Robot in 3 days (Ri3d)

For other posts about the 2014 FIRST conference, see the index page.  (written on my iPad; please excuse typos)

General

• Goal was to mentor many teams without it taking 6 weeks or more
• Handle most important parts of game
• “house rules” –  Modify rules to allow for a mostly FIRST legal robot and substitute parts, skip bumpers, etc
• Last year, one group in Florida. Expanded this year to have more groups
• Spend a lot of time preparing so can use 3 days well .- have parts organized, order stock of sheet metal, wood, etc
• Do electronics mockup so not waiting until end
• Good debate on chiefdelphi about whether giving away too much or inspiring teams to do more. Goal is to inspire less strong teams.
• Design within your resources. Working in parallel

What’s next

•  try to expand network of teams involved
• advise teams not to release CAD of entire robot
• prototypes not just full robot
• might release videos later in the week so can edit

Showed video of failures. (Good to show happens to the experienced)

My impressions:

Very entertaining. Andy baker had good interjections as did the guy next to him (don’t remember name). Good mediause. Slides, video, comments. Clearly Andy hadn’t seen the deck in advance, but that was entertaining.