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Unread 06-11-2006, 11:05
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Alan Anderson Alan Anderson is offline
Software Architect
FRC #0045 (TechnoKats)
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Re: Ideas to move in the direction of making FIRST competitions 'fair'

Quote:
Originally Posted by KenWittlief
I guess I have asked for too much to try to focus on coming up with ways to make the FIRST competiton more fair than it is today.
Indeed you have.

Before you can start working on ways to improve the situation, you must first define the problem. The trouble here is that there is no common definition of "fair", and I don't think there can be. Your proposal seems to be about equalizing the quality of the robot, and letting the quality of the drivers determine the outcome of the matches. For FRC, I think that's the wrong emphasis on many levels.

If you like the idea of constraining the designs so they can be matched up into predefined classes, there are other organizations out there that do what you want. But they do it that way because they are robotics competitions. FIRST uses robotics competitions as an incentive, not as a goal.

Quote:
but as they say, seeing the problem is the first step. If you cant recognize there is a problem, then nothing can be done about it.
If your target is "fair competition" along the lines of the one design sailboat races, I suggest that the problem is that you have chosen the wrong target.
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