[Peter Matteson]

30 pounds is easy to follow with the COTS rules.

My team over the last several years has worked with the COTS and witholding rules to allow major changes to our robots at events when we knew we got something wrong in the initial design.

In 2009 our frame had issues so we built a new one under that year's limit and carried it in to swap out every robot component and didn't miss a single practice match.

In 2010 we completely redesigned our kicker/possesor when the original exploded at scrimmage in our first match and we had to go back to the drawing board. This limited what we could do with our hanger so a good portion of that was made from raw material we carried in with us.

If you maximize use of COTS by purchasing gears and transmissions from AndyMark and Banebots or designing simple cuts of raw materialyou can do a lot with 30 lbs. By planning well and using these rules you can do a lot within the rules and have a clean conscience but it means you have to plan ahead.

Don't fight the rules, work with them and they are more helpful than you think.