Does collaboration do good and evil?

[Tim Delles]

Hasn't this issue been beaten to death enough already? Everytime I come on CD recently thier is something about collaboration, and how it is good or bad. I think this is around the 5th thread I have seen since the season started about collaboration and wether is it good or bad.

[Alex Cormier]

Originally Posted by Tim Delles

Hasn't this issue been beaten to death enough already? Everytime I come on CD recently thier is something about collaboration, and how it is good or bad. I think this is around the 5th thread I have seen since the season started about collaboration and wether is it good or bad.

It's a different look on the collaboration if ya actually read the post...

[Tim Delles]

Originally Posted by Alex Cormier

It's a different look on the collaboration if ya actually read the post...

Alex I have read through the thread completely, and the topic just seems to be going down hill. That is all that was meant. And depending on how the collaboration is done it does not hinder one team or the other from winning awards.

[Steve W]

I am totally against collaboration. The reason I am is the fact that I believe that the more people that are trying something new, the more they will learn and benefit. I have found in the business world that when a group specializes that they lose other skills or do not develop new ones. Eventually they will become redundant as technology and fads change.

I have to say that I was against 1114 the first year that I saw the collaboration. I only saw mentors working on the robot. My feeling for the team changed after I saw students becoming more and more involved. I have seen inspiration stemming from this team and flooding the whole of FIRST. I believe that they do inspire and that is what FIRST is all about.

I am still a strong believer in individual teams with individual bots. I am not saying that you cannot mentor teams but that it should not be an ongoing theme.

Basically collaboration does do both good and evil.

[Beth Sweet]

Originally Posted by Steve W

I am totally against collaboration. The reason I am is the fact that I believe that the more people that are trying something new, the more they will learn and benefit. I have found in the business world that when a group specializes that they lose other skills or do not develop new ones. Eventually they will become redundant as technology and fads change.

I have to say that I was against 1114 the first year that I saw the collaboration. I only saw mentors working on the robot. My feeling for the team changed after I saw students becoming more and more involved. I have seen inspiration stemming from this team and flooding the whole of FIRST. I believe that they do inspire and that is what FIRST is all about.

I am still a strong believer in individual teams with individual bots. I am not saying that you cannot mentor teams but that it should not be an ongoing theme.

Basically collaboration does do both good and evil.

To ensure that I entirely understand what you're saying Steve, you're insinuating that collaboration would be good, so long as the teams that are being "mentored" by the parent team changed every year?

[KenWittlief]

Originally Posted by Alex Cormier

...does it hinder the ability to win awards? Think about it, if one of the collaborated teams won an award, how does the judges go by and talk to the other collaborated teams? ....

I think the issue would depend on how the collaboration was managed. If all the teams contributed to all parts of the robot, then I dont see how they could (should?) win a design award, since three teams worked on the one design.

But if each team designed a specific subsystem of the robot, then I dont see any reason why one team could not win an award for their drive train (for example) or another team win for their arm or collector or shooter...

At first this seems a little unfair, because that team only designed one part of the robot this year, so they could concentrate all their resources on that one subsystem. But any team could also do that - use the FIRST KOP chassis and drivetrain for example, and only design a shooter that is attached to the rest.

[Pat Major]

The Martians Team 494 and More Martians Team 70 design the robots as one group. They build the robots as one group. At the end of the build a coin is flipped to see which robot gets labeled 494 or 70. The students then compete to see who can do a better job of explaining the robot to the judges. If the judges feel the design is worthy of an award the team that does the best job with the judges wins. Here are the 2006 regional awards won by both teams (Team 70 has almost all first year students).

494
Regional Winner (Buckeye)
Finalist (Wisconsin)
Radio Shack Innovation in Control Award (Buckeye)
Motorola Quality Award (Wisconsin)
Xerox Creativity Award (West Michigan)
Underwriters Laboratories Industrial Safety Award (West Michigan)
70
Regional Winner (West Michigan)
Finalist (Wisconsin)
Xerox Creativity Award (Buckeye)
Underwriters Laboratories Industrial Safety Award (Wisconsin)

I think the issue would depend on how the collaboration was managed. If all the teams contributed to all parts of the robot, then I dont see how they could (should?) win a design award, since three teams worked on the one desig

It has been my experience that a design can not win without students explaining it properly. It becomes a competition between the two teams to see who are the best informed, and the best presenters.

I actually do wonder if anyone has ever collaberated on any other aspect of their robotics team?
Collaberating on fundraising actually might make even more sense than collaberating on building a robot.

Team 494 and Team 70 are from the same high school and do the same fund raisers. This year Team 494,70,and 1213 did a fund raiser together, to help 1213 stay afloat after losing their sponsor.

[JamesBrown]

I have always and still do love the idea of collaboration, both in the case of the triplets (one experienced team helping to get others started) and Division by chicken ( I don't know if they collaborated this year but last year it looked like 2 great teams playing off each others strengths)

As far as awards with the non technical awards they could go to anyone because they aren't impacted by the robot. As far as technical awards they could be given to the team that designed one aspect of the robot, for example an award for amazing Autonomous would go to the team that did the programming(if that was how work was divided up)

[Dan Petrovic]

All this talk of collaboration makes me want to collaborate with someone.

Any takers?

I like collaborating. There's just something about it... you get to interact with other teams and see how their design process is done.

Maybe try collaborating with a new team each year?

[robochick1319]

First of all I would like to say that I have immense respect for any team that collaborates with another team on the design and building of a robot. That is a process (that I have never done) that I can tell takes a serious commitment and a lot of hard work.

But I was asked by a person on my team if I would ever consider doing it. Honestly, no. The one thing that I love about our team is that every year our robot looks different. We don't always go with the normal and you can almost never find a robot that looks remotely like ours.

Secondly, I think that building twins or triplets is an effective game strategy but it knocks you out of the running for technical awards (which can get you to Nationals). It also, in my mind, defeats the purpose of FIRST. FIRST is about (to me anyway) inspiring engineering and while triplets demonstrate what many businesses do, I see FIRST as a program meant to inspire new ideas and new methods of creation, not mimic those already present.

Triplets or twins are well and good, and congrats to teams that completed them successfully, but I think I'll stick with my coffee grinder robot that definitely gets attention!

[KenWittlief]

I dont have any problem with teams collaborating, but I would have a problem with a team getting a technical award for a part of the robot that their team did not design.

No matter how well you can explain how it works, its a design award, not a technical understanding award. Should a team get a design award if they can explain how the IFI operator interface and robot controller work?

The company I presently work for has 4 electrical and 2 software engineers. We contract our mechanical designs out. I would love to have our company sponsor a FIRST team. If we do we will be very strong in sensors and control and SW, but we would either have to use the KOP drivetrain, or collaborate with another team that has mechanical engineering resources and a machine shop.

Thats really the root idea of collaboration, not that two teams join to form one super team, but that two teams with limited resources work together to complement each others strengths, and to fill in the areas the other team is lacking.

[Pat Major]

Secondly, I think that building twins or triplets is an effective game strategy but it knocks you out of the running for technical awards (which can get you to Nationals). It also, in my mind, defeats the purpose of FIRST. FIRST is about (to me anyway) inspiring engineering and while triplets demonstrate what many businesses do, I see FIRST as a program meant to inspire new ideas and new methods of creation, not mimic those already present.

For the Martians one of the reasons twins were developed had to do with getting more hands on time for the students. As our teams has grown by double digits each year, it gets harder for the students to be involved in the build (with our building system 76 hands are too many for one robot). We have the same number of mentors as in the past and doing two different designs was more than we were willing to take on, we did not want to over extend ourselves (we had never build a second “practice” robot). We believe that any student that is interested in FIRST should have the opportunity to get involved. We do not want to limit the number of students at our high school that can participate in FIRST.

Maybe you missed my post which is three above yours. We were not “knocked out of the running for technical awards” four technical awards for Team 494 and two for Team 70 shows how hard our students worked, and how well informed they are. These students all worked on developing the designs (together as one design team), they just ended up on one team or the other.

I agree 100% with you on the purpose of FIRST. If the Martians put their students into two groups and separated them for brainstorming and design, each group would have about 19 students. Which will produce more ideas and inspiration 19 students in a group or 38?

FIRST is a mimic of the business world and this is just one more way that the students can learn more about how businesses operate.

I hope that anyone that wants to learn more about how our teams operate will look us up at the Championship for more information and the pros and cons (yes there are some disadvantages, which I believe are far out weighed by the advantages to our team and FIRST).

[Kevin Kolodziej]

Teams 1675 and 1714 have collaborated on a lot of things this year. We had joint strategy meetings, but chose to go seperate ways with the robot. Travel and lodging to Cleveland were arranged together. Above all else though, our preseason activities took place as one large team. Our workshops were done together, as well as our mini VEX League. The large Wiscosin VEX Tournament was also hosted jointly by the two teams. We are already making plans for many more joint ventures through a summer program, as well as the return of the Milwaukee VEX League in the fall. Will we ever collaborate on the robots? Only time will tell, I guess.

Kev

[KenWittlief]

Originally Posted by Pat Major

If the Martians put their students into two groups and separated them for brainstorming and design, each group would have about 19 students. Which will produce more ideas and inspiration 19 students in a group or 38?

I have to say two groups are better than one. You will have two designs created instead of one, and therefore two independant design paths will be followed.

Most likely one group of 19 will end up with a better design than the other, but it will be 'their' design - and thats the basis of what we are trying to do.

As Ive already said, collaboration is great if its used the right way - allowing separate teams to focus on the subsystems they have the best resources for. Creating a super team, where they all work together on everything - how is that any different from one large team building two robots, and paying the registration fees for both - and basically becoming a multi-robot single team?

Isnt that what they do in bicycle racing and some auto races? One sponsor will have several entries in a competition, and they play as a team?