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Re: A Request
All of these programs are excellent and serve specific purposes, which are different. I think Andrew is right when it comes to impacting non-participants, up to and including a lot of businesses; it has nothing to do with inherent value, the technical challenge, or team size...the deciding wow factor is robot size.
People see FTC and VEX-sized robots and they think, "ooh, neat, toy robots!" People see FRC-sized robots and they think, "ooh, neat, robots!" When it comes to spectacle, scale matters. The fact that you're manipulating objects on a human scale makes it inherently more attention-grabbing, more sports-like, more relatable than the smaller-scale programs.
This isn't particularly fair or reasonable; many common robots manipulate comparatively small things (photocopiers, mail sorters, etc) and are of stunning complexity compared to your average FRC machine. Complexity doesn't scale with size, except insofar as building smaller robots to complete a job is harder than building larger robots for same. Bigger doesn't mean better--except psychologically and therefore sociologically when it comes to wow-factor and spectacle.
Large-scale games are significantly more spectator-friendly, too.
So FRC is intrinsically superior in one particular aspect--but certainly not all, and I'm sure an astute observer can find aspects where the reverse is true.
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Patrick Freivald -- Mentor
Team 1551
"The Grapes of Wrath"
Bausch & Lomb, PTC Corporation, and Naples High School
I write books, too!
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