engineer bots

[Alexander McGee]

I understand how you feel. It's not much fun when you realize that everything you worked so hard for lies in the shadow of these "superbots". The game is always much easier for Veteran teams; they know how to "play the game". They spend each year coming up with some new, better method of doing something (transmissions, cleaner wiring, more advanced programming, different drive mechanisms), and are able to create a new robot each year with a little of each of these great things.

I, personally, am against a robot being designed and built with minimal student assistance. I have seen it too much, and grew to dislike it. For me, it is and should remain a "high school robotics competition". This is the exact reason that i created my team this year. I wanted to show that a successful team can be made without the assistance of professional engineers. No teachers, no engineers, no corporate sponsor demanding a victory in exchange for it's sponsorship. For the record, we have done just fine.

However, these "superbots" do (as has been stated above) serve a very good purpose. We look up to and admire these teams. The best example i can think of comes from one of my own students. We, as a rookie (and a team whose robot was built exclusively by high school students) obviously did not have one of these "superbots". We server our purpose, and we able to be competitive, but we stood in the shadow of these giants.

One of my students who designed our arm mechanism was utterly dumbfounded by the presence of these other teams. He has no previous exposure to FIRST, and was basically lost for words at seeing these amazing robots. And you know what? I could see the excitement in his eyes. I could tell by the way he looked at how they had "done it" that the wheels in his head were turning. He was flooded with ideas (which he shared with me) about how we could improve our tactics for next year. He's hooked, and his enthusiasm inspires me to keep at it. As we all know, this competition is about inspiring high school students. Consider him inspired.

I love this organization. I love seeing my students lives changing. I love seeing how the veterans improve each year. It is truly inspiring.