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Unread 20-03-2007, 16:32
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AKA: Neil Parikh
FRC #0025 (Raider Robotix)
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Re: why sooo many bad robots in 07

Quote:
Originally Posted by Conor Ryan View Post
I have an idea! Let's put a salary cap on fundraising for teams, then all the money they make beyond that goes into a general fund to support other teams with less money, after all they do it in sports. Then after we balance all the budgets we'll distribute machinery and mentors to all the teams (after being selected randomly of course).

Will what I just said even be considered? No. Because there are the have's and the have not's. Some teams have the capability to CNC their entire robot, some teams have a hard time getting access to just a drill press. Others have many mentors with a lot of know-how and knowledge, others have one, maybe two. The kit chassis and drivetrain is given to teams to help balance the playing field a bit, and it does. Some teams need a little more than just the chassis and drivetrain, and until those who do get it (or figure out a way around it), FIRST won't have a ultra-competitive playing field. This year what many teams to not be competitive on the field was what they had or (more often) didn't have.

If only FIRST was a professional sport......
But isn't this the point of FIRST. If the goal is to prepare students for the real world via hands-on experience in engineering, etc, then FIRST has accomplished this goal.

Take a look: not every team has the same resources, funding, mentorship, etc. Some teams have more, some less, some are willing to share, some are not--but in any scenario, the kids are in real-life scenario.

Say you start out at a pharmaceutical company such as Palatin, a small NJ based company with little funding, but many great ideas. In working there you may not have all the resources in the world, but you are still getting your hands dirty--and you're still making the best out of what you have.

Now say later in your life you move onto working for Pfizer, one of the world's largest 'bigPharma' companies. Now with access to all the resources the world has to offer, are you that much better off? Who knows?

But in real life you'll always be faced with challenges--and that is what FIRST set out to emulate..the challenges of everyday, real - world design scenarios. Many of the smaller companies allow for more creative freedom, and that explains what so many of those smaller companies are being bought out by bigger ones for their intellectual property. Both sides have their advantages--in a smaller company your ideas may be given more of a chance to develop (and in a smaller or team with less resources, you may have a bigger flow of more creative ideas), but in the bigger company, you might have much more resources, funding, and publicity (just as with a bigger team or more well funded team).

In the end, as many of my mentors have taught me before, FIRST is not about the robots, it's about the kids. It's about inspiring us to go into the fields of science and technology and to help develop us into the leaders of tomorrow. Now regardless of whether the students are a part of a big or small team, a poorly or well resourced one, or one with 100% or 50% student involvement in construction, etc, if the message is being carried across, then FIRST and that team have achieved their goals--to inspire and recognize science and technology.
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