Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by Sean Schuff

This year our team “borrowed” ideas from other teams (hey, sharing is a part of the spirit of FIRST, right?) and put them to use on our robot. One was a two-speed shift-on-the-fly transmission and the other was an omni wheel. Both were courtesy of Andy Baker and the Technokats. (Thanks Andy!) We did have our engineers and students do some tweaking to make them fit our needs but the fundamental ideas came from another team. And both worked phenomenally well; so much so that we finally won our first competition in our 9 year history. Sharing is the spirit of FIRST and I think we employed those resources well this year.

This isn't exactly on topic but I think it is closely related enough that I'd like to add something as well. In 2004, we "borrowed" a gearbox design from a team in 2003. It was made nearly identical except for some very minor improvements. But what we learned out of the experience of building that thing was incredible! It set us off on the right track to make incredible gearboxes from then on, and even helped in obtaining a new sponsoring shop to help us manufacture the parts. I don't looks down upon anyone who builds another team's design as long as they can argue why it is fit for them and as long as they understand all the inner workings of it.

So anyway, I would say the best experience does not come from handing the students a box of parts and saying "have fun" and seeing what they come up with 6 weeks later. Some form of mentorship, even just reading published whitepapers, I think is crucial to success.