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Unread 03-03-2006, 19:22
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AKA: Justin Huang
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Re: [moderated] pic: The 2006 NiagaraFIRST Triplets!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Swando
First, as Dean says, "FIRST is not meant to be fair." (paraphrased). See my post in the Rule 17 thread on "Levelling the playing field" vs. the fixit window.

Second, your concerns about collaborating assume that the final design completely outshines all others. This is only your one opinion, not fact. Since human players and drivers can't switch from team to team, the abilities of each robot is still limited to the students on each team. This was proven last year when 217 and 229 collaborated, and 217's drivers were much more comfortable with the robot than 229's drivers (No offense Jay T.).
I thought I made it clear that I believe that working together will produce a stronger robot, if three teams get together, they have three times the students, three times the mentors, three times the resources, three times the strength of the robot, and there's nothing wrong with that. What my concerns about collaboration were the fact that three copies of the same robot go to the same competition, tripling their chances of succeeding (note the distinction between competition and regionals, even if the robots go to different regionals, they still have increased their chances). Whether or not there is a disparity in the skill or practice the drivers of each collaborating team have access to is irrelevant, having three robots is better than one.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Swando
Thirdly, if a team gets picked in eliminations, it obviously belongs there due to skill. If a robot is not picked, it obviously wasn't good enough to be picked as a partner. Whether you're 25th on the teams' pick list or 50th, it doesn't matter. Teams aren't going to arbitrarily pick another just because it's a sister team. And what if it is? Unless they win the regional together, it's a moot point. Just because one collaborating team wins, doesn't mean that the other "partner" gets to go to Atlanta. If anything, it's a disadvantage, because that "partner" team built a winning robot, and doesn't reap the benefits of winning.
You don't see that it's still inherently unfair to other teams? If all three collaborating teams are fairly picked on basis of skill, the fact remains that there are three of them, two of whom wouldn't be there without collaboration, meaning two other teams that tried equally hard over the course of the build time who didn't get picked. If a group of people work on a robot, they should get the chance they deserve to get picked, but not three.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Swando
Plus, your "plan" doesn't include the situation of when teams partially collaborate, such as the 217/229 collaboration. Though both teams were very similar, they were not identical. Would you combine these robots into one team because they collaborated, even though they're not identical? Moreover, would you combine all coincedentally identical robots into one team, just because they're identical? Your concerns are the same whether they collaborated or just coincidentally made the exact same design (which is very possible, given the specific rules of the game each year.)
I can't say that I've made up a plan, though I wouldn't mind some FIRST people perusing this thread and getting a few ideas. In your presented situation, all I have to say is that it doesn't matter if teams come together and agree with general design qualities, for example, a shooter up high, but when multiple teams come together to engineer a single robot, each one shouldn't get to bring a copy of it to the competition, and triple their chances of success. "One team, one robot, one competition" means exactly that, if the robots differ, then the teams differ. In your case where robots are coincidentally, it's important to differentiate robots that are identical and identical in design. Identical robots are exactly alike in every respect, which is almost impossible to occur just coincidentally. Robots that are identical by design have all the exact same design qualities, like having the same number of flywheels, same type of drive train, etc. Teams that collaborate and develop robots identical in design are likely to be more powerful, and if it proves to be a successful robot in the competition, people will learn that teamwork works. But that doesn't mean that teams can all bring the exact same robot to the regionals to increase their chances of success. Bottom line: every team should engineer their own robot, but that doesn't mean that they can't have similar design principles.
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