Quote:
Originally Posted by artdutra04
Most teams aim to win and be competitive. Team 190 puts innovation and inspiration as our highest goal - above being competitive.
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As a former member of 190, I can attest to this. While winning may be fun, when you're an engineer and you study it in every class and are just itching to get some real world experience with it, why not go nuts on a robot?
While I may be a huge fan of simplicity, especially in FIRST as I like keeping pit stops as short as possible, over-designing does have its merits. You learn a lot through the process, it's a good chance that everyone on the team will be exposed to atleast something new, and you'll get a lot of exposure. Team 190, year in and year out, consistently designs and implements some of the best and most innovative design concepts in this program. Between the slip ring this year, CVT's in 2002, the wonder wheels in 2001, you can't argue it.
Plus, by going in such a drastic direction as they did this year, they were playing a game. If the ruling of the GDC went one way, they could have had the greatest design and won every match. However, it went the other way and they had a robot that loved penalties as much as my car loves premium gas. It's a gamble to play that aggressively, and they know that. However, they probably had more fun in 6 weeks than most of us did.
And I'm not a betting man, but I'm pretty sure that they'll do something just as ridiculous next year...