Just had time for a quick scan but noticed a few things right away…
New Items:
Section 3: Youth Protection Program
*-sad what this says about our society, but definitely needed *
Section 4.8 Advancement Criteria -detailed to 41 places!
Section 6 Robot
<R04>
b. All post-processed materials are allowed provided they are readily available to the majority of teams from
standard distributers (e.g. McMaster-Carr, Home Depot, AndyMark, etc.).
Examples of allowable post processed materials are:
perforated sheet and diamond plate
Injection molded parts
3D printed parts
*I think it is new this year to have “post processed materials” - should make the folks happy who have struggled with the TETRIX axles and other KOP items. *
c. COTS parts and assemblies may only have a maximum of a single degree of freedom. It is the intent of FIRST
that teams design and build their devices to achieve the game challenge. Assemblies of COTS components, such
as linear slides, and gearboxes are allowed while a pre-fabricated gripper assembly designed to grab the game
elements is not. Holonomic wheels (omni or mechanum) are exempt from the one degree of freedom
limitation.
Part c limits items to one degree of freedom with some exceptions*
Looks like FTC is continuing to open up the list of resources teams are allowed to use!
R09.b
A maximum total of eight (8) TETRIX /**AM-2964 **motors (in any combination) or eight (8) MATRIX DC motors are
allowed and must be controlled by a compatible TETRIX or MATRIX controller. A Robot is constructed with either
TETRIX /AndyMark or MATRIX DC motors, not both.
Emphasis mine.
While its not listed on Andymark yet, I’m still excited about more motor options outside of Tetrix!
Also:
R09
Gearboxes may be replaced and repaired with replacement parts that are equivalent (identical in performance) to the
original.
Glad this is allowed. In a pinch, my teams were able to salvage working parts from old tetrix motors(individual gears, the gearbox assembly, etc) and hodgepodge together a working motor. Glad to know that it’s competition legal.
I’m excited to see them too. Especially with all the complaints about Tetrix motors, I’m hoping AM can deliver the motor FTC has needed.
I’m also very excited to see materials restrictions opened up-- some of my teams are going to be juniors next year, and they’ll really appreciate the added flexibility they now have.
This just has me more excited for Kickoff in September!
I spoke with an AndyMark rep - details will of course be posted on the website when it comes out but it sounds like the motor has the same speed and torque but the life span could be up to 2 times greater. We won’t really know until the motor is released of course.
Overall, I’m pretty thrilled with the increased flexibility in this year’s rules.
We’ll need a long string of Q&A’s to ask about legality of specific wheels.
I thought we’d see a weight limit this year. It seems weird to allow these robots to be 50 lbs, 70 lbs, etc.
My wish for 2016 is a completely new control system (brain, radio, motor controllers, motors). But mechanically, FTC is in a great place, and we should see some pretty sweet machines this year.
Huh, we ran them for one regional, two scrimmages (think slightly-smaller-regional), and a couple outreach events on our mats (actually, all those events were on the same mats, we provide two fields for the regional, and run the scrimmages), never had any damage.
I guess you’d see more damage if teams are running them without a dropped-center?
What kind of damage were you seeing? Do you know how the wheel caused it?
Chucks or rips here and there. Part of it was probably the non dropped-center robots. We only had a little bit of damage, but we would like to get a few seasons out of one set of pads and we are on our third set now.
From what I saw, previous rule, 2013-14 Game Manual Rule <R08>n.6 was not included in this year’s game manual.
vi. The processor included in the Prototype Board may not be reprogrammed.
Although, it says nothing in the rules about it being allowed to be programmed either.
Also, I think it may be helpful in some cases that a 9V battery can be used to power the Prototype Board.