Kingman (60) started it, but it was the design collaborations with 254 in 2003 & 2004 that really helped it start to spread further (already mentioned earlier in the thread, and also a big part of why 254 won the Chairman’s Award in 2004).
From there, it spread from 254 to their other collaboration partners in future years (22 in 2005, 968 in 2006-08). You started seeing the design pop up on more and more west coast teams in the later 2000s, and then FIRST as a whole in the 2010s (with the VersaChassis bearings making it accessible to COTS-teams).
I’m surprised by anyone who doesn’t mention FRC25’s 2006 robot in a thread like this.
They showed the powerful connection between an accurate vision system and on-field performance. I think their success was more foundational than some of the more recent examples. They also showed how important it was to come out ahead in Auto-Mode.
Adding another 2006 robot, or rather robots, to the discussion.
The Niagara FIRST Triplets
It wasn’t the first case of design collaboration in FIRST (254 & 60/22/968, 217 & 229) or even the first iteration of these three teams collaborating (they also shared designed in 2005, when 1503 and 1680 were rookies). But it pushed the concept of design collaboration to the forefront in ways that none of its predecessors had done, and really make it a point of discussion in the FIRST community. The fact that 1114 & 1503 teamed up to win three regionals together (in an era where winning three events in a single years was unheard of for any team with a number other than 47) really made it a point of focus. They also helped launch 1114’s stardom.
Both 610 and 1477 were very fast cyclers. They complemented each other in that 1477 had a floor pickup and could pick up shots that didn’t go in so they did not always have to return to the loading station. It was cool to watch them catch up to the full-court shooter and out score them.
I love that design, but I’m so glad it was ruled illegal. It would be a huge pain to play this game if 2022 rolled around and we all needed to start putting vacuums on the robots to be competitive.
I just wish 95 had gotten to play an event with it.
Personally I’m in the camp that doesn’t think the design should have been ruled illegal based on the current rules, but would absolutely want the rules to be rewritten so that it would still be illegal.
Is creating a negative-pressure zone really “attaching” to something? Does a racecar “attach” to the road as it’s driving? Does a plane “attach” to the space above it as it flies? Of course not. But if the design were to end up being legal it would have been too OP and would have inevitably caused an arms race of copycat designs among the top teams.
Truck Town Thunder Team 68 in 2003, in its first design iteration. This is why we have rules on how big the robot can expand and rules on blocking flow of the game. Anyone have a pic?
Wildstang’s 2001 robot was nuts and helped enact rules about total robot weight. 111 had multiple robot configurations that was over the weight limit but because robot weight was calculated based on what was on the field at any given time this was completely legal. This changed for the 2002 season.
Does anybody know which team (if any) caused the “no leaving robot pieces on the field” rule? I think I remember hearing about a team that left a part of their robot on the field that prevented the opposing alliance from scoring. I could be totally wrong so feel free to correct me.
I think there were two stages of tipping being banned. In 98, they banned tipping as an explicit design strategy – 121’s robot straight-up had a battlebots-style flipper mechanism on it that served no function other than to take their opponent out of the action, and would chase their opponent down to do this first thing every match.
From the '98 rulebook:
Strategies aimed solely at the destruction, damage, tipping over, or entanglement of the opponents’ robot are not in the spirit of The Competition and will not be allowed. Accidental tipping over of an opponent’s robot is not considered damaging and will be allowed at the discretion of the referees. Intentional stabbing, cutting, etc., is illegal. If a breach of this rule occurs the contestant’s control system may be disabled by the referees.
Vigorous defensive play as part of gameplay which often resulted in tips, and games/rules which made it commonplace, still existed until the bumper era, and the rules took an “eh if it happens, it was probably accidental, what are you gonna do about it?” approach. Minus diabolical dynamics, every game from 1999 to 2005 all featured “king of the hill” style game design elements to varying degrees, which haven’t existed in any game since and encouraged this kind of interaction.
This clip from 1999, and particularly the vigorous cheering and fist-pumping at a robot being tipped through messy arm-to-arm contact, is my go-to reminder of how…violent, FRC used to be, and how much the culture has changed. The play itself would be massively controversial and frowned upon today, let alone the wholehearted celebration of the team’s robot being toppled.
You just brought back a very painful memory from 2004… and as it was pretty apparently a strategy, I’m still just a grain or two salty that the refs didn’t call anything at all. (Team A pushed Team B sideways off of the low step, effectively taking Team B completely out of the match.)
Continuing along the topic in general: I’ve got to poke 980’s 2005 robot (and a bunch of other wedge-shaped robots). In divisional semis that year, they managed–along with their opponents–to get a 0-0 tie by DQ, due to intentional tipping going both ways. (Not having seen the match, I can’t comment on the calls themselves.) I suspect that the GDC saw what was going to keep happening–O-bots going low to defend themselves, D-bots trying to go low to prevent the O-bots from being under them–and decided to pull the plug. Standard bumpers debuted in 2006 as “optional”–two years later they were mandatory.
Uh, while I’m on bumpers, I believe it was 1038 that made a red and a blue set and asked if they could use those as sets in 2009, to match the trailers. GDC said “no”. The next year, they said “And now you HAVE to.” We haven’t had to worry about flags or tiny dim blinking LEDs or rotary lights with suicidal covers since then, the bumpers have marked the alliances.
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