I mentor middle schoolers who go up against mostly high school teams and I have an on-going debate with myself about what to encourage the kids to design. The obvious approach is to have them try to build a robot that can “do it all”: score cubes, build a skyrise tower, etc. like they see in all the videos.
However, when they actually start trying to build robots that can “do it all”, I always worry that their capabilities might not match their ambitions, so there is always a chance they will end up with a mess of machinery that somewhat resembles a robot but it’s one that can’t do anything more than flail around the field, fall apart, then collapse and die in front of the spectators (moms, dads, little sisters who like to squeal “toldja so!”). Often, I’m worried the middle schoolers are no match for the high school teams and they simply get crushed by the superior technology of the high schoolers. Consequently, they might rarely get picked for an alliance. Consequently, they get discouraged. I tell them it’s an artifact of going head-to-head against kids 3-5 years older than they are, but I don’t express sympathy very well.
So my internal debate runs something like this: why not make the kids more appreciative of the larger strategy of the game. In other words, why not encourage them to build relatively simple robots that do things like block really well. By themselves, they wouldn’t do very well, but their supreme blocking capability might make them attractive to a very good high school team that wants to bog down their opposition.
For example, I could easily see middle schoolers being capable of building a robot that is 18 inches x 18 inches x 6 inches tall. It would be little more than a “steel brick on wheels”, but with an 8-10 motor drive it would be able to run around the field and make life really difficult for all of these dainty high-altitude scissor lifts with their high-precision cube-bombing systems and 4-motor drives. By spending less time on building and perhaps more time on programming, they might even be able to buzz to the other side of the field and wreak havoc with their opponent’s autonomous, too.
Okay, so I can see this being an attractive strategy from a “win the game” standpoint. But I personally feel uneasy about encouraging the kids to specialize in becoming expert nuisances. I have seen how people react to wallbots at tournaments - it’s not so pretty. On the other hand, I can see how a robot designed to do nothing but block could really become an attractive game-changer in SkyRise, especially considering how tall these robots are getting and how prone they might be to falling over if they need to be continuously out-manuevring a vexatious high-powered “steel brick on wheels”.
Anyway, I just wanted to ask people what they think about this. I’m guessing the wallbot aficionados would be thrilled with the idea. But I’m not sure anybody else would. For one thing, nobody likes to see their fancy $5K robot have a bad hair day all because of a squat, high-density pushbot built by a bunch of 6th graders. On the other hand, I’m curious to know if a good high school team would think they could benefit from an alliance partner that does practically nothing but cause the opposition lots of headaches.
I’m interested in hearing comments of any kind.