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Re: Corporations Build Robots
1) There are some robots built more by mentors than by students. For those of us who've been doing this for a while, we know it happens. But I don't think the number of these teams are as high as people may think.
2) Teams often look at a well sponsored team and make assumptions about the mentors/sponsors involvement. My team has been guilty of this in the past. We'd get frustrated because our robot might not perform as well as we'd hope, and then we'd see the well sponsored team kick butt in the competition and out of jealousy and envy, accusations would surface about "well at least students built OUR robot". Come to find out later that the well sponsored team had a lot of students involved in many different ways which led to their well-designed robot and performance.
3) For those few times when a mentor(s) has built most of the robot, the team doesn't always last very long. I know two teams in my area that started and then folded because it relied so heavily on the mentors. When the mentors changed jobs or positions, the team couldn't survive. SAD.
4) There are many ways for students to be inspired, working along side an engineer or engineers working along side students. Both work, FIRST has proven that. Get over it.
5) Ask anyone who has judged a competition, if they know which teams had mentors doing most of the work. They know and take it in consideration for certain awards. Don't set your team up to rely on success with the robot competition only. There are other awards that are very meaningful to a team, make sure YOUR team knows this. For the first 2-3 years our team worried mostly about getting the robot to perform well. In the subsequent years, we prepared more for different awards, how to talk to judges and our overall team presentation, and wouldn't you know it we started winning some of the other awards and take a lot of pride in that even though we have yet to win a competition.
Don't close this thread, it's good discussion and information that teams need to grapple with. I'd rather they grapple with it on a well moderated thread than make rumors worse elsewhere.
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