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Unread 08-04-2010, 11:04
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Re: Frustrations with Minor Technicalities

Quote:
Originally Posted by engunneer View Post
A random thought I had to make the rules more clear - keep the numbering consistent on common rules from year to year.
This is a BRILLIANT idea. We should pose it to FIRST and persuade them to go with it, as in practice it works extremely well.

It's not mentioned much around here, but a different robot competition, BEST, does rules like this. They have a packet of "Generic Rules" that is available year round and rarely changes from year to year. This includes many robot build and wiring rules. Since it's available all the time up to kickoff, it's a great resource to point teams to to get them ready for building a bot.

I think FIRST could greatly benefit from employing this kind of philosophy to the rules. Many (Most?) of the robot rules are identical from year to year or nearly so and have no connection whatsoever to the actual game. I think FIRST could release these generic robot rules well before the kickoff for teams to pick at, and declare a freeze a month or two before kickoff. This would let us hold workshops on robot building well before kickoff and give teams ample time to familiarize themselves with 75% of the robot rules in a non-pressure situation. The only difficulty would be making sure everyone is clear that the game specific robot rules entirely supercede any noted generic robot rules. Or just make the generic rules are generic enough by skipping specific sizing and weight requirements. Anyways, I think the benefits of this approach would far outweigh the minor difficulties.
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