Whats your honest opinion?

[Patrick Wang]

Remember that the field that we play in is not completely enclosed, and there are people standing to the sides. Effectively doubling the voltage would be doubling the power available to the robots. (If any of you saw what happened the the field barriers after a strong robot this year hit it, you can imagine what would happen if a robot twice as strong hit it)

Remember that the Field is carpetted, can you imagine the damage that large robot would do to anything else?

Remember that in FIRST, I have not seen a real out of control fire, usually letting out the magic smoke is as bad as it gets. Yes the wiring builds in a lot of saftey margin, but remember that a fire can easily take a robot out of commision and may cause damage to the playing field or worse other people.

The damage that robots took this year was bad enough as it is. We don't want to regress to the point where 99% of the weight of the robot needs to be spent on armor to keep it in one piece after a round is over.

There are much more creative tasks, stacking one of them that are far more interesting to watch. (I remember the loud and universal cheer the first time people saw someone that ACUTUALLY worked with a stack) that is impressive, not robots slamming into each other the whole time.

This is my 4th year with FIRST and see clearly that what makes FIRST different and more sustaining than any other robotics program (even Battlebots is out without a sponsor right now) is that new and fresh things are added and changed each year.

Think of the real world, there is no use for a robot that drives and slams into a wall repeatedly, but there is definately a use for a robotic surgeon.