Re: Who Owns Your Robot?
 

hmm. our past years robots are stored in our technology wing in our school. it is nice so when we make a new robot with a similar concept, we can look to see how we did it back then. from more than 2 years ago, the robots are in pieces from using them as scrap materials and parts. it is cool to go upstairs and see random robot frames sitting there with random components.

Re: Who Owns Your Robot?
 

Our robots stay in the school except from shows and demonstrations for sponsors. The 2001 and 2002 bots are there but no longer run (parts). 2003 bot runs but is not fully functional. Our 2004 bot (made it to regional finals) is in perfect working condition. The 2005 bot - well thats in Atlanta :)

Re: Who Owns Your Robot?
 

Our robots are considered team property, except for the first one or two which went to our major sponsor at the time (JPL). The 2000 bot was destroyed by the salvagers. 2001 could be made functional if someone wanted to do that but it would be a loonng job as parts are missing or scattered. It last ran in 2003. 2002 died this year but has not been scrapped or salvaged at all. 2003 is at our facility and still running as a defense bot. 2004 is working too, but not fully. It was converted into a practice bot for this year.

Re: Who Owns Your Robot?
 

As far as I know/understand, the team owns our robot. Past years robots go to the front of our shop off to the side. Some are used for extra parts where as some are kept in mint condition. (1992 and 1998 robots) One of our robots (2003) is on loan to a team we are trying to get started for next year. We are only missing one robot, I believe.

Re: Who Owns Your Robot?
 

Our Sponsor (GM) owns our robot, but we keep them at our school in our tech-lab. the 2004 robot works and so does the 2003 bot but the 2002 bot is missing several speed controllers and other various components. We have a spring sports pep-rally that we drive/showcase the robots at each year, it really gets the underclassmen that are unfamiliar with the program excited about joining.

Re: Who Owns Your Robot?
 

I suppose technically the school "owns" it, but it belongs to the team. We have our own room and we keep them in there, than once we scrap them (every year before the 2004 one currently), the frames go down into the storage room.

During the summers the robot stays w/ one of our mentors, but it is still the teams. He just plays with it during the summer. ;)

Re: Who Owns Your Robot?
 

One of our sponsors thinks they own our whole team (which will remain reserved because I don't want to be lynched). Other than that we own our robots. We keep our robots in storage closets in the school actually. Sometimes we keep the robots at someone's garage when we are working on the robot and "borrowing" parts.

Actually yesterday we found the goal to last years game. Ah, that was fun running down the long hallway in our school "surfing" in the goal. :D

Re: Who Owns Your Robot?
 

haha.. yea.. we have 2 main schools KOrah in ssm ontario .. and soohigh in ssm michigan.. also we have 1 member from st basils in ssm ontario and some from career center ssm michigan..

that and we have two robots.. what we think will work for us is:

korah gets practice robot (stays in machine shop class <team mentor is the teacher)... as we had two robots from a canadian robotics competition thing from a few years back (much much different then FIRST robotics)

and soohigh gets the competition bot (in their machine shop where the teacher is also a team mentor).. . then next year we switch .. . that way its easier for demonstrations and for showing off..

it really makes a difference having a robot available for demonstrations... we recently showed ours off at a science forum (large expo dealy) .. and also at our local mall and at a sponsers business.. and thru this pr we have received a lot of acknoloedgement and sponserships :D

Re: Who Owns Your Robot?--Thanks for the info
 

I really appreciate the information in this post. One of the things about FIRST is that it is not only about engineering things, it is about how human beings work, too. Learning cooperation and ...yes, politics, which is not a dirty word but just what happens when human beings work together without violence... is a critical part of how anything gets done by groups.

I did not forsee this question (ownership) when we started, but it has a lot to do with how we grow from here. Our sponsors have been so generous, and we don't want to repay their generousity with discourtesy, but we now know we also need to know what the expectations are when things are given.

Starting out was kind of a sudden, ad-hoc, organize as we go along in six weeks sprint. Now we want to use what we learned to make the next year another valuable, but different, experience. Anyone who wants to send us stories of the transition from rookie to successful ongoing team, we are eager to hear!

FIRST is terrific!

Craig Butcher

Re: Who Owns Your Robot?
 

Something similar did come up in the past...here it is.

From the standpoint of a team like Woburn, which benefits from a bank and the school board as its major sponsors, it is absolutely inconceivable that the sponsors own anything team-related. It's simply a matter of donations paying for the team's expenses.

With the NiagaraFIRST teams, one might argue that the partnership owns the robots, but it still doesn't make sense to say that the sponsors own them. (I'm speculating; one of the senior adminstrative people from NiagaraFIRST could probably answer this definitively, if there is an official position on the matter: try Karthik, rourke or Derek Bessette.)

Re: Who Owns Your Robot?
 

sponser owns the 56 bots
1997- Crusin' Crusader - Destroyed!
1998-RoBBES Roadrunners-Destroyed!
1999-RoBBE Xtreme- still working it was at the school but then given to a student
2000-RoBBE Xtreme II-Destroyed!
2001-RoBBE Xtreme III- its almost Destroyed but base still runs and arm is off i believe if needed can be repaired
2002-RoBBE Xtreme IV- DESTROYED!
2003-RoBBE Xtreme V- Still together no brick so it wont run unless we put the brick back in
2004- RoBBE Xtreme VI- still working but! modified to pick up tetras
2005- RoBBE Xtreme VII- really hoping its still in one piece and working its sitting in Atlanta right now!

the sponsers keep the 56 bots but they let us have them when ever we want they are awsome and really we have no place at our school for the bots we were gunna bring 2003 to the school to modify but we just dont have room to store it.

Re: Who Owns Your Robot?
 

Our robots are ours. They reside at our build center which just happens to be a sponsor's shop. They are, from 2001-2005, sitting on top of a shelf rack. 1999 and 2000 are no longer with us, RIP my friends. But we do have some of 2000's base and the rest is sitting in a pile of rubbage/scrap in the corner. They are all fully functional, just a few modifications for testing purposes. It would be nice to give the local children's museum one or two, seeing how the top of the shelf rack is now full. We used to have the robots at Sherrard HS but we were kicked out of there. We have full access to the robots. We take them to many demonstrations over the summer and next school year. In fact, last Saturday we used the 2005 robot to demonstrate at the SECME Mousetrap Car Regional at Davenport Central HS. We found out that there are multiple FLL teams in the Davenport District. We were also aproached by two more teachers I believe to help start more FLL teams. Using the robots for demo is awesome.

Re: Who Owns Your Robot?
 

Just like everything else in FIRST, it probably depends on how your team is set up.

Cyber Blue, 234. is a "one school" team with several sponsors, big and small. The school has ultimate responsiblilty for the students and the team, they provide the teachers and the workspace and the computers that do all of design work and the machine in the shop we either purchased by the township or donated to the school.

So for us, I would say the robots belong to the school, which is the same as belonging to the team.

The sponsors provide funding and materials and such, but they are donations to the team / school and do not constitute ownership of the program or the robots. If the sponsors would go away, the team would remain.

I know that Rolls-Royce sponsorship of teams is to the schools, for the robotics programs. The teams are allowed to use the money as they need to = parts, hotel rooms, etc., as long as it is team related.

I know that other teams are structured differently and the corporate sponsor may technicaly 'own' the team and bring in students and mentors. The sponsor, in this case, may actually own the program, and terefore, own the robot as well.

I would suggest laying out a plan on what you think ownership should be and get your teams' agreement. If it is really troubling you, then I would also talk to the 'sponsors' about what their expectations are -

Re: Who Owns Your Robot?
 

Our team has two schools and one main sponsor, NASA. Our 2001 robot is on display at the NASA shop where we build our machines. I think one of the older, non-running machines may be at one of the schools. We always keep one or two of the newest robots running for demos, and one of the running robots is usually at the school where our primary teacher mentor, Mrs. P. works.

I don't know who "owns" the robots, but maybe NASA or Brevard School's lawyers do. We consider them to belong to the team.

Re: Who Owns Your Robot?
 

Our robots are property of the X-Cats. We have almost all of our robots from our years in FIRST (the first robot is on display at FIRST place) and there is simply no room to keep them at Wilson Magnet. Far as I can tell Xerox has no interest in displaying any of our robots niether (remember they'd have to display Sparx and XQ Robotics robots as well. That would eat up alot of space.