Quote:
Originally Posted by gblake
One example would be to annually publish a how-to manual for building, and programming a simple, useful robot (plus control station), if that would be consistent with the purpose of building robots in the first place. However, my natural next thought is that any healthy team could do this already.
Or a healthy team could simply build a kit bot for themselves in the first 48 hours after the game is announced, and could then spend the rest of the build season helping N struggling teams instead of trying to win a blue banner for themselves. Imagine how well that would be received by the Chairman's Award judges ... That would be extreme, but it's a thought experiment that shines a light on the "Healthy teams need more time to help struggling teams" argument.
I understand the no bag & tag arguments, but I remain unconvinced that struggling teams' root causes will be affected.
Blake
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I get and don't disagree with your first two points and I've made the point before that we need more comprehensive tutorials.
I'm not going to tell my students they have to stop at a kit bot when there are other ways to solve this problem. This isn't just about maintaining competitiveness, forcing a limit on a team hurts their own ability to inspire their students. "Sorry but we need to artificially take away you'r ability to try to do better so we can level the playing field." The team I spent the most time helping is another 35min - 50min (varies by traffic) away. Even if I took more time away from my team my net work load in hrs per week would go up! I imagine many of us would be helping teams who are farther away than our primary team.
Or you could give me more time to help that team by:
Driving the extra 45min to visit them once in awhile but not so often
sharing our manufacturing sponsors (long lead times make it hard to fit in our own parts during six weeks)
Spend more time during the season sharing ideas and what we learned with them while they can still work
Give them time to get up to speed on CAD so they can make use of our resources
Give me more time to convince their administration that no the KOP is not literally
everything you need for a successful robot and yes you should let them buy that gearbox from VEX Pro.