It’s In The Bag (for the last time ever)

The Foley Freeze “Launches Off” for Final Official Bag Day

By Emily Eisenhauer

The Foley Freeze worked down to the wire at the end of the six-week build season to finish their 2019 robot in order to bag it —  for the last time in FIRST history.

All FIRST Robotics teams are required to seal their robot in a bag by midnight Feb. 19 and keep it secured until the week of their first competition. That makes each bag day a big day for all members of the robotics team, but especially this year, since this one was the last. Starting in 2020, teams will be able to work on the robots all season long.

Having a specific stop deadline was designed to not only try leveling the playing field among teams, but also to mimic the way many companies operate on a schedule to complete products. Companies today are more likely to make changes right up until manufacturing starts, and often even after. Technology allows software updates for products such as cars and trucks even after customers take them home.

Bag day originated when teams were required to ship their robots in crates to their competitions. The first official “bag day” was created in 2009 when FIRST initiated the District model in the State of Michigan. Instead of crating the robot and shipping it to the team’s first competition, the Michigan teams would bag it and bring the robot with them, still sealed in the bag, to the first of the teams 2 district competitions.  The bagging of the robot became universally used for all competitions except the World Championships today.

The build season has always ended with a special day for preparing the finalized robot for shipment and transportation. This year, the team faced their final “bag day” in a big and new change to next season rules on building time. Next year, teams will no longer face an exact time constraint when creating and constructing their robots.

“We are working more and concentrating hard. Preparing for bag day is exciting and I am looking forward to competition,” Claire Larkins, a member of the design subteam, said in the last days before the robot was finished.

The teams can still work on things such as software because they have a duplicate version of the robot used for practice that is not sealed in the bag. That robot cannot be used in competition. In district competition, teams will be able to open the bags and work on their robots for a six hour period before the beginning of competition.

Even in the final 30 hours before bag, team members from every corner of the room were working hard to finish their component of the robot. Multiple people crowded the robot all fixing different parts of it and double-checking its functions as it remained under construction. The public relations team even rushed to finish graphics printed out for the robot. Each room buzzed with the sounds of work until the final seconds. Everyone gathered at midnight to bag the robot together for the last time.

“One time, a team member was almost closed in the bag while wiring the robot for the last 30 seconds before the robot was bagged and zipped,” said Nico Toppi, a programming lead, about bag day in the past.