Quote:
Originally posted by Andy Baker
I am glad that this point was brought up.
I see Sarah's point as a reason why FIRST is removing the auto-qualification for teams who win technical awards.
It is true that some teams in the past won technical awards for innovations on their robots which did not work during many matches. While this innovation deserves some recognition, the design is only worth ballast if it does not work on the playing field.
Why should a team qualify for the Championships if they get a technical award for something that does not work? I definitely think that a team should not win an award for something that doesn't work.
However, if this team uses this somewhat-functioning innovation to promote engineering and inspire students to be engineers, then they may have a darn good Engineering Inspiration award entry.
Non-functioning innovations should not get awards. Inspiring students with these innovations (even if they don't work too well) should get awards. Teams should use the innovation to inspire, not as a ticket to go to Atlanta. The more I think of this, the more I applaud FIRST for making a decisive move in this direction.
Andy B.
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My point was that technical awards take pressure off the teams to do really well and work perfectly 24/7 while still applauding good engineering. I agree that teams shouldn't get recognition for something if it doesn't work at all, but its possible that a team could have a great design that works but doesn't get used because of other independent problems.
I understand your point about Engineering Inspiration, but in some cases the influence of such a great design might not be enough to win the award due to heavy competition. Some regionals have a lot of teams that all benefit FIRST immensely. For example, the National Chairmans award winning teams from the past two years both won the J&J Mid-Atlantic regional chairman's award prior to that. A small team with a great design isn't going to be able to compete for Chairman's or Engineering Inspiration. The design, however, would be enough to win a technology award.
Perhaps the best solution would be to create an "ultimate" design award that would qualify a team for the Championship. That way you still have the benefits of having technology award wining teams qualify, while also not putting too much emphasis on good design.