With the end of stop build day, how will this affect Elite teams and will they continue to build 2-3 full scale robots?
Two definitely, three unlikely.
For elite teams, yes. For mid-range teams that build 2… that’s a lot more up in the air. My team was already working on increasing our project management tracking for this season, and since the announcement we’ve been working to improve our system to help us identify whether or not we want to continue to build 2 robots. The decision is very much up in the air right now, and probably won’t be made until next fall, when the new leadership team has a chance to digest our tracking data from this year. And then we’ll need to do similar tracking next year to see if we made the right decision, and iterate the following year. It’s definitely a process!
Some will some won’t. We will probably see some elite teams move to one robot with a second set of major assemblies kept as spares or only used during practice. There won’t be nearly as much of a need to keep two robots running simultaneously and the cost of an entire second set of speed controllers and electronics is quite a significant cost compared to the rest of the robot.
The other thing we might see more of is:
Build one robot -> Tune/learn/iterate -> Build iterated second robot -> Disassemble first robot -> Build spares from parts of the first robot.
Absolutely.
I can’t imagine putting all that wear and tear on our comp bot. As it is now our practice robot is beat to death by the end of the season and by the time IRI comes around our comp bot is in need of much repairs.
Teams which only use the practice robot after bag may drop to one, but I think this is a minority of teams building two robots.
3946 began making a second robot to take advantage of the weeks between bag and competition, but quickly integrated the idea of having two robots into the build process - once drive practice begins, drive A and improve B. then drive B and improve A. No bag likely means that this two-robot process will continue a few weeks longer, but will remove (or at least greatly reduce) the temptation to build a third robot.
- One for development and programming, and the other for the drivers to practice on. Decision as to which is the actual “comp” bot will happen on the last day after we see which one functions the best.
Yes, here are my 4 most likely scenarios why.
1.) Give the programming team a dedicated bot for tuning auto mode.
2.) Two opportunities to test various ways to play a game and how they interact together to simulate alliance possibilities.
3.) Teams who have the money parallel pathing two full designs longer and choosing which bot to bring the night before the competition.
4.) In several cases Elites will build an early season robot and a late season robot to keep their best ideas under wraps while working things out. They will compete with a robot designed to qualify for a district championship or championship at an early event where the competition won’t have had time to clone all the best designs and save the best for Champs if think they don’t need to bring out the kitchen sink any earlier.
I think some will probably stop building 2 robots for the sake of not overdoing themselves but I don’t think many will. I think it will be business as usual for most teams. No Bag 2020 at least gives a majority of teams the chance to debug and practice with their robot.
Our team just built 2 robots for the first time last season, and we gained a lot from it.
We’re doing it again this year, but just slightly different in that certain things like the drivetrain will be done for our practice robot before the season starts if the gain is generic enough to use a standard base. If so we just slap the wheels we want on, and move on to the next challenge. We will just have a kick-start in that area we hope. I assume moving forward there will always be some kind of second robot for our programmers to use, and we will do a lot of iterating on our main robot after a certain point. Our practice robot this season was used all the way up til GACMP. I don’t know if that will be the case come 2020.
We’ll probably just build more spares that are ready to easily swap in but only have one complete robot. The amount of money we’ll save on motor controllers & electronics will be fantastic.
I fully expect the powerhouses to build 2 complete robots still though, down from 3.
/thread
we put around ~100 hours of abuse on our practice 'bot during the competition season.
compare this to the ~4 hours of abuse the competition robot saw in 87 official matches.
pretty easy math imo.
A lot to be said for having 2 identical robots. Building 2 doesn’t take that much longer than one since the design decisions and head scratching is done for the first one. It means you can keep the hours on the competition bot low, and let the drivers beat up the practice bot. You want to practice how you play, and your comp bot to able finish every match.
While I don’t have any special knowledge, I suspect there will be a total weight limit on robot+non cots spare in 1920 and beyond. If for nothing else to keep the Zebras from bringing spares that look like a robot. (Of course they will probably build 2 really lite robots just to confound the RIs)
We are not elite but we are above average. 
The 2020 change will keep us from moving to three robots. Probably still need two, so programming and drive teams can play nice together while build team supports both.
Yes. That. For all those reasons.
Wouldn’t it be easier to just have replacement gears/other parts to drop in when needed? Usually when I buy an expensive thing, I use it and maintain it to keep it working. I don’t just buy two of them in case the first one wears out.
You must have a lot of people and space to do both concurrently!
We’ve had to build two robots before so we have a platform to continue development between bag day and regionals, but there’s no reason I would ever want to build two with the bag restrictions lifted. Instead of wasting two weeks of manual labor to build a second robot we could be doing many other things. The man-hours sunk into building the second robot would exceed the man-hours gained from owning a second robot.
IMHO the bigger question is how many Teams will build an entirely new ‘Bot for Champs. Combining all the best designs and ideas into one. Imagine two sets of Lockdowns completing against each on Einstein.
As for us and other teams on the district system, we don’t qualify for champs until the district championship. The robot is in a crate pretty much the Tues after the event ends. Not really a lot of time to do anything to the robot. Of course the door is open to building a championship specific robot. But that has been done by others even with the bag and tag rules.
I suspect there will be rules prohibiting this, but we shall see. I’d be ok with a couple of those anti-removal stickers being placed on your robot in key locations to prove that the robot you start with is (at least partially) the robot you finished with. This would also prevent teams from swapping in their practice bot if something major fails on the competition bot between competitions (or even during!).
I’d hate to see a situation where a team with the money and resources to do so largely copied another robot. I understand that this goes on in some of the other smaller robot competitions where the time and money investment to copy is less. I suspect there would be a very negative reaction if a “copy” was to beat the original robot.
Some people will claim that the team with the original robot had more time to understand, debug, and program their version and so they should naturally outperform a copy. But I don’t see that as a valid counter-argument. Wholesale copying should be disallowed, somehow.
I do believe some will, because say if they want to do some test/upgrade, you want to do it on a spare robot just to see if it work perfectly.