Team Whoop5 will be significantly impacted by this decision. We have dedicated six months to developing a vision odometry system using a Raspberry Pi 5 and a OAK-D Lite, with a team of 10 developers and an investment of over $1,000. It is simply unreasonable to expect us to abandon this project after such a substantial commitment of time, effort, and resources.
Whoop5 is not just a robotics team, we are an educational platform that introduces students with no prior experience to real-world robotics and software development. Making this project work is more than just a technical achievement: it is a cornerstone of our team’s mission to train and inspire the next generation of engineers. Our work embodies the VEX vision that “every student has the opportunity to be inspired by the excitement of hands-on STEM learning and knows the feeling of creating something with technology.” This rule change doesn’t just affect the robot, it affects the 10 student developers who have spent months learning to code, processing real-time data, and refining their skills. Without the ability to implement their work, their efforts will be rendered meaningless, both as a learning experience and as a valuable project to showcase on their resumes for their career. Imagine the disappointment of being told that their hard work, which was meant to be used in competition, is now obsolete. For students who have devoted a quarter of their college life to this project, the loss is immeasurable.
Beyond the technical team, our logistics team made significant sacrifices to secure more than $1,000 in funding for this project. That money could have been allocated toward a full field and element kit, allowing us to host the Aggieland Classics competition better. Instead, we chose to invest in innovation, only to now see that investment potentially wasted due to a single Q&A ruling. The impact extends beyond just our team, it affects the entire Aggie Robotics community that benefits from our outreach and contributions.
From a technological standpoint, the capabilities of the VEX Brain and camera simply cannot support the level of processing required for our vision odometry system. The Raspberry Pi 5 and the Oak-D Lite camera provides the necessary computational power, whereas the VEX camera and Brain are limited by low resolution and low processing power. The OAK-D Lite integrates a 13-megapixel color camera, stereo depth sensors, and an Intel Movidius Myriad X VPU into a single compact package, enabling real-time computer vision without relying entirely on an external processor. This sensor, with its integration of the sensor in its “simplest form” and the coprocessor is now illegal to use on our robot. Without the ability to use our hardware, our project is infeasible, and years of progress in high-level VEX robotics development could be lost.
We urge VEX to reconsider VURC Q&A 2113 and continue supporting Whoop5’s mission of education, outreach, and technological innovation. This ruling does not just limit competition, it stifles the very spirit of STEM learning that VEX aims to promote.