[moderated] pic: The 2006 NiagaraFIRST Triplets!

[Jonathan Norris]

I agree with the two MORT team members in saying that to an outsider the first impression will usually be that how these 3 teams operate can seem unfair. Even though Niagara FIRST builds great robots my personal first impressions was this. Many people I know have had this same impression when first seeing these 3 same robots last year, even my father had the same impression when he learned about these robots. However, throughout this past year I have warmed up to these 3 teams, and have come to admire many aspects about them. They have been able to do to Canada FIRST what none of the larger older Canadian FIRST teams have done. They are able to build robots of the highest quality in the FIRST competition, these three robots I saw at the Greater Toronto Regional last year were by far the best built Canadian robots in that competition, and look to have great robots again. Even though their collaboration will always bring skeptics, it will fuel the rest of the Canadian teams to work harder to build much better robots to truly compete with these three. They have raised the bar for robotics in Canada, and us at 610 have built our strongest robot to date and strive to compete at the same level and defeat these three strong teams. Just as many American teams always strive to beat the great teams such as HOT or Wildstang.

Their accomplishments do a lot for building FIRST, especially in Canada, however the thought of building 3 of the same robots can be seen as hindering creativity and originality in robot design. If these three teams can build 3 great robots with the same original design, I would love to see what 3 original designs they can come up with for three different robots while working together. Am I implying that the 3 teams should not share GM Engineers or share resources to build 3 great robots, in no way. However, I do believe that building 3 exactly the same robots for the same competition, who usually all compete in the same regionals, can be unfair to the rest of the teams in the competition. Because of the robots impeccable quality, competing in a regional with these teams can feel like facing 3 HOT or Wildstang teams, which is a challenge on to itself. I am not trying to say that these three teams should not work together, which should be applauded, but I would wish to see 3 individual robots of the same great quality but each with unique original designs. With the resources to build these 3 same robots, I do not see why they cannot build 3 unique individual robots, while continuing to work together and share resources. Us here at 610 have been sharing our resources for a while, in a much different manner. We have 'sponsored' a team in the past, St. Clemens School, when they worked in the same shop as us for the whole build season, we shared much knowledge and resources. But ended up building very different robots, of different capability due to different levels of experience. I am not trying to imply that our method is better in any way, we did not produce robots of the same quality, but I believe, as do others, that this method of joint work is closer to the method FIRST wished us to follow.

Anyway sorry for ranting, for a while, try not to read into my words too much as they are just a single persons opinion.