[Siri]

We won both Philadelphia 2011 and Hatboro-Horsham 2012 & MAR Championship 2012 with a practice robot (and a roughly full field, though we could have shrunk some). It definitely helps a lot, including driving, programming (both hybrid period and autonomous assists in teleop) and mechanical improvements. I think the biggest thing it's made us do is build more quickly, though. We're still not fast enough, but it's getting there.

We always want to build the practice bot first, but in 2011 we got them done at the same time (seemed impressive then), and in 2012 we finished it around a week after bag & tag. Our goal for 2013 is to get it built first, at least in terms of each system.