Teasers????

[Ken Leung]

I think people have a right to keep their robot a secret until the actual competition, because it give them an edge in the first few matches in their regional. A team work so hard to figure out a robot to play the game, and if they decided to keep their strategy hidden so they can surprise everyone at the competition, I think they should all respect their desire of an element of surprise.

As you said, once competition startes, everyone will see your robot anyway, so there's no point in hiding your robot from other teams. And by then it will still be too late for some body to copy you.

Every year I asked "Can I come to your pit area and take pictures of your robot?", a lot of people answered with great enthusiastism saying "sure! go ahead! I will show you the good stuff", so there is definitely no lack of spirit of FIRST out there.

However, there is always those who believe improvizing at competition is one of the greatest challenge in the game, and that everyone should be allowed to make their robot better after what they see at the regionals. Those would be the people who want to keep their robot hidden until the competition starts, and the biggest scouter when it come to data on other robots' performance.

Then there are others who just don't feel so comfortable sharing what they know about robotics. To those people I respect their wish for privacy, but at the same time I would openly share whatever I know about robotics to them, that is if they want to listen.

At the end, I don't think I can tell what people should and shouldn't feel about this. People shouldn't have to feel sorry about their decision. People can do whatever they want, and all I can do is to show them what people are doing out there, and advise them what's more important: learning, or winning?