[Tottanka]

Originally Posted by Bill Moore

Earlier this fall, as FIRST was releasing information, I was surprised at the number of times they addressed "collaboration". Taking your NASA idea to a more present engineering achievement, consider the International Space Station. This is an Engineering task that must be coordinated between teams of engineers very distant from each other, yet the separate components must match up in space, or their efforts will be wasted.

BIG WHAT IF . . .

What if FIRST provided a docking ring and collar system in the KOP, and teams had to build both a drive system and an actuator assembly that could be separated by using this docking system.

Then at competitions, teams would not only play together, but would have to use the drive from one team with the actuator from another. You could have 2 robots vs 2 robots matches and increase each alliance to 4 teams (8 teams per match). Teams would only play with half their robot, and they could mix and match among the alliance to get the best fit of robots.

It would be very difficult, but by encouraging collaboration, it would mimic a current engineering task.

I dont think that first will like the idea of some teams using other teams drive systems/operational systems.
It might just take the whole game out of the driver-skills.