[FTC]: Team Unlimited's Visit at FIRST HQ

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by gdo

A: For the time being only the Vex metal will be allowed to be used in the competition for next year.

With that statement from FIRST, the mechanical "flexibility" of the new FTC kits just went down the toilet.

One one hand you have a kit that only contains ten aluminum spur gears and a few LEGO gears.

And on the other you have a kit which 95% of FTC teams already own which has spur gears, bevel gears, rack and pinion gears, worm gears, differential gears, roller chain and sprockets, tank treads, and a variety of regular and omni wheels.

I was holding out hope that all mechanical parts of the Vex kits would be legal in the new FTC game. (Actually, that would have been the only reason for me to give any measure of support to the new FTC kits.) As of now, it appears that is not very likely.

And, quite possibly just as, if not more so, important is that the majority of the thousands of dollars of investments by each of the few hundred FTC teams are now worthless for continuing in FTC. A $1500 investment in Vex over two or three seasons may seem trivial to some, but when some of these teams run on an annual budget of less than $1000/year it IS a big deal. So much for the "affordable" robotics competition.

People used to complain about the lack of diversity in the Vex FVC/FTC competition robots. Now just imagine what it will be like when nearly all of the fun and interesting mechanical stuff in the kits is gone. :-/