[Cole Cyr]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

Have you ever looked at a robot or a mechanism and thought "wow, that's beautiful"? You might have 30 other teams at the event that accomplish the task the same way, but none of them will look as good. That's art, expressed through engineering. As we see every year, any team that tries can field a robot that plays the game. But some teams have a certain elegance in their design that makes you stop and look, while others are kludges that, while functional, aren't pretty.

At work, I implement solutions to problems every day. Sometimes, when I review those solutions before delivering them, I think "wow, that's ugly". Other times its "wow, that's really nice". The nice, elegant solutions I want to go crow about. The ugly ones I just hope no one else notices. Yet both of them solve the problem and become part of the product.

Art is integral to engineering, even if we don't like to think so.

A solution to a task that solves it with beauty and elegance is not thanks to Art it is thanks to STEM and a robot that looks good while doing it is Art. it is true there is something to be said about a good looking bot but at the end of the day you dont get to finals for having a good looking bot, infact ive seen alot of ugly bots get to finals and win so what do u value more, a robot that can accomplish a task well or one that looks better but performs worse. do you think that on the ISS that would install an arm that performed worse just because it looks better. the point being that Art compliments STEM but has no OBJECTIVE purpose