FRC Blogged - KOP Evolution

[IndySam]

I win!

[Taylor]

Ah, but did you link CyberBlue's white paper?
Plus, mine has more replies

I win better.

[Brandon Holley]

Belts are a VERY good change for the KOP robot. Most of the mechanical misassembly that is done with previous kit bots has been in regards to the chain paths. Whether it was too loose, too tight, mis-aligned, etc. Hopefully with predetermined belt lengths, assembly should be a breeze.

Nicely done FIRST.

-Brando

[mwilbur]

All of the teams that don't use the Kitbot are big winners on this one. Since the PDV are considered KoP items, which don't count against your $3500 robot budget, I think that all of our robot budgets just effectively jumped from $3500 to $3950. This is good news for our team, whcih has been looking at alternative designs that we will probably implement this build season. This eases some of the concerns that I had had over the robot budget restrictions.

It sounds like the teams that do use the Kitbot are big winners, too, because of the lighter drive train and improved buildability.

This is great!!

[EricH]

And the teams that don't use the Kitbot in competition but use it as a testbed are also winners--they don't have to build another testbed.


Some good ideas with the KOP the last few years: FIRST Choice, and now this! Wonder what other good ideas they'll come up with...

[Jared Russell]

Wow! These are great changes.

[Jon Stratis]

I think this is an awesome move for FIRST that also hugely benefits teams. From FIRST's perspective, it lets them move a significant chunk of the KoP costs into a voucher, which is much easier for them to modify in future years should they encounter budgetary or donation constraints as the program grows. From a team perspective, it doesn't take anything away from teams who opt not to use the voucher, and it provides a nice chunk of financial support for teams who don't want the KoP chassis.

[Steven Donow]

Awesome news!

[Tom Bottiglieri]

This change is a winner.

[Nick Lawrence]

Fantastic news.

FRC: Doing things right now.

-Nick

[Gary Dillard]

10/1 - 10/18, How do I know whether or not I want to use the kitbot drive system if I don't know what the game is?

[Ether]

Originally Posted by Gary Dillard

10/1 - 10/18, How do I know whether or not I want to use the kitbot drive system if I don't know what the game is?

Can you use your voucher to buy the parts needed to build a kitbot?

[Mk.32]

Originally Posted by Gary Dillard

10/1 - 10/18, How do I know whether or not I want to use the kitbot drive system if I don't know what the game is?

Well you could still use the $450 buy a Kit Frame, with modified components even. Also if you team has a habit of building custom drives every year you probably aren't going to use the kit frame anyways.

This is really great imo. Our team just finished up on building our first WCD and we love it. And plan to over the season and $450 to go to components would be awesome! I hope Andymark has some pulleys we can use with a live axle setup...

[David Doerr]

I'm leading a rookie team in 2013 and we've been active for the past month or two trying to prepare for the season. I submitted a reply to the FRC blog and I did my best to be diplomatic. I'm going to be more candid here.

I think it stinks that rookies don't have the same opportunity for a voucher that veteran teams do.

[AlecMataloni]

This is a huge step in the right direction; however, I'm a bit worried about the voucher deal.

Teams that might not be able to make a custom drivetrain that can match the kitbot in reliability might just opt out after seeing the savings. Of course, every team needs to make its own decisions; but, as a person who wants to see a net increase in competitiveness throughout FRC, I'm worried about how this move by FIRST and AndyMark may effect that goal. Maybe I'm just overthinking things, but who knows. I'm probably wrong.

Overall, I'm happy with the move to belts. I trust Cyber Blue's analysis and I think that many teams could use an introduction to the use of belts in an FRC drivetrain.