FIRST Mentor Opinions

I learned today that many FIRST Team Members are unfamiliar with sports idioms because many of them haven't or don't play organized sports, other than FIRST. We need to be aware of this and help bring these idioms and expressions to our teams so Team Members have the same references as their peers as they head off into the work force. What happened is one of the teams I mentor made it to playoffs and lost their Quarterfinal Matches after putting everything they had into the game. Their last match was a particularly brutal one in which their Alliance left many parts on the field, including a battery, an intake wheel, and a bumper. Back in the pits, I was proudly explaining that the Alliance "left everything on the field." (http://englishidiomsblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/leaving-it-all-on-field.html) One of the team members kept countering with their own expression. Each time I said they left everything on the field, this individual would reply with their expression. I...

FIRST is a sport. It was designed to have all aspects of sports to inspire a passion in Science and Technology.  There are many analogies between FIRST and other sports available to high school students. There are also several differences. In all the sports available, FIRST has the most overlap with auto racing.  Like auto racing, we have drivers who must operate the vehicle. We have mechanics who must repair damage to the vehicle. We have pits where tuning and repair must be done quickly before heading back onto the field.  Within auto racing, NASCAR, IndyCar, and Formula One only have a single person in the vehicle. In Rallying, there are two people working together to operate the vehicle and win the competition.  Rallying has a Driver, who is controlling the vehicle on the course. They also have a Co-driver, who is responsible for navigating and calling out what lies ahead, when to turn, the severity of the turn, and what obstacles to looks out for ( https://en.m....

At most FRC Regional Events, teams get 9 to 11 Qualifying Matches. Everyone there is trying to get teams the most number of matches possible. The Field Reset volunteers, the Team Queuing volunteers, the Referees, and the Field Technical volunteers are working as fast as they can to start the next match.  Teams have a huge influence over how quickly the next match can start. They can help the event by getting on the field and off the field quickly and safely. It is easy to do, if you plan for it. Today's reality is that most teams don't plan for this part of the competition. When entering the field, use the following procedure: Lift Cart Enter When leaving the field, use the following procedure: Exit Cart Gently Each event will set up their own traffic pattern for robots moving from Team Queuing to and from the field. The challenge is working with the gates on the same side of the field as the Scoring Table. There is no room to maneuver Robot Carts on this side of the field. Tea...

Bumpers are a critical part of the FRC robot. Bumpers serve as the jersey for the robots in competition. In sports like football and basketball, team members have a jersey for Home games and a different jersey for Away games. In FIRST, the robots wear a jersey for Red Alliance and a different jersey for Blue Alliance. The Bumpers also identify the player on the field. In sports like football and basketball, each player is assigned a number that is prominently displayed on their jersey. This helps the referees determine which player committed a foul. Even in the sport of auto racing, each team prominently displays their team number to help them be identified during a race, even as their sponsors change and the paint job on the car changes. Even with the criticality of the Bumpers to the game, teams often leave the bumper design and fabrication to the last minute. Many teams rush to finish their bumpers at the last minute and end up with a product that is less than their best. Today is r...

The 2021-2022 FTC Season Freight Frenzy had an uneven playing surface. The Barrier created a challenge to go around or go over.  There are lots of ways to approach this problem. Some teams investigated the Rocker-bogie suspension system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocker-bogie). There are two keys to this design. The first is that it steadies the vehicle body relative to the motion of the wheels and terrain.  The second is  that it allows travel over obstacles that are up to twice the diameter of the wheels. Teams did discover that creating a Rocker-bogie suspension is more difficult than it appears. I recommend starting with the Bogie Runt Rover kit (https://www.amazon.com/Actobotics-637162-Bogie-Runt-Rover/dp/B00UZMJ2BQ).  The kit is just the robot chassis. It can be controlled by any number of robot controllers, like an Arduino or Raspberry Pi. In 2021, in response to COVID-19, FIRST and WPI developed software libraries used with the Romi chassis and Raspberry ...

I'm not a fan of pneumatics on FRC robots. The advantage of pneumatics is force and speed. They create two-position linear motion for the robot. They require a lot of additional hardware and add several points of failure to the overall robot. My resistance to pneumatics is an overall cost-benefit analysis. I can't clear the benefit with the costs to overall reliability of the robot. A Linkage Mechanism can achieve the same motions that pneumatics can. I think one of the reasons that teams keep selecting for pneumatics is because they don't include linkages as an option in their trade studies. And the reason linkage mechanisms are not considered during trade studies is because teams have little to no experience with linkages. As World Championships for the 2022 season approach, we need to start thinking about project for the Internal Research and Development (IRAD) Season (from Graduation to First Day of School). The IRAD Season is the opportunity to gain experience in syste...

This post is about For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Tech Challenge (FTS) Blocks Programming. More information about FTC is available at https://firstinspires.org. Most teams start their FTC programming using OnBot Blocks. This post is about using a motor with an encoder to move to a set position and hold the position. This approach is most common when moving a manipulator into position to gather Game Pieces or deliver Game Pieces. This can also be used in an Autonomous OpMode to drive the robot to a specific position. (Note that Mecanum Wheels slip by design. Using Run to Position with Mecanum Wheels will have different results every time it is run.) Several teams developed an arm manipulator for the 2021-2022 Freight Frenzy presented by Raytheon game. This allowed the robot to pick up Freight from the floor and place it at any level of the Alliance Specific Shipping Hub. (Details on the 2021-2022 Freight Frenzy game are available at https://www.youtube...