[Richie_Richter]

A few mentors, team members, and I were discussing this yesterday as we were watching some live streams of week one competitions. What we quickly noticed was that nearly every robot was implementing some kind of module (ball intake, ball launcher, etc.) that had already been proven to work on one of the RI3D robots.

The amount of robots waving around motorized airport ground crew directing sticks or lowering a wheely bar over top of the ball to collect it was what troubled us the most. How some teams didn't execute the designs as well as other teams is beside the point, what matters is that a ton of robots this year look, or at least operate, much in the same way. And I think RI3D is partially to blame.

I'm not saying that teams couldn't have arrived at such designs on their own. I'm saying that watching a video of a working robot three days after the start of build season, seeing what worked and what didn't, and then implementing variations of what they saw working onto their own robot was probably something that happened a lot this season.

Our team is partially guilty of this too. For about two weeks, we toyed with the idea of having a spinning wheel intake. When we found that it was going to be too heavy for our robot, we went for a lighter forklift-esque design. And so far in our practice sessions, the design has worked very well for us.

I don't think the Robot in Three Days Event really promotes healthy competition or a true creative process for teams. With how much more popular the event has become this year, thousands of teams probably saw the videos, and even if their final robot didn't use anything that they saw in the videos, it probably gave them plenty of good ideas. Ideas that should have been generated from within the team through discussion and experimentation.

At the same time, I think the event is really fun to watch, and it is interesting to see what the teams can throw together in just a few days. One of our mentors thought that they could still do the event, just not show the footage until after the end of build season. He also suggested that they could wait until the last three days of the build season, rather than starting on the first day.

But that's just what I think, and I really want to hear what some other teams have to say. What's your opinion of the RI3D thing?