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Originally Posted by plutonium83
I had the same thought when I was at the Greater Toronto Regional and the Finger Lakes Regional. At GTR, I saw three collaborators that where all designed by a GM engineer. To my knowledge the students had no involvement with the development process. At FLR, I saw an adult scouting team and a lone adult working on a robot.
This level of adult involvement takes away from what FIRST is all about, the inspiration of students.
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Wow.
Your attempt to be discreet failed miserably, since there weren't really many three team collaborations at the GTR regional.
You're talking about the NiagaraFIRST.org robots, and you're doing so with no knowledge of our teams. Did you actually talk to anyone on our teams and ask them about our design and build process? Do you think it's fair of you to make assumptions our teams, without taking the time to get the facts.
Here's how things worked for NiagaraFIRST.org this season.
The day after kickoff students and mentors convened at all three schools, and broke into small groups to breakdown the game, and begin the initial brainstorming process. Later on that evening all the groups met at General Motors, and each team presented their findings and ideas. A vote was held, and ideas were narrowed down.
From here the design process began. Different ideas were prototyped as the team worked to finalize a design. Both students and mentors were involved with this process. Once the design was finalized, many finer points were ironed out by our engineers. The students were involved in this process as well.
Most of the fabrication took place at Westlane SS, home of Team 1503. They have an amazing machine shop, with CNC facilities. This is where our frame rails, sprocket hubs and wheels were made. The students from all three teams were an integral part of this process, working with their shop teacher and a GM machinist.
All the robot parts were brought to Governor Simcoe SS, the home of Team 1114. This were most of the robot assembly occurred. Again, the students were the leaders of this process as well. Students from all three schools would work late into the night with GM engineers and other mentors to get the robots built.
I'd say the more than 50% of the wiring on our robot was done my the students as well.
The credo of NiagaraFIRST.org is "Inspiring Future Science & Technology Heroes". We will never claim that our robot is 100% student built. We do have a large degree of engineer involvement. We firmly believe in our process of having the students work with and learn from engineers and other adult mentors. But to say that "the students had no involvement with the development process" is insulting, offensive, and blatantly untrue.
Kevin, I welcome you to come to our pits in Atlanta, so you can see first hand what our team is all about.
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Edit:
Here's a quote from one of my students on Team 1503, from our team's message board. This was in a thread started by one of our engineers asking the kids to describe their proudest moment of the season...
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My personal favourite moment was seeing the robot completed for the first time. Knowing how much of my blood, sweat, and tears went into that thing, I was glad to be done with it, but I was happier to see it fully functional knowing that Chris V, Evelyn, Khalid, Andy and I built the thing from scratch, I, and I'm sure everyone else, almost cried when we shipped it away."