Hello,
If you had 4 people willing to participate in the competition, and had enough funding to make 4 robots, would it be ethical for all four members to collaborate to come up with a design and then copy that design 3 other times?
I don’t think that there is anything wrong with this. It really isn’t all that different from how teams at the same school will take ideas from each other and then incorporate them into their robot.
take ideas from each other. I’m just worried that showing up with the exact same robot across 4 teams, and then if any one team makes all the students go to that team is a little bit unethical.
it’s like instead of being 1 team and making 1 robot, and taking 1 state/world spot, they now have 4 teams and 4 robots taking more than 1 spot. Would that be looked upon?
There is certainly nothing wrong with that as a concept. The problem you would have with just 4 people and 4 teams is they would all have to be 1 person drive teams if they were ever in the same tournament.
At KIDS Inc, we have multiple teams but everyone helps each other. On competition days, the members of the drive teams may be different from one comp to another. This ended up being very helpful. Due to funds and the increase in cost for states, we combined our two middle school teams into one. They are already used to working with each other and we have two pretty good drivers. One is better in skills and defensive match play and the other is better in offensive match play. At state, they will both be used.
You might get some flack, but if you do, it can help you master the art of not giving a crap what others think.
Mastering the art of not giving a crap…B:|
Some of the best alliances have been doing this for years. As long as all 4 of the people are putting in the work I don’t see anything wrong with helping each other.
We are a club that has the funding for 1 person teams and all of us age too stubborn to listen to each other’s ideas
Stupid
On rare occasions dumb people have good ideas
If you’re considering splitting your team, don’t do it. My team tried it last year and it ended up with two of them going to worlds and me not.
I’ve seen plenty of teams do what you are suggesting and it is 100% permissible to do so. However, I would not expect to win a judged award with a roster of clone-bots.