Re: Sustainability - 2014 - COTS parts
 

I think a combination of things has contributed toward greater team success

1) 2013 had a game piece that was manufactured more consistently than 2012's was, thus making it easier for teams to shoot in a repeatable fashion, and thus it was easier to score points

2) More COTS components at cheaper prices at several "one-stop FRC shops" makes it easy for teams to find affordable components to build their robots

3) Besides RI3D, having more teams in FIRST means more testing videos uploaded to Youtube and other sites. Also, all the old videos from past games don't go away--the online resources for teams are expanding each year. Teams like 1114 have excellent resources about how to optimize your drive. By the end of week 2, a little searching of Chief Delphi could show that a balanced 8" pneumatic wheel or banebots wheels could be used to shoot discs. There were also videos showing passive 10-point hangs, and shortly after there were videos showing how a bucket could be used to index discs.

I like having examples available to make having a competitive robot accessible to all teams, and I think having COTS used (like RI3D did) in the examples makes it even easier for teams to recognize what they need to purchase to make the 'template' robot, without having everything necessarily laid out with instructions like the KOP drive is.

Is selling COTS subsystems outright, like a COTS shooter or COTS hanger, really the way we want to go, though? If we look at 2011, a COTS minibot? We already have COTS drives and COTS transmissions, which certainly have dramatically increased the performance level of many teams. A LOT of integration still certainly has to be done. At what point do the individual components become so few teams lose the 'fun' of designing and building it themselves? I'm not sure.

Re: Sustainability - 2014 - COTS parts
 

I think this is a non-issue; I'd expect that FIRST would not condone FRC suppliers selling what essentially constitutes ready-made entire robots, and could trivially put an end to it by simply not giving them any information on the game prior to kickoff. To this end, I doubt we'll ever see COTS mechanisms that deal with year-specific game tasks.

Re: Sustainability - 2014 - COTS parts
 

The only manual I have handy is from 2011, but similar (if not identical) wording was present other years.

Re: Sustainability - 2014 - COTS parts
 

Oddly enough, this was not present in the 2013 Manual, although I believe every year prior to 2013 or 2012, that exact rule was repeated.* As I looked through the archived version of the manual, I found the most relevant rule and the 'blue' explanation box below it, and it more or less allows a team to purchase a complete sub-assembly from a vendor regardless of function.

*I went back and checked the 2012 Manual, and it reads the same as 2013's, meaning that 2011 was the last year there was a rule preventing a supplier from selling complete mechanisms.

As Example 2 implies, a vendor could in theory sell an 'Arm Kit', that is pre-assembled for $399.99 and have it be completely legal within FRC. (As the 2013 rules are written)

The change from the previous verbiage may be due in part to conflicts with the KOP Chassis, since technically, according to some rules it would be illegal - although with it being supplied in the KOP, it's technically exempt from some/most rules.

Regardless, I doubt we'll see wide scale proliferation of 'ready' made mechanisms any time soon, due in part to the nature of FRC games. The fact that the game is unknown (at least at some level) to even major FRC suppliers would mean that they'd have to prototype, brainstorm, and produce any relevant mechanisms in a very, very short period of time, and then have the produced in an equally short period of time - or take a gamble on having a series of components designed and ready for production (or produced) by the time kick off comes around. The counter argument to this would be Vex's Chassis from 2013, since it was basically designed, built, and ready to be shipped within a week or so from kick-off, so it is "Possible" - but reasonable to do with mechanisms? Maybe.

If anything, we're long over due to see the wide scale production of 'build your own _______' kits geared towards FRC robots. 'Black Box' mechanisms like Ball Conveyors, Elevators, Telescoping Arms, Etc are well now well understood enough that someone with the resources could very easily manufacture a kit containing the 'tricky bits' of the mechanism with the end users supplying raw materials in the form of aluminum extrusion or similar. It's funny to see that there are actually a handful of teams that currently use this method internally and have refined their designs to the point where the only thing that ever seems to change is the size of the system, but not the construction method...

Re: Sustainability - 2014 - COTS parts
 

Just in case anyone was thinking I advocated complete subsystems in an off the shelf package with my earlier post....I definitely do not. I was just trying to express that the nature of COTS items that is currently available has not changed the way my team designs or builds very much. We did buy some belt pulleys and some other hardware type items for 2013...but we have always used the kit drivetrain - and we have always constructed our specialized systems from our own designs.

I will concede that the current stock of available items has changed the activity greatly since the early years - it was my impression that this thread (and other similar current threads) were speaking more to very recent changes and/or comparison to seasons only a few years ago.

Re: Sustainability - 2014 - COTS parts
 

I completely agree. It's not a particularly good business practice for companies to build "frisbee shooter" and "frisbee intake" systems for the number of logistic and technical problems mentioned in this thread. Even if they could see us "2014 manipulator I" or "2014 manipulator II," I doubt most teams would use them. They wouldn't have any reason to think that they would actually work, and using them would probably raise questions of morality.

On the other hand, someone is going to make a lot of money making components for 233 style arms, 254 style elevators, good arm components, and decent worm gearboxes. There's a lot of "secret sauce" that goes into a 233 telescoping arm say, as well as manufacturing technology, and it would make a lot of money as a great COTS solution. Teams will buy them in droves if they're available, well made and useful.