[Peter Matteson]

I was thinking about the issue of weight for the robot this year and was reminded that with the use of bumpers the competition weight for many bots this year will exceed 145 lbs. I believe that the handling of the robots on and off the field has become an issue with this weight increase. The company I work for will not allow anything over 35 lbs to be moved without a lift assist device. We are having 2 people lift almost twice that weight with the way robots are typically handled at competitions. I want to know how many other people think we have gone a bit to far and need to scale back.

Reminder: FIRST specifically added lifting safety to this years kickoff presentation for a reason.