[Donut]

Originally Posted by tindleroot

Obviously, Chairman's is given to "model teams" for outreach, program growth and sustainability, etc, but I wonder if FIRST used to consider the strength of a team's robot performance as well. It's a little bit surprising that many, many hall of fame teams are also perrenial contenders for Einstein, considering the outreach portion of Chairman's seems to be the most important (not trying to knock powerhouse teams here, but if Chairman's and robots are truly independent then you would expect the hall of fame to contain a large range of robot-skilled teams).

Originally Posted by Hot_Copper_Frog

Well, I'd imagine that part of being a model team is fielding a consistently competitive robot. Not because winning is important, but consistently high performing robots are a product of teams that have strong partnerships with their sponsors/mentors, a solid base of institutional FIRST design knowledge, effective implementation of the engineering design process, etc. I don't necessarily think that robot performance is explicitly factored into the decision, but the teams that are "doing it right" will probably end up with pretty good robots because of they way they are structured.

Looking at all of the Hall of Fame teams since 2000 the majority of them are well known for their performance on the field, but there are two counter-examples. Last year's winner 597 has never won a Regional or Champs Division in their history, and has a total of 4 robot based awards since their inception in 2001. They have been Regional Finalists 3 times but only once in this decade. 2008's Chairman's winning team 842 had never won an event in their history at the time they entered the HOF and had a total of 3 robot based awards at that time (4 if you include Division Finalist from Champs that same year, though I would think that would have occurred after judging for Chairman's was already concluded). There is also team 22 from 2001 that according to TBA had no robot awards prior to winning, but I don't know how accurate the history pages on FIRST and TBA are that far back for award listings.

Now I do think that having consistently below average performing robots precludes a team from winning Championship Chairman's, but once you are above a minimum-competitiveness threshold it looks like it is not a factor. I am not familiar with 597's robots but I did get to watch (and drive against) most of 842's robots during the years prior to their Chairman's win. They built sturdy robots focused around one aspect of the game and were often a playoff team, but were rarely an alliance captain and did not become a major contender for winning an event until their Chairman's season. Looking at TBA history for 597 they look similar in that they made quarters or semis at many events but rarely seeded high enough to captain their alliance. Based on these two teams, I would say any team has a reasonable shot at Championship Chairman's as long as they have robots that function reasonably well and sometimes make eliminations.

It will be interesting to see how 597's HOF status affects their competitiveness in the coming years. 842 really caught fire and has created some amazing machines since their Chairman's win. I'm not sure how much my students believe me when I tell them that they used to field robots not much different from the ones we have built recently.