[Ben Mitchell]

Over the past few years, I've noticed some trends in the way the games are designed.

2001: 4 versus 0, robots had to work together and in concert to balance goals on a bridge. a low bar and the bridge as a choke point made teamwork and strategy an essential and integral part of both robot design as tactics on the field. A very difficult but fun challenge where the quality of robots as well as operator skill and strategy played a part.

2002: Zone Zeal - drag goals into zones. Balls are irrelevent. May the strongest bulldozer win.

2003: Stack Attack - Stacking quickly become almost impossible, and most games centered around defending stacks, and either herding bins in or knocking bins of out yet another scoring zone. Camping the top of the ramp was another favorite tactics. Bulldozers did well again here.

2004: First Frenzy - herd balls into a chute so humans can throw them. Don't have autonomous? Don't worry, the balls automatically drop after 45 seconds. Don't have a robot that can move the goals or put large balls on top of them? Don't worry, you can still score points, since robots can't actually score. Can't defend your goals - don't worry, they cannot be descored. In fact, all you need is a drive train. Can't build a drive train in six weeks? One comes in the kit prefabricated - no knowledge of engineering, machinary, or design required.

Is FIRST actually raising the bar by including prefabricated parts, scoring the depends on athletic ability of humans rather than robot design, and a number of safetly features to ensure that any team regardless of quality of robot can score?

I think this game is far from raising the bar. In some ways, it lowers it.