What does it take for a team to get their robot onto the Einstein field?
2491 Is a team that likes to dream, and dream big. This year is the first year we are really shooting for Einstein. The idea is not so much that we “expect” to get there, but more so that we will do everything that we can in the pursuit of competitive greatness. Einstein is just a good name to put on it, and a good high place to shoot for.
This is a situation of “we dont know what we dont know”. Its easy to say, but we really want to take the steps to get to that level of competitive greatness. We have already reached out to a few teams and will continue to do so, however I thought I’d ask the masses on CD (knowing that most haven’t gone, but that it my reveal a few gems)
So what does a super high functioning team look like? What does a high functioning robot look like? What are your tips for being more effective on field? How does team culture contribute to more points on field? What DONT we know? What are we missing?
Don’t make mistakes at competitions. Whatever you do before comp, once you get there be prepared and consistent in every single match. This is critical both to performing well and getting picked. Beyond that its just get really good whether its by luck or skill you need to be a top robot with top drivers and organized professional pit crew.
I think one of the quick, quantifiable answers is budget, it takes money to make it to Einstein. In 2024, 461 (who did not make it to Einstein) spent around $35,000 flying the team down (roughly 10 mentors and 35 students) to Houston, renting cars, (some) meals and hotel costs. We won EI at our District Championship, so registration cost is not factored into that number, additionally, a sponsor brought our pit and robot down to the event at no cost to us.
That’s all on top of our typical season spending for robot parts, team registration and travel to our three Indiana events.
I have other reflections on this from 2023, when we did make it to Einstein (shoutout to our stellar alliance partners & captain, 1678) but I think that will need to be a longer, more thought out post. As @Peyton_Yeung pointed out, a lot of it is luck.
Luck is a huge factor, but there are still some teams that make it every year, so they have some control over their Einstein appearances. The list we’re trying to check off includes:
a large reserve of dedicated, experienced mentors
enough shop resources, internal or external, to build and iterate a robot (or robots plural) extremely quickly
a well developed “library” of proven software and sensor packages that can enable robots to run state-of-the-art autos and teleop cycles.
more, and more regular funding than you think
a dedicated student base with multiple years of training
hundreds of hours of pre-competition practice on a full scale practice field to both train the drive team, and also shake out the bugs in the robot.
a strong scouting and strategy team that can help ensure every achievable match point is scored, and the best possible alliances are picked.
a pit team that is capable and empowered to catch, repair, and prevent any on-field breakdowns.
a leadership focus on winning. Identifying the conditions necessary and improving as necessary, often over years.
I’m curious to see what other people add to this list.
I’d highly recommend watching as many of 1678’s fall workshops as you have time for. You’ll learn a lot of super valuable stuff about how to be successful in FRC.
I would add a good and effective presentation. A great robot will show itself on the field, but especially getting to the 2nd and 3rd picks, a good presentation can make you seem more professional and put together. Plus it’s usually tied into the other points listed.
I will echo the luck factor, while hypothetically can be argued all day long, we are pretty sure we were 2 alliance picks away from an Einstein appearance, it’s just how luck plays out.
This might be a bit of a hot take, but with some of the changes to champs advancement limiting the number of teams that qualify strictly through awards, “luck” may actually play at least somewhat less of a role this year, as teams might be able to rely on more effective alliance partners in their qualification matches.
That is very multi faceted, see all the comments above.
The reason some (many) teams are famous is their year over year consistency (and other things too, but the high level of execution in every single match is a large part of it)
Performing consistently is one thing, being able to execute at a high level (spikey) occasionally is another thing, making the two happen for the same robot in another thing. It is HARDER STILL to make all that consistency happen at a high level for enough seasons to get lucky.
There’s really only two paths to consistently making it to Einstein.
Option 1
Build a top 15ish world EPA robot
Get lucky with divisional assignment to be one of the top two performing robots in your field
Get lucky with match schedule that a weaker performing team doesn’t have a really favorable schedule and seed #1
Get lucky with a match schedule without any overpowered qual matches. Perform consistently and reliably through qualifying and seed #1 on your field and pick the next best robot or
Get lucky and have the other of the two top performing robot on your field seed #1 and pick your team
Get lucky there isn’t a really good 2nd rounder that falls to another alliance leaving you with weaker alliance overall than a lower seeded alliance
Avoid any moments of bad luck throughout the eliminations
This makes those that manage long streaks even more impressive, overpowering some of the luck component involved in option 1 is stupid hard.
I will also add, going off of the mentor network earlier, it can’t hurt to know people, it really does help if you can ask a blunt question to a friend over text when you manage to get licky, be a top 15ish bot that doesn’t get an unfavorable schedule, etc etc.
This will be my 8th year in FRC and as hard as it is to simply qualify for Champs, it’s all that much more impressive to see teams that can not only do that consistently, but also make Einstein consistently. I’ll definitely be watching this thread to mine whatever nuggets of gold that I can.
100% there is tons and tons and tons of luck involved here. We recognize that. The heart of the question is asking what do we do that is outside of luck? What can we do to mitigate luck?
And those that have pointed it out 100% are right, and I don’t discredit any of the opinions provided. However I’d love to expand the conversation
Partnering with 1678 has been a good strategy over the last decade…
More seriously, in seasons where our team has made Einstein the goal, we’ve generally struggled. The only time one of my teams has ever made Einstein started off with the goal of building a simple, reliable robot and having it ready for our first event.
Setting your sights on Einstein is going to push you to make design decisions that have a high potential for hurting your overall performance. It also sets you up to fail as it’s an unrealistic goal for 99% of teams.
As a team which has only ever played 1 playoff match (from being on 2 different playoff alliances, 2015 and 2023) at Worlds:
Qualify for CMP
Assuming you can’t build that top 15 robot, have something that the captains are looking for in partners (for example, we missed out in 2024 I guess by not being able to pass shots half court)
Don’t break down - in 2015 we were captain but had a chain failure in the first playoff match so we swapped to our 4th bot
Scouting - also in 2015, we weren’t super into scouting at CMP after a poor time at states (if I remember this all correctly) until our rank suddenly shot up to 6th after qual 73 and then 3rd after qual 79
I like to say especially for our FTC teams that trying to be clever and having a really good robot for states is a good way to flounder and maybe not even qualify for states.
This past season we designed with the goals of best cleanup bot we could be (within our design, manufacturing, and controls capabilities). We correctly identified the role of " the beat cleanup bot possible" as the ultimate meta. But this hurt us as we did not build a bot for full field cycling, which was the dominant strategy for the first half of the season or so, got to worlds on mostly luck.
So we got one piece of the puzzle correct (design neiche), and managed to execute pretty well from event 2 onwards (consistency) but there are so many other parts that we could not hope to control with our resources…
This upcoming season we are looking to streamline and better control what we can, that and maximize practice.
(And I hot glued the ever living snot outta last year’s bot)
From my perspective, the things you’re looking for, are what I call the process of making your own luck.
Like others have mentioned, practice, consistency, preparation, and systems can help you create luck.
Citrus has built an incredible organization of systems, with Mike and the rest of the mentors really pushing each student to push themselves, focus, and do their best work possible. They think beyond just their team, Citrus service/etc are all key elements to ensuring they get every RP, they think beyond just the obvious internal things they control, but help every single one of their alliance partners to be the best they can be.
This is far and beyond the capabilities of most teams, it’s hard enough to get everyone on your team moving in a unified direction, now imagine including two or three other teams, that will have crazy different organizations, and you’ll start to understand the scope of what it takes.
It’s something we’re working very hard to instill in 6328, and it’s a work in progress. It will take years to build up the organization to the point we want to be at, but that’s what it takes. Think long-term, improve bit by bit, and be willing to understand that you can always get better.