FIRST...Taking Broad Steps...

[Ryan Foley]

Originally Posted by Greg Perkins

So good bye to domination and the "powerhouse" teams, and hello to a level playing feild.


thanks,

greg

Well I do hate to be devil's advocate here, although I do enjoy a good debate. I agree with you Greg, FIRST did a great job leveling the playing field this year. However, I don't think we are going to be saying goodbye to powerhouse teams. Just because every team has that great gearbox and tranny doesn't mean teams that have gotten really good at drives (45, 111, 217, 1114, etc) are going to stop building amazing drive trains. So I think we are still going to see the innovative drive trains we see every year.

However here is what I hope happens:
The past few years (2002, 2003, 2004) a lot of emphasis has been on building a good drive. If you didn't have a good drive train, you were at a disadvantage. Hopefully with the introduction of this KitBot, the importance will shift. Instead of drives being so important, arms and manipulators will start to be the important part. I would love to see the competition shift a bit in that direction, and I think that this year might be the beginning of that paradigm shift.

But as you said Greg, the KitBot is great, and definitely helped give the lower-resource teams a fighting chance.