Team Work & Sister School

[Timshel]

Well, it'll certainly help in development, but it isn't going to do much good in competition unless you're specifically assigned to the same team every single time. Since we only have one other potential "sister school" in Germany, 3 hours away from us, collaboration is unlikely.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by Timshel

Since we only have one other potential "sister school" in Germany, 3 hours away from us, collaboration is unlikely.

That shouldn't be a deciding factor. There's been collaborations in Texas/Michigan/Ontario and East/West Coast teams - thousands of miles apart.

[EricH]

254/968 (or 254/60, for those that were around back then) are about 4-6 hours away from each other...

For another interesting collaboration, see "Division by Chicken", when 217 and 229 collaborated in 2005 but didn't build identical robots. You heard me right, they didn't build identical robots. The robots were hard to recognize as twins.

[ebarker]

"Ideas are cheap,The combination of ideas and execution and excellence and the whole process is what really matters."

Woodie Flowers

My point - you will see a lot of team "work in secret".

There are about 1700 teams - the challenge is announced - and everyone show up to competition and there are only 3 or 4 basic concepts.

The difference is in in the execution.

A corollary - teams work in unison sharing ideas, they may as well because ideas are cheap. And there robots differ by their ability to execute their ideas.

Cooperative competition is way more fulfilling. And it is a long journey between today and the final rounds of a regional competition, A LONG way.