My two cents; given unlimited time I would love to have my teams figure 
out every design aspect of their robots all by themselves. However, 
given the time constraints I prefer to bring them my stack of books and 
encourage them to look online for ideas. I consider it research and 
often refer to the meme that architects have three thousand years of 
bridges to which to refer when they design new bridges. I do not 
consider it a good use of their time in reinventing the wheel. I have 
often seen my teams meld the best ideas of more than one design in 
creating their robots.

For all-rookie teams, I see nothing wrong with taking the basic LEGO 
Tribot and modifying it with new attachments for the competition. Just 
my opinion.

Randall Greene
The Robot Engineers #6461
9th year coach.
> On Sep 14, 2014, at 11:59 PM, Frank Levine<[log in to unmask]>  wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>    I was wondering where the line is between 'kids do the work' vs 'starter
> robot' is?  I have seen several suggestions (both here and on the
> interwebs) that this/that robot is a great robot for rookies, etc.  While
> my team has been trying to make a decent robot from scratch, I have taken
> many of the suggestions that I have seen from the internet and made what I
> think is a decent driving base.  Is it appropriate to hand that base over
> to the rookies and let them go from there?  Will the judges frown on a
> coach doing some of the initial legwork to get a base started?  What's the
> difference between that and finding a starting base on-line?  Ideally I
> would love to see them make it from scratch, but today's building session
> has me thinking that this may be a bit of a stretch.
>
> Thanks,
> Frank Levine
> "The Construction Mavericks"
>

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