[Anupam Goli]

I'll admit, i was initially kind of skeptical of having 6 robots built in 3 days for people to watch, but the results of this build have erased any doubt I had about these programs and their effect. I love any and all attempts to raise the level of competition in all of FRC, especially coming from a weaker region. What Ri3D and Build Blitz have done is compress 6 weeks of prototyping and iteration into 3 days, giving all teams a base to work off. Teams that have little experience and are starting out the process of building their team up can use this base bot, learn from it, and compete with it. Elite teams know that iterating and improving designs never ends, and will continue their attempts at creating the perfect bot to play the game.

The concern that these new resources stifle creativity is a valid one, but unless I'm mistaken, this robotics program is called FIRST Robotics Competition, not FIRST Robotics Fair. In order to promote the FIRST program, we need to raise the base level of competition and give the resources to teams so they can meet that base. The one lesson that students and mentors need to ingrain into their minds is that engineering is an iterative process, and even though you may learn a lot from just copying one of the Ri3D or build Blitz designs, but those who twiddle their thumbs with their copy won't be able to rise up as much as these who take these ideas and improve them. And it's not like that we only saw one idea surface during these marathons. We saw 3 different intake concepts, 3 different shooter concepts, 1 catching concept, and different drivetrains. There's still a lot of ideas that teams can mix and match and further improve upon. Don't worry too much about these programs existing, because even teams who copy these bots will continue to grow due to what they learn in the process.