[Jon Stratis]

I keep going back and forth on the size change.

Pro: Helps to stimulate innovation and create a diverse field of competing robots.

In other words, by defining the robot footprint the way they did this year, it allows a lot more flexibility and creativity. Hopefully, we'll see robots with wildly varying dimensions this year.

Con: Getting the kitbot with a belt drive train this year really doesn't work well with the new size limit.

The belts are designed for specific spacing, which means you need to build your drive train to one of two dimensions, depending on if you're going 2 wheeled or 3 wheeled. This seems to be directly contrary to the main benefit of the new size rules.


So, if you're a team that opted for the voucher, you're sitting real nice - You can build to whatever dimensions you want (within the limitations of the rule), and build a custom drive train.

But if you got the kitbot chassis, you have a choice to make: Build to the specific dimensions the belts for the drive train dictate you build to, or spend more money for new belts (or chains and sprockets) in order to get the same flexibility teams with the voucher have.

It just feels like these two changes shouldn't have been introduced in the same year, or that we should have had some sort of advanced notice about the size change so we could really make an informed decision when it came to the kitbot chassis.

Then again, maybe I'm just being a bitter old man after being stuck obtaining chains and sprockets when the belts wouldn't work with our design.