Quote:
Originally Posted by 595294001
My main complaint about this year is that the peak is too low, many teams have achieved perfection, or almost. I would like to see a challenge where you have fewer team getting full/almost full score, and time left over Here are a few ways I see that happening
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I thought about this a bit yesterday as I mentored some middle school teams through their local VRC competition. I think many FTC teams achieved success more because they were forced into simplicity for FTC due to the lack of variety in the available FTC components. Think about it -- how many drive trains did we see at competition that were
not cookie-cutter skid steer or swerve? I went to two FTC competitions and saw zero. Such simplicity may start an interest in engineering, but eventually it will downright bore students that do it from year to year. Perhaps FIRST can poke PITSCO until they either turn blue or provide teams with more variety. Things like bevel gears,
differentials, conveyor belts, chain systems, and
omni wheels would be useful. Technically we could make our own omni wheels from what's purchased on the website, but we'd rather not pay $100 per wheel... Finally, the LEGO motor mounts are a joke, but I actually don't mind only having four useful motors for heavy lifting; such limitation makes the students think hard about conserving energy in movement.