2019 was my first year as a student in the FRC program. When I first joined my team, I had no previous experience in FIRST or any other robot program. However, I had done a lot of video work on my own (particularly in the way of Visual FX/CGI). Therefore, an opportunity to use my passion for video for something related to my newfound robot addiction was very exciting. I joined a bit too late to set up a proper robot reveal my first year, but I was greatly hoping to have a chance this year (2020). Unfortunately, the new stop build day rules (i.e. no stop build day), have me concerned about the prudence of this action, and the new strategies teams may use in the light of this massive rule change make me wonder if reveal videos are obsolete. The following are my concerns:
With no hard endpoint to the build process, teams may not have a completed robot until very near their first event, leaving no time for a video.
This new rule promotes the culture of modularity more than ever in FIRST history. Will teams want to show off a robot knowing it may very well undergo massive changes?
Will teams want to share their ideas for all to see knowing that opponents, with the freedom to iterate to their heart’s content, could easily, well, steal them?
I’m sure team media will still exist, but I will be sad if this is the last time robots are freely showcased with all the grandeur of previous years.
I expect the reveal videos to move back a week or two, but not disappear. Indeed, some teams may do multiple reveals, one for each event in which they compete.
Will teams want to share their ideas for all to see knowing that opponents, with the freedom to iterate to their heart’s content, could easily, well, steal them?
There are some teams who document everything they do in the build season and publish it as its being done. This not only provides inspiration to other teams, other people can give them feedback about their work so they can work more efficiently and build a better robot
A great example of a team like this is team 95
This new rule promotes the culture of modularity more than ever in FIRST history. Will teams want to show off a robot knowing it may very well undergo massive changes?
There are teams that in the past published multiple video reveals of their robot as they developed new features and capabilities even between competition events.
With no hard endpoint to the build process, teams may not have a completed robot until very near their first event, leaving no time for a video.
Each team should set their own schedule before the build season and plan how much time to allocate to different tasks like reading and discussing the rules, designing, building, programming and training on the robot. My team allocated a few days for shooting a reveal video usually near the end of the build season.
Remember that this season you have more time with the robot than in previous years so I see no reason to allocate some time for a reveal video
We are open during build season and will have video of our robot practicing, etc but we will likely focus on a better recap video of our first event instead of a fully produced reveal video.
Its difficult to find time to do a reveal video and, in spite of more time allotted this year, I doubt it will be used for video. Most teams struggle to get the bot done on time as it is.
I think we can expect reveals to come out shortly before events rather than on bag week. Teams that routinely do them will still make great videos, they just won’t want their secret sauce to be known with enough time to try and copy it.
We usually work on our robot in the afternoon until the night. That means the robot is free in the day to shoot a reveal video. The students that work on the reveal video take a day off from school to do it. We planned this ahead of time so it wouldn’t interfere with important school things or the building process of the robot
Im sure you can try to do someting similar to get some time to do it
Sure we have had “some fixing” to do in the event in all the years I were on my team,
But there is a huge difference between a robot that is so unfunctional that you can’t even film a reveal video of it and a robot that has some more things to work on in the event like tensioning belts or adding a small sensor
Anyway, I have seen some small teams that didnt have time to film a video so they filmed the robot during the event and released that
So make multiple reveal videos. One per event, maybe?
It’s a lot harder to copy something that this statement makes it sound like. Teams with something highly unusual will probably keep it under wraps… but they always have. The majority of teams can go ahead and post, resting sure in the knowledge that the time investment to perfect a mechanism is going to exceed the available time their competition has to try to copy and perfect what they built.
The big question is really about timing. And that comes down to a team’s purpose for making a reveal video. What impact do you want the video to have? Who do you want it to reach? What do you want people to walk away thinking after they see it? Being able to clearly state why you want to make a reveal video will guide you towards the best time to release it.
They won’t be dead, but they’ll definitely go down in quantity, and be spread enough that big “events” like premier night will suffer. More will take place pre-champs than pre-week 1. See VRC for what the reveal landscape might look like.
I just hope we don’t lose some marquee reveals from teams I expect to take full advantage of the ability to totally redesign their robot mid-season, like 118/148.
Exactly. I love to see the grand reveal, but its just not realistic, especially for 2020. Even last year 148 changed their climb and 254’s sort of reveal got outdated as soon as it was released.