Thoughts on Ri3D and BuildBlitz

[tkell274]

I agree that having robots being built in three days and having all the cad files and part numbers readily available is an issue and allows teams to be lazy, but I feel that is not that big of an issue.

My thought being that yes some teams will take these ideas and do better than they have in the past but for the most part teams will continue to only build upon the basic ideas or use their own totally original ideas that will get them the win on Einstein. And using ideas from other teams or past years is not always a bad thing. I don't see anyone on here complaining about that fact that pretty much half of FIRST uses or has used at sometime 1114's kitbot on steroids and that's because it's a good and well tested design that makes a better robot.

I feel that robot in three days has actually made FIRST a lot more competitive now because although it does now allow teams to just take some cad and part files and build a totally solid and competition ready robot, it also forces teams to figure out ways to defeat these ideas and make even more effective and well designed robots. Because in the end the Ri3D and BuildBlitz bots might be able to make it to district or regional eliminations, but they will all be beat out by better designed robots that came from a teams original idea.