FIRST Robotics Competition Blog

While I completely understand the motivation behind the six week build cycle, this is a welcome change for those of us that could only afford to build one robot. 

Please reconsider the ending of build day in the 2019 season. Seniors this year should have the opportunity to benefit from the same that students starting in 2020 will experience.

so how is this going to be fair for teams going to week 0 or 1 competitions vs. teams in the later competitions, because they will have a significant amount of time more to make things like autos and more attachments and can be the difference of causing a team to go to  worlds vs not. Also not to mention that late competitions are going to be significantly more competitive by nature. Maybe a better solution to deal with holidays/ teams with lack of funding/ extreme weather conditions is that if need be they can extend their build season to match the equivalent of 6 weeks of work while using the same concept as a bag lock up form to track it all. And teams lacking reasoned can have an extra week or something of that nature, but this makes the competition completely unfair, not to mention the 6 week time crunch is half the fun, students get to know their team as a second family, we have a feeling of necessity in what we do, it makes us think/work hard, and it teaches us how to meet deadlines. It also as a whole makes the origins action look less impressive to outside people. Finally the teams that have a second robot are at an advantage but not as big of one as people think, code can change for us, changing a physical part on a robot is rare and difficult to accomplish realistically. Overall this seems like a major part of what makes FIRST, FIRST, is now gone with this change, it’s less of a “sport for the mind” because this makes it less difficult for week 8 teams vs Week 0.

Also copying is going to be a MAJOR issue now, because teams can show up to a week 1 comp, take pictures and measurements, then go home, make an exact copy but maybe improve some of its downfalls, then the team that was copied now feels cheated and the team that copied had to do little to no work, teams won’t interact as much because they don’t want to be copied, and the division of teams due to resources will get worse because they will just make a robot that has things any normal shop wont have capability of making, so now you have super good teams with even more expensive and fancy robots and the limited teams won’t be able to do anything and they will stay about at the point they are at...

 

If it comes to 2020, and you go through the season and find it was not as successful as you expected do you foresee going back to Stop Build Day? 

If you won't have stop-build-day, how are you planning to stop teams from building an entirely new robot between two competitions, or "copying" the robot of a different team?

Western Australia says hip hip hooralia!

 

By having a stop build day you give everyone an equal amount of time to build their machine.  This made it fair to all.  The concern was teams closer to the competition would have more time to build and need less time to ship than teams further away, hence giving them an advantage.  A stop build day gives everyone the exact same amount of time to build their competition machine.  

But like so many of the poor decisions FIRST has made my lone voice in the wilderness will go unheard or unheeded. 

For those who think that the retirement of stop build day is the end of fairness, I would respond that the competition has never been perfectly fair. Some regions have much more inherent expertise in electromechanical systems and robotics, providing a richer source of mentors. The northern tier is blessed with snow days, meaning we almost always lose a few days to weather. International teams often have fewer sources of parts and outrageous shipping costs. Some local economies are booming so more money is available. There will always be "unfair" advantages.

This could be the Kool Aid that does FIRST in. From a former volunteer, coach and team lead mentor, I believe the newly allocated time infringes too much on callings outside of FIRST. I hope I am wrong but there needs to be a point where we do not get addicted to this! Remember its suppose to be only a game. Go back to 6 weeks and take what you've got at that point to competition (teams will understand when told "it is what it is"). Let people have their evenings and spring(s) back and allow them to spend time at home.

Will you have a bagging between competitions?

Eliminating stop build date is an excellent decision. For far too long, allowing students to develop practice and knowledge in software programming was being short changed by the stop build rule. It is nearly impossible to develop embedded system software without access to the hardware. This will give students an opportunity to nurture this critical skill. Isn't that what FIRST is supposed to be about?

For far too long, we have had teams show up at competitions with robots that don't even move during autonomous operation. Or were severely limited in what they could do for autonomous. Teams will now have the opportunity to make something great happen. What would you rather see at a competition? Robots static during autonomous mode, or able to do something impressive?
 

This change is very concerning for my team.  We are a very cash strapped team that can only compete in one event per year, unless we get to worlds.  This economic issue means we also can only compete in the regional nearest to us which is generally a week one event.  By removing Stop Build Day, you have given those teams that have better funding the ability to keep building for their competitions, no matter how many competitions they attend or when those events are. Also, Stop Build Day produced a level of fairness as EVERYONE has the same amount of time between start and stop.  For those that say weather issues cut time for some teams, this is true.  Our team lost as many as 8 days the past two seasons.  However, we still completed our build by bag day.  I truly fear this change will drive many smaller teams out of FIRST and to other robotics competitions due to creating an even easier path to success for better funded teams.

My friends pointed out that during the 6 week building period it didn't feel like we were competing against the teams. It felt like the teams were all competing against the clock together. I strongly believe that this change does not allow for equal opportunity. There were teams that built fantastic robots in that time period. I do believe having longer to build is a great idea. I always wish I could've gotten more time, however I think that teams should all have the same amount of time. Coming from the east side of the state where we didn't have all the resources the west side did, so I feel that taking away the stop build date will put smaller teams with less resources at a larger disadvantage than they already had before.

Why can't we start end build day this season? I feel like it would give the 2019 seniors a new experience, and it would allow many teams to save more money.

 

We already have an 8 month build season for FIRST Tech Challenge.  Last year, we spent every second of that 8 months refining and designing one of the best robots in the world!  But, I've always said there was a genius to the 6 week build period in that FRC valued the balance of School and Robot building by making the season so short. Fundraise in the fall, makes your strategic plans and execute it for 6 weeks.  Then, go have fun at some regionals and see how you did.  Now, FRC will be spending 14 hour days in the robot room for 4 months. It's different for a small group of up to 15 FTC students to make that kind of commitment compared to up to 75 FRC students doing this.  This is going to upset a lot of people.

I agree the issues this creates are larger than what we are trying to fix. I do like the idea of extending build time to get a full six weeks using the lockout form for weather issues. We are a mentoring organization at heart and almost never in industry do I get all the time and funds that I need. That is not being unfair to anybody, that is reality. This change seems to suggest the primary goal of our organization is to have a fair robot competition when I think it is to mentor students in STEM and teach them about our jobs in the real world.

Although I understand the reasoning for the change in the build time bag and tag rules, it does as posted in previous comments, open the door to other situations just as complicated. Better funded teams will always have an advantage, either by being able to build clones, participating in multiple competitions, etc.  The issue that concerns me the most is by extending the build timeline, what impact is it going to have on the mentors?  For example, all of our mentor's are volunteers and all but one of our mentor's for our team work outside of the school, so we need to meet in the evenings.  The six week timeline means that we can meet three to four times per week for a limited amount of time and still be able to have some home life.  It is my belief that by extending the build time line, mentor burnout is a real possibility and needs to be considered, especially since many teams have real difficulties in getting and keeping mentors in first place.

vele thak tou