Hello CD. I was thinking about it with a friend, and we consider building an entire robot at an event to give away as cheesecake to our 3rd alliance member. This seems entirely within the rules. The robot would be able to drive around. Is it too far? How would you feel competing with a robot you did not build? Opinions?
whether or not it is within the rules, it would be neither gracious nor professional to imply that their robot was worthless by giving them a completely different one
it would also be a poor allocation of your pit space and resources, IMO
Not saying it is worthless… Just had a unique design in mind that can win elimination rounds quite easily
I think once you get to a point where you have to make considerable (anything beyond adding a cheesecake platter) changes to a team’s base/frame, that’s taking it too far.
Basic chassis with bumpers plus minimum electronics, motors, & drives is approaching $2000. That is a lot of cheese cake. Would you let them keep it?
If you can find a team willing to use it then it’s find IMO.
That is one valid point. thank you
Wouldnt the robot have to fit inside the 30Ib of extra parts restriction?
Kitbot is all COTS.
We plan to build it from scratch at the event… Also, not with the kitbot
If you had a gameboy advance, and I gave you a 3DS, am I implying that your gameboy advance is worthless?
I don’t care I’ve got a free 3DS now and I keep my GBA…
If you baked a pie to bring to a potluck and I gave you a cheesecake and told you to bring that instead, am I not implying that your baking skills are undesired?
I can’t believe this is still a discussion…
Now I’m hungry.
*any student on my team would say “He’s always hungry!”
Wow - there is a large gray area of cheesecaking that would be crossed. It is one thing to help a team create new manipulators so that the team competes at a higher level…
As for building an entirely new robot for a team that already worked for six weeks on their own - yes, that is crossing a line.
However, there was a point at Lake Superior where a few teams got together in case a rookie team did not have one ready to go. Luckily for all involved - the rookie team showed up with a robot that was nearly ready to go. That being stated, the robot DID need some major work - and kudos to FRC 93 and FRC 1816 the team was ready to go at the end of the day on Thursday.
Whether or not it is going too far is debatable. However, i feel that it is very against the point of FIRST, which is for students to work together with other students and overcome challenges as a team. Simply the fact that you have to ask this question should be enough of a answer.
Lots of raw stock then. Unless you order it pre-cut, you’d have to cut all of it in the pits.
The fact that one team builds it, to me, is not in the spirit of first. At least the 900/1114 Harpoon rig was a combined effort. Just picking a team to drive it, to me, is indeed too far.
It also kind of minimizes every part of the build season in favour of only looking at (presumably) winning. It says to me, never mind all the strategy work and planning and designing and time management and skill learning and testing and coding and teamwork and practice that you did during your build… forget all that and drive this instead because this will win more.
I would say this would be a grand gesture for a team that has had trouble getting something rolling and effective. The team that looks like they barely had time to assemble a working kitbot might appreciate this gesture on Thursday or Friday of a regional. A team might be interested in collaborating with you to build this ala the Simbacorns Harpoon Initiative. But I wouldn’t want to be on a team that felt briefly elated because they were chosen only to find that the choosing team had an ulterior motive and no desire to use what they built.
I know the manual is pretty long, and that sometimes people don’t read ALL the way through, but… um… R1 is pretty close to the beginning:
R1 A Team must submit **their **ROBOT for Inspection. **The **ROBOT must be an electromechanical assembly built by the FIRST Robotics Competition Team to perform specific tasks when competing in FIRST STRONGHOLD. The ROBOT must include all of the basic systems required to be an active participant in the game – power, communications, control, BUMPERS, and movement. The ROBOT implementation must obviously follow a design approach intended to play FIRST STRONGHOLD (e.g. a box of unassembled parts placed on the FIELD, or a ROBOT designed to play a different game does not satisfy this definition).
R1 requires that the ROBOT a Team uses in competition was built by
that Team, but isn’t intended to prohibit assistance from other Teams
(e.g. fabricating elements, supporting construction, writing software,
developing game strategy, contributing COMPONENTS and/or
MECHANISMS, etc.).
Emphasis mine. Feel free to give away whatever you want, but maybe read at least one of the rules before suggesting your strategy is “entirely within the rules”.
Sorry if that seems a bit snarky… some FRC rules can be difficult to figure out, or hard to notice. But they were pretty clear about this one…
Jason