Part Restrictions

[Sixis]

Hello everyone,
this is probably a weird time to post something like this with the competition just having ended however, as a rookie team member having just completed their first season some questions come to mind.

I'd like to start off by saying that i think what FIRST does is great. They're obviously extremely generous, and despite the somewhat large budget required for a team, FIRST offers a lot of help and we definitely wouldn't have been able to do it without their generous grants.

However, I am interested in some of the rules and aspects of the competition. For instance the parts restrictions seem to only stifle the creativity FIRST seems to otherwise promote. Yes, one could argue that by restricted the parts teams are allowed to use it forces them to really think and come up with something creative and unique, and that it may also be put in place to prevent the team with the largest budget and nicest parts from sweeping the rest of the competition. However i am somewhat disappointed that we are not allowed to use a wide variety of parts. Coming from a background in hobby robotics i saw many places where i could implement certain parts to aid in the operation of the robot, and make it less like a remote control toy.

I think it's fair to say that one of the reasons FIRST has the part restrictions (and partnerships with companies like andymark) is based purely on economics reasons. Obviously without partners like andymark FIRST might not be able to provide the generous loans that it does however, one could see the monopolies FIRST has set up as reliant on economic reasons rather than restrictions forcing teams to be creative.

If anyone could offer more insight into why the restrictions they have are as such i would be very grateful. I'm sure i'm not the only one who was disappointed by the restrictions.