A Recycle Rush Reflection

[iRobot_]

Originally Posted by Ginger Power

I would say adapting to a rule that allows for your team to go from ineffective to highly effective requires a high amount of ingenuity. Plenty of teams have attempted ramps and failed with them. Others have succeeded and I commend them for it. I know exactly where you are coming from though. If I'm an audience member who is viewing a FIRST match for the first time, and I'm watching a robot with a string tied to it I'm asking myself how that is considered 1 robot? It won't make sense to me. This confusing element makes it more difficult to explain the game to people outside of FIRST. It isn't an issue where you point fingers at the teams. It's an issue where you question the rule which makes it an allowable practice. This rule is obviously the lack of frame perimeter restrictions. Besides confusing ramps, this rule has also generated some of the most innovative and inspiring robots I've seen in FIRST. Just rewatch Batman and Robin, or check out 1987's amazing robot. It's a rule that has obvious benifits and pitfalls. To repeat though, a team doesn't have any less ingenuity just because they build a tethered ramp.

The rule itself is an amazing aspect of the game. What i'm saying is that creating a passive ramp and attaching it the the "main robot" seems like an abuse of the rule. You mentioned 1987 and 148 as prime examples of how this rule allows for very impressive robots. But I would like to point out that 1987 is not tethered, and 148 has a motorized component on their feeder station robot. Maybe criticizing teams as having less ingenuity was a misstep on my part, and I apologize. Adding a ramp is so much easier than fixing the original robot to complete the challenge, and that's the problem, it's just too easy. My issue isn't the fact that the rule exists, which I guess I failed to highlight in my previous post.

Also, I stated that fact that motorized components should have been a rule for parts of the robot TETHERED to another part of the robot. To my knowledge, 1114's grabber isn't tethered.