this is rather discouraging...
It is rather discouraging that FIRST couldn't handle this issue strong and quick enough that all teams have a clear understand what we are supposed and not supposed to do.
Couple of thing that made this happen:
FIRST engineers not communicating with each other well enough.
Inspectors/referee are trained differently at each competition.
Too many questions making it really hard for Frc engineers to keep track of different issues, and take care of what's more important.
FIRST didn't design extensions into the game too well.
The issue dragged too long through out the whole season.
And, even though I understand why this happened, I think it is still unfair for teams to have to deal with this during their short 6 week build period. The unclearness and changing of rules made teams wasted a lot of time developing something more complicated than necessary, while someone got off easy with using simplier devices that doesn't follow the rule as strict. The tether design came into my mind... The 15 degree wedge you can use to lift goals up also came into mind....
These problems limited a lot of teams in expanding and expressing their creativity on their, which is one thing I liked about FIRST robotics competition. It is really inspiring and fun when watching all sort of different robot with different design accomplishing different goals on the playing field, while all FIRST put on the field are few simple objects and a roll of duct tape.
You can see at regional competitions the past two weekend, that robots ended up in pushing wars, and whoever pushed stronger wins. Imagine what would've happened if more robots have an extension device... It would've added another dynamic in the competition.
A lot of people seems to express the same feeling. And I don't mean to repeat what was said before... Just that with all the above reasons, I really think we ought to suggest to FIRST what improvement they can make to fix this problem next year... Instead of just posting in here ranting on and on.
Few things I hope FIRST would consider:
Better communication between FRC engineers.
Better web site for teams to ask questions in, one that is more organized and easier to use, and a place for teams and FRC engineers to look at official ruling of different issues, so there is nothing unclear.
Faster responds of questions, which is a part of improving the web site for posting questions. FIRST should improve the web site so that they can sort out which issue is more important and needed immediate attention. Simple busy questions can move to another group for other FRC engineers to answer.
All in all, I am just hopping FIRST would look at this whole process, and come up with a systematic way to solve problems.
Any other suggestions?
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