The lack of basic common sense at VEX is incredible. This is just the latest.
Legal six foot long robot at the beginning of a match?
How exactly are teachers supposed to transport or store that monstrosity if it becomes the main way to play?
How are fixed budget people supposed to get all of those extra parts?
How are EPs supposed to have queuing tables or pit areas that allow for that size machine?
Part of me actually hope this becomes the meta and worlds runs out of room in queuing, pits, and inspection. There will be some really dumb looking pictures on the website of robots that require 4 students to carry.
While I don’t think there will be a scenario where a robot maximizing that 6ft size will be very competitive, I do agree it will be something teams may at least give the ole college try if for nothing else than the “meme” factor.
Our team didn’t even come close to a robot utilizing that much space in the “rapid design” workshop we did this afternoon. I think even they realize that’s just silly.
I’m more worried about the stress this game is going to put on the judges. There are a lot of “moving parts” from a scoring perspective here, including the last 15 seconds, the “buzzer beater” definition, runners sprinting around the field, limiting 2 balls “in play”, etc.
I think this was a cool choiceon their be half,not a mistake.making a 6ft robot would be dificoult and expensive meaning only auper competitive teams will be doing it.so realy its not a bad idea,one i realy like.plus most twams will be shooting anyway.
We will see. After thinking things through, I will just have to put these common sense restrictions in place based on my role.
As a mentor, the rule will be that my team’s bots needs to fit in pieces into our standard transport box so we can get store them and get them to events. Anything large will need to have ways to collapse or be able to be temporarily disassembled.
As an Event Provider, I will just add some extra notes in robot events so that we can keep evets running smoothly.
No extra pit space or queue space will be provided for larger robots.
No extra field setup time will be allotted for larger robots. Robots must move from the queue to be set up and ready to play in the time allotted. Note that last season this was approximately 45 seconds as our cycle time between matches was commonly 1 minute and 1 second.
I can’t really think of a six foot robot being competitive,; but I might be wrong. When considering another robot on the field and not knowing how that robot will be designed, it doesn’t seem like a good idea. I made a “suggestion” to my students that they design their robot to fit with in the robosource boxes we transport our robots in. It’ll be interesting to see the different designs play out.
While I think there will be some “meme” bots, I just don’t think enormous robots will be the meta. Mostly I’m excited because no one will be judging if your intake goes .1 inches out of size if it hits a stack of 15 purple blocks just right…
I love it actually… Because it seems that a lot of limitations happen because students can understand the mechanisms, but they can’t understand them if they’re all smashed on top of each other to fit inside a small space.
This allows them to compete with a larger robot that has the same mechanisms but they can see them and understand them, and then they can iterate and make something smaller and more manageable.
With the smaller size restrictions, often, the complicated robots are so dense that the student s can’t even hope to build something that works the same, thereby missing out on the engineering they could be learning because they don’t want to build something that they couldn’t use because it’s too big.
So I had an idea for a lightweight, maybe even foldable-for-transport 6foot bot.
The functional part is like a cannon, with a flywheel intake on one side, spinning gears in the middle, and aiming beams on the other side. It would be like an aimable pitching machine.
The cannon would be pulled back and forth via chains or pulleys along a 6 foot simple track. This track part could theoretically be foldable.
This part would be on wheels (several, to support the length!) that would drive forward and backward only. Obviously no reason to to drive sideways if you’re taking up the whole sideways space!
To use the bot, you would drive toward a ball and slide your cannon sideways along the track to meet the ball. Then you could drive backward and reposition the cannon to get in range of firing at the desired target.
It would present a limitation that your alliance mates would be forced to accept. The other bot would be trapped on their starting side.
Theoretically it could be competitive even with that limitation. And if there were two of them, they could still be competitive. That’s because it could present an advantage that other bots wouldn’t have. It would chop the field up into smaller and more easily controlled and more easily OBSERVED parts. This would make it easier to guarantee that all balls were touched by both robots. Robots roaming freely will find it tricky sometimes to keep track of whether both robots touched it to earn a pass. With a bot that serves as a gate or fence, you know if the ball makes it to the other side, the long bot definitely touched it and moved it along.
If the bot were in the starting position closest to loading zone, its job would be to collect every ball, but then instead of firing from the cannon, it would gently poop it out the back. The other robot could then collect it and score it. Really easy for the referees to observe that ball was touched by both robots, so you’d get all the pass points. You would do this if the other bot were a stronger target-hitter than you. Or, if the cannon-track-bot were in the back starting position, its job would be to collect all the balls the other bot had already pre-touched and shoot them into the targets. If you played a match with two of these monstrosities, theoretically it would still be fine.
Am I saying I actually want to encourage any of my teams to build anything like this? Absolutely not! Ha! But am I enjoying the thought experiment of trying to derive some kind of benefit out of this goofy size allowance? Yes. It’s entertaining. Do I kinda want to build this bot myself just for giggles? Also yes.
Having a catapult on a pulley system is genius but I agree.m, the cons outweigh the pros. It would be really funny though, if a game that has been marketed as a game of speed and agility and the best strategy was to have a six foot bulky robot that only moves backwards and forwards
Couldn’t agree more!! I think that especially with more complicated systems being introduced to Vex IQ with the release of pneumatics, it’s really nice having a game where the students are not as concerned with the size of their robots. In Full Volume, our teams were constantly worried about things like whether our intake would be out of limits due to expansion, or if our robot would be deemed not legal by certain inspectors because of our robot’s width and length. This year, it’s a lot easier for the kids to just make their ideas work without so much of a concern for the size limits
I think the rule allows for more variation in skills vs teamwork configurations. To have a gigantic robot in teamwork could be very counterproductive, but in skills if it can change the way you’re doing things on the field and not having to use passes, then a long robot may be useful for autonomous skills.
I’ll bet teams still fail inspection for being out of size limits
2025-26 game “Robot must fit inside 6’x8’x’4’high area.” It will be called Fantastic Factory. And everyone will complain about the space again.
Ha, yes! It always amazes me the teams that show up to our events and the robots aren’t even close. I can understand if it rubbing or super close. I am talking, we have teams show up that are an inch or more over the constraints.
