The Use Of Practice Robots At Off Season Events

[Jeff Rodriguez]

Back on 173, we entered our practice robot at a few offseason competitions. It was always used by another team either a pre-rookie or a team that broke or couldn't transport their original robot.
The instance I remember most was at Bash @ the beach in 2005 when we loaned it to team 1099. Their drivers drove it and I coached them since they had never used the bot. They also did all the fixing/prepping. It so happened that 173 got paired with their practice robot (2nd partners were picked from a hat) in the eliminations.

Originally Posted by JaneYoung

So here's a naive question or two:

If your team fields more than 1 robot, then your team has more than 1 chance of winning, right?

Say teams bring a bunch of robots and start fielding more teams - can't they basically dominate the event?

Why is that ok? And how does the coaching work?

Jane

If one team can bring a bunch of robots to a competition, why don't they just hold their own competition? As Adam said, when a teams bring multiple bots their either using new drivers or less stable bots, so your chances of winning don't go up.
The entire reason for bringing multiple robots is to give less experienced members more experience whether its a pre-rookie team or a new student on your team. As long as more students are having fun and gaining experience, I don't have a problem with it.