Team Update 14 (2016)

[mr.roboto2826]

Originally Posted by BrennanB

It is however a decent indication that if 973 can build a semi competitive clone in a day, a much more average team should be able to do it in a few weeks?

2826 did a copy of 2013 254, which was (lets be honest here) a ridiculously complex robot. I dunno what timeline that was, but probably a bunch of time.

Plenty of teams already don't reveal anything until they absolutely have to keep their competitive edge. eg 1114, 2056, 2826?, 1678? I'm sure there are others, and for 2826 and 1678, I don't actually know those are mostly guesses in general they tease/reveal later in the season. Not that I don't understand the reasoning behind it and see how it's advantageous, it's just that I really enjoy seeing the robots in a polished way like 118 and so many other teams that put out videos earlier. Removing bag day I think would cause more teams to do this.

Copying is smart. Why re-invent the wheel? I just don't love the secretive nature culture that results from it, and I would prefer FRC not to be like this.

I guess I'll chime in since I was one of the people involved with that robot. That robot was inspired by 254 yes, but mostly just the climber. In fact that robot was 33, 341, and 254 all thrown together with a 2826 twist. We did in fact copy, and yes it is smart. But I would never do that again, much less in 4 weeks (yes 4 weeks from start of design to competing at iri). The most important thing we learned however is what we were capable of. We saw what these other guys were doing and figured out how to do it ourselves.

And in regards to the "secretive nature culture", I can't count the number of times teams like 1114, 254, 118 and so on have been open to explaining their designs. Thats why Wave is at where we are today, because these teams were open, and gracious to show us everything they had!