I have a passing knowledge of FRC (my son competed with a team for a year) and FTC (I’ve judged/reffed some events 3-4 years ago), as well as a little knowledge of the origins of the Vex competition.
I know that Vex PRO is intended for FRC and FTC teams; I’m trying to understand why they’ve segmented many products to specific competition venues. I understand the Vex competition wants to have a relatively easy cost and complexity entry point (with cross-over to classroom), so things like the bag/cim motors and supporting electronics seem reasonable to keep out of Vex and limited to FRC/FTC.
However, why are things like wheels not available as cross-over products? Is it that the shafts used for the FRC/FTC motors output hex shafts? Access to the flex wheels would be pretty cool, I think:
With the newish (square) high strength axles and V5 motors with replaceable gear cartridges, would it be possible for Vex to offer a square-to-hex shaft coupler or a direct hex output adapter for the V5 motors and include hex shafts so that the number of available wheel types would increase?
And that’s a fair point that I also hadn’t considered Taran.
The team my son was on was probably a bit more student-centered than most (probably moreso because they didn’t/couldn’t find the types of mentors other FRC teams have), but they still had significant help from a full-time engineer.
The goal of FRC from that standpoint (to me anyway) seemed geared towards having students build relationships with mentors almost with an eye towards future employment opportunities/career networking.
To add to Taran’s observation, VRC is advertised as a program where students could participate with minimal adult supervision.
V5 motors are already packing plenty of power. If you start adding even more, I wouldn’t feel comfortable letting middle school students use them without, at least, several months of hands-on training and adult guidance in how to safely handle that power.