This is the first year our team has truly grown above 50 members (we have had more registered before, but we are getting to the point where 50 are showing up regularly.) The issue is that our leadership team is very strong this year, and will have a major role in most of the robot building during build season, and over half of our team are new members. A lot of them have a lot of potential to be really good programmers/fabricators/designers, but we simply don’t have enough bandwidth of work for them to do during build season. During our pre-season, they built an entire bot by themselves that won 3rd place at an off-season competition, but it is not yet up to par with our team’s main season competition standards.
We are hesitant to start a JV bot during the season because they wouldn’t be able to compete, and when we tried that in 2022, it ended up pulling our team apart, and the project ultimately got abandoned. We also don’t want to put all of our members onto Impact Award submission, because that is primarily a business team responsibility and will cause more members to be disengaged in their original subteam. But at the same time, we don’t want people sitting around at meetings doing nothing, because we have had issues with things getting destroyed, and parents get frustrated if students are just coming to meetings to play games. What do teams do with a large amount of inexperienced members, while still making sure they are engaged and trained?
First half of the season: prototype, prototype, prototype. (And build field elements if you have space)
Early “quick and dirty” prototyping should not take a huge amount of resources (and as long as everyone is looking out for general safety concerns) and should not take a huge amount of mentor/lead student time resources. Prototyping is great for mechanical and software (although the latter may require more robust prototypes). It is also good practice to “don’t get married to your idea” we are all on the same team, working towards the best bot. Even unused prototypes teach us all a lot and may guide other designs.
This allows you to explore a lot of situations on a mechanism and system integration/ architecture level. With 2022 as an example, experiment with all sorts of flywheel configurations, intakes, poopers… when combined in different ways what all that means for strategy and match play.
Late in the season focus on refinement, you may need to prune ideas (fully fleshed out mechanisms can get expensive) software gets a lot of time then to fine tune as well
My team is having some of our rookies and sophomores build a modified version of the Kitbot for drive practice and programming work. You would have to opt in and it’s not for every team, but could work for you guys.
I would say a great thing to do is have younger students work on simple bots that can help simulate gameplay. Maybe a heavy kitbot to practice defense or an everybot to practice against a popular design that will be seen during the season. These do cost a bit( a few hundred usually) but the experience gained is huge compared to the cost. If cost is no issue then building twin bots is always an option.
My team is fortunate enough to support building multiple robots. In 2023, we had 3-5 mentors, a few rotating veteran students, and 20-30 rookies working on kit bots. In addition, we had the rest of the team on competition and practice/beta robots. Mentors encourage veterans to mentor rookies while working on non-kit bots so students can choose what robot to work on.
Some things that give non-competing kit bots more purpose:
- Use those kit bots at off-season competitions as able
- Make robot repair kits for Everybot, Starter bot, etcetera to help teams with kit bots
- Iteration of kit bot design to improve performance
- Drive team practice using multiple bots
First, have an intensive off season training program in the fall. Get new students up to sufficient competency to contribute meaningfully. Second, build off season bots, as you’ve done, and use what parts you have. We copy other teams’ bots to spread the experience. Third, have your senior members become managers and reduce their hands on work. They gain some of the most important experience while transferring their knowledge. Fourth, be sure to add a scouting software system. That alone can use up many students. Fifth, increase outreach projects so students have more tasks in total.
Funnily enough, our team is one of those where our members like scouting a bit too much, idk why, considering I’ve heard a lot of…differing opinions on it from members of other teams, to put it lightly.
But overall, this is a really helpful list, thanks!
Thank you so much!! Our leads came up with the idea of building a ’base’ robot, one that we could, in theory, compete with, but is rough in terms of wiring, aesthetic, durability, etc, as our more senior members build a more sophisticated version of that bot. Have other teams done this before? If so, how did it go?
As a team in a similar situation, I’m glad you asked and I’m following along! We will be trying some of these ideas this year, so it’s nice to see them show up here.
I’ve thought about creating a scouting function, but we are usually in the last round of picks, so it’s not key for us. I suppose we could share data with other teams. Students would have to get it all started, we don’t have mentor resources to spare for it. Is that reasonable? Is it worth doing a light version?
When I see large teams my first thought is “mythical man-month” and my second thought is one of logistics and cost per student.
It helps that a lot of these teams some times have dozens of mentors and parents helping, but that’s a project management nightmare.
So actually, our team has actually done something to mediate this the last few years. At the FIM state champs in 2022, we hardcore scouted all of the matches in the DTE division. We didnt end up in the place we wanted to at the end of quals (in 18th I believe). But we had all of the scouting data with nothing to do with it, so we preceded to set up a QR code in our pit with a link to a spreadsheet of all of our data. This allowed elite teams to cross check their data with us, and teams that didnt scout to have accesss to data. It helps the FIRST community, and ended up getting us as a 2nd pick for the 3rd alliance, who ended up winning the DTE division! So even if you are in lower rankings, having concistent scouting and being able to share that data with others is fun, and brings the FIRST community together more
Our team is currently in the middle of that. We have about 15 mentors and a dedicated parent committee, but as our member population increased this year, it’s become a bigger project management task on the bot side for sure
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