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Originally Posted by Ken Patton
Con: There will be much less inspiration.
Students will have ready access to the solutions to the problem - all they need to do is look at 67, 233, 111, 71, 217/229, 997 and they will know what some great solutions are. Their brains won't hurt cause they didn't need to use them. There will be no transition from "this is impossible!" in week1 to "I know five ways to do this and four of them are easy" in week6. They will miss out on the magic of creating something from nothing.
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Really, though, don't we already have something like this? Every year we see imitations of the most successful drivetrains, and every year we see the teams that created those successes pushing the envelope even further. Look at AndyMark and the kitbot. Are the teams that didn't have to come up with their own solution as to how to drive around any less inspired? We can't have it both ways - either better robots lead to better inspiration, or they don't.
Anyway, I think that the idea that the game is the same isn't really central to the whole concept. (The person who's concept it is might disagree.) Imagine being a rookie team next year, and showing up on day 1 with a working drivetrain and arm. You can see up close how someone else screwed up, and how to fix it. A rookie team starts with a year of hardware under their belt, and the help of a more experienced team to move them along. Allowing them to use whatever parts of their mentor team's robot they want to salvage gives them the chance to be competitive, or at least the chance to see what doesn't work. I think it's great.
Another possibility: limiting the build restrictions to teams who won a regional or a robot award last year. Discuss.
