The team I am mentoring has bought a Mecanum wheel Set and a Traction wheel set from AM and IFI, in the intent of building simple frames to experiment with.
I wanted them to
learn by experience, so that when the kickoff gets here they can say "well according to our experiments in different setups we can conclude that it is probably better to use this setup rather than that." (for example)
(like every veteran team can do for free - because they usually have 2-3 old robots lying around with different drive concepts).
The plan was to later
dismantle the chassis' and use the wheels
we ordered before the kickoff on the real robot we build during the 6 weeks.
I
think feel that this is legal according to the spirit of the rules.
specifically I remember reading somewhere in the rules that it's ok to buy parts before the kickoff for use on the actual robot.
and I think it's still ok if you use those parts to prepare yourself for the FRC by building testbeds.
now of course there are really gray areas such as coding...
I don't know about you but I won't tell anyone not write code in the offseason...
it's called learning!, and when he does write code I have no problem with copy+pasting it into the robot code, as long as when he wrote the code in the first place he didn't mean for it to go on the real robot.
writing it all over again is a stupid lawyer-type formality and we could all really do ourselves a favor and ditch that kind of stuff.
We can either have it really lawyered up and basically everything would be illegal (you have to be sterilized before the kickoff because dust created before the kickoff is not allowed on the robot).....
Or we can try and understand what the intent was (or have FIRST tell us what the intent IS), which in this case was in my opinion:
"Don't start building the robot before the kickoff."
(and no I don't think i'm contradicting myself regarding the programming and the "no robot building")
Good luck to everyone this season and remember to bring your GP to the kickoff!
-Leav