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Unread 06-03-2006, 15:24
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Re: [moderated] pic: The 2006 NiagaraFIRST Triplets!

Quote:
Originally Posted by doubleslash
"One team, one robot, one competition" means exactly that, if the robots differ, then the teams differ. In your case where robots are coincidentally, it's important to differentiate robots that are identical and identical in design. Identical robots are exactly alike in every respect, which is almost impossible to occur just coincidentally. Robots that are identical by design have all the exact same design qualities, like having the same number of flywheels, same type of drive train, etc. Teams that collaborate and develop robots identical in design are likely to be more powerful, and if it proves to be a successful robot in the competition, people will learn that teamwork works. But that doesn't mean that teams can all bring the exact same robot to the regionals to increase their chances of success. Bottom line: every team should engineer their own robot, but that doesn't mean that they can't have similar design principles.
Come to a regional in which the NiagaraFIRST teams participate, and then give some more thought to this matter. If you saw the three of them last year you would know that despite the fact that they had identical robots, they were three clearly different teams. They all had their own style of play, and as an alliance leader thats how you would perceive them.

Last year at the Waterloo regional our team was in a position to be picking an alliance and the night before we never once said that any one of the Niagara teams was just as good as the other. We ended up picking team 1503 because at that regional we felt their performance would complement our alliance moreso than the other two teams. To their credit though, team 1680 was the highest-seeded rookie team at that regional and 1114 went on to dominate the Greater Toronto Regional (and went up against 1503 in the finals I might add) despite their performance in Waterloo.

The teams collaborate with each other to build their robots, they share mentors, and I'd gather that the students have gotten to know each other quite well. But when it comes to the competition, these are three individual teams, and should be treated as such.
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University of Waterloo Computer Science, Class of 2010