about making the effort and learning to work with carbon fiber as a result.
Our new drivetrain and custom gearbox over the summer gave them a lot of confidence and experience with CNC machining on a router we didn’t have for last season. Overall, we are looking forward to the season.