Ethics of 2 teams building 2 identical robots

[JesseK]

I'm with Kodo Ed on this one -- collaboration like this is a way to bring the cost of building a good robot down for teams who have the motivation but lack the resources. Instead of 2 teams going through the same bad iteration separately, only one team goes through it and thus between them some money is saved on parts. They can also partner up on shipping robot parts, wholesale purchases of aluminum, and travel to/from competition.

If both teams benefit from the collaboration, who are we to judge it? Sure, we may get our face stomped in by 2 teams instead of 1 team ... but in the end someone on those teams came up with the design and we would have lost to one of the teams anyways.