[Charlie B]

Several of you have made very good points about the positives of allowing “standard” FIRST robot components. Thanks especially, Mike, for reminding me that FIRST’s mission is to inspire as much as it is to educate. I see advantages now that I didn’t see before, but I still have some concerns.

Purchase of pre-builts feels like a way around the six week rule. A company may offer “standard” moving boxes, maybe one version with low ground clearance and one for climbing obstacles, with my choice of high and low speeds. There are no rules in place now that would prevent it, and it wouldn’t be too hard, logistically, to pre-build a bunch of them. I take delivery on January 10, and get five weeks to practice driving and to design and build appendages. What about the teams who can’t afford the pre-built robot? Even if they are on the ball and get a design done pre-season, and buy transmissions, they still have to build the chassis, drive train, and appendages. Pre-building doesn’t seem to eliminate the disparity problem between rich and poor teams, it just moves the problem down the economic ladder some.

Andy, will your transmission plug into the FIRST-standard chassis? That might help alleviate the disparity.

Consider the team that’s debating whether to do their own innovative drive train. If their competitors are buying pre-builts and focusing on appendages, maybe they’ll skip the risk of innovation in favor of being safely competitive. Might pre-builts discourage innovation? I agree with Steve that pre-builts could be a great way to expose students to the state-of-the-art, and I hope that mentors, or students, will push teams past settling for “good enough”.

It’s fun to watch a robot do well in competition, just like it’s fun to watch my favorite baseball team win a game, but being a sports fan doesn’t make me want to play sports as a career. The pride and inspiration that I see in my team comes from knowing that they designed and built the robot, that they can fix it between matches because they know every nut, bolt, gear, wire, and tube. They learn that engineering doesn’t have to be distant and esoteric, it’s something that they can do. That’s where the inspiration comes from. Pre-builts seem to lessen the opportunity for that kind of inspiration. Like many teams, we usually have one design group on chassis and drive train, and another group on appendages. Only so many people can work on appendages. If teams can buy pre-builts, doesn’t that decrease design engineering opportunities? Even if the mentors have them take the pre-built moving box completely apart and put it back together again, they won’t get the design experience. Engineering design will still be something that other people do.

It may sound like I’m on a crusade to stop Andymark, and I’m really not. I just think that we are at a crossroads here, and that the FIRST community should consider the negatives as well as the many positives before going too far down the road of pre-building.