[ASmith1675]

I personally am a fan of the 3 day robot builds. I think over the last 2 seasons in which they have been taking place, I have seen the floor of the competition increase significantly. (I also think that the availability of high quality COTS parts specifically designed for use with FIRST robots from the likes of VEX and AndyMark, among others is also a large reason)

I have mentored FRC teams for a total of 8 years (2005-2008 & 2011-2014). Several other of the engineering mentors on our current team have also been involved for similar periods of time. This gives us a large experience base of designs of both robots and mechanisms that have both worked and failed in past years. Over the past several years we have had games that have closely mirrored other games in the not too distant past (see: 2006 & 2012, 2007 & 2011, 2008 & 2014). Because we had mentors that knew the games in the past, we could easily say to our students, "Hey, this game is pretty close to 2008, lets take a look at some robots that played that game well for inspiration"

The robot in 3 days concept gives this same advantage to all teams. Not every team can have a mentor that even would have known about the game in 2008 this year. Luckily, now we have the resource of the 3 day robots to help teams which do not have the luxury of mentors that have been involved in the program for nearly a decade. The team that I was first involved with, 677, was mentored entirely by college students from Ohio State. So not only were we turning over our students every 4 years, we were also turning over all of our mentors as well. These type of projects would have helped both our students and our young mentors get up to speed a little quicker, had they been available at the time.

We all draw inspiration from somewhere. I don't see how drawing inspiration from a 3-day robot is any different than drawing inspiration from 1114's 2008 robot, or seeing roller claw mechanisms in 2007 and incorporating them in 2011. Yes, you can argue that the 3-day robots are specifically designed for this game, but as others have said, nothing is a direct copy. Even if a design were to be a direct copy, there is still likely to be a lot of testing and troubleshooting of the systems involved to get them to be as effective as possible.

I don't tend to get too preachy, but in the end its about inspiration. Some are inspired by the 3-day robots to say, "Hey, that doesn't look too hard, we could do that". Others say, "Yeah, that's a nice design, but I think it would be better with X, Y, and Z changes. Still others will challenge themselves to say "I don't want to copy the 3-day robots, I want to try something completely different". Personally, I think teams can learn from any of these ways of thinking.

Anyway, I've rambled for far too long now.