Gracious Professionalism

[DanL]

To play the devil's advocate for a little bit, couldn't the "finesse" be it's power? Gracious professionalism was defined as
+ Respect
+ Courtesy
+ Good Sportmanship
+ Best Behavior at All Times

Respect - is it really disrespectful to control other bots? If you feel the best strategy is to control other bots, thats your strategy, and others should respect it as long as you respect their strategies - or, their robot design. What I mean is basically it's one thing to aim to destroy another bot (battlebots), but it's another thing to aim to control other bots. If your methods of control are not designed to destroy or harm the other bot, you are showing respect towards the other team - both their bot and their strategy - and they should do the same.

Courtesy - the game has certain rules. The game was designed this year to be a contact sport. Dean specifically said that during Kickoff. Again, you must show courtesy towards others - any methods that are designed to harm the other robot don't do this. However, is pushing such a harmful strategy? If your robot gets harmed by being pushed, did the pusher show 'dis-courtesy' towards you, or did your team ignore a key element of your game? Gracious profesionalism is designed to facilitate the advancement of engineering. However, if you failed to incorporate a key concept of the game into your engineering, couldn't it be argued that by being pushed, you were taught that you forgot to include several important parts. Needless to say, next year, you won't make that mistake (if the game has the same amount of pushing). And so, didn't you learn an important engineering lesson - or put another way, didn't you learn what gracious profesionalism is out to teach? At SBPLI, there were several robots that took the pushing possibility very seriously. As soon as they got the goals in their endzone, they shot pnumatic cylindars down, lifting their robot up onto steel plates, and making them immovable. When I first saw this, I was impressed by the creativity these teams showed in their engineering. By considering a key concept of the game, they advanced their engineering to a superior level. Isn't that what gracious profesionalism is set out to do in the first place - advance the pursuit of engineering?

As for Good Sportsmanship and Behavior, that isn't necesarily limited to the robot. If it turns out that someone's robot IS harmed by your tactics, what if you sent your team engineer to fix them up for their next match? They would have learned to make their robot more robust next year, AND they would have been fixed for their next match. Isn't that what gracious profesionalism is out to do?

Summing everything up, I'm trying to say that you can still follow Gracious Professionalism using offensive tactics. There is a huge difference between putting a large piece of steel sharpened to a point that could pierce any robot, and making a robot designed to push other guys around. In no way am I supporting the hood-ornament idea. What I'm saying is that the mission of FIRST is to inspire and recognize science and technology. Which team should be recognized more - which team completed the mission of FIRST: one that completely ignored an important aspect of the game, or a team that considered it and incorporated it into their design? Like or not, robustness was a key element this year - Dean said so at Kick-Off. As such, it shouldn't have been ignored completely, and testing robustness should be a respected strategy. Of course, if your team fails the test, it is only right that the other team help you and fix what they did destroy. After all, they did destroy, and thats not part of the fun.