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Originally Posted by Mike Martus
I do however stand behind my point regarding students learning from making an additional robot of any kind to drive and practice repairs. Skills are only learned through practice.
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As Jon said, this is more of a mercy rule than anything else, to encourage teams to take a step back from the machines for a moment and ponder what has happened and what's been learned over the previous 6 weeks. My feeling is the rule was designed to prevent work done on actual competition pieces and parts, and it does not apply to any sort of non-FIRST related robotics. If a team is building a robot to do other things non-FIRST for experimentation and learning, I'm pretty sure the FIRST rule wouldn't apply (as the robot itself is not a part of the FIRST program). There's just as much to learn with that sort of robot than a FIRST practice robot.
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On very often heard complaint is that students do not repair their own robots in the pits. In many cases it is because they do not have or have never been taught the skills to do so.
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Any students actively involved in the building of the robot should have a pretty good idea of how to repair the robot should anything fail. If a student is taught during the 6 weeks how to assemble and disassemble pieces of the robot, they'll have no problems doing it in the pit at competition. I just don't see how an extra 48 hours post-shipping or post-regional would be any more beneficial toward teaching repairs than the 6 weeks of actual build time.