Kickoff Schedule

*All times US Central Time
**Team Size 40-70 students

Group Division

Students are divided into Red and Blue groups by captains and mentors. Division of students is purposeful, with the goal to limit distractions and conflict, or to encourage individual engagement. Groups are evenly divided as much as possible to contain equal numbers of new students, veterans, build, media, programming students in each group. Within each Red/Blue group, students are further divided into 3 groups. Each group is given a section of the manual. Division of the manual is determined after the release using a quick review of section page count. Sections that do not change (much) from year to year are excluded. Focus is placed on field layout and dimensions, scoring, year specific robot construction rules, and year specific penalties. Each sub group presents the findings from their manual to their Red/Blue groups (separate rooms). At least one veteran student is placed in each subgroup with the goal of helping students filter out the “evergreen” rules that are the same year to year, to avoid wasting time presenting things that are always the same.

The purpose of sub groups is to get through the manual quickly. The purpose of dividing red/blue is purely team size. In previous years, dividing the manual into 6 sections resulted in very different sized sections and unbalanced time in the manual. Dividing into 3 sections resulted in review groups too big and disengaged students. Attempting 6 groups to redundantly review 3 sections and joint presenting findings was slow and repetitive. Additionally, having the red group compete against the blue group in the human simulation, motivated groups to focus on the manual, rules, and strategy.

Human Simulation

Students will simulate robots as their groups (red vs blue alliance) and play the game on a full sized field taped on the floor. Game pieces will be simulated with any analog that makes sense, such as paper plates, basketballs, wiffle balls, buckets, etc. Students acting as robots, sit on wheeled chairs or scooters. All other students line the edges of the field and act like walls to stop game pieces from rolling away. Some students act as goals to collect and count scored game pieces. Mentors and captains establish any rules around timing. For example, it takes 10 seconds to climb, 2 seconds to score low and 4 seconds to score high, etc.

Human simulation can identify the following

• Choke points on the field
• Primary and secondary cycle paths
• Benefit of being short/narrow to pass under/through field elements
• Optimal scoring combinations
• Ranking point strategy
• Endgame strategy

Prior to moving to the gym, while still in their groups, students will have discussed the game strategy for their human simulation. They will have defined which combination of robots to use in each simulation, planning for 3-4 matches. Before each human simulation, Red/Blue teams will verify which 3 robot archetypes will be in the next match, making any desired last minute changes. Students should try a different strategy for each simulation. After the simulated match, a general discussion will happen for no more than 5 minutes of what observations were made, before moving on to the next match. Simulations must use one of the pre-defined auto routines created by the mentors and captains for each robot. There will be a pause in the simulation to count scoring between auto and telop phases of the simulation.

Robot Archetypes

Mentors and Captains will use their past experience to guess at what robot characteristics will be most important, which characteristics may be most common at competition, or which play strategies are most likely. Archetypes will focus on what a robot can do, not how it can do it. Auto routines will be created by mentors and captains to establish a reasonable and consistent auto scoring, avoiding situations where a human simulated robot would pick up pieces rolling around on the floor and avoiding collisions with other robots in auto (common experience before this rule).

In past years, the design team would define different capabilities a robot could have and assign point values to each. Then groups would “spend” points to construct a robot to complete. While this was a helpful exercise to encourage students to prioritize time and effort for actual robot construction, it took too much time and offered minimal additional value to robot simulation. This step is not skipped to ensure robot simulation can be completed on kickoff day, rather than waiting until our first meeting on Monday.

Example Archetypes for Crescendo:

Robot 1:

Shoots from distance 4 seconds
Can drive under stage
Cannot trap
10 seconds to score in amp
Climbs in 10 seconds
Can buddy climb
Primary Focus - Speaker Scoring, buddy climb
Secondary Focus - Amp

Robot 2:

Shoots from Subwoofer 2 seconds
Scores in Amp in 4 seconds
Cannot drive under stage
Can climb in 5 seconds
Can trap in 15 additional seconds
Can buddy climb, but not trap if buddy climb
Primary Focus - Climb, Trap
Secondary Focus - Speaker, Amp

Robot 3:

Can drive under stage
Can pass across field accurately
Shoots from distance 4 seconds
Cannot amp
Climbs in 5 seconds
Cannot buddy climb
Primary Focus - Passing, Fast Speaker cycles
Secondary Focus - Climb

Robot 4:

Can drive under stage
Can pass across field accurately
Shoots from Subwoofer in 2 seconds
Can score in amp in 2 seconds
Cannot climb
Primary Focus - Passing, Amp
Secondary Focus - Speaker

Overall Goals

Kickoff day has evolved significantly over the past decade for KnightKrawler. The current model and schedule was created to rapidly accelerate the build season schedule.

Previously, the first week of build season was used to give every student an experience with detailed rules review, brainstorming mechanism design, prototyping all ideas, evaluating pros and cons of design choices, and involvement in final design decisions. We wanted every student to have this learning experience and would invest 1-2 weeks in this process. With the introduction of MinneTrials, students are now given this experience during fall training.

Under the new process, a design team is created to make all these decisions for the competition season. Any student can join the design team. The expectation is that the design team requires extra work that is often completed outside of regular meetings. The design team meets at the end of kickoff day, after all other students have been dismissed. Their responsibilities include defining the first sets of prototypes to be created.

Design team members will go home (or reconvene at a location outside the school) and begin sketches in OnShape. The sketches define the relationships and limitations of robots, game pieces and scoring elements. For example, a sketch may identify a game piece size relative to the bumpers and demonstrate maximum extension outside the robot frame. From this “driving” sketch, initial mechanism shapes can be drawn to create plates that can be cut using the school’s laser cutter or the team’s CNC.

The goal of the new accelerated kickoff schedule and emphasis on the Design Team, is to be testing prototypes within the first week. Prototype mechanisms created in the first week should have the goal of verifying game piece contact (compression) for pickup, feeding, and or shooting. These “near” final dimensions should lead to the design of “on robot” mechanisms during the following weeks.

The first year this new kickoff format was adopted, the student leadership felt like they were one week ahead of schedule after the first two weeks of build season, compared to previous seasons.