engineer bots

[Validius]

prenote: I'll make cliffs later if enough ppl want them.

This was team 1549's rookie year and though we had some FIRST vets (one was on his 5'th year. he is a college student now) most of us, including myself, were rookies to FIRST. Anyways, moving on...

A little about our team: there is a charter high school at Washtenaw community college that i am in and that is the home of team 1549. Our team consists of high school and college students. The college students are mostly majoring in industrial robotics, fluid power and machining. Most of them are not engineers.

The point?
At GLR this year we saw teams who's bots were obviously totally designed by the engineers. While this is legal i do not think it is with the spirit of FIRST. There were 4 builders (including myself) and 1 programmer who did 70% of the work on team 1549's robot. A few more guys jumped in in the last 2 weeks. Except for our passive gripper and the winch drum everything was designed, made and put together by high school and college students.

Our bot, while very good (when the drive program isn't screwed up and I'm not getting ramming penalties), cant measure up to these superbots.

There is nothing that can really be done so i guess i am just ranting for my own sanity. I just wanted to point out the unfair advantage that many teams have.

Also, i cannot conclude a post about building the bot without thanking the mentors, particularly Kieth and Gary. Without your guidance, passing on the wisdom of past experience and teaching the team how to be a team we could never have gotten this done. Thanks guys!