Ethics of 2 teams building 2 identical robots

[Katie_UPS]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Why identical robots? I wouldn't want a robot on my alliance that looks and behaves exactly like my robot. I'd rather have a robot that compliments mine. Perhaps the two teams can focus on different aspects of the game and excel at those, while sharing some common traits.

Because you should always assume that you will be with two box-bots during qualification rounds.

[de_]

I can't say if this scenario applies in this case

Lets say you are a super team and you build (or help build or direct the building of) an identical robot for a non-super (say rookie) team and the 2 of you form an alliance that wins not only your local regional but you go to say 3 other regionals and win all those as well.

If the second super robot did not exist, at 4 regionals another 4 (deserving) teams would have virtually certainly been in the winning alliance and would have received:
- a permanent very desirable trophy
- a highly visible regional championship flag
- a very limited availability invite to the championship (a huge growth experience for students)
- substantial recognition in their school, mentors, sponsors, students etc
- substantial improvement in funding opportunities to go to the championship (versus if they had come second place with no invite, no trophy etc)

This may not break any current FIRST rules but it is clearly inconsistent with the goals of FIRST and the student base overall are the losers.

Clearly its okay to help a junior team get a basic robot to a regional. To help them so much that they get into winning regional finals in my mind crosses the line.
Update: clearly the above scenario is extreme and I won't comment if this scenario has already happened (or something close to it) but clearly there is some gray areas in the issue especially when super teams are involved.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

Here's an interesting thought exercise.

How many teams that collaborated won a world championship prior to collaborating? How many won a world championship during collaboration? How many won a world championship within 3 years after ending collaboration? Why?

254 won their first championship the first season they didn't collaborate following 7 years of collaboration.

We won our first championship the first and only season to date we had collaborated.

I can't think of any teams winning championships while collaborating aside from these two points, but if you open it up to division wins it becomes quite more (2005 [254], 2006 [968], 2007 [1902], 2008 [968], 2010 [254], maybe others I'm forgetting/overlooking).

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by de_

I can't say if this scenario applies in this case

Lets say you are a super team and you build (or help build or direct the building of) an identical robot for a non-super team and the 2 of you form an alliance that wins not only your local regional but you go to say 3 other regionals and win all those as well.

If the second super robot did not exist, at 4 regionals another 4 (deserving) teams would have virtually certainly been in the winning alliance and would have received:
- a permanent very desirable trophy
- a highly visible regional championship flag
- a very limited availability invite to the championship (a huge growth experience for students)
- substantial recognition in their school, mentors, sponsors, students etc
- substantial improvement in funding opportunities to go to the championship (versus if they had come second place with no invite, no trophy etc)

This may not break any current FIRST rules but it is clearly inconsistent with the goals of FIRST and the student base overall are the losers.

Clearly its okay to help a junior team get a basic robot to the a regional. To get them into the finals in my mind crosses the line.

What makes those teams any more deserving than the 2 teams that built a robot that proved more capable? Sounds to me your problem isn't with teams building identical robots but with those teams winning multiple events which is an unrelated problem.

Furthermore, FIRST has never come out and said that building twins or triplets is not in line with their goals. Collaborations have been around since the beginning of the 2000's so they've had plenty of time.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by de_

I can't say if this scenario applies in this case

Lets say you are a super team and you build (or help build or direct the building of) an identical robot for a non-super team and the 2 of you form an alliance that wins not only your local regional but you go to say 3 other regionals and win all those as well.

If the second super robot did not exist, at 4 regionals another 4 (deserving) teams would have virtually certainly been in the winning alliance and would have received:
- a permanent very desirable trophy
- a highly visible regional championship flag
- a very limited availability invite to the championship (a huge growth experience for students)
- substantial recognition in their school, mentors, sponsors, students etc
- substantial improvement in funding opportunities to go to the championship (versus if they had come second place with no invite, no trophy etc)

This may not break any current FIRST rules but it is clearly inconsistent with the goals of FIRST and the student base overall are the losers.

Clearly its okay to help a junior team get a basic robot to the a regional. To get them into the finals in my mind crosses the line.

The only thing preventing these four "deserving" teams from winning the event was that they built a robot that wasn't as competitive.

Both the "super team" and the "deserving" teams were given the same opportunities, timeline, ability to fundraise, ability to find sponsorship, ability to find mentors, etc...

If the deserving team truly deserved it, they would have achieved it.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by de_

I can't say if this scenario applies in this case

Lets say you are a super team and you build (or help build or direct the building of) an identical robot for a non-super team and the 2 of you form an alliance that wins not only your local regional but you go to say 3 other regionals and win all those as well.

If the second super robot did not exist, at 4 regionals another 4 (deserving) teams would have virtually certainly been in the winning alliance and would have received:
- a permanent very desirable trophy
- a highly visible regional championship flag
- a very limited availability invite to the championship (a huge growth experience for students)
- substantial recognition in their school, mentors, sponsors, students etc
- substantial improvement in funding opportunities to go to the championship (versus if they had come second place with no invite, no trophy etc)

This may not break any current FIRST rules but it is clearly inconsistent with the goals of FIRST and the student base overall are the losers.

Clearly its okay to help a junior team get a basic robot to the a regional. To get them into the finals in my mind crosses the line.

There are multiple problems with this scenario that you outline.

The first, quite frankly, is that the team(s) in question do NOT fall into the super-robot class quite yet. They're mid-pack, though near the upper end of that. In other words, your entire scenario does not apply.

Now, assuming it did, in fact, apply:

The second issue is that it's not always advantageous to pair with a team that is just like yours. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You're also assuming that you can do so every time. There may be another, better team at the event to break things up. (Say your hypothetical collaboration shows up to an event with 188, 1114, 1503, and 2056, among others. Or any event with 67, 217, and 469. Or... Or... You get the picture.)

The third is that the invite to Championship is not exactly limited. Any team can register for the Championship (given that they aren't a rookie and they register during their time to do so). Teams that don't get in get spots on the waitlist in case of scenarios like you propose where teams get multiple invites, which of course they can't accept all of.

The fourth is that if you're going to 4 regionals (and Championship), someone's going to be hurting anyway. That's why most teams don't do it. It'll either be robot quality, student homework quality/quantity, or sanity of various people on the team.

The fifth is, quite simply, it's not a collaboration as you outline it (maybe in one of your three cases, it is). If one team with one design is merely copied by another team, is that other team going to do as well? I think not. There are infinitely many tweaks that can be made to improve performance.

And now, a little discussion on the goals of FIRST. What is the goal of FIRST, in your mind? Is it to inspire students? Is it to educate them?

Or is it:

Originally Posted by FIRST's vision

"To transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology leaders."

Originally Posted by FIRST's mission statement

Our mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.

These are taken from http://usfirst.org/aboutus/vision. Or is it:

For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology

More students inspired by a powerhouse robot (or two) means more mission accomplished. Despite some people not liking said powerhouses, or said collaborations, they do fit right in with those goals.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

I can't think of any teams winning championships while collaborating aside from these two points, but if you open it up to division wins it becomes quite more (2005 [254], 2006 [968], 2007 [1902], 2008 [968], 2010 [254], maybe others I'm forgetting/overlooking).

217. Collaborated in 2005 (non-identical robots). Made Einstein semis. Did not collaborate in 2006, but won the Championship that year (and repeated in 2008). Collaborated again in 2010, with one of their partners from 2008 (148), but no championship that time out. As far as why, you'd have to ask them.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by de_

I can't say if this scenario applies in this case

Lets say you are a super team and you build (or help build or direct the building of) an identical robot for a non-super (say rookie) team and the 2 of you form an alliance that wins not only your local regional but you go to say 3 other regionals and win all those as well.

If the second super robot did not exist, at 4 regionals another 4 (deserving) teams would have virtually certainly been in the winning alliance and would have received:
- a permanent very desirable trophy
- a highly visible regional championship flag
- a very limited availability invite to the championship (a huge growth experience for students)
- substantial recognition in their school, mentors, sponsors, students etc
- substantial improvement in funding opportunities to go to the championship (versus if they had come second place with no invite, no trophy etc)

This may not break any current FIRST rules but it is clearly inconsistent with the goals of FIRST and the student base overall are the losers.

Clearly its okay to help a junior team get a basic robot to a regional. To help them so much that they get into winning regional finals in my mind crosses the line.

So, to get this straight: If I am helping another team- I should make their robot a haphazard version of my own and make sure they aren't as successful as my team will (or hopes to) be? Why are they not deserving of winning with me?

What would be the point of helping another team at all then if I don't plan on helping them reach success?

Your issue doesn't even seem to be with collaboration, it seems to be with being too helpful of a mentor team. Most teams don't force themselves on a rookie team, the rookie team asks for as much help as they think they want/need.

[Cuog]

I would steer the team discussion away from the ethical standpoint of a partnership. There's been a lot of first teams that have done it in the past, and the majority of the community has deemed it plenty ethical.

I would look into the logistical angle of the plan and see if its something the team members want to do. There's a lot of opportunities and a lot of sacrifices, and if most don't want to do it they'll spend all season focused on those sacrifices and will get less out of the program than if they hadn't gone the partnership route.

[Peyton Yeung]

Well from a competition standpoint, one might get confused seeing 2 of the exact same robots on the field at the same time. I know at the CAGE Match we lent out our practice bot to a new team and it got somewhat confusing watching them both in the field at the same time. Also when we were partners in the elimination matches it was hard to efficiently divide up tasks because our robots were made to do the same tasks the same way. I know 1501 also lent out their bot at CAGE but I'm not sure how they did with that.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by sst.thad

So some of the members think that bringing 2 identical robots to a regional would be cheating because they think it gives us an unfair advantage to winning.

Um, what if both robots perform very poorly? Will teams like you for having an advantage to losing?

Ethics is not a question here. Neither is "Fair" (or unfair). Nobody will hate you for collaborating. There is no advantage to building two identical robots*

So, considering those truths, don't worry and just build 2 twins. It'll work out fine.


(*Actually, this is true if they are built at the same time. If one is built after the first is completed, the second one will be better made. The design could still be awful, but build quality improves in the second iteration).

[Cuog]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

Um, what if both robots perform very poorly? Will teams like you for having an advantage to losing?

Ethics is not a question here. Neither is "Fair" (or unfair). Nobody will hate you for collaborating. There is no advantage to building two identical robots*

So, considering those truths, don't worry and just build 2 twins. It'll work out fine.


(*Actually, this is true if they are built at the same time. If one is built after the first is completed, the second one will be better made. The design could still be awful, but build quality improves in the second iteration).

I'd agree that building two identical bots isn't cheating, its doubling down on your bet. If you think your design is the best there is, and you build two you're giving it twice the opportunity to succeed, and twice the opportunity to fail. But that's just it, the idea gets more game time and chance, but each team has the same chances. I've been to a regional or two where another team there had an almost identical bot to my teams, it was by pure coincidence that both teams had the same idea and built in the same direction, does that change the fairness because we didn't work together? Is it only fair to help another team if you don't give them what you think is your winning recipe? I do know when it comes to FIRST values, it has nothing to do with what design you use for the bot, FIRST has always been focused on how the program encourages students, and said over and over its not about the robot. More recently FIRST has added this new idea of cooperating with your competitors to have a friendly and supportive atmosphere at competitions, I don't see how collaborating with another team does anything but support these core ideas.

changing gears to a personal opinion: I don't like seeing a collaboration to build the same robot because to me its boring, it reduces that interesting spark as I walk through the pits and see the dozens of unique ways teams came up with the solve the same problem. What I'd really like to see some teams do is collaborate to build complimentary bots intended to form a powerful 3 bot alliance in the finals. It would be hard to make it happen, but I think the cool factor would pay off.

Just to go on the other side of the debate, there are a few advantages to having two similar robots. Once both are made, you could use one for practice, and the other for testing new ideas and building. That would involve very close collaboration between the two teams, since one robot would be almost a driver's only thing, and the other could be use to better the overall design of the two robots.

Why make two different robots when you could make one and perfect it? It's like giving two different robots 50% of your genius, or give 2 identical robots 100% of your genius.

While it is true that not all people will be doing things, there will be a lot more work time open since the drivers will be driving the other robot.

[Nick Lawrence]

*runs and hides in a corner over brewing firestorm*

-Nick

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by IKE

You could try a call-in similar to the EWCP guys as the pros and cons of collaboration would make a great topic.

We've actually been trying to set up this topic for a while now and have discussed it a bunch of times among ourselves. Usually, our main source for the topic (Karthik) has been busy but was gracious enough to do the 1114 Spotlight cast with us. That talked a little about the old NiagraFIRST collaboration, but not much.

Hopefully we'll be able to get some time from Cory, Travis, and EJ from 254 along with Kiet Chau, Adam Heard and Ranjit Chahal from 968, 973 and 1323 respectively to talk about their collaborations/twin builds. It would be tough to pick a good time due to the 3 hour difference.

If you guys have others you would like us to interview, drop any EWCP member a line.