Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Steve W
One question that I have is how do you regulate the 3 day prior to comp build time?
What is to stop a team from designing, building and testing an apparatus for 3 weeks prior to competition?
|
There is currently no enforcement against teams spending as much time designing and building as they want.
However, if you allow 3 days prior to competition for additional fabrication and you require a team to check their parts in at the competition, the inspector would have a pretty good idea of what was realistic to fab and what wasn't in those three days.
Further, most of us are pretty honest folks. Few teams would start their fab prior to the three days before the Thursday of a regional. If you don't get everything done, you run against a hard limit; you're getting in a van or on an airplane.
However, with the rule that allowed three days after competition fab, if you didn't get the job done, the temptation to keep fabricating was pretty intense. A higher percentage of folks are going to give into this temptation than to knowingly start fabricating early.
The "three days after" rule also put teams in a situation where they may have just finished a grueling three days + travel home. And the next day, they're back in the machine shop. This creates an unacceptable safety risk.
FIRST's primary goal is to motivate high school students to pursue engineering. Attending a competition with a robot that does not work goes against that goal. The six week build phase does not provide much margin for error for most teams. Therefore, if you slip up, you are caught between the dilemma of having an anti-inspiring competition or of cheating or of fabricating in unsafe conditions. FIRST can eliminate this dilemma through the spare parts rule.
As long as there is a rule that the super-majority of people understand and follow, the playing field will be level.
An ambiguous rule or a rule which changes after kick-off will result in an unfair competition. This is evidenced by the many discussions in the past regarding interpretation of the "spare parts" rules.
A rule which puts teams into conflict with FIRST's fundamental mission will result in higher attrition, especially among first and second year teams.