Team Update 14 (2016)

[Paul Richardson]

Here's one data point for this clone debate: In 2014, team 1477 worked on a design that would have converted the robot into a "254 clone". Building that design was well within their capabilities, but the team decided not to use it, considering that the existing robot wasn't too bad and it would be a lot of effort for something that wasn't guaranteed to work. Just like Cory and Adam said:

Originally Posted by Cory

A team that would wait until week 2 of regionals and copy a robot like 1114 isn't going to be good enough to actually get the details right.

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

It's not realistic for most teams, but it is possible for some teams currently (with high resources).

1477 is a pretty high resource team, relatively speaking. Not quite on the level of 254/118/148/1114 right now, but well above average. The students took their design for the 254 clone and turned it into an offseason project. Turns out, cloning a 254 robot is pretty hard, and it was really buggy because of small details.

I don't think successful cloned robots can be made in the 3-4 weeks between reveals and late competitions. It takes too much testing and iteration to make a top-tier robot (see 1477 in 2013 with 3 regional losses before winning one and then Champs).