I notice that this press release comes from Luminary Micro, and not from FIRST. They are bold enough to announce that they "will be included in the FIRST Robotics Competition's (FRC) official Kit of Parts (KoP) and distributed to over 1,700 teams in the upcoming 2009 international FRC." This "announcement" has not yet been acknowledged or confirmed by FIRST. But I have heard rumors that the content for the 2009 KOP, and the associated rules about what is legal to use on the robots, have not yet been finalized. Therefore, I would surmise that this announcement may be a bit premature.
I have heard tales of some members of the GDC that are devious enough to pull an item out of the KOP specifically because the community got unauthorized advance knowledge of a part, and started to do pre-design and pre-build work before the season officially started. After all, wouldn't it be interesting if the entire community got all spun up about a rumored new "capability" that was then never actually included in the KOP? That would be an excellent way to divert their attention away from what was actually going to happen.
Nah, something like that would never happen.
-dave
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