1. Understanding the Robot Game

This exercise is designed to be completed using a mind map and spreadsheet applications, Share your ideas on Slack

Understand Your Team

You may want to use a spreadsheet to track all these questions

    1. Evaluate how many students you have
      1. How many fully invested students
      2. How many half invested
      3. How many non invested
      4. Does anyone have any vacation or leave scheduled during the build?
    2. Evaluate where everyone's skills are (at kickoff)
      1. Who has done FRC/FTC Before?
        1. FRC/FTC Electronics?
        2. FRC/FTC Pneumatics?
        3. FRC/FTC Programming?
      2. Who is good with CAD?
        1. Who wants to do CAD?
        2. Who wants to be better at CAD?
      3. What tools have people been trained on/ have experience with?
        1. is any tool missing?
        2. Who has been trained on ALL the tools?
        3. Who has experience on ALL the tools?
      4. Are there any special skills or abilities or experiences?
      5. Who is a leader?
        1. Who shows leadership potential (understudy/sub group leader?)
      6. Who can take directions?
      7. Who needs direction?

Watch Strategic Design

    • This takes an hour and is worth every moment

Read the Rules

    1. To understanding the game you need to understand the rules, and to understand the rules you need to read the rules.
    2. Then once your done read the rules again,
    3. Then read the rules with a group.

Understand what winning means

    1. Is it max point accumulation over many rounds?
    2. Win loss ratio?
    3. Coorpartition?
    4. How do Ranking Points Work?
    5. How does Ranking Work?
    6. What is a Top Alliance?
    7. What is a Top Robot?
    8. What does a Top Robot Want?
    9. Do points reset in the finals? Semifinals?
    10. Does winning in the finals change from winning in the seeding?
    11. Write down the exact step by step way that you "win" the competition.

Break down every scoring opportunity

    1. You need to fully break down each and every scoring opportunity( points) that is available in the game,
    2. Break each opportunity down to the individual actions necessary to score the points and
    3. Determine if the points are repeatable, or not, or has a max number of repetitions
    4. Is this a cycle based game? the more you can do an action the better?
    5. Is this a speed based game? the faster you can do a single(or limited amount) of actions the better?
    6. If it is a 0 sum game taking away 2 points from the opposition is the same as scoring 2 points for yourself

Break down each action needed for points

*you don't build a chassis to drive the robot around, you build a chassis to drive game pieces around*

    1. How much time does each action take?
    2. How many degrees of freedom for each action take?
    3. How many axis of rotation does it take to preform an action?
    4. Some point actions over lap what are the overlapping actions
    5. How much time does it take to preform each action (drive from point A-B, pick up item C, drive from point B-A, etc)
    6. Can you preform some actions in parallel?
    7. Place all these actions in a table with the number of degrees of freedom, time it takes to preform ,and the points associated with preforming (design matrix)
    8. Try to determine "cheep" points( minimum actions for some points) and "expensive" points (lots of complex actions for some points)

Break down the game flow

    1. Identify what happens in the set up phase
      1. What is random on the field?
        1. random field orientation?
        2. random light?
        3. random auton goal?
      2. How many game objects can you start with
      3. Is there a difference between the game objects
      4. How are you allowed to put your robot?
      5. How are you allowed to put game pieces?
    2. Identify what happens in the Auton Phase
      1. High/Low Scoring?
      2. Multi auton?
      3. can you win with auton alone? ( FRC2015)
      4. ranking points?
    3. Identify what happens in the Teleop Phase
      1. are their sub phases for the Teleop Phase? early/late game?
      2. what is the goal of the first part of the game
      3. High/Low Scoring?
    4. What is the end game?
      1. High/Low Bonus?
      2. Can you win with end game alone? (FRC2011, FRC2016, FRC2019)
      3. Ranking point?

Understand the playing field

    1. Build the playing field
    2. Are there places you can get stuck in?
    3. What are all clearances for fully traversing the field?
    4. what are all the clearances for fully traversing the scoring areas of the field?
    5. Are there places you will come in to contact with other robots?
      1. How often will you be there?
      2. How often do you expect defense to be used against you?
      3. Can you use defense to your benefit?
    6. Are their places you can block off for yourself
    7. Are there places you can drive fast? slow?
    8. Color code the map of the field

Understand the game pieces

    1. Play with the game pieces
    2. How much does each piece weigh
    3. How hard are they to manipulate
      1. can you throw them, drag them, bounce them.
    4. How many can you have on your robot at one time? ( is this limited in the rules or physical dimensions)
    5. How many can you have in your scoring area at one time? ( is this limited in the rules or physical dimensions)