The Herobot has improved over the years to where it is competitively competent to a student. In other words, the Herobot does “something” that a young student can see works for the game.
The challenge I see for coaches and mentors is, a student can’t envision how to get beyond the Herobot because any innovation does NOT come with an instruction manual.
How are you coaches and mentors helping our Elementary Students to stretch their imagination? Oftentimes a student will “lock in” on a solution that doesn’t work and never step back to “re-think” where he/she is going.
Is there a thought experiment you have that gets a lightbulb to go off? Do you have sample ideas built for them to “play”/think about?
For me as a former coach I always would point students to look at other robots from different games, whether that be IQ or V5/VRC and even FIRST. Coming from a former competitor as well as a former V5 coach, I’ve seen how other teams in the program will often go back to older robots and see how they can implement things into the game.
For me with this game there is not a lot of clear cut ways to look back onto other games because the game elements are in no ways similar nor is the core gameplay similar to other games. But there are chances that with enough imagination there can be something that can be made.
Also others will look into bilibili or youtube to help with inspiration.
well im not a mentor but I do have my take on creativity and imagination. I don’t really know if this applies for elementary students, but in high school, there are very few but key students that are actually passionate about robotics. These students are the ones who usually take risks, create new and less common designs. While I think that some part of the hero bot does limit creativity, I don’t believe that creativity is the main intention of the hero bot, and rather it is just a way to get newer students more familiar with the parts and be able to do stuff and compete in tournaments. a nice example of this is the Everybot in FRC. Created by team 118 robonauts, the Everybot is built around the world with teams with limited resources and experience. The Everybot design every year gets praised for “bringing the robot to the students” rather than having clueless students try to build something and just have none of it work.
TL;DR (I actually use this and its not only ChatGPT)
The “Hero Bot” is not there to build a students creativity, but to get students familiar with the pieces and how they work. Once the fundamentals are patted down, students would be able to expand their creativity to new levels.
I hope this response clarifies the purpose of the hero bot and how it helps students. Don’t forget the students can always modify the hero bot piece by piece and improve it. So don’t look at the hero bot as a limitation, but view it as a stepping stone to encourage newer teams and people into robotics.
During the offseason, we work with students on core concepts for building and programming. The idea is to give them a recipe collection so they’re not just copying ideas - they actually understand how things work.
We break it down into parts like:
Chassis – wheel alignment, spacing, track width, omni vs. traction wheels.
Lifts – gear ratios, 4- and 6-bars, and using presets to hit the right height.
Intakes – claws, rollers, belts, chain drives - different ways to manipulate objects.
Sensing – how to use color, limit, and position sensors for automated control.
The base concepts give them more ways to be creative and solve problems on their own.
YouTube will be one of the best places to find inspiration. It’s great because one student might find something but think “this is great, but it needs a modification here” and then you can build off of that.
YouTube is my go-to source. BUT, I’ve encountered, especially in the elementary schools, that parents are locking their kids out of YouTube … for good reason, like going down the wrong rabbit hole.
Further, I’ve had other students that look at YouTube and don’t “see” stuff that is relevant to their situation; even curated stuff that applies directly.
And the most problematic, students who are good with what they have. No competitive fire. Drive a coach nuts.
A lot of great responses in this thread. I’ll add my approach.
Often when the newer students build the hero bots, we encourage them to make small changes and improvements. During the pitching in season, there were many things you could do that made the hero bot semi-competitive.
Once the students have had some experience innovating on the pre-designed bot, they are usually better equipped to build on their own the next year.