On my way back from the kickoff today, a friend and I were talking about the new aspects of this competition. One of the biggest changed (in the three years I have been in FIRST) is the addition of the third robot to each team. This is going to make knowing who you are A) up against and B) working with all that much more important. In the past there have been teams who have started their own robot databases, going around to each team with a laptop and filling out a chart (or what have you).
This got me thinking: Why not have a wiki-style database of robots, strategies and so on?
Has this already been done? Would people like to see it done? Would people be interested in helping it get done?
Unless I mis-understand FIRSTwiki, no. I was thinking more along the lines of a robot database where, either, teams could enter their own robot’s information (what it does, strategies, and so on) or teams could report on other teams (say, if they faces a team using a particular strategy, or they had a particularly good partner). That way it would be easy to know who you were up against and who you would be working with in the upcoming events (among other things).
You’re not misunderstanding FIRSTwiki at all, because right now it doesn’t have such information. But the beauty of a wiki it that you can extend it to include exactly the information you’re talking about.
You could click on “Team 188” for instance, and then add a few pages on their 2005 robot describing what it does, their strategy, and also reports from other teams on how successful they were in their alliances.