Entering Two Robots in an Offseason Competition?

[Ken Streeter]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

Are there any offseasons that do/do not allow doing this? Entering a second robot either for use by a pre-rookie or just if we want to train several drivers at once. I know all about entering robots for pre-rookies.

It is completely up to the organizers of the off-season tournament as to whether or not participating teams are allowed to enter two robots. 1519 has been attending most of the New England off-season events for the past couple years. (We went to seven off-season events last year.) What we have tended to observe is the following:

* At tournaments which are typically over-subscribed (i.e. they have to turn away teams because the tournament is too popular), teams are not permitted to enter two robots, because allowing a team to enter two robots would require turning away another team. In New England, this is the case at WPI's BattleCry, which is perennially over-subscribed. At last year's BattleCry, we brought our hurdling robot (Fezzik) as our primary entry, and brought along "Speed Racer" as a substitute for any teams which weren't able to compete in a given match. (I could picture such a "substitute robot" option for non-show teams being very important in Lunacy off-season events!)

* At tournaments which are typically under-subscribed (i.e. they are working hard to get enough teams to fill out a 24-team competition schedule), participating teams would usually be encouraged to bring a second robot which they could run free of charge. We have done this for a few years. Other New England teams which often bring a 2nd bot include teams 40, 173, and 549.

* At tournaments which fall in between the above extremes, 2nd robots are usually permitted but need to register at either full price or a reduced price. We entered two robots last year at "Beantown Blitz" in Boston, "Mayhem in Merrimack" in Merrimack, NH, and "River Rage" in Manchester, NH.

We really like fielding two robots during the offseason events for a whole bunch of reasons:

* This gives *everybody* on the team that wants to drive an opportunity to do so. Last year at one of the offseason events, we had a different driver for Speed Racer for all of the qualification rounds. I think everybody should have a chance to drive the robot! It's a lot of fun to drive the robot on the field, and it is helpful for everybody to understand just how demanding the task can be! Our policy for the offseason events is to give everybody on the team at least one opportunity to fill any of the team roles (drive team, human player, pit crew, scout, etc.)

* Building a 2nd robot gives more students a chance to be involved. For 2008, our 2 robots were the separated configurations of our original "dual-config robot", but in 2006 and 2007, we actually built new robot designs as the 2nd robots for the offseason. The construction of these robots occurred in the offseason, when build schedules are relaxed and there is an opportunity to do more training of the new students on the team. These are valuable opportunities for more people to be involved with all aspects of the robot design, fabrication, assembly, and maintenance.

* Entering a 2nd robot allows some interesting intra-team matchups, whether it be with the two robot designs being against each other (we had quite a few "Fezzik" vs "Speed Racer" matches last year) or even with the two robots being together on the same alliance!

In sum, fielding a 2nd robot in the offseason can be a very fruitful endeavor, even though it does take a fair bit of extra work!

Best of all, the offseason provides fantastic "bang for the buck" in getting as many students as possible to participate directly on all of the team roles!