FIRST Robotics Competition Blog

PLEASE do conduct a wide-ranging survey of the FRC mentors to see how they feel about this new no-stop-date plan. Some that I that I know are very unhappy with the idea. There are potentially many issues, including (1) Less time for students to pursue other school programs,  (2) The impact on mentors, many with extremely busy schedules and other commitments and (3) The HUGE advantage to the highly-supported top-teams which will make it nearly impossible for smaller or less experience schools to compete on an equal footing.

Thank you for all your great work for FIRST, and I hope it can continue on an equitable and balanced basis. PLEASE SURVEY THE MENTORS, they are the BEST barometer as where this program should go.

--Dan Sternglass, 12-year mentor

I appreciate both plans by not changing this years schedule and removing stop build in the future. My Ski Trip between Stop Build and the first event is still on!!. When planning the rule changes for next year, Please consider the effect on the inspection process. Inspectors could in the past rely on previous events inspections to repair violations to rules for future events. I would suggest additional prescriptive rules for teams and inspectors to follow and leverage pre-event inspections. 

With or without stop build day there will never be a level playing field. Some teams will always be better funded and resourced than other teams, and they will have an advantage regardless. I do understand the concern over time commitment, but each team needs to decide for themselves how much time they are willing to commit. The highest performing teams don't stop at 6 weeks so I don't see how this will be a big advantage for them. I do see it being a big advantage for teams who can't get a functioning robot done in 6 weeks. I also look forward to seeing even more impressive autonomous performance. As for stealing ideas, that already goes on in FIRST and in life, might as well get used to it. I hope it doesn't stop people from discussing their designs, it won't stop me. Anyway, I look forward to the change and seeing even more impressive performance on the field! 

We are a third year team, and in this time, I have had 4 out of 6 mentors withdrew from the program due the length of the current build season.  6 weeks build is already long for many mentors.  If you retire Stop Build, I afraid young teams like mine will not be around beyond 2019.  It is already difficult to get mentors for six weeks. Now to ask them to volunteer for up to 12 weeks will be an enormous challenge.  As a teacher for 13 years, I know that students only work when they know there's a hard deadline and when they know that time's not on their side.  I have rarely seen students perform better because they have more time.  More often, they'll squander the time, believing they have a lot of time, and produce poor results in the end.  

The 6 weeks build timeline is something that my students are proud to tell new sponsors and is something that gives great credibility to the FRC program.

Please reconsider and don't retire the Stop Build Day.

I do not support this decision. A wise man once told me: "schools do not teach students how to deal with stress". For the 13 years I've mentored in the FRC, I saw this program as an opportunity to allow my staff to help guide the students with aggressive timing when designing, fabricating, debugging, etc. I use this program to help the students get a 'taste of the real world' where deadlines must be met. I see this move as a detriment to providing guidance for students in their future careers.

As for my team in 2020, I will be promoting a "stop build day".

Are we missing the point? Small teams, large teams - who gets the most benefit from FIRST? I mentor a team that has gone from 18 students to 5 students to 8 students since I started in 2013. Our students pride themselves on living the First Core Values, Gracious Professionalism and Cooperatition. We have won safety awards, Spirit awards, Last year our 8 students prepared a Chairman’s award presentation, an Entraprenaurship award presentation and nominated a mentor for an award. The year before they started an antic sexual harassment campaign in the school. And oh by the way, Built a robot that got into the finals of their last competition. The awards earned that they prize more were a Judges award for their efforts and the way that they dealt graciously with challenges and breakdowns with our robot. In our second competition four of our team spent the morning before their first competition helping a rookie team gat a robot uplifted to compete. During competition after repairing damage caused by that team to our robot our most experienced builder went back over to help the rookies get their robot fixed. We are most proud of the Gracious Professionalism award. I will mentor this team a long as I can and the students want to participate because of the life values developed and the fun I’m having. Nothing to do with how many competitions we win. Do what you will with build season, We’ll bring our $1200 robot to competition and continue to help others practice Gracious professionalism and cooperation on.

Would a later kickoff (mid January?) solve some of the concerns?

With your decision you forgot the international teams completely. We have to send the robot to a foreign country and the timetable just worked perfect. After the stop building day we shipped the robot and it was there on time. So the international teams will be left with the 6 weeks but not the US team. No fun anymore because the international teams don’t have the same conditions.

If you really retire the stop-build-day. It wouldn‘t be fair anymore. Did you think about the international teams? They have to ship it oversea. They have 6-7 weeks, but other teams maybe have 12 weeks or even more...

If a team goes to week 1 competition and another in week 3, they can make changes and additions to the robot? This is so unfair to small teams with little funding. If they go to week 1 and no other competition, they can't improve their chances of getting to worlds. This seems to be a decision pushed through by large well funded teams who frequently win, their mentors are usually part of FRC management. How about a limit on how much they can spend on a robot if they're going to get more time. Or at least, no additions after 1st competition. At least, FRC should put teams in Divisions based on how long they have been a tezm and how many wins they have had. This would put teams of equal experience together. Some teams win or place top every year and the struggling teams feel they have little chance. Their goal is just to improve from prior years.

We're a new team that was recently founded in Beijing, China and we're finding that the stop build day severely limits our build season. This is especially the case because we have our Chinese New Year Holidays where most of China shuts down to celebrate the holiday (which is deeply rooted in tradition). As such, it is extremely disruptive to our operations. Is there any way of applying for a 1 week extension to this season's Stop Build Day? It seems somewhat unfair that we are forced by circumstances to give up a whole one to two weeks of our build season while others maintain their 6 week seasons.

Not sure if this has been covered yet, however I have som issues with being an international team shipping a robot to champs. As an Australian team, we must send our robot by the end of week three to have our robot arrive to champs in time. This inherently puts us way behind any team that is within easy travel proximity of champs, moreso than it does already with food, housing and transport etc. What is going to uphold this fairness, or is it something foreign firsters will just have to suffer through being 4/5 weeks disadvantaged of other teams?

 

I mentor a 2nd year team, and we have been pulling many nights to 9-10pm, plus working weekends, holidays, snow days, etc. It is taxing on the kids, mentors, and mentors families. This is supposed to be fun, but being away from my family and working nearly an entire school day AFTER school ends is not my definition "fun." I hope that getting rid of the stop build day will benefit students and mentors. I know it will benefit us, and will allow us to actually go home and see our families. 

I just learned of this new rule today and even though I don’t participate in the FRC program I can speak to burnout and team objectives.  Full transparency, I run VEX teams so I won’t pretend to know the specific issues FRC or FTC brings BUT our season begins in the summer(pre-planning and goal setting) and, if we’re lucky, runs to the end of April at Worlds. Honestly, that amount of time provides ample opportunities for me to “teach” the kids programming concepts, build techniques and game strategy and I can’t wait until the new season begins. Are we tired, sure, but I feel much better knowing that the kids learned something instead of how to become stressed. For us, the whole season is an improvement and learning session.  I say wait and see how it will all work out. If keeping a self imposed 6 week grind works then keep doing it.  Ultimately the goal here is to have FUN and not make stressed out kids, parents and mentors.  Life will do that all on its own. 

Many comments above center on the leveling of the playing field between teams.  When are we going to require that the robots have a majority of student built content?  Teams that have outside help from "sponsors" or where the mentors essentially design and build the robot seems like areas we should explore.  This change opens the door for more student involvement by eliminating the time pressures of the stop build date.  Is headquarters discussing this aspect?

Numerous rules were predicated on the original bag rules.  It is critical to understand how these are changed. 

Where will we be able to see this document?

When will we be able to see this document?

At competitions, teams are given 3 days to compete with the first day giving teams a chance to work on/repair robots before the qualifying rounds. Will this stay the same without the stop build day or will something different take place?