Practice Robots

[matthewdenny]

I was thinking about practice robots the other day, and had a few thoughts:

-It seems that building a second robot is of an obvious benefit to teams that can afford to do it in that it gives them the opportunity to work on driving, coding, and even making mechanisms that can be transitioned to the competition robot using withholding allowance weight.

-Unfortunately this is a financial hurdle many teams have a hard time realizing. Even teams that can afford to make a 2nd robot probably have other things that could benefit from the funding spent to do so.

-The practice robot is beneficial to student learning in that it gives a platform to work on and learn from.

-There is are some feelings of unfairness from teams that are unable to build a second robot, and this is understandable, but those teams that have the resources to build a practice bot shouldn't be handicapped because of their effective fundraising either.

MY PROPOSAL: What it every team had a practice robot. How? Use he competition robot. After 6 weeks no modifications may be made to your robot. You can still use it to practice driving and coding. There would still be a stop build day, but without the bagging. Parts that are damaged or worn out could be replaced with identical replacement parts only during this period. Basically you act as if your robot at the end of build is off limits just as if it were in a bag, but the robot as it is at that point can still be programmed and practice driven.

What do you think? Would this be a fair modification to future rules?