[patrickrd]

While at the Canadian regional our team selected a robot with a tape measure as our alliance partner. As a coach I didn't have much time to watch matches, or participate in scouting. When we were in the queue waiting for our match, I was talking with our ally about their tape-measure-tether design. It was the first one I had saw and I was quite impressed with it's simplicity and effectiveness.

What I wondered was how they came up with the idea. I wanted to know what type of brainstorming they did or how that idea came about. When I asked I was pretty disappointed to find out that they had seen it on another robot at another regional, and more or less copied the design.

While it is legal (this year at least) and I don't see anything wrong with a team choosing to add the feature (it obviously is quite effective), I am disturbed a bit with the whole concept of copying an idea during the season. Once a team starts competing, I think teams should not be allowed to change their designs. That's what the six weeks is for, in my opinion. I just don't think it's a good idea to let teams take the idea of one team (i don't know who did it originally, but i give you my congratulations on a great idea) and add it to their robot for the next regional competition. It's okay to look at an aspect of another robot design and say, "what a great idea. next year we should think along these lines...". I don't think it's okay to say, "look at that feature. let's add that before our next regional." It's just not fair to the team that came up with it originally, and it's teaching the students on the team that you win by copying other designs. We have some unique design features on our robot, and I think our team takes great pride that we came up with these ideas by our own brainstorming and design process. If we were to add two tape measures, well, that would seem cheap to me. Sure we might do better if we do, but then can we really call the robot our own?

Patrick