[EricH]

Originally Posted by OzzyMan92

Ok well the original plan was to just to share resources and ideas to work together to build our own individual robots. But is it required that the teams have to combine?

No.

217/229 might be a good example here. Back in 2005, the teams collaborated and had identical (well, almost) drivetrains, and identical (well, almost) arm towers. But their robots were different. 217 had their tower at one end of the robot; 229 had theirs at the other end, among other differences that I'm sure existed. Other collaborations have tended to result in identical robots (254/60, 254/968, 254/22, 1114/1503/1680, 217/148). Did they build similar/identical robots? Yep. Did their teams combine? Nope, not fully--for many of those, the teams are quite a ways apart in terms of distance.

Only one of those above collaborations is still in full swing--but 217 and 148 still like to talk together and debate the game/strategies/robot designs, from what I understand. They're also part of Team IFI, who love to make parts for each other.