[moderated] pic: The 2006 NiagaraFIRST Triplets!

[doubleslash]

Originally Posted by Richard

Second that.

I'll confess my initial reaction to seeing the photo that started this thread: the design is an inspiration, but like some others I thought making three copies of it was somehow unfair.

Several weeks later I volunteered at Waterloo and saw the Triplets in action. My thinking changed.

I is too my contention that collaboration - and working together in general - produce something greater than the sum of its parts. The great success the Triplets and other collaborating teams have enjoyed this year only confirms this to me. However, as these teams pool together their assets to become one large team, let them be treated as such in the eyes of FIRST.

So why not have some sort of system in place, some set of rules, that allows teams to temporarily combine into a single pseudo-team for the year if they intentionally plan on building the exact same robot? This way, teams can collaborate all they want, just as before, but the one flaw in the competition system they exploit is gone.