2006 Season - The Negative

[Billfred]

This might be nit-picky, but I seemed to see a lot of folks on the floor of the Dome with team media badges...that didn't have any photography or recording equipment with them. (One gentleman I saw was actually attempting to coach his team from a few feet off the carpet.) A little more work on access control would be useful. (At the same time, does an entire set of doors have to be exit-only, when the nearest entry doors are nearly impossible to find?)

The flag holders were alright, but they seemed to be the biggest pain in the butt to inspect. (Bear in mind, I inspected at UCF, which was before the whole offboard compressor thing hit the fan.) If FIRST were to either allow two mounting holes, all the way through, or perhaps some other more secure method (perhaps create some cheap mount the teams have to bolt onto the robot's top that the flag latches on to?), I could stand to see them return. Honestly, though, I'd really prefer to see a light of some sort.

The IFI breaker panel is lighter/sexier/more elegant/(any good word here but cheaper). I thoroughly intend to beg for its return in 2007 at the team forum.

The ball counters were great--but they need to work properly in order to really get the full awesomeness out of them. The theory was Chuck Norris, but the execution was only Vin Diesel. (That said, I do like that they attempted to improve the readings over the weeks.)

Bumpers were nice, but somewhat annoying in their requirements. (I heard from a secondhand source that some regionals erroneously required the Cordura fabric. It should be made painfully obvious when things are not rules, but encouragements.) If they're going to continue this required format, I'd at least like to see some flexibility in it. (A smaller bumper option, for example, and an allowance for angled cuts and what not.)

The wedge rule was good in theory, but the execution (in my experience) saw some obvious non-wedges become ruled as wedges. I'd much rather see either the no-wedge zone dropped lower, or establish some empirical requirement (create a Kitbot-On-Skyways dummy, for example, and require that robots be unable to wedge it.)

Oh, and for Pete's sake, dump the Hatch field controllers. It seems like it's not a regional until you have to break out the foghorn at least three times just to get one clean match. The solution is out there--the WildStangers-designed FVC field controllers were nearly flawless over the two days of the Championship. (And they're tiny, too--one alliance station's connection point was about the size of a deck of cards. Plug in two Cat5 cables and the eight handset cables for the radios' tether ports, and your field is just about wired.)

The problems within the first week of getting more balls from Poof-Slinky was a little annoying, but at least it was sorted out quickly.

I can't think of anything else--overall, the season was a pretty good one, with nothing too terrible in my experience. Some things just need some tweaking.