Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Marc P.
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.
|
But can you honestly say that working on an offseason robot and learning from that is as inspiring as working on your competition robot? I don't think you could make that statement. There's an excitement, a rush, involved with working on a robot that will compete in a regional or nationals. It trumps, in my oppinion, any kind of inpiration that can be fueled by an off season event or activity. FIRST is learning yes, but a lot of kids will choose not to learn about stuff if they're not too terribly interested (we're lazy). The FIRST season creates an atmosphere that really can't be beat, and it's learning and working with robotics in that setting that gets kids fired up about science and tech, particularly, learning and working to perfect something that will compete. A practice robot helps to further this goal of inpiring kids to learn, getting them that much more excited and involved.