[Mike Nawrot]

On behalf of Phill (catchrothy) I apologize, he made too many assumptions. I personally am a little disgraced by the Co-op between these three teams, because here on team 11, we believe that a bad robot with no adult design input is much better than a good robot with no student input. I am not saying niagraFIRST students had no input, because they clearly had some form, but i believe that the mentors are there to challenge the students mind by asking questions the students must think about hard and long before giving an answer. Our leadership always wants a good robot, but they ask us what we want our robot to do, and then ask us why we think that, and when the students come to a majority for a single strategy, we keep it. Afterwords, it is in our hands to design the robot. The mentors work FOR us, when we come up with a design, they help us solve details by offering ideas. They help us learn HOW to make the parts of the robot, not how to DESIGN it. I am not accusing these three teams of not designing their own robots. We CADD our own things, all CADD'd by students, then send the drawings to our local county college, or one of our teammate's basements to have it CNC'd. We then assemble it, and if there is a part that is not made, our mentors point it out and we make it. Not to say these three teams don't do so. Its about time i get to the point: disagreements are unavoidable. there is no such thing as the perfect robot. Everyone has a different view on how to do things. I personally think that the Co-op could've resulted in similar ideas (IE high shooter, same abilities) but i think that every robot should have a different solution.... seriously.. if you have to design something.. and its the same amount of material as the other robot..... then you can easily CAD something different and send the CAD over to the source of all your heavy machining. The robots would do the same things in the end, but the way they do them may be different. Essentially, it's like one giant team, which is great, because we have a fairly large team ourselves, but everyone wants to build a robot. It'd get crowded, sure, but thats the point where i think that they should go in the direction that RAGE went. Two robots (or in this case 3) for one team, using them as spares. Its all one team in the long run, but if something breaks they have a back up. Its not three teams competing with the same robot that way. its one team with two spare robots, which would not call any attention to it. But having the idea of having three teams with the same exact potential is... its just unfathomable. I'm not saying the design of these robots was easy. Honestly, i think the robots themselves a very impressive. But i want to compare this to the real world. Take any industry you want. Three companies/firms need to come up with a product to do the same thing. They work together and come up with the same result. they market the end product under a different name, but they go for the same price and work exactly the same. which one do you buy? i think that the idea of three teams with the same robot isn't bad when it comes to learning how to construct it and design it.... its just a bad end result..... and after all this rambling (which is all it really comes down to) I'd just like to state that i have no stance on this. i like the robot, and i know students took part in it. But the fact that they acted as one team and want to compete as three others goes against my FIRST morals. What's done is done, but i recommend forming one team with three robots next year. Our team founder/current mentor found this picture... and the look on his face could only be described as the deepest disappointment. As a team that worked with another school to help them get started, we know that cooperation between teams really helps, and we've helped that team when they had problems, but we never designed their robot with them. There is a fine line between one team helping and three separate teams. i think you blurred it to make something no one has ever seen. My point is really just to let people have their opinions, and that there were better ways to go about this. Nice robots, good luck, and i hope that we see more great robots in the future.

Sincerely,
Mike

note: I know the people involved in the NiagraFIRSTteams are amazing people.... but three teams may be a little excessive for what they need to do.