Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber
I cannot agree with this more, if a team has a large number of students then build a practice bot is just logical. It gives more students hands on time with the robot which is always a good thing. It also allows you to use your current machine as a demo bot during competition season.
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Exactly. We have 82 students in our club this year. They are working, in three separate teams, on three prototype robots right now, with a few mentors working on two others. Some combination of the prototypes will get promoted to the final design, and the students will build two bots, one to bag for FRC and one to use for other activities. One robot from the bunch will go to two different science exhibits.
We probably have an advantage over a smaller team, though that can be debated. But we're still at a disadvantage to teams with better experience/skills, more money, better school support, etc.
In recent years, we built our competition robot on Thursday on the event; sometimes on Friday. But we've slowly built up our resources, and student interest is at an all time high despite those performances. We're looking to the future with a multi-year plan to turn the program into a championship FRC team.