[Tom Ore]

I have a slightly different take on the "learning" aspect of this. Let's say a group of students worked on their minibot for the entire build season, tried lots of different design options, did their best, but only produced a rather average minibot.

Somewhere in their thought process something was missing - they just couldn't see the better solution for whatever reason. They understand the problem and the parameters, but the key to breaking through with a truly top notch design has escaped them.

As soon as they see the exceptional minibot made by another team they can study it, understand why it works, they can go back through their build season and figure out what in their thought process caused them to miss the obvious, elegant solution. If they build it, they can see firsthand how it works and begin to understand the tradeoffs within that design. In this respect, there is learning benefit to "copying" a great design.

The "competion" side of things is another matter - the minibot is so easy to copy that any team that wants a fast minibot can make one easily. This may make the outcome of many matches rather random - assuming teams can make a successful deploy mechanism. The deploy may still be the larger challenge this year.