For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Casey. I have been competing in Vex Robotics ever since the 7th grade and this year I will be graduating as a senior in high school. I love Vex and I was very much looking forward to competing in Vex U this upcoming 2017-2018 season. In the past, I was super excited to see that Vex U offered the ability for teams to compete in matches and skills with 2 robots for 1 team. I was disappointed this year in Starstruck and unfortunately this upcoming season for In The Zone to see that Vex U will only be allowed one robot instead of two for each team.
I wanted to create this post in order to see what others thought of the change in Vex U. For me, the ability for a team to compete with two robots per team is what made Vex U special and allowed people to have fun and experiment with having a complimenting alliance that they could build. I know that a rule change is probably very unlikely, but I wanted what others opinions were on the matter. If we could get enough support maybe the GDC would consider changing Vex U to 2 robots per team, where 1 team competes at any given time for the upcoming 2017-2018 game. I know that many people loved the 2 robot rule in Nothing But Net and past Vex seasons, and would love to see the return of 2 robots per team for In the Zone. Thanks for taking the time to read this post, and I hope you will support the case for 2 robots! Thanks again.
I would agree to the two robots but they won’t because colleges have said it is too expensive for new teams to have two robots. They are trying to grow the Vex U program. I loved the collaborative autonomous of skyrise and would enjoy a return to that but it probably won’t happen.
As someone else who is joining Vex U next year, I’m also disappointed by the return of the one robot rule. Having only one robot per team limits both the amount of members who can be actively contributing and the strategies that teams can use. The challenge of Vex U came from having to create two robots that could work well together and that challenge no longer exists with the new rule.
At the open forum, they said the one robot rule would be staying for at least the next year (for the duration of In the Zone, that is), but after that they may be open to reevaluation.
As a new Vex U team I’d say the chances of us being able to compete with 2 robots would mean we just wouldn’t be able to even try. We get no grants, no help whatsoever, so this is going to be pretty difficult anyway.
If the competition kits were donated then I’d agree, building 2 robots that worked together would be a fun challenge and make some of the designs a LOT more interesting.
Having two robots is a lot of fun because it opens up a lot of strategic possibilities, it would of been really cool if starstruck allowed us to have two bots.
However, with ITZ, I can’t really think of any crazy strategies a second 15" bot would open up that would be within the spirit of the game. For the ITZ season it might be best to only have one robot for vexU.
Oh I can think of one great strategy. A very stable bot to hold the mobile peg, then a quick bot to feed it. The big bot would be able to make a large stack and bring it back, but the extra parts needed to make it super stable and handle the height would make it slower. So it could be heading back while the little bot fed it more to the height.