[Chris Hibner]

This is a good reason to get rid of the "ship after 6 weeks" rule. Teams that build two robots (to work while their robot has been shipped) are already working through the entire competition. The six week deadline isn't saving these teams any work or any stress. In fact, if we didn't have to ship the robots, these teams would be doing less work (since building a second copy of the robot is obviously more work than only building one copy and keeping it).

It seems to me that the only teams that build two robots are the teams that have the money and/or manpower to do it. If FIRST is interested in a level playing field (for the small teams), then perhaps it's time to do away with shipping the robot off in 6 weeks. That way, everyone has a robot to work with between competitions.

I also think that this takes away some of the advantage to going to many regionals. At the regionals, the teams get to work on their robots, work on programming, make modifications, fix problems, etc. The more regionals you go to, the more opportunity you have to fix things. If teams keep their robot, every team has equal opportunity to fix the robots, make modifications, etc.

Some may argue that this takes away from the "real engineering experience" of having a deadline. I disagree. You would still have a very real deadline: your first competition. If you don't like having to work on the robot at the end of six weeks, then don't - no one would be forcing you to.