[Joe Johnson]

I think this year will be a year with more variation than typical. Yes, there will be a lot of elevators and those will certainly share a number of similarities, but after that, the sky's the limit.

There will be Double Stackers and there will be Stack On Stacks Stackers. There will be Landfill Munchers and Loading Station Loiterers.

And that is before we've even started talking Cans. Upright Cans Only Machines will be quite different from Knocked Over Can Machines which will be different from Step Can Grabber Machines.

Then there are noodles? There will be machines that are Noodle-Ignorers and machines that are Noodle-Centric.

Also, lets not forget that some teams will design in mechanisms for knocking over stacks while making it look like an accident for when they need their alliance partners to fall in the rankings. Those are going to be crazy looking rigs ;-) (no, no, no... ...just kidding).

Then there is the whole constrained Transport Configuration vs. virtually unlimited Competition Size. Not since bumpers rules effectively made "The Big Flop" illegal (I'm looking at YOU, Bill Beatty ;-) will we have robots with such imposing wheel bases driving on the Carpet Fields of FIRST.

Then there is the whole crazy (but maybe crazy like a fox) idea of I'm-building-for-Einstein-and-I-don't-care-if-I-rank-dead-last-during-the-qualifiers Strategy (cough, cough, simultaneous 4 can auton grab, cough, cough)*

Bottom line. I think this year will be a better than typical year for robot variety.

I will close with this. I can't/won't share the Overclocked 2015 Robot just yet, but I will say that we've nick named her "Scorpion" and she's worthy of the name.

Cheers,
Dr. Joe J.

*don't be a hater. I haven't let any cats out of any bags. With 1000's of FRC teams do you think your team was the ONLY team that thought long and hard about that idea? I myself stared long and hard into that abyss before shrinking back in horror (the horror, the long spindly, almost certainly rickety horror).

P.S. This is a very tongue in cheek reply. Don't take this too seriously. Lighten up. Really. JJ