How will they top WILL I AM?

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

I think some of you guys are a little harsh on the minibots!

Dr. Joe made a prediction in our lab a couple weeks ago, and I am fully on board with it. He basically predicted that minibots would return, but would be REQUIRED to be smart, and not necessarily by rules, but by necessity to complete the task. The example he gave was completing a maze.

I think in an implementation like that, minibots have the potential to be a very cool and different aspect to games that we haven't seen before. It helps break up the somewhat repeatable actions of handling some sort of ball, picking up some kind of tube and placing it on a peg, hanging from a bar of some sorts, etc.

-Brando

In an application like this that requires cooperation between utilizing the FTC hardware and FRC I'd be ok. In a drag race where the optimal solution is to not use any FTC parts other than what is required I think minibots were pointless. They wanted us to work with FTC teams, which I am all for*, but they made a challenge that didn't play to the strengths of the FTC teams and didn't require anything other than their motors (which even FTC students bad mouth).


*I put my money where my mouth is and am mentoring an FTC team right now so I have a basis for comparison between systems. So far I have some things I'm impressed with and some things I'm less than impressed with.