[mathking]

Originally Posted by meg

I think it depends on what you want to teach the students. What if the engineers at Google had decided that because cars are vehicles driven by people, they couldn't start to automate that process.

What if the Wright brothers had listened to the whole world telling them that it was impossible to fly? Where would this world be if all the engineers and inventors just accepted what is and what has been assumed? Cars? Space exploration? Computers?

I don't disagree with this but I don't think it is the right analogy. If the self-driving car engineers had come up with a self driving jet pack it would be amazing and cool and not what they were asked to do. I am all for trying to find crazy ways to play the game and coming up with really innovative mechanisms and designs that are fantastic and effective. And honestly I don't think a team that put two robots in the bag with the intent of one being spare parts for the other did anything wrong at all. It's pretty brilliant, particularly for a game as rugged as this one is likely to be.

In this situation, and in pretty much every situation where we start a discussion like this about what is the right way to do things or what is fair in FRC, I think about what makes the competition fun and exciting for the most people. The mission of the organization (in regards to FRC) is to change the culture by providing a competition that makes STEM exciting and fun for high school students. So while I do think FIRST is not necessarily setting out to make things "fair" they have pretty solid reason to keep things "fair enough" that people (kids and mentors) stay interested.