Coopertition is now an integral part of the regional competitions. I think the concept could really be extremely useful during the design and build season as well. Let me explain. How much time do you spend once the game is announced researching ‘how to do’ things on the internet? Internet searches like ‘how to’ pick up game elements, what kind of arms work well for this challenge? Here’s an example of what I found on youtube looking for a gripper http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKOI_lVDPpw So what if there were threads on CD for the various components of the robot we’re all going to build where we could share videos and other information we find surfing the net. That way we’d have a collective resource to germinate a lot of promising possibilities without each of us having to start this quest from scratch. This virtual coopertition would be really useful to the design process. What do you think?
That video is an old concept (2-3 years at least). While I think your premise is great, I think that what you are defining is basically the idea of ChiefDelphi. We exist as a community that shares ideas and concepts we find that we believe relate to FIRST Robotics and get feedback from other teams on our concept.
Our team does spend some time researching old games, mostly the ones similar to the current game. Generally as the game is released, threads open up defining the different parts of the robot.