Coaches Survival Guide
Presenter notes in blue.
2011 BEST National Conference
Prepared by: David Kwast of Cowtown BEST
Purpose
This is presentation draws on what has
worked for me as a garage-based team that
met primarily on evenings and weekends.
What works for your team will vary (even from
year to year). A good resource to look at is
the Coaches Survival Guide posted on the
bestInc.org web site.
The focus of this presentation is about
increasing the odds that you will have a
successful team.
• What is Success?
– Winning?
– Learning?
– Participation?
What is your philosophy? You want
the students to have a positive
experience.
• The Key to Being Successful is having a Plan
– The overarching challenge to the BEST competition is time
Outline
• Season Walkthrough
• Must Do Tasks
Season Walkthrough
• Pre-Kickoff
– review the engineering process
– review past competitions and designs
– line up help (parents/mentors/alumni)
– shop training and safety
– establish meeting time availability
– plan a preliminary meeting schedule
Do everything possible that can be done
prior to the Kickoff Event.
Season Walkthrough
Try to do as
much
instruction
as possible
before the
season
kicks off
This a goal to shoot for. It is
unlikely that you will be so prepared
that teaching isn’t required during
the season.
Teaching
During the
season the
students
should just
be executing
Season Walkthrough
• Post Kickoff Meeting (same day)
– handout copies of the game specific rules
– discuss game and possible strategies
– define what the robot should do
• must haves
• good to haves
Make sure that everyone understands the
problems to be solved and the issues to
be considered. Solutions are not
entertained at this time.
An okay idea done well is
much better than a great
idea done poorly.
Season Walkthrough
• Brainstorming
– adult led will go faster
Often bits and pieces from old
– record everything
ideas get used later on.
• Evaluation
– does everyone understand the idea
– is the idea feasible
– discuss pros and cons Combine/sort/group as desired.
• Multi-voting
– cull the herd to a few good ideas
• Decision Matrix
– make sure that something related to ease of
fabrication gets proper weighting here
Season Walkthrough
Typically three main build teams.
Base, arm and effectors.
• Form Build teams
– consider students’ technical skills
– consider students’ leadership abilities
• Build Mockups or Partial Assemblies
– proof of concept
• cardboard is your friend
– fabrication refinement
• maybe it can be made out of cardboard
The building of mockups often
helps the students discover
simpler ways to build things.
Season Walkthrough
• Build the Robot
– use
standard designs as appropriate
• wheel mounts, servo mounts, couplings
Refining standard designs is
a good off-season activity.
– make students explain and draw what they are
going to build before allowing them to proceed
– encourage simple design (ask questions)
– completing a bad component design may be the
best path forward
• allows overall team progress
– be directive when appropriate
• don’t allow student/s to remain stuck
– ask questions
– present options
The students still must make
the decision of what they are
going to do.
Season Walkthrough
• Practice
– modify an old robot for practice
– make a list of items to fix (or improve) and rank
them
– any refinements to the robot should be planned
such that they do not affect practicing
– practice everything
Season Walkthrough
• Competition
– have a checklist if necessary
– replacement modules/parts (within kit
limitations)
– specific person assigned to charge the batteries
is their game strategy? Will it
– scout the other teams What
alter your strategy? Note good
machine design items.
Must Do Items
• Get the Actual Game Pieces
– This is the only way to verify the behavior between
the game pieces and the robot
• Build a Portion of the Game Field
– Essential for practicing
– Small details of the field can prove to be very
significant
• Have a Complete Functioning Robot by Mall Day
– A full week to practice and find/correct problems is
invaluable
Coach’s Personal Milestones
for the Team
Week 1 – Design Selected
Week 3 – Have a Drivable Base (if it has wheels …)
Week 5 – Fully Functioning and Complete Robot
These are the milestones that I try
to have my teams achieve. I
imagine teams that are proficient at
building could spend more time in
the design phase.
Design Tips
• Assume robot-to-robot contact if you share the same field
area
• Encourage failsafe design features (belt and suspenders)
• Avoid a design that stalls out a motor
• Use standard designs when possible
–
–
–
–
wheel hubs
couplings
motor mounts
servo mounts
Backup Slides
(hyperlinked to the main presentation)
Schedule Example
2007 Team Meeting and Build Hours
Week
Sun
Mon
Tue
Wed
0
1
1.5
2
2
2
3
2
2
4
2.5
2.5
2.5
5
2.5
4
3
6
6
3
3
Thu
Fri
1.5
2
2
2.5
2.5
2
6
6
2
Sat
1.5
3
6
6
7
6.5
Example of actual hours of meetings/building for the
2007 GPA team (this team had very little experience
building, this also does not include the BEST Award
hours).
Totals
1.5
6
12
12
23
24.5
16
95
1 of 2
Schedule Example
From BEST Inc. web site (78 to 124 hours).
2 of 2
Decision Matrix Example
Cu
rv
ed
Sq
ue
e
G
ra
bb
er
zin
g
Sc
G
oo
ra
p
bb
wi
er
th
G
ra
N
ot
bb
ch
er
es
Fo
rk
2007 Decision Matrix
Rank from 4 (best) to 1 (worst). Use same rank if equal.
Number of Bottles
2
2
4
4
Number of Boxes
1
3
4
2
Min Precision/Max Speed
2
1
2
2
Min Movement
3
2
4
3
Releasing Items
2
4
3
2
Simple
2
1
4
2
Robust
4
2
4
3
16
15
25
16
Design and Function
Totals
1 of 2
Decision Matrix Example
From the Coach’s Survival Guide
on the BEST Inc. web site.
2 of 2
My advice about
giving advice.
Give the students
plenty of advice
(primarily by
asking
questions), but
do not require
them to following
it. The students
should have
ownership over
their ideas and
decisions. Their
successes need
to be their
successes, and
their failures
need to be their
failures.
Here is a
complicated
design that was
not properly
tested. All of
these clips were
thrown away (plus
a bunch more).
1 of 3
Here is the final clip
design (much simpler),
2 of 3
Evolution of an arm from mockup to final design.
3 of 3
A basket that was way to
complicated to fabricate.
This arm design was
completed even
though we knew we
could not use it on the
final machine
(rotating arm).
1 of 2
The arm design used
for the Hub
competition (crane
style arm).
2 of 2
We did not practice placing the
robot on the end of this strut, two
students had problems doing this
during the competition.
Game pieces
(specific knob and
specific can).
1 of 2
More game pieces. The practice bottle
(left) and the game bottle (center)
behaved differently with our robot.
2 of 2
Practice field.
1 of 5
These screws affected our performance (which we
didn’t discover until Mall Day because we didn’t
think they were necessary for our practice field).
2 of 5
Practice field.
3 of 5
Practice field.
4 of 5
Practice field.
5 of 5