Quote:
Originally Posted by Ekcrbe
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After reading both threads, allow me to give another perspective.
One of the dangers of Ri3D IMHO is that it "allows" students to not develop their own creative juices. I heard the tale from another mentor on a team "far far away": last year his team was faced with a technical issue he thought he could use in a teachable moment as a way to analyze and find solutions to problems. He told me of his dismay when the students said "let's check the video", meaning the Ri3D clips on YouTube!
I do see the value of allowing under-resourced teams (aren't they all?) to quickly target better solutions rather than pursue failing ideas (cough, my team some years, cough), but it seems now teams that simply wait a few days don't have to "waste time" with the heavy lifting of design, just copy what they see.
A decade ago ago Team 811 discovered (and adopted) the Team MOE Collaborative Robot Design process, where we spend three days analyzing the game, developing strategies, fostering concepts, and ultimately zero in an overall design by Monday after Kick-Off, and it has served us well for years. Last year we built an amazing robot that won at Week Zero, semi-finals at GSD, Finalist at WPI (one missed autonomous shot shy of winner!), semi-finals at NE-CMP (clutch failure), competed at St.Louis, and won at Mayhem and RiverRage, yet we still have kids to this day complaining that our design should have matched one of the Ri3D bots. Huh??
Bottom line: If Vex Build Blitz is going to focus on elements and not the whole design, I'm all for it! Maybe Ri3D could consider emulation.