I voted yes to the poll. We did had a practice robot that was very benificial to our programming team before and during the season. It was disassembled before we headed to St. Louis for spare parts.
We have built practice robots in 2005, 06, 09, 10, 11, and 12. Sometimes they are useful for driver practice, programming, etc...other times they are torn down for spare parts because they are not being used during the season.
One of the biggest benefits we get out of the practice bot is that we learn what works an doesn't work, in terms of design, manufacturing, and assembly as we build the first robot. This helps improve the quality of build between our practice robot and our competition robot.
I would suggest building a practice bot if have time and funding too and you are going to use it to improve before and during the season. Do not build one if it is going to effect the build quality or completion of your competition robot.
Competing in Michigan we get lots of driving experience in matches. We did not practice at all in 2009 or 2010. Actually the practice robot in 2009 was torn down before the season to fix the competition robot. In 2010 the practice robot was used for driver tryouts (before the grabber was installed), then we competed in week 1...so no more practice was conducted. In 2011 we practice a couple of times before the season, but never in the season.
This year the practice bot was identical and fully functional. We practiced a couple of times before the season. Once before Waterford. Once before Northville. And, then we practiced triple balancing before we left for St. Louis (so much for that..
).
We have about a 1/4 field that we setup and teardown everytime we want to practice. It usually takes about 10min to setup.
This setup works for us...it may or may not work for your team. I judge if we need additional practice by comparing ourselves to the rest of the teams out there, if more is needed we do it, if not then we don't.
As my good friend JVN says, your mileage may vary...