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Originally Posted by dooey100
I was the driving force behind creating an FTC team at our school this year, and I think it would be awesome if we could move up to FRC. I'm wondering how feasible this would be, and if I should pursue this.
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Although every situation is different, I think the primary different between FRC and FTC involves the availability of engineering mentors. The FRC is intended to be a collaborative effort between professional engineers and students where the students learn first hand about engineering process by working together with the pros. IMHO this is the essential character of FRC and what makes it unique among Robotics programs.
So until you can recruit at least a couple of engineering mentors to devote the considerable time and energy during the 6 week build season to drive the engineering of your FRC bot, it may make more sense to stick with FTC. Until you have the engineering mentor resources, I think you may find that FTC may be more bang for the buck.
IMHO it is also almost essential to have team capability with Inventor (or Solidworks or Pro-e). The value of CAD to engineering process today is indispensable. You can use FTC to build these skills and having them will dramatically increase your probability of success with FRC.
We have 4 FTC teams which function as a Jr. Varsity and an FRC team that is the varsity. Our FTC teams are student directed with "light" mentoring. FTC is fun, produces instant gratification, and is 100 times safer than FRC. In FTC it's easy to recover from even major mistakes. The FTC program, however, is in most respects just another robotics competition. It does not provide the unique life changing experiences that become available to the students of mentored FRC teams. Our FRC teams have "heavy" involvement from mentors because that is the essential character of that program.
Remember what Dean says - It's not about the robot.