Quitting FRC for Vex?

[Foster]

Originally Posted by jman4747

I also think that FRC is the technological pinnacle of high school robotics no one I've ever shown this to, especially an engineer, expects to find high school students doing anything this advanced. Like the comment one of our new mentors gave at the end of the season was: "this was more complex than my final project from college."

I agree with this, FRC robots are just amazing. There are some other programs like the Underwater competition that build some pretty amazing robots also.

I give the nod to FRC doing best is the complex tasks with a 120lb robot. This game brought out a lot of serious engineering to keep robots together for 2:30. The leap in vision from last year to this year was pretty amazing, I'd love to see next years game have a component that could be helped again by advanced vision systems.

I'd like to see FTC/VEX be allowed to use some of the smaller cameras as a off board vision system: Open MV programmed in Python

[FTC5110]

Originally Posted by Foster

I'd like to see FTC/VEX be allowed to use some of the smaller cameras as a off board vision system: Open MV programmed in Python

Got that in FTC. The phones have cameras and some teams were using them this season. Come to the light side, we too have cookies and a lot of scope for new stuff next season.

[rlance]

Are there grants available with the Vex program like there are with FRC? If not, then for our team I'm not sure that Vex wouldn't cost more.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by rlance

Are there grants available with the Vex program like there are with FRC? If not, then for our team I'm not sure that VEX wouldn't cost more.

Yes, there are VEX grants. You can get these specifically from VEX's foundation as well as any number external grants and sponsorships. It works much like FRC in that respect (notwithstanding debates of flashiness to sponsors and necessary fundraising amounts).

http://www.roboticseducation.org/for...s/team-grants/

[Foster]

STEMRobotics has grants for Delaware Teams for both IQ and EDR. We have some out of state grants on a on a one off basis. We are happy to look at any proposal.

[ARampantBrian]

I think there are many things that VEX and FRC get right individually. I did both in high school and continue to mentor in FRC currently.

VRC is much better for many schools/organizations. As has been mentioned before, VRC is much cheaper for teams, and definitely doesn't have the same scare factor that FRC does in both time and money. From experience, VRC competitions are also much easier to manage and run than FRC competitions are. It is much easier for schools, students, and mentors to jump in and do well in VRC because VEX's building equipment is a lot more simple to put together for someone without experience than FRC is.

However, VRC just doesn't have the same wow factor in my opinion. Something that makes FRC the spectacle it is is the arena factor of the competition. FRC has much more of the sport feeling to it than VRC does, which feels much more like a hobbyist competition to me than FRC does. I think the six-week challenge for FRC teams makes it much more of an interesting challenge than VRC is, and in FRC you get much more difference in design than VRC due to the time teams have to work on the robot.

I know, personally, I would not want to continue in VRC because as a mentor, I just do not enjoy the competitions and challenge as much as I do the FRC challenge. Something about the six week build time and the size of the competitions just makes the time needed to compete well more worth it than what I experienced as a student in VRC.

Overall, I think the problem with FRC is that it is not easy to jump into as VRC is. Although I personally prefer FRC, I would suggest VRC as a robotics competition for a new school/team. I think if FRC wants to continue to grow and wants to continue to be more available, both funds and the learning curve to FRC needs to be addressed if it still wants to be the main high school robotics competition.