[Marc P.]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

Matt and Steve,
Learning doesn't stop with the build season. Practice robots are good for so many reasons, I am not sure I can count that high. When we complete a robot, pack it up and ship it, we get a chance to relax for a little while, but our students are still fired up and open for more knowledge. (don't forget that for many schools, this program is also a credit class and that requires constant class time throughout the year.) It is the practice robot that allows them to practice what they have already learned. It gives electrical students a chance to see what can go wrong in mechanical systems. It gives mechanical a chance to see what small software changes can make in a perfectly working mechanical system. It allows teams that build them, a robot to use for demonstration at schools in their area and to show off to potential donors and school board members. If it were not for the practice robot, our students would not be prepared to help out other teams, recognize hardware weaknesses, software bugs, or electrical problems. And above all, it gives teams a testbed to find problems with new hardware that were not obvious during build. I do not believe FIRST would have advanced as far as it has without this additional time to play and learn.

Would not the previous year's robot serve the same purpose though? Inspiration and learning aren't specific to any particular game or setting. As Matt so eloquently put it in his post, a practice robot based on the current game would give the higher resource teams an advantage over teams without. If Software people want to learn about mechanical systems, or electrical to learn about pneumatics, or any other group learning any other aspect of the machine, the same can be learned from a machine not geared towards the current game.

That's not to say there aren't advantages to a practice robot, as have been stated in other threads. Of course, there's plenty to learn about the current game in terms of strategy and robot capability, and naturally these are good things. The big problem (and main purpose of this thread) is that not all teams have this capability, and positive as the experience is for one team, another team can see it as an unfair advantage in competition.

If you take away practice bots, you might as well take away post season events, workshops, white papers and CD.

The main point in this thread is that practice robots can give teams an unfair advantage in official FIRST competition. Once nationals and the official season has ended and the off-season begins, the sky is the limit in terms of development. Teams can work on robots and do essentially anything they wish without fear of rules (unless they plan to compete in post-season events, in which case modifications are governed by each event's specific rules). There is no fix-it window or guidelines on building things for learning/inspiration. The white papers and workshops really have nothing to do with this either. Workshops are designed to build skills and enhance knowledge of available parts and capabilities, but otherwise have nothing to do with the specifics of the game. Same for white papers, and ChiefDelphi is a resource where it all comes together year-round. They are all tools to directly aid teams in building a competitive robot, but are available to all teams at all times. Practice robots serve only teams with the resources available to build them, and while providing insight into how said teams will perform in competition, they detract from the meaning of the six week build period by extending prototyping and testing past the ship date. And again, for purposes of learning and inspiration, other machines can serve the same purpose, without giving extra time to work on an already shipped robot past the deadline.