Quote:
Originally posted by SarahB
Thats why technology awards should count for something because they're dependent on good engineering, not good match performance.
Your robot could be broken most of the time and you could never win a match, but you can still win an award for your great idea. I mean look at some of the award winners this year. Many of them didn't do too well at the competition. In some cases the mechanism they won for didn't even work most of the time.
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I am glad that this point was brought up.
I see Sarah's point as a reason why FIRST is removing the auto-qualification for teams who win technical awards.
It is true that some teams in the past won technical awards for innovations on their robots which did not work during many matches. While this innovation deserves some recognition, the design is only worth ballast if it does not work on the playing field.
Why should a team qualify for the Championships if they get a technical award for something that does not work? I definitely think that a team should not win an award for something that doesn't work.
However, if this team uses this somewhat-functioning innovation to promote engineering and inspire students to be engineers, then they may have a darn good Engineering Inspiration award entry.
Non-functioning innovations should not get awards. Inspiring students with these innovations (even if they don't work too well) should get awards. Teams should use the innovation to inspire, not as a ticket to go to Atlanta. The more I think of this, the more I applaud FIRST for making a decisive move in this direction.
Andy B.