[EricH]

There are 3 things I want to talk about. All of them are relevant; none of them is an attack on the original poster, or intended as such. If it is perceived as an attack, I apologize in advance.

1) All teams have the same amount of time. Another poster brought up fix-it windows. We have fix-it windows this year that are from ship day to competition. Maybe not all teams have the same resources, or the same practice space. Meet the incentive to get those resources--the robot that has them and beats yours (or not). For reference, my team used old robots as practice until 2007, when we built a practice robot first, as a prototype, and then used what we learned to build the real deal. We won the Championship in 2005 without an accurate practice robot, just a retrofitted 2004 robot that wasn't really meant for driving on the floor. Since 2007, there have been several practice robots...

2) No rule prevents any of the following: collaboration, intentionally identical robots on different teams, mentor-built robots, student-built robots, or practice robots built by one team. If anyone can show a rule, I'll shut up on that topic. (Also note: this is the umpteenth year that all of the above items have been legal--collaboration was officially approved in 2004, and was the last of the list.)

3) What is the spirit of FIRST? Does anybody know? United States Foundation For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology... Does that not describe the spirit of FIRST in a nutshell? For those wondering, yes, that is the full official name of FIRST. They've since stopped using the United States part, and to a large extent the Foundation part. I don't see how building a second robot detracts from either inspiration or recognition--in fact, it may even expand it by allowing more students to get their hands dirty playing with science and technology, and improving their understanding.

In short, you have to define the spirit of FIRST before you ask if something is a violation. That definition is a very good topic, because we all need the reminder. "Asking if" something is a violation is not the best topic, as we all just found out.