Spare parts and duplicate robots

[Rob]

I would like to start by disclaiming that this is not meant in any way to attack, bash, or diminish the accomplishments of any team that was involved in collaboration this year. This is not meant as a new collaboration debate. This is intended to alert FIRST and this community to a situation that may need some new rules created to address it. If you wish to contribute to this discussion, please think about what you are posting before you do it, and be sure that what you post is respectful and constructive. If you want to debate collaboration, please go look up one of the threads on that topic.

Over the last several competition seasons, FIRST has made an effort to control what teams may bring to events and use as spare mechanisms, and made effort to restrict teams from bringing duplicate practice robots to events for use as spare parts. With the emergence of teams using a collaborative approach to designing and manufacturing their machines a situation exists where duplicate robots may coexist at the same event. With the increasing frequency of collaborating teams, this offseason is the time for FIRST to address how these teams should interact with one another regarding the use of parts from one “clone” robot as spare, replacement, or upgrade parts on another.

A situation could exist where one “clone” is competing in qualification or elimination rounds and may need access to some spare, replacement, or upgrade parts. There could be temptation to use parts off of another “clone” who is not currently competing in a qualifying round or who has been eliminated from the elimination rounds to make the needed repairs or maintenance.

It is my interpretation of the rules that if a team were to use parts off of another “clone”, these parts would not fit the definitions of “spare parts”, “replacement parts” or “upgrade parts” as defined in the manual, and would also not comply with rules R01, R16, R26 (if the robot the parts came off of had competed at a previous event), R29 and R46.

FIRST needs to create a rule for next year’s competition that specifically addresses this situation so that there is no “grey area” or room for interpretation. It is my opinion that if all teams can only bring 25 pounds of spare mechanisms to the competition with them, that collaborative teams should not be allowed to pull parts off of one another.

Lets please keep the discussion civil

Rob