[Bob Steele]

Bigger and Heavier does not make something a more VARSITY LEVEL COMPETITION..

Innovation does.... this can be accomplished at any scale.

I believe one of the issues that arises is visibility from the stands...
Vex competitions and FTC competitions (and BEST and others) all have smaller footprint robots. It is much more difficult to see what is happening from the stands.... not that this is necessarily a bad thing....at least for the competitors..

Scale is a tricky thing... most of the time smaller is MUCH harder...

We are in the process of building an approximately half-scale FRC type robot...
with a base size of 15 X 20. And a max height of 30" The FRC components do NOT lend themselves to this scale...particularly the control system.

It has presented some real design challenges... and continues to.

Scaling down the robots would help a great deal in shipping ... etc.

I would think that perhaps a robot with a 20 X 30 robot might be attainable or perhaps a 24 X 24 footprint.... given the present control system with perhaps a 36 " height... It would be a real design challenge...

That IS what we thrive on isn't it?

These robots would much easier to transport

I can't see this year's competition changing the size very much... given that we are using the same control system and battery....(from KOP data already released...)

We could start to reduce the size back though.... so perhaps this year...??
A robot that starts at 24 X 36 with a max starting height of 42" ?
or max height of 36" ?

This could make the crate much smaller.... perhaps something like 4 X 4 X 4
Easier to handle in shipping .... lighter too...
We all know that the crate usually weighs MUCH more than the robot...

Just ideas... we can do this.
We can do whatever is decided to do...
We like tough challenges...

Go FIRST...