My team is considering making a “clone” of our robot before we ship. Is this a good idea, or not worth the trouble?
It depends on how much money/time/people you have. I can’t really see what advantage that would have…but I doubt it would hurt much more than your wallet. It could be nice for testing purposes…I know team 84’s only testing time is the first qualifying round 
(We normally miss practices…heh) Building an extra robot would give you a few weeks to gain some basic experience.
Building an extra robot is basically trading the 2 weeks of practice we have after finishing for the 6 weeks of practice we get after shipping.
Just build a prototype using your last years controller and systems. This will allow you to test out stuff while the build team builds. And you can of course use it for practice, too.
If you’re doing anything complex like stacking bins… then it might just be a good idea so you can perfect the technique. It also gives you a good idea of how the bugs need to be worked out of the robot.
If you’re just doing something simple like defending boxes and going up the ramp (or you don’t have any spare money)… 2 weeks of practice should be fine. However, you may want to look into attending a pre-season competition. Many states have one. If your state/area doesn’t, maybe you should look into setting one up with some friendly neighboring teams.
But… if you have the money, and are really bored… I guess a practice bot would be great. Besides, before the competition you can strip it down for spare parts. All you’d be really investing in is the frame. Bring the rest with you in case something brakes.
This would be an excellent idea, as long as you have the money. If you have a second robot, it would give you practice time after the robot ships, and would allow you to swap parts as opposed to trying to fix them between matches.
Several teams did this last year (we didn’t) and they liked the idea they will be doing it again this year.
it would be great with we could spend money to build another robot… but we can´t 
A big reason to build a 2nd robot this year is the autonomous part of the game this year. With a 2nd robot, your programmer get to have 2 weeks to mess with the program, and perfect it before competition. That way, they make up the time waiting for the rest of you guys to finish the robot.
And for that, you don’t even need to clone the complete robot. Just similate the 130 lbs, and copy the drive train and sensors. And remember, the only spare parts you can use on the real robot have to be manufactured during the 6 weeks, or directly from the kit of off the shelf items.
Before you are thinking of cloning a robot, finish the first robot first ;).
Just keep in mind the technically the rules prohibit you from developing anything while your robot is shipped
*Originally posted by RebAl *
**Just keep in mind the technically the rules prohibit you from developing anything while your robot is shipped **
This has been true in past years. This year, due to some controversies last year, I searched the rules to find out how they worded things. I could not find anything relating to the development of new hardware after ship. SO if there is anything I would apprecite it if you could point me to the rule number.
Just because it was there last year, doesn’t mean it is still there.
*Originally posted by Ken L *
**And for that, you don’t even need to clone the complete robot. Just similate the 130 lbs, and copy the drive train and sensors.
**
Thanks, that’s a great idea! The main reason I thought more practice would be good were for driving and autonomous mode practice (last year we had maybe an hour or 2 before shipping), so that should work just fine.
My personal feeling is that building a second bot is possibly a crude advantage to certain teams. It is, for the most part, a flaunting of funds and not much more.
RebAl:** Just keep in mind the technically the rules prohibit you from developing anything while your robot is shipped**
Although this can’t be regulated past large objects being smuggled in, such as a claw, arm, etc. (Even though more than a few teams have done this in the past). The main two things that having a second bot gives the advantage for is programming and drive practice. Neither can be regulated because they can’t disallow new programs to be entered post-ship.
If you are to build a program off a clone-bot then TECHNICALLY you would be cheating, although I don’t think most teams would construe it as such, and neither would I.
As I said earlier, building a secondary bot is mostly a flaunting of your team’s excess funds. I think those funds and effort could be put to a better use than a second bot. Such as maybe buying materials and building a field for a rookie team or one that may have lost a sponsor.
FIRST, and many teams, are at a low-point in funds. I closely parallel this to small businesses starting up. They need to buy products from other companies to start turning a profit with their own products. Which in turn makes for better competition in the marketplace, which often leads to collaborations of ideas all the way down to more efficiant, better products by both companies.
I hope no team in FIRST wants to blow everyone out of the water, do it themselves, and win Nationals without any alliance partners, just because they can. I hope they want to promote all that the chairman’s award stands for.
If your team has money to blow, rather than build yourselves a new bot, I think building a field or buying field parts for another team which can barely afford to build one bot.
Personal experience, another team donated approximently $500 to 4 or 5 other teams, that money was used to pay for our field materials so we could make a full-size field to practice on. Before we had that money we were contemplating on building a partial field or none at all.
In the end, my suggestion is that having friends is better than perfecting your bot for beating teams. If you still got a lot of cash to blow, maybe build a chassis to give your drivers some stuff to practice with.
[note] These are my beliefs and not necessarily that of members of 470, 470 itself, or my old team 247
A clone would allow you to run hundreds of test autonomous runs so you could get it perfect. But considering that the playing field is different from your test field to competiton. For that matter the carpet will change from the begining of the practice rounds to the finals. Also just putting 130 lbs of mass on your bot wouldn’r work because the load on each wheel would be different on your final bot. So I’m not sure how much you could perfect a program.
As for practicing driving it would definately help. It would also let you beat the robot until it broke so you can see where to make improvemnts so you don’t break the real thing in the middle of a match.
I gotta wade in here 
Our team , I suspect like most teams, has no extra money to ‘blow’ and yet in the process of prototyping we will have most of a robot left over after we ship. Using some old controllers and drill motors we are planning on a clone to practice with.
I would advise any team that can do anything close to this to do it. As someone already mentioned , stacking is a skill that will take some time to work on. the two 10 minute practices (I have heard that other teams get to use that time, we always seem to have a disaster to fix )just aren’t enough.
[Is anyone else piling up broken bin parts?
Maybe that should be in the picture forum. tallest stack of broken bin parts ]
I seem to remember that at the beginning of the 2001 season, we decided that whatever we built, we’d make two, so as to have a complete duplicate of the robot with which to practice between shipping and competition.
It never got done.
We wound up making a similar drivetrain, but that’s all it was, a drivetrain. It had none of the same mechanisms.
By the way, hi Mr. Stokely (after two classes with you, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to call you anything else). This is Jim.
I believe we built practice bots for 2000 and 2001, but we didn’t have time in 2002. We want to build a second one for this year, but we’re not sure if we have all required resources.