What makes a good team stay good year after year?
In the past I have seen some teams that make a consistently good robot year after year no matter what the task is and I have see some teams make a good bot one year and fade out of the spotlight the next.
What is it, in all of your opinions, that makes the good teams have this consistancy and what causes other teams to falter?
There are so many factors that go into running and maintaining a successful team:
If a team can build a solid base of teachers, mentors and adults that are dedicated to the program and know what they need to do to make their team succeed in FIRST, that is a huge help.
Also equally important is a solid student group that builds off these adults, if students as a group take responsibility and know what they need to do for success, and if they can also pass that along to the younger students on the team, that is key. This is a cycle that I think is crucial to sustaining a team.
In addition to the people, you need to have a sponsors/financial base that you can count on year after year and also one that grows as your team grows.
If a team is missing or lacking even one of these components, things can go bad. Everyone needs to work together to make good things happen.
Every team should strive to have all of these things, along with a solid process on how everyone and everything works together.
another thing i have seen is in many of those top teams. They re-use ideas and bases form previous years. Look at HOT’s 04, 05 arm, it was used before. 1126 has used the same base for 3 years now, 254 has used a similar base for a while now. Why reinvent the wheel entirely every year?
Can this reusing also act as a hinderance sometimes since the teams fail to accept new ideas that may be better?
Most of the “elite” teams share a few things in common:
They have dedicated and supportive sponsors, many of which give large amounts of funding, fabrication, machinery, and/or floor space.
They have a dedicated and supportive group of mentors, teachers, and adult volunteers who return year to year.
They have above average machine tool and construction capability.
They meet almost every day (typically at least 5 meetings per week for several hours) during build.
They prototype new ideas and designs during the summer/fall.
They have a wide selection of techniques and designs that they have used in the past and often re-use.
They have experiences and ideas gained from previous years games, results, successes, failures, and other robots.
They have a proven and effective design technique, and know what strategic decisions to make in terms of robot design.
They are mindful of weight, cost, and size constraints through-out the design and fabrication periods.
They finish fairly early in the build season, giving themselves time to test, debug, integrate, and practice.
They have skilled drivers with hours of practice under their belts by the time competition season begins.
They have robust designs that survive the strains of competitions with little failures.
THEY SHOW UP WITH FINISHED ROBOTS (unless they are 469)
My team was running into that problem some this year. We have no seniors on the team, so all of the leaders are juniors. We were heading up the different design groups, and everything we came up with eneded up being exactly what was on our robot from 2005. We sat down and talked about why this was happening as a team, and we got some team alumni in on the discussion too. we realized that we get only 1 robot a year, the one we make during build season, so you need to get out of your comfort zone and go for whatever. We reworked the design and now we have a unique robot, that will be a challenge to build and is very different from anything weve done in the past, and everyone is very happy with it.
What im getting at is, what is the point of being a consistently good robot year after year if it is just the same robot year after year. sure you might have had a good thing going for a while, but you need to experiment a bit and go wild to keep on the cutting edge. innovation happens not when you improove existing designs, but when you do something completely different that works better than you imagined.
I think it’s all about the process. A team finds a process that works well for them, and they stick with it.
So far, our new design process of having a small, core design group has definately proved it’s effectiveness to us. It may work for some teams, it may not work for others.
2005, the robot was essentially designed by a small group of people, last year, the robot was essentially designed by a small group of people, but neither of those years were very attractive years looking back at them because the design was finalized too late into the season.
This year, we went in knowing that we will have a small design group finalizing the design early on. We had a basis done Wednesday of week one, and today, the CAD team finished every part on the robot in Pro-E. This has been the one of the best, if not, the best years since my family became affiliated with the team back in 2002. This system, so far, has worked very well for us.
What I’m trying to say is that not all teams have always been good right from the get-go. Some have been (1126 for example). It may take a year or two find the process that best suits the way the students like to work. They repeat that process and get the same results.
Now… I don’t really have a way to justify the amazing year one year, and then a not-so-amazing year the next. I have a feeling it has to do with some major change in the team structure, sponsor, location, or something like that. Or it could vary based off of the games we get. I can name a couple of teams that did very well in 2005 and 2004, but not so well last year.
Your want to talk about a team which has consistancy. That has to be 173 rage. Highly underrated and always finds a way to make it on the big stage.
You missed one, but it might be wrapped up in #2
The most consistent teams I have seen all have a tremendous amount of parent involvement. This seems to be at least as critical as good mentors, and seems to be true even for teams that do not have a lot of technical parents.
So if you want to move your team to the big leagues, concentrate on getting your parents involved. They will go out and find the technical people you need.
Yeah. 60 used their arm in 2001, 2004, and 2005. I’m sure they’ll use it again this year. 254 used it in 2004 and 2005, once again I’m sure they’ll use it again this year. 968 and 22 used it in 2005, to much success of course.
I’m thinking a repeat of that arm will dominate this year.
The end effector is more important than the arm its attached to (for the most part).
High quality teams?
So they quickly select the correct strategy for the game, then quickly get a prototype robot up and running to do some real world testing, then they go to the drawing board and refine what they’ve initially designed, then they begin fabrication/assembly of the competition robot, then they train the heck (sometimes) out of their drivers, and then they are good to go. Once the competition is underway, they keep their strategy simple, but constantly tweak it to adapt to changing circumstances.
I think the most important thing consistently good teams have are great drivers. With great drivers, your robot could be average to sub-average, and you can still make an effective competitor. BUZZ is a good example of this. There robots were pretty good over the years, but their skilled drivers really made their robots shine.
With all this talk of drivers, and etc… you’ll see that most good teams have cornered some aspect of a given game, and when you watch them, they’ll do the same routine every time.
Three things really standout as important to me
Skilled Drivers-Easily the most important thing that makes teams great is a superb drive-team. Teams that have great drivers will be picked because they know how to win. The best drivers also make an average robot a great one.
Strategy-Great team identify their game strategy early in build season and know how they want to play each game. Having and expert strategist (Mr. Beatty, Karthik, Mr. Copioli) who can identify a winning strategy will make you very consistent.
Reputation-Teams that have a reputation as winners will be picked more than unknown teams. In 2005 our robot was decent, but we were very well known so we were picked higher than we probably should have. A more accurate example is IRI this year when we were picked by 1504 before our sister team 70 who has one of the best drive teams in the country returning. We were picked because of our reputation not because we were better.(this is not any kind of shot at 1504 who were one of my favorite alliance partners ever)
Most consistent teams have all these things each year and are very strong because of it.
So everyone in here pretty much has what i was thinking.
Just to add is that the team understands the strategy of the game, not only in part but in its entirety. This is key, because as with a solid strategy and good drivers even an average robot becomes a lethal force on the field.
You are absolutely right. Make sure you make use of prototyping. During the off season experiment with designs, etc that you feel might work. A few sketches never hurt. In addition, KISS. Keep everything as simple as you can. Many teams fail to remember that doing every decently is not tantamount to doing one thing well. Pick something that you know you can do well and do it. Though I have full faith in the abilities of FIRST members, frankly some teams do not yet have the resources and know-how for building a robot that can do the more advanced things.
In regards to keeping a good team running, a robot is only as good as its drivers and tacticians. Make sure you have someone that knows the rules like the back of their hands so you never run into trouble. Make sure your drivers a practicing as much as you can get them to. Even during the off season our drivers (currently new) are trained as often as possible on older robots.
Have a good scouting team. If you know exactly what’s going to come at you, it’s only going to make your job that much easier. And if you cannot afford to have people scouting (in a #people to # jobs you have) sense, get scouting data from other teams. There are many scouting services available across FIRST that you can use–of course use them with a grain of salt.
As was said before–mentors, mentors, mentors. As Sean said good teams have mentors that return year after year. Adding mentors is always great, but try not to drop mentors that are experienced in FIRST style robotics. (yes I know that this is often unforeseeable). Sponsors are equally as important. Most schools simply do not have the equipment it takes–we have no mechanism for cutting metal accurately, for doing a lot of the more complex machinery, etc. Mentors and Sponsors (or even better mentors from your Sponsor) can make they difference when you have a ‘rebuilding year’. Every team has those years when most of the experienced members leave and the newer ones must be trained. The mentors can help you train these members–but better yet, make sure these kids are trained before the older ones leave. We have a program called FTP (Freshman Training Program) which allows for the training of new members by older ones. Everyone is taught the basic concepts and then allowed to choose where they would like to further continue their studies.
Also note that teams with great consistency are VERY rare.
Here is a graph I made during a rather heated thread where someone was complaining about the existence of the mythical “first place every year” team.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=4724&d=1162868157
Notice how a given bracket of performers in one year spread out ALL OVER the performance distribution in the following year. There is SOME correlation: teams that came towards the very bottom in 2005 tended to not win in 2006 (but could still get as high as top 20%). Teams that did very well in 2005 tended to not come dead last in 2006. But that was it. If you placed in the top 10% of 2005 robots, you could’ve ended up anywhere from first place to top 80% in 2006. There is a great deal of mobility in FIRST.
Note that if there was great consistency from year to year, this graph would be a line from the bottom left corner to the top right corner.
It will be very interesting to make another graph like this one comparing 2005 and 2007. Since both games are ‘manipulator’ years, then there should be more consistency.
What about a graph from 1999 (since its the first year of alliances) to the present? Year on one axis, performance level on the other, and each succesful team throughout that time period gets a line that charts their success, even if it would stretch back to a time of limited success.
I agree that consistent teams are rare, however, because if I were to count, I’d probably only end up with 25 teams.
But that’s no matter, eh? Because even if there were only one consistent team, then there would still be room to analyze their roads to success, and formulate an effective plan to steer your team down a (possibly) seperate, but coincident path to achieve that same consistent level of success.
The key to consistency is to have consistent team members. And who are the most consistent team members? Teachers and mentors. Even the most dedicated student can only realistically be around for 4 years. And in that time, a dedicated student will build a tremendous amount of knowledge about FIRST. That is everything from knowledge of building techniques, programming ability, the ability to interject reality into design discussions, a feel for the game and strategy, basically everything.
But once that person leaves, most often for college, that talent is gone.
But if you have a mentor (industry professional or teacher) that is as dedicated as the student, that talent and knowledge will be around for a long time. Also, mentors tend to have more power than students when it comes to organization. So even though a student might want to hold off season prototyping and training sessions, its not going to happen without a mentor just as dedicated.
Like it or not, this is a program that cant be won, consistently, without dedicated mentors (I tend to not like that fact). However, I wouldnt trade my student-run experience for one where the mentors are the most dedicated people on my team. FIRST, to me, isnt about winning. It is about the journey more than anything else. It is about pride that I recieved when our team over comes the odds against us.