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2013 FIRST Robotics Competition Kicks Off
theodp writes "Saturday, the 2013 FIRST Robotics Competition kicked off, and — much like the Pinewood Derby — mentoring by adult engineers there doesn't hurt one's chances of winning. So, any advice for 'ordinary' high schools going up against the likes of FIRST Robotics Teams sponsored and mentored by NASA? FIRST Robotics Team 254's Lab at NASA Ames Research Center, for instance, includes 'an 80% size practice field as well as a small machine shop, workspace, computer lab and meeting space.' Not surprisingly, Team 254 won the 2011 FIRST Championship." We took our camera to the Michigan FRC championships last year, and had a great time.
Get Craig Charles to present and maybe it'll be more of a hit.. Heck I'd watch it then :)
Any robotics competition is interesting - but why don't we hear more about them on slashdot? The last mention of a competition was last year ... Skills Canada has a similar, yearly competition and has included robotics as a category for quite some time (Up here, it's been going on since 1995).
... though the geographic restrictions may limit individual participation.
In fact, it looks like there are 26 different competitions that students can enter, per year
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
The first piece of advice: The point of the contest isn't to win, it's to have fun and learn stuff. Yes, just like in the pinewood derby, having dad build the thing means you're more likely to win the trophy; it also means you're less likely to win and have fun... So make sure that your mentors are mentoring, not doing the work for you.
The second piece of advice: NASA isn't the only place that has smart engineers. There are plenty of small engineering companies in the world; take a look around and find one! Even pretty small towns are likely to have some civil engineers or mechanical engineers...
Making sponsor relationships is a big deal, as their time does not count towards your budget. Expect to work long hours. Find a mech eng to help.
Most important thing? Let he kids do the work and have fun. Our mentor team probably could have had a robot built already, or close (4 pro programmers, a ME, a machinist, an EE) but we let the kids design and build, we teach software design, how to use the shop, and act as a safety team.
Dropping the kit of parts to the school thisAM
Go Fe Maidens 2265 and SciBorgs 1155
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Parent poster is what happens when you listen to the modern auto-tuned-to-hell pop-crap that is so popular today. You have lustuous desires for robots and household appliances. Go back to humping your toaster or vacuum.
I glanced at the PR stuff and was pleased to see its not a stereotypical "robot" = "homemade RC car with weapons destroys another homemade RC car with weapons". Apparently something about getting disks into goals, I assume as close as they can get to calling it Hockey without violating trademarks and patents. Does anyone know if its basically "homemade RC cars that play hockey" or are the robots autonomous? An autonomous robot competition would be more complicated, but much more interesting. The only autonomous competition I can remember is that "drive across the desert" thing from years back. Not that there's anything wrong with homemade RC cars.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Is there an open source platform that will contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars in hardware, software, and money to help stage the event?
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
You can use labview, java, C++, or python this year. Sure you still have to use NI's CompactRIO, but at least you don't have to use labview.
"So, any advice for 'ordinary' high schools going up against the likes of FIRST Robotics Teams sponsored and mentored by NASA?"
You need to think outside the normal rules of competition. Get to know the fundamentals behind the two trademarked FIRST terms are "Coopertition" and "Gracious Professionalism." There are always rookie teams going up against 22-year veteran teams.Try to work with, not compete against, the teams with significantly more resources than you have. First encourages teams to help each other out. It's not only about winning, it's about doing your best when the other teams are at theie very best.
I'm a mentor for a team in it's 7th year. It started with a few high school students building a "robot" in a garage with little adult mentor help. Now the team has grown to nearly 100 students and we are still struggling for resources. We have no lab, school teachers, meeting spaces or funding from the district. Our next goal is to have the school provide us a room and pay for buses to get our team to the competitions.
I was on a local team in high school which was sponsored by an engineering entity much larger than NASA. At the championship, the usual trophies/medals/etc are handed out, but more emphasis is placed on the awards for cooperation and community outreach. Our team was mentored by world class engineers, but the emphasis was always on giving back to the community and helping out other teams. While I was there, the mentors took turns making detailed, weekly posts about running a team and the process of getting your robot ready. As a team, we also mentored some of the smaller teams around us. I think we might have even helped start some teams.
The point, I guess, is that best thing you can do is seek help from other teams. They will probably not build your robot for you, but they will certainly help you with your process and teach you things. This is one of the most important parts of FIRST.
On our robotics team the mentors only mentor . The kids build from start to finish. They learn a tremendous amount about teamwork and design and engineering. Its all about learning and having fun.They only have a couple of competitions a year because that is all they can afford. The robots are built from scratch and the kids do an amazing job of designing them. It is wildly expensive to build and compete in these competitions that is where all the support (like NASA) comes into play.They get huge sums of money donated to them from these organizations which is awesome but if you don't have that backing its tough to compete against them. We can only go to 2-3 a year because of the cost to enter. The kids have a blast though so its worth it.
Getting mentors that have engineering or shop skills (and equipment) is important, but frequently overlooked or undervalued is getting a mentor that knows how to talk to kids and get them organized and working as a team. I'm sure there are plenty of engineers that can do that, though its not the most common set of soft skills in a highly technical person. A teacher or a coach that can help the kids break down the competition, prioritize, divide up tasks, help kids identify their strengths and weaknesses as individuals and as a team, set schedules and priorities, and constantly help the kids remember why they are there can go a long way towards a successful competition and teach really valuable life lessons that they are not as likely to get in the classroom at college.
4 years after entering with 759 I wish I could enter again with a team from my uni.
Two pieces:
1) FRC is about learning --- robotics is hard, take the small victories as best you can. If you happen to get to the point of dethroning the NASA kids then that's great.
2) Gracious Professionalism --- the FIRST ethos dictates that those kids who are working in privileged environments should be helping other teams to learn and grow.
Now -- now the heck do you build a lightweight frisbee tosser ---- we shall see what the kiddos come up with. Personally I think scaling the tower will be harder -- the devil is in the details since the rules are written to make it hard.
In my 4 years of robotics competitions, the one thing I've always witnessed is that Mechanical without failure always fucks over Computer Science & Electrical by giving them practically zero time to refine their code with testing.
The ways to mitigate this:
1. Mechanical should have a complete solid model assembly & bill of materials down to the lock washers before they make a single metal chip.
2. Mechanical should have as much manufacturing as possible done by machine shops and rapid prototyping outfits like Shapeways. Sponsorship's if necessary to finance this. Money = Labor and since you start with a fixed pool of both, hopefully you'll have enough savings from #1, to provide your labor with a force multiplier. Otherwise, get an attractive girl on your fundraising team. Show cleavage.
3. Electrical should work with mechanical to have their shit planned from a wire & cabling perspective in advance. To some extent, it would be nice to have a completed electrical block diagram before mechanical even starts. BatchPCB.com is slow and cheap if you have discipline. Otherwise, find fast turnaround board house. Try to replace as much of your logic and power distribution with a PCB. Expect it never to be completed but it will help you plan your electrical work.
4. Don't bury your fuse holders where you can't fit a child's fingers. Make your shit serviceable, but also do not blow your entire war-chest on connectors. Bolt on ring terminals and lugs are almost as fast as connects but significantly less expensive and way more reliable. If you cover your vehicle in cheap Molex connectors, expect to spend 2 weeks looking for an intermittent connection at some point.
5. Strain relief your solder joints and connectors or you can expect to spend 2 weeks looking for an intermittent connection at some point.
6. Computer science is fucked. Seriously, put your head between your knees and kiss it. You can pray and hope for Hardware In the Loop & Unit Testing but you are essentially 100% at the mercy of a team of High School grade Mechanical and Electrical Engineers to not make amateur mistakes and dump a halfway working pile of aluminum and zip ties in your lap 7 days before competition.
7. #6 is inevitable unless your team is 100% Asian with heavy parental involvement. Fear of Seppuku may get you up to 2 weeks of actual testing before competition. This means lots of bench testing, and hopefully a very good plant model. Centralize your variables and offsets where you can maintain them and comment that shit. If you can accommodate a change in wheel diameter you're doing well. If you can accommodate a change in computer vision gear you're doing great.
8. FIRST has so many rules the specifics of the competition are beyond me. All my shit was in college. Chief Delphi forums but take it with a grain of salt. Opinions are like assholes, and confidence does not equal good advice.
If you follow these guidelines well, you will have a huge upper-hand over a NASA sponsored team using the Waterfall Method+Monster Garage Approach. Keep in mind, the reason the NASA team kicks so much ass is because they probably work from an even better set of guidelines than I have made for you.
I'm a FIRST Robotics judge for one of their regional competitions. After looking at this year's game, it seems to me that there will be frisbees flying all over the place. This is my 2nd year judging. Any good questions I you all think I should ask the kids?
Out here the highschool team is pretty interesting and wins many competitions, though I haven't been out there. I know they have sponsorship from a couple of big engineering outfits, but it seems that they practice their work and learn quite a bit. http://www.robowranglers148.com/
Taking a que from most all human endeavors (sports, music, etc), it would seem that testing, prototyping and practice are key elements. You need lots of time, material, and a coach that fosters talent from the whole team. Depending on a few key players will only lead to short-term glory and frustration.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Having participated in FIRST myself during my high school years, our team was lead by a local University, 2 engineers from a locally based (but still large enough to be middling on the Fortune 500 list...) company, and in my first year, we won the championship in the early 2000s, and have since then won a few more times after I left.
It's an amazingly fun experience, and besides, as a HS student, this should be more of a learning experience for you. It's great to see the whole engineering process, from problem definition to solution implementation... including some of the work-place drama that goes on >_>
The object of the game (and I know it sounds cheezy) is not to win, its to learn. When I was a student, the mentors let US do the programming, designing, etc. While the robot wasn't as good as the adviser-bots; when your in the pit and YOU'RE working on the robot...well I wouldn't have traded it for anything in the world. You might not have a full practice field (hell I don't think we ever had the robot WORKING in time to practice anything!), but it really is fun no matter what place you finish in.
Now as an adviser, it drives me nuts when the students don't want to take the path I think is best. But FIRST is about experience, it shouldn't be a classroom where students sit down and watch engineers build things. Let the students make the mistakes (to an extent) and of course let them to ALL the work.
If your looking for good mentors, ask around the local college (if there is a engineering/technical minded college around your area). I know after I graduated from high school, I was eager to come back and work with the team as an mentor.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. -- Isaac Asimov