Quote:
Originally Posted by Aren_Hill
I forget what year it was rookies were deemed incapable of making a robot with any level of ability.
And having a rougher interaction helps teach not only robust construction, but designing for ease of maintenance and replacement.
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The bottom line, Aren, is that sometimes you have to look beyond the competition to see the greater meaning of FIRST. I do believe that bumpers are one of these times.
There are plenty of rookies capable of building great bots, and there are plenty that are not. Perhaps I shouldn't have used "rookie" as my descriptor, as there are plenty of veteran teams who have the problems I'm alluding to, but it quickly got my point across to a reasonably astute reader.
I've seen plenty of "adventurous" uses materials and frame design in my years in FIRST. And plenty of these uses have ended up failing under the heat of competition. I've even seen some very sturdy frames get quite bent out of shape by some overzealous play by other machines. I'm not saying we should reward "bad" design, but I am saying we should be somewhat forgiving of it in terms of helping the greater mission of FIRST.
Ask yourself, which is going to be more inspiring to a student. Showing up with a scrapped-together robot that barely runs, takes plenty of help to pass inspection (including needing to make bumpers), but ultimately gets out on the field and drives around. Or one that drives around for two matches, then gets smashed into the wall and broken and doesn't see the field again for the rest of the day as your fix it?
Obviously neither situation is ideal, but the joy I've seen from teams just as their robot
moves is much greater than the joy I've seen from teams who don't see the same achievement. I'd rather have the teams at least come away from the event with a robot that didn't get smashed to pieces, and I think they would all say the same thing.
Maybe it forces the elite teams to change their designs some to meet bumper rules, but ultimately I think it does FIRST all the better. It's the lesser of two evils, in my mind. And not to mention, anything to help make sure I have functional alliance partners throughout qualifications is a good thing, in my book.
More related to the topic at hand, I do agree that some of the restrictions on materials, backing, shape, and coverage need to be adjusted to make more sense and allow for more creative designs. Specifically making it easier to create oddly shaped frames, concavities, curves, sloped frames, and articulated frame members.
I would like to keep the SOLID red/blue colors for the entire length of the bumper, though. Introducing team colors to the bumpers will take away much of the simplicity of the red/blue rules (or require more strict rules about bumper/frame shapes to facilitate "color on the corner" or similar rules, which still won't be as effective as the current situation). I would suggest more strictly enforcing team number size and color rules, and perhaps forcing number colors to be white to increase visibility.