Do you think a practice robot is needed to compete?

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by MrForbes

Allen, that sounds like a great reason to build a practice bot.

One of my favorite practice bot anecdotes was in 2014, a week or so before World Championships. A bunch of California teams brought their practice bots to our field to practice. We invited some other great California teams (who unfortunately had not qualified for the Championship) to bring their now-retired robots to help fill out the field. Our drive teams all scrimmaged together for hours. They went over every possible scenario, practiced beating defense, inbounding, perfecting positioning - you name it. (It must have paid off, since there wound up being 3 Einstein teams and one Division Finalist in the building that afternoon).

But even disregarding the future on-field success, I thought it was really cool. It was a unique bonding experience for the teams in the region. Hopefully we will do the same thing in 2016 (2015's game didn't have quite the same dynamic, so most teams could practice alone).

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

One of my favorite practice bot anecdotes was in 2014, a week or so before World Championships. A bunch of California teams brought their practice bots to our field to practice. We invited some other great California teams (who unfortunately had not qualified for the Championship) to bring their now-retired robots to help fill out the field. Our drive teams all scrimmaged together for hours. They went over every possible scenario, practiced beating defense, inbounding, perfecting positioning - you name it. (It must have paid off, since there wound up being 3 Einstein teams and one Division Finalist in the building that afternoon).

But even disregarding the future on-field success, I thought it was really cool. It was a unique bonding experience for the teams in the region. Hopefully we will do the same thing in 2016 (2015's game didn't have quite the same dynamic, so most teams could practice alone).

Sign us up!

We had a great time practicing that day.

Despite being spread out, CA's network of teams is one of our biggest inspirations/resources/motivations.

-Mike

[GeeTwo]

I answered #1 because it's closest to our reasoning, if not entirely accurate.

Our sponsorship resources have been generally rising year-over-year, despite a number of big "hits". On several occasions, our coaches, mentors, and boosters have explicitly considered "what do we add" nearly as seriously as we would address "what do we cut" if finding were to decrease. Each time, we have applied resources to both outreach and competitive capacity. On the competitive side, we did a "prototype" robot with a wooden frame in 2014, and in 2015, we did "twin" robots. Each of these gave us more driver practice than ever before, and better use of the withholding allowance to implement improvements worked out after stop build. While the second robot isn't strictly necessary to be competitive, we've found it to be a highly useful and cost-effective tool to help get there.