[mprikril]

Let me state that what was accomplished to 1923's and 900's robot in that amount of time was nothing short of amazing. Please don't think this was simply bolting a new mechanism on a robot, I was able to witness three teams come together to achieve something I would have thought impossible had I not witnessed it. The work required to design something that would function and (mostly) fit, then to get it mechanically integrated, then to get the controls in place in time for the matches on Curie is just nuts. They pulled it off.

That being said, I am curious on how robots are inspected mid-competition against rule compliance for cost of materials used if a part from another team is on their robot.

In the past, if I design a part for my team’s robot, my time is not charged to the cost of that part since my company is a partner of this team. If I needed a complicated part made by wire EDM and had to go to an outside machine shop, the cost of that part (which includes its labor) would have to be captured on our BOM. Even if that vendor machine shop did us a favor and did the work for free, we would have to capture the fair-market value of the part if they aren’t a team partner.

If one robotics team designs a part and has the on-site machine shop build it, wouldn’t the receiving team for that part be required to account for the engineering design time on the cost of that part in their BOM? How is donated time at events captured? How about design time that was “spent” prior to the event but for parts given to other teams at the event?