Some musings
Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 8:43 am
This is my first post here after lurking for a few years. By way of introduction, I am a 62 year old native Texan who has spent the last 19 1/2 years in Morgantown, WV. I am the mentor of a second year FLL robot team composed of 4 middle school aged boys.
Last year I taught the boys some fundamentals of FLL robot design, and the team produced a robot that was 4th out of 19 teams at the state tournament. In fact the team was in first place after the first two rounds of table competition. The judges in the technical part of the competition had declared that the design was a good basic robot. The robot wasn’t perfect but the design was sound and with some fine tuning appeared to real competitor. It seemed that the team was in a good position to make a run at first place this year.
Last year’s design survived through the off season, but one of the boys on the team got a Mindstorm set last Christmas and produced a new design for this year’s competition. The biggest challenge with FLL robots is getting them to go straight and to run reproducible routes. This year’s design went through numerous changes in search of performance equal to last year’s robot and along the way last years robot was disassembled and the parts used to build a second new robot with even poorer performance. Finally after 1 1/2 months the team has a robot whose performance is comparable to last year’s robot. And, lo and behold, the drive train layout almost identical to last year’s robot. So here we are about one month before this year’s state tournament, and we will see what the boys can accomplish in the next month. I hope this boys have learned that you don’t toss something that works (but is not perfect) before you know that you have something better.
So what does this have to do with anything? Well I note that the greatest loss of life for soldiers in Iraq is IED and car and truck bombs. Unless one has a plan to stop these devices the outcome is not going to be any different. The fact is that during the conventional phase of the war the American troops routed the Iraqis and suffered few losses. The speed of advance through Iraq was incredible, and Rumsfeld was a hero. During that time I never heard one individual tell us to beware of the IED’s and car bombs that were coming. Nor do I hear about what to do about them now. All I hear is whining from a bunch of Monday morning quarterbacks with 20/20 hindsight. From my perspective a great portion of the American public is behaving like the 12 year olds that are on our FLL team.
Last year I taught the boys some fundamentals of FLL robot design, and the team produced a robot that was 4th out of 19 teams at the state tournament. In fact the team was in first place after the first two rounds of table competition. The judges in the technical part of the competition had declared that the design was a good basic robot. The robot wasn’t perfect but the design was sound and with some fine tuning appeared to real competitor. It seemed that the team was in a good position to make a run at first place this year.
Last year’s design survived through the off season, but one of the boys on the team got a Mindstorm set last Christmas and produced a new design for this year’s competition. The biggest challenge with FLL robots is getting them to go straight and to run reproducible routes. This year’s design went through numerous changes in search of performance equal to last year’s robot and along the way last years robot was disassembled and the parts used to build a second new robot with even poorer performance. Finally after 1 1/2 months the team has a robot whose performance is comparable to last year’s robot. And, lo and behold, the drive train layout almost identical to last year’s robot. So here we are about one month before this year’s state tournament, and we will see what the boys can accomplish in the next month. I hope this boys have learned that you don’t toss something that works (but is not perfect) before you know that you have something better.
So what does this have to do with anything? Well I note that the greatest loss of life for soldiers in Iraq is IED and car and truck bombs. Unless one has a plan to stop these devices the outcome is not going to be any different. The fact is that during the conventional phase of the war the American troops routed the Iraqis and suffered few losses. The speed of advance through Iraq was incredible, and Rumsfeld was a hero. During that time I never heard one individual tell us to beware of the IED’s and car bombs that were coming. Nor do I hear about what to do about them now. All I hear is whining from a bunch of Monday morning quarterbacks with 20/20 hindsight. From my perspective a great portion of the American public is behaving like the 12 year olds that are on our FLL team.