Ethics of 2 teams building 2 identical robots

[Thad House]

So I'm going to state my opinion on how this worked out.

We went with the building 2 identical robots for the 2 teams. During build season this worked out pretty well. Everyone was working great and both robots were completed on time, which had never happened before. The only main issue involved programming. We had one team(2898) doing C++ and 1510 was using LabVIEW. As the end of build season approached, the C++ code had fallen pretty far behind, and we decided to use the 1510 LabVIEW code on both robots.

As soon as competition hit, all hell broke loose. There were some changed that I and my co-driver wanted made in the controls. The programmer didnt want to change them, and didnt want us to change them either. This created a huge fight at our first competition, until the code was completely changed for the our team for our second regional up in Seattle. This split the team in a VERY bad way. This part could have been resolved fairly easily, and I would still recommend working this way again if not for the 2nd, Much more major issue.

Only 2898 got the chance to go to worlds, because they pre-registered. Neither team won their way. But some people on 1510 still felt they had built that robot and wanted the privilege of being on drive team and pit crews. Our coach earlier in the year said the teams were separate after build season and would not be combined. But then he went and moved 2 people from 1510 over to 2898 for worlds without the teams approval. This caused major havoc on the team, and if anyone was around our pit on friday night would know how bad it really was. Student from 2898, including me, were shoved out of the pit to make room for the other 2 members.

Ego's hit some of the people VERY hard, and many students feelings were very hurt, including mine.

I have not talked to the people that shoved me out of the pits much since worlds, and am having a difficult time deciding it will be possible for me to return to the teams to mentor next year, as those 2 students are the captains of the teams next year. Also there are 3 other students planning on moving to another team, which is a rookie team. That is where I plan on mentoring as well.