We are by no means a powerhouse team, but these are things we found out that help, and that a lot of powerhouse teams, and we feel can benefit all teams.
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The assumption that a CNC makes everything possible is false. I know for a fact that Team 4 Element has a CNC mill and lathe, and yet is not able to use them, because they lost their mentors who knew how to operate them. Furthermore, even 254 uses their regular lathes and mills often. If you read their build blogs, they do a lot of the machining work themselves. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95347
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Something that helped us do better this year, was pushing our motors to the limit. Instead of assuming a certain gear reduction was enough, for example we calculated how fast we wanted a ball to come up our elevator, figured out what gear reduction we wanted, and then figured out if we had enough torque. Do this with everything. DO THE MATH.
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Build to your teams capabilities. If you have a mill or lathe, then design your robot around those machining capabilities. Also, it is easy to get sponsors if you work at it. Most people would be surprised how easy it is to get a 2D sponsor, and they can really help speed up your build.
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Design within your teams capabilities. Using 254 as an example again, while many powerhouse teams decided to go with a turret, they instead went with a non moving shooter. Yet they made it effective, and I’m sure gained more practice time from that decision.
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Gain from the experience of powerhouse teams. Reading the build blogs of 254 and 148, and the New Cool really helped our team to improve. Paying attention to CD also helps. For example, we went into the season not really sure how to build an effective WCD. We searched CD for help, and eventually found 973’s CADs. They really helped us build a more effective WCD. Remember, innovations is made by copying and improving.
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Work with other teams. Both teams will gain. Right now we are developing a swerve with 1515, and it has helped so much. Really, you can see how much this works, with partnerships like 148 and 217. Also, CD is kind of like this. You can get help from other teams.
For anyone who can’t make it to Karthik’s 105-minute “Strategy” presentation in St. Louis on Wednesday, I’ll go ahead and give you the first few lines in my notes from the last 2 years’ presentations (summarized):
- His name is Karthik and his team wins alot. His teams proactively seeks to help other teams as well.
- When determinining where time and resources are spent, there IS a priority order on every team regardless of whether that priority order is explicitly stated.
- The #1 priority is the thing that MUST work every match to be able to do anything, and that is DRIVE TRAIN.
- The #2 priority is the FIRST thing the game piece touches before it can be scored and that is the game pieces ACQUISITION MECHANISM.
- Robot functions should work 100% and not be some over-constrained half-thought-out almalgamation of metal and motors.
- This implies that if priorities are out of order, then the pickup function may suffer the most due to spatial and weight constraints.
Ergo, if the first thing a team designed on the robot this year was a shooting mechanism then there’s a good chance the intake mechanism was a secondary priority. That means there was less brainstorming time and more constraining factors given to that mechanism overall. I know that as Week 1 progressed, this is what wound up happening on my team.
If you look at the original post, all the “missing features” related to game piece acquisition. Actually, that makes so much sense.
While 95 is not really a power-house team, lately we’ve been coming up with pretty good mechanical designs I think. I.e. the double roller claw in 2011 and an over-the-bumper collector this year. What we ask ourselves is “what would make it easiest for the driver?” We knew that reorienting the tube for placement, and having the widest possible mechanism to pickup balls, would make the drivers’ life easier, so we implemented them. It’s the question that we ask ourselves that generally results in a good design I think.
We did not miss the ‘stinger’ balance assist mechanism idea, but we did undervalue its importance and therefore did not build it 
Alas, if only our shooter had worked as well as our drive train and ball acquisition mechanism…
Your robot is only as good as it’s weakest piece.
Your team is only as good as it’s weakest resource (students, materials, tooling, mentors, time, money, space). Powerhouse teams are alike in that they have all managed to have enough of these resource. Stuggling teams are short some place but each team may have a different resource that they need to try to increase.
Teams that know that they have all the resources need to succeed, can work to build a robot that can do what is needed to win. Those that don’t focus on being able to show up.
Powerhouse teams aren’t powerhouse because they build great robots, they are powerhouses because they build great teams.
Absolutely. This was a case of us thinking we could pull off something that ultimately we failed to pull off. On the bright side, we’re overjoyed with our drivetrain as a base for future robots – with some redesign and tweaking we think it will be applicable to almost any situation. 
If you have a good general design approach for your chassis/drivetrains that can quickly be adapted to any game, that frees up a lot of time and brain power to focus on the “top end”. It also lets you start building shortly after kickoff, which spreads the fabrication schedule. Chassis/drivetrain prototypes are great pre-season projects. I doubt many powerhouse teams build a chassis/drivetrain that isn’t based on something they had previously worked with.
As a senior on a five year old team, I can vouch that our “powerhouse” status (we aren’t, but bear with me) came when we a) started collaborating with the other powerhouse teams and b) started building two robots. We have been lucky to go to championships every year, and we went to IRI last year. The networking and collaboration with other teams has allowed us to use their ideas, and coop them for our robot.
So! As a member of a not-really-powerhouse team, if can build two robots, do it!
Also, try to move away from the kit gearboxes and frame. Doing that forces you to design what you want, rather than what you’re given. Big difference in attitude with that shift.
And if you guys need anything, just ask 2415!
When I look at a robot, I divide the mechanisms into 3 categories. Drive-train/Grapples/Hangers/Ramp-wedges, devices which manipulate the entire robot. Conveyors/Lifts/Arms/Indexers, devices which manipulate the game piece indirectly, or when it is isolated from the field. Grippers/Intakes/Shooters/Ramp-arms, Devices which actively control the game pieces while in contact with the field, as well as portions of the field.
High quality robots always have an excellent drive-train, usually a high traction skid steer drive. I don't think many high rate teams work too much on a drive-train during the season, they build something similar to what they have done in the past, and make it as light as possible. The drive-train is something that shouldn't take much time to do because it should always be an iteration of a previous robot. Devices which manipulate the entire robot are typically focused on delivering as much power as possible, and being as sturdy as possible.
Middle manipulators on high rate robots are usually simple and fast. The primary design goal of the middle manipulator is to avoid hampering the ability of the end manipulator in any way. The middle manipulator on most high rate robots avoids using available motors, power, weight, and time needed for the end manipulator without being sub par.
The end manipulator/manipulators is what really sets the high performance robots apart from the average robots. The end manipulators for both acquiring and releasing the game piece have few design constraints with regards to weight, space, work-time, complexity, and motors due to the minimalistic nature of both the drive-train and middle manipulators.
Many robots also have a special feature which adds design constraints not stated by rules. These design constraints are usually delt with using clever manipulation of the drive base and Middle manipulator, so that the end manipulator has as few constraints as possible.I also disagree with this statement. A team should only move away from the kit of parts drivetrain if they if they have the wherewithal. This is going to different for each team. Do they have the technical knowledge? Do they have enough mentors to guide them? Do they have time in the pre-season to develop it?
I believe the kit of parts allows all teams to leapfrog many steps and start running closer to the elite teams. I am from the pre-andy-mark era, so remember how much resources went into getting a working, bullet-proof drivetrain. With the kit of parts, every team can have a rolling chassis in week 1. If a team is struggling finishing the build season with a working robot, the kit of part drivetrain makes a lot of sense. A team can focus entirely on their scoring mechanisms.
What is the penalty for the kit of parts chassis? Perhaps is weights more. however , you can get the custom gearing you want. You can even add a two speed gearbox.
A working drivetrain wins games. A well tested scoring mechanism wins games. The pitfall for us non-elite team is not being able complete enough design iterations. When a robot is first tested on the final day of build, you know not enough testing will be done.
By going with a kit of part chassis, a non-elite team can get more time to go through the design iteration process, more time to come up with that genius idea. I would argue, time shapes ones willingness to explore ideas. When time is scarce, attitudes quickly change, people become more narrow minded from the stress and the looming deadlines. Ideas are not fully developed because people don’t have time for the research, prototyping, modeling and building. By focusing less on the drivetrain by using a proven successful design used by many, one has more time to focus on other aspects of the robot.
My old team 766 frequently did drivetrains based off of kit of part drivetrains. It was a good tactic for an early start on the build season.
The kitbot is also an excellent thing to build in the first couple days and give to your programmers. Many autonomous modes can do something useful simply by driving (2009, 2008, 2006, 2004, 2003), and if they have a few weeks of the drivetrain to themselves, they can work out control systems for the drivebase. Line-tracking, gyro-centering, dead-reckoning can all be worked on with just a kitbot base and a couple sensors c-clamped to it.
I don’t think this has been said yet but if it has it’s worth repeating… I believe a lot of succes that powerhouse teams have comes from the amount of dedication from the mentors and students. They don’t just have afew dedicatate mentors and students… All of their mentors and students are extremely dedicated
I just wanted to correct something that was ssaid earlier about the key to last year being a roller claw. The real trick wasn’t just a roller claw. It was a roller claw with a pnuematic release. The part everyone but the best missed was that the pnuematic release allowed faster and more accurate placement of the tubes.
Look at the best robots, they all had it.
33, 254, 148 etc…
I dunno… I’m unconvinced that a roller claw was the killer feature in 2011.
Look at 1503. Single jointed arm, no rolling of the tubes, no floor pickup, and they still won 2 regionals and their division at CMP. IIRC that robot had 5 motors (4 drive, 1 to control the arm pivot), and a pneumatically-operated claw. It is easily the best FRC robot I’ve seen in terms of success vs simplicity. How did they do it? Their drivers were FLAWLESS.
As its been said before. Having drivers with loads of stick time is the most important thing; in order to achieve that, you either have to have sufficient resources to build a carbon-copy practice bot, so they can get the stick time in between ship and the competitions, or you have to be FAST enough that they have that stick time before it goes in the bag.
I think both of these posts reinforce a point, something that I’ve been pushing 1551 more and more towards as time has gone by: build a protobot. Not a full competition bot, but something slammed together with plywood and vice grips and so forth that satisfies these basic criteria:
a. The drive train must match the drive train on the robot.
b. The basic functionality of the upper mechanical system must be mocked appropriately – it must have the correct number of motors wired the correct way with the correct sensors, but doesn’t actually have to accomplish any of the actual tasks. (Maybe it doesn’t open as wide as it should, or lift as high as it should, or what-have-you…)
c. It must be done incredibly fast – like, as soon as you settled on your design, you should have a protobot together and handed to your programmers.
Essentially, you want a “test bench” that mimics the actual robot functionality, and you want to give it to the programmers just about as fast as you can.
…and in the mean time you have a drive train that you built in the off-season that is awfully darn close to (or tweaked so it’s exactly like) the competition drive train, so that your drivers can practice just maneuvering until they’ve got upper mechanical functionality to play with.
Mind you, I’m not saying that this is what the powerhouse teams do, but I am saying that this is something that any team should be able to do, that will get them closer to “great” than they currently are.
I think as well as what’s been mentioned, what’s popping up even more now is experience. I recall hearing about Einstein back in 2010, though I don’ tquite know the valididty of the statement, that most of the reoccuring teams on Einstein maintain the exact same drive team each time they’re there, within a 4 year period provided. Thus, one thing that could propel a team would be having a driver who knows the 'bot they’re using and have competition pressure experience to draw upon.
I will address this from my team’s point of view.
In our 6 year run we only repeated our base driver in 2010-11, our operator was the same in 2008-9, and our human player in 2007 was our 2006 operator. Other than that the only consitant drive team member during that run was our drive coach who has been the same since she took over the job in 2004.
On my team you have to earn the the job every year by beating out everyone else in tryouts. We find that the competition to get the job works well as a motivator even though we would like to have multi-year drivers.
We did have the same driver set for the four seasons from 1996-99 however, one of whom is a mentor on our team now. In 1998 they were so good we were accused of having adults off stage controlling the robot. FIRST requested our drivers to show up early on Saturday at Nationals as it was called back then to prove they were driving. After catching a bouncing ball on the fly that fell off the tower FIRST apologized to us and let our team continue to compete and secured the #1 seed at Nationals that year. The funniest part of this story is that the drivers involved only found this out last year. At the time the adult mentors on the team told them it was being filmed for a local station, and it only came out last year no one every told them.