[118 Tech]

Being veterans of FIRST for three years, and having the opportunity to attend numerous regionals and nationals, we were concerned about the fact that although their is a ship date when “robot construction” should be STOPPED, teams are using their time at regionals to redesign their robot. Their have been many teams that have shipped one design that they plan to use and then start on a second one again at regionals. They then use the "create spare parts time" to add on to the new design. Their have been reports from teams that their are other teams who spent the majority of their time at regionals rebuilding and redesigning the robot, this included the team being absent from most of the qualifying rounds. This leaves other teams in the match without an alliance partner. We feel that this is not in the spirit of FIRST and should be stopped. When this happens other competing teams trying their best to advance in the rankings are left at a disadvantage.

We also have another concern. Those teams that have the funding to attend numerous regionals gain an advantage, they gain robot drive time, spare part construction time, de-bugging time, strategy planning time, familiarity with the game and overall just more competition experience. Yes, some of the things that are gained from attending multiple regionals can not be refined to equalize the “un-privileged” teams, yet many of them could be. Time spent working with the robot and the game is crucial, if some teams gain more time by attending multiple regionals then why can’t this time they gain be given to the other teams as well? We believe that the time teams are given WITH their robot should be equalized.

By the way FIRST does limit the amount of events one team can attend to three. Yet look at how much time is gained from one extra regional!!

What do you think????



Josh and Chris

The two of the two radio toting, Leatherman carrying, webpage designing, EE majoring, FIRST junkies on 118's college student Alumni team.