The Triplet Challenge

[BBnum3]

I'm going to respond to some parts of this thread, not necessarily the original post, so disregard this if you think it is off-topic.

One thing I've seen a lot of criticism towards is the "Paint-by-Numbers" method of collaboration. To me it seems like this doesn't even fit what collaboration actually means. Merriam Webster says that collaboration means "to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor." If one team gives another plans to build a robot that the first team has designed, there is no working jointly and no intellectual work happening in this situation for the team receiving the plans. As far as I know, there have not been any instances of this happening, aside from (in my understanding) some virtual teams. If it did actually happen, as many people have stated before, I would be completely against it, as it takes all of the inspiration out of the FIRST experience.