[FTC]: FTC and/or FRC

[Rick TYler]

I made the mistake of taking my FTC teams to the Seattle FRC regional. They're a successful FTC team (especially since only one of my 20+ teammates are not rookies), and won an Inspire Award this year plus other recognition. If not for tragically forgetting to turn their robot on in the last semifinal match, all three of our FTC teams would very possibly have been in the Washington FTC finals (it was a great, although sad, learning experience).

Now they want to do FRC next year. I know the price that has to be paid for FRC -- I did it for two years. Half our FTC team is coming back next year, and I expect that they will be a force to be reckoned with in any FTC event we attend, while they would be an inexperienced, totally green rookie FRC team with limited money, shop resources, mentors, and robot programming experience. As the lead mentor I am currently torn between doing what they want to do (FRC and FTC), and what I'm sure they would be successful at (FTC only). I also know where the responsibility would fall to get the FRC program started. That would be -- me.

Our FRC life is complicated because Exothermic Robotics was started as a club for high school kids to join who attend high schools without robotics programs or are home-schooled. We draw most of our team members from three schools that have no shop facilities of any kind, and have no special interest in having big robots built on site. They are very friendly to us, but we don't ask for much except some space to store our parts, and the use of a classroom after hours. We are friends of the schools, but we aren't part of the schools. So, we would have no build site on campus for an FRC robot, no machine tools, and no industrial arts teachers to help.

Any thoughts from other experienced FTCers on this question? Anyone else had to make this decision?

[fredliu168]

Personally I chose to start an FTC (FVC) team during my senior year of high school rather than continue on the FRC team at my school. I expected FRC to turn out to be like the previous year, where there was 3-4 people doing everything and the rest of the team hanging around playing CS.

What I learned later was that instead of the students even touching the robot during the first 5 weeks of build season, the second year team machine shopped the entire thing and spent a day putting together the parts into the final robot. When I spoke to the team leader, I got the impression that they just wanted to do well in the competition and didn't think the current team could pull it off. I spoke with some friends on that team, and they all said they didn't do anything at all, or something completely unrelated to the robot. I'm very disappointed, to even this very day.

Doing FVC allowed everyone to get involved in the building process, since the teams are so small. I met some great people and learned a lot more than if I was on the FRC team. I was certainly much more inspired by FVC.

My point is, see what the limits are of your team. If you think your team can handle the FRC program financially and has the talent and time to pull it off, go for it. If not, maybe a very sucessful FTC/IFI season could be more inspiring for the students.

[ManicMechanic]

Last year, a very small (6 student) FRC team started up about 1/2 hour from us. When I asked our FVC team if they would be interested in inquiring about the possibility of joining, they all answered, "Nah -- as it is, we all get to work on the robot every meeting, and if we join an FRC team, we might not get to touch the robot all season." These were kids who had been to Atlanta and seen the best of FRC in action.

One important consideration was that the team didn't, and still doesn't, feel it has reached saturation -- there are many design ideas they still haven't tried out, and while they get better every year, they can see that there's still room at the top to grow. The end is still not in sight, so we have no reason to move to something more expensive.

I suppose 2 important questions to ask are: 1) How would you feel about less hands-on time (which is likely), and 2) Do you feel that there's not much left to learn in FTC (and if so, what more would be learned in FRC).

[lynca]

The DiscoBots 2587 and AusTIN Cans 2158 were both setup with very little money and no shop resources. Those teams were able to do very well and continue to grow with young mentors and great students. Funding is always an issue but 1st year teams usually have a much easier time with NASA grants and regional grants. As long as your recruit a couple more mentors and delegate responsibilities you should do fine.