FAHA: Too much help from mentors?

[Kevin Sevcik]

This is a hot-button subject on these forums as there are many, many answers to how much mentor involvement is too much.

According to FIRST, any amount of mentor help is appropriate from none to building the entire robot. The only important thing is that the students on the team become inspired by the process. Thus the meaning of the acronym. So from a technical standpoint, having an entirely mentor built robot isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The important thing is that the kids on the other team are getting interested in engineering and sciences and such. You should talk with the kids on the other team. If they're sulking about, annoyed that they didn't get to do anything on the other robot then there's a problem. If they're at a competition and they're only near the robot to drive it and they're complaining that they never get to do anything with the robot then there's a problem.

On the other hand, if they're excited about their robot and such, then it's probably ok. I, personally, don't think a mentor built robot is a good idea, but it could be right for some teams, it just depends.

On the whole, it's something for that team to work out for themselves. You can give advice and ask them if they really like having a mentor built robot or if they'd rather work on it some themselves, but the team needs to decide that for itself.