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Originally Posted by travis48elite
Our team has a practice robot that is a clone of our competition robot. This robot became useful between competitions for fixing problems or making new or modiefied parts. And we would usually take these new completed parts that we improved to the competition to replace. But the only parts that we regularly took to the competitions was our tank tread modules. But I do agree we have to draw the line as far as what you may take from a team with the same robot.
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I realy have no problem with the colaberation, or even the donation of parts to from one robot to another. My largest problem is the problems that it has with the FIX IT window rules. Say there is a three team colaberation, and say that all three teams have decided to go to 1 regonal all together and 1 regonal by themsleves. So you have team A that decides to go to a regonal in week one. They work on thier robot and their code because there are a few bugs in the code and the design. Then week 2 comes along and it's the regonal that all three have decided to attend all together. All the work that team A did in the first week on their robot and code is then sent to teams B and C before the second regonal so that when the FIX IT window opens before the competition the two other teams can fabricate the parts they need to make the modifications. This I think violates the FIX IT window rules since the parts had been designed before teams B and C had their FIX IT Window open. This is lawyering the rules and may or may not be alowed.
The more blatent problems with the FIX IT window is the use of a practice robot. This practice robot is used between the ship date and the competition to find bugs in the design and the code. So durring practice with your practice robot you find a problem with your shooter which requires a small part to be made. This part is designed and made for the practice robot and works perfectly. The team then waits for the FIX IT window to open and then makes that part for a "upgrade" that is brought in as your 25 lbs. But did they not design that part outside the fix it window? Does this not break the FIX IT window rules? Finaly this team works on their code for they're practice robot to make the robot's autonomous code work more smoothly and makes the robot function better. They then arive at the competition and upload this inproved code into their robot. I know that there was a specific question in the Q&A about programming and the Fix it window and the answer was along the lines that you are alowed to think about changes to the code but are not allowed to actualy code anything. Would they not have been coding for their competition robot when they were improving their code for their practice robot? Do teams rewite the code line for line when they get to the competition to avoid this? I find that if this is if not against the rule at least against the spirit of the rule, which i beleive is almost as bad as breaking the rule itself.