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Originally Posted by Jason Kixmiller
I agree that FIRST is intended to help spread and increase engineering knowledge, but the idea of two established teams sharing an identical design seems to have skewed the concept. I feel personally that FIRST should be about each individual team sharing the work load and the joys and the pains that come along with engineering and manufacturing its own unique design. While the idea of developing partnerships and friendships among colleagues and potential opponents is novel and advantageous, I feel that the fabrication, design, and communication that occurs as a single team creates and competes with its own robot cannot and should not be replaced.
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This is partially my reasoning on it.
Giving each other design tips is great. Designing two identical robots where on team produces double of one part and the other team build the other is part is where it crosses the line for me.
I love to see the innovation that each team has separately.
I could see this happening nationwide in order to make everyone more efficient and competitve. Can you imagine going to a regional where there are 50 teams but only 25 robots, just doubled? Especially since FIRST has been trying to get more media coverage to bring more people in. Can you imagine what someone might think watching this event where they watch identical robots competing with identical strategies? I would think it was dull and unimaginative.
I've already touched on this subject of sort when talking about with holding secrets, not that secrets should be withheld but in that FIRST is awesome because the robots are unique.
We should make one plan for every robot and everyone can make the same robot that does everything and is in the limit of the rules and this would give rookies a level playing field. The whole competition could be based on the best strategy.
I think collaboration is great, mass production goes against what FIRST is about. I urge other teams not to repeat this in the coming years. Build partnerships but don't build each other robot. My econ teacher has went over how trading is good for everyone, but in this case I think it hurts FIRST.
Next year I would urge both 60 and 254 to use each other as sounding boards for design ideas and use each other for machining capabilities. But don't split the workload on one robot design and then just double it. But that is only my opinion. I'd like to hear what everyone think about this one.
Yeah Scott, I can see that one. We are competition-driven in Kansas.
And Joe, Please don't let any collaboration of this nature happen with delphi teams. I'm already starting to get scared. Many teams won't have the resources to compete effectively if team with resources enough begin to collaborate and double their resources. I could see some pretty powerful hard to beat collaboration happening.
As a future note, may I ask that any future collaborators only collaborate with teams that go to a different regional. <edit out>You could build complimenting robots that you make a deal that if one make the top eight the other makes the alliance and they work perfectly together. Hey, I should do that. </edit out>