[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by Jim Zondag

This whole debate needs to shift to a discussion about how we can encourage a spirit of continuous improvement amongst all teams in the FRC.
Continuous improvement is the essence of how the top teams operate and is the essence of how Engineering works in the real world.
Teaching anything else does a dis-service to our participants.
Today, only the well resourced team can really do continuous improvement, everyone else is pretty much screwed.

Thanks for taking the time to explain your view of FRC. I'm still pondering the mission of FRC...

I find it paradoxical that this rule is not consistent even within the FIRST programs: Small robots are much easier to change and copy than large robots, but there are no restrictions on the FLL and FTC machines.

I think maybe that's why the rules are as they are? It is not easy to change large robots, and continuous improvement for many FRC teams would be prohibitively expensive and time consuming. If you get it way wrong the first time, you pretty much have to start over. Since I am not convinced that having every team build a top notch robot is the point of FRC, the existing rules make sense to me.

As far as making FRC into a sport that the public will want to watch in droves...I am not so sure about it being a reasonable goal. I also do some drag racing, and I've seen how to get folks interested in watching the sport--it's called Street Outlaws. The robot equivalent is Battlebots, but it would need a lot more soap opera content to get folks really into it.

Culture change is a difficult thing.