0689: "First Design"

[eviloatmeal]

http://xkcd.com/689/



Title text: "Pool on the roof must've sprung a leak."

HACK THE PLANEEET!!!!

[stardek]

I love that movie

[scottgoblue314]

What is it pushing in the last panel?

Also, brilliant.

[helo darqness]

I get it some kind of Rube Goldberg contraption.

But thats it. Is this some kind of inside joke again?

[eviloatmeal]

No, it's a robot soccer match.

[SummerGlauFan]

I thought it might have been some kind of robot fighting competition.

[scottgoblue314]

I get it some kind of Rube Goldberg contraption.

But thats it. Is this some kind of inside joke again?

Not a Rube Goldberg, just Robowars. It isn't complicated like a Rube Goldberg.

[Omegaton]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRST

Had to look it up myself...

[helo darqness]

I get it some kind of Rube Goldberg contraption.

But thats it. Is this some kind of inside joke again?

Not a Rube Goldberg, just Robowars. It isn't complicated like a Rube Goldberg.

Ah, haven't watched TV in over a year.

[miggit999]

That's a much better design than anything my team's come up with so far
And its robotics! and FIRST! Yay! He actually drew this year's game! *babbles*

And to explain, its a high school robotics competition from an organization called For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) http://www.usfirst.org/ There's a new game each year, and this one just came out (its a soccer match obviously).

[PCChris]

Omegaton: You beat me to clarifying the acronym. I was going to point it out as the title of this thread isn't capitalized.

[Peregrine]

I personally prefer the EMP-device/Faraday cage combination.

[Kaldra]

I'm reminded of one of the early episodes of Pokemon when Pikachu beats Onix by zapping the sprinkler system
I like it!

[ajosmer]

Heh, I love this! Unfortunately, having already had a quiz on the rules for this year's game in robotics, I have a couple of issues to point out:

1) Nothing may intentionally detach from the robot ("intentionally" is determined by the referees, not the teams).
2) That is WAY above the height limit for the robot at ANY point in the match (60" during most of the match, and 90" during the last 20 second Finale).
3) There are no bumps or towers on the field.

Other than that, I would totally steal that idea...

-Aaron
FRC #2158

[Kanerop]

It's this year's FIRST FRC game. Like people have said, it's basically robot soccer, with the field divided into thirds by big trapezoidal speed bump sort of things.

On a side note, looks like I'll have to try and waterproof the electronics this year.

[jkirow]

Long time reader here, I had to register to give kudos for actually acknowledging the FIRST competitions!! High school was definitely more fun with a robot to tinker with, even if I spent more of my time messing with the programming than actually in the shop working on the parts.

[organman]

I fear that this may not be graciously professional.

[slavik262E]

I get home from a FIRST robotics meeting to find this. Nicely done, Randall.

For those of you who still have no idea what's going on, FIRST robotics is a high school robotics competition. Teams have 6 weeks to build a robot essentially from scratch to play a new game every year. Software is run on a 400 MHz PowerPC processor running VxWorks, the same OS used on the Apache gunship. Programming can be done in C++ and Java, and for those of you who prefer to draw flowcharts instead of actually code, LabVIEW.

- Matt Kline
Team 537

[Storm]

Hahah great comics this week and a fantastic one for my birthday! Thanks Randall!
I really like the thinking outside the box idea. Lets just hope it does short the other robot!

[etotheix]

I suspect all of those on XKCD who are FIRSTers or FIRST alumni will quickly fill this thread.

Awesome comic!

-Ian Curtis
FRC1276

[Quordlepleen]

I remember some good times back in high school and working on my school's First robotics team. We always would joke about pulling some stunt like this to mess with the other teams. Unfortunately the rules for the competition where always fairly well thought out so as to prevent that sort of thing. Plus the idea of good sportsmanship was pretty heavily promoted and so such actions would probably be frowned upon.

My youngest brother is on the school's team this year and I can't wait to see how well their new robot manages to do in the competition, hopefully the team can make it to nationals again.

[The Free Man]

Spandex: it's a privilege, not a right.

P.S. The actual quote is "The pool on the roof must have a leak."

[oxy]

wish my school did this...

[pyroman]

At first i thought that this was for the Trinity Robotics competition where the objective is to build an autonomous robot that can navigate a maze, find a candle and in someway shape or form extinguish it. I was a little disappointed when i realized it was some other robotics competition (FIRST? not sure because my school wouldn't give us to money to do that one). This would have been a much more creative solution to the Trinity competition.

[lu6cifer]

Hello everybody!
I feel kind of ashamed, being a part of this year's FRC, and not understanding the comic upon first sight...

-Team 1712 programmer

['; DROP DATABASE;--]

Nice. I tended to come up with similar wacky designs for Robot Wars - a spike hammer injecting water/napalm into whatever it pierces, or a transmitter to jam the enemy's remote - but I figured they probably have rules against that sort of thing.

Homer Simpson did once win such a contest by destroying the remote though. :p

[Zyphyr]

Waaayy better than my design team's designs. This one is so going to win at Georgia.
- Team 190

At first i thought that this was for the Trinity Robotics competition where the objective is to build an autonomous robot that can navigate a maze, find a candle and in someway shape or form extinguish it. I was a little disappointed when i realized it was some other robotics competition (FIRST? not sure because my school wouldn't give us to money to do that one). This would have been a much more creative solution to the Trinity competition.

Hahaha that's amusing. I've done Trinity as well.

[Cryopyre]

Haha, he even pretty accurately depicts the field in the last panel (save the trusses that extend into midfield).

Our team's design is a little crazy this year. I don't know if it will work, may have to collaborate tomorrow.

[Brace]

When I did this my idea was just like a bucket and then the robot could just stay underneath the thing that drops the balls and catch them all

[Zapheres]

I didn't get it at first sight! So disappointing...

[azrathud]

I love how my interests merge. This is awesome.
I am glad to have joined FIRST this year.

team 2945 kind of programmer

[ILikeFood]

Brilliant. We had some ideas like this after a team member almost lost a finger in a scissor lift prototype. If it works on us, why not on rival teams?

Randall, are you a mentor?

With love,
FRC 2374, Portland, OR

[artichoke]

This has to be one of my favorite strips now for mentioning FRC. I'll have to show this to my team!

Good luck to the other teams out there; this game is definitely going to take a lot of ingenuity because of its restrictions.. no sprinkler system for us!
Also just finished building a bump today, and I have to say, it's even worse than expected!

Katie Roch
Team 1726

[menace101]

A few friends on FIRST and I have just shared quite a few moments of utter happiness in seeing this comic. Randall, thank you for making my day. Proud 3rd year veteran of FIRST!

Franklin Wu
Team 840

[lingomaniac88]

Great comic. Especially since FIRST was one of the most awesome things I did in high school.

And apparently the comic is a big hit on Chief Delphi.

So, which teams would like to volunteer and send this robot to their regional?

[Danny89]

Been a long time reader of the strip but I had to register on the forums just to comment on this comic
I spent more time in what we considered our robotics lab than I did at home

proud alumni and mentor of 375

[ohaus]

As a member of FRC team 329 and a fan of xkcd, this completely blew my mind.

I mean, he even got the field design for this year's game(mostly) right and everything.

I'm definitely telling my teammates about this at today's meeting.

[admalledd]

Yay for FIRST!
so Randall just added the next rule to the team updates: water proofing...

I'm the lead programmer, and i have a lot of work to do! i plan on programming the robot in python so that our code looks like VXworks->C++->BOOST++threading->python->image recognition code in python.

sadly at this time i have been unable to port the soul module to PowerPC architecture... anyone willing to help?

Eric D.
team 2517

here is to hoping we make it to Atlanta!

[lingomaniac88]

so Randall just added the next rule to the team updates: water proofing...

Congratulations, Randall. You just turned Breakaway into the elusive water game. Well done.

[sje46]

Apparently the first three FIRST competitions were held in gymnasia at local high schools (in my state, NH), and the fourth one (and every one since then) at Disney World. That's kinda...a jump.