[FRC Blog] Weather, Weather

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by loyal

Constraints and unforeseen problems are part of the learning exercise. That has always been the answer from FIRST in the past. Facts that can not be argued. I am not being confrontational just truthful.

You're right if you look at FRC as a robotics competition. Here's a newsflash for you, it's not. It's a tool for inspiration that just happens to masquerade as an engineering competition. Now, let's look at the options here:

Option 1: You should have planned better/Deal with it

In an engineering competition this is the proper response. BUT, does it accomplish our inspiration goal? No, in fact it does the opposite. "We tried FIRST but it was too hard and we can't do it" or "It was unfair, we got steamrolled by these punks who didn't lose days to snow". Or, my favorite - "Oh we had a design for [mechanism] that was really cool but we didn't have time to adequately test it because we got a freak storm"

Option 2: Add withholding allowance

In an engineering competition this is fine, it doesn't damage anything and it actually encourages modularity. From the POV of inspiration? It's a life saver: "They are listening to our struggles". It also allows more butts in seats time with the mentors which is one of the biggest goals of FIRST.


If you want to argue facts, make sure you are right. FRC just so happens to use a robot as a tool. The end goal isn't building a robot, the end goal is building future engineers. There's plenty of time for the world to crap on their spirits and make them bitter engineers, let's try to not do that.