[Dan Petrovic]

FIRST has a recent trend of alternating between exciting spectator games to technically challenging games and we're in the technically challenging part of the cycle. FIRST will see that games that allow for alliance interaction are preferred by the community.

However, for this year, I think FIRST (and maybe FedEx) really wanted to re-visit a box stacking game. It didn't go so well back in 2003 and turned largely into a King of the Hill style game because stacks are difficult to protect, so I think they bit the bullet and decided to separate teams so that the box stacking game can come to life as intended.

The added benefit of the separated teams comes from the much more relaxed robot constraints. This year allows teams to think outside the box (or the frame perimeter) for their robot concepts and my students are rather intimidated by that fact. We're so used to strict starting configuration constraints and even teleoperated size restraints that they have hardly even considered the possibility of creating larger designs.

Because of all of this I have the suspicion that, while this may not become the norm, we will likely see similar structures in the future.

On the topic of the carpet, FIRST has used colored carpet in the past, so I don't think that it'll become a fixture in the games. Ironically, it was last used during the last game that "featured" stacking boxes.