Back when FTC was actually played on a scaled down FRC field!
Cool to see both VEX and FTC evolve over almost a decade.
Are they standing behind a shield ?
Basically… it’s like a mini-FRC alliance station.
Will there be a 10th anniversary of Vex at next year’s world championships?
It would be interesting to see. I wonder if next year’s game to commemorate the 10th anniversary will have anything special.
I’m probably one of the few vex forum-ers who was lucky enough to compete in this. A few interesting tidbits about the competition:
The build period occurred before VEX parts were for sale to the general public. A few top tier FRC and FLL teams were invited to participate and were each mailed three of the original VEX starter kits, which each contained the pictured assortment of parts. There was no aluminum. There was no high strength chain. There was no low strength chain. There were no omniwheels, not even the borderline unusable original 2.75" design. There was no tank tread or rubber flaps, teams that wanted roller intakes made do with wheels, rubber star rollers, or most frequently, zip ties. There were no linear guides of any kind, though my team burned a whole lot of effort trying to make one happen with slotted angle. There were no chargable batteries in the kit, instead using a 6 pack of AAs, although the rules were loosened to allow 3rd party batteries and chargers equivalent to current VEX offerings. There were only 9 3 wire motors, but we were realistically limited to 8, because there were no Y-cables. Also, because we were strictly limited to only the contents of our kits, each team had only three 8" long extension cables. This made most powered endeffectors out of the question, unless you wanted to awkwardly suspend your PIC controller right in the geometric center of the robot.
There was no autonomous mode, because there was no programming cable, and no programming. Small edits to robot response to joystick input was accomplished using jumper clips placed in digital inputs to modify the default code, and the limited programmability of the original 75mhz transmitter. I remember distinctly being forced to drive our robot for weeks in tank drive, with the left wheels on the correct axis, and the right wheels on the horizontal axis of the opposite stick.
The field was overbuilt, and resembled an FRC field more closely than modern fields, partially because the game was a scaled down version of FRC 2004. The glass is used in FRC for safety reasons and often incorporated into the game design, like with 2014’s over the station goals, or 2004’s integrated ball release, seen between the two teams. The game, one of FRC’s all time greats, did not adapt well to VRC, mostly due to the signifigantly reduced speed and manuvering ability of the underpowered VEX robots of the time, a misguided attempt to adapt an FRC level human player role to small scale, and extreme restrictions that the 3 wire limit put on active manipulators. Most successful teams were consistent hangers and defenders, or herding designs with skilled human players.
FIRST had some speed bumps bringing FTC (then called FVC) to it’s current day form. Half Pipe Hustle the year after had a bizarre, sloped field, with two different configurations for teleoperated 2v2 play, and autonomous only matches, in which robots played something resembling modern programming skills challenges in an isolated quadrant of the field, simultaneously with opponents in other quadrants. By the time Hanging-A-Round rolled around, the competition effectively looked like modern VRC, with the exact same field border we know and love, the same autonomous/teleop format of matches used in VRC and FRC, and so on, save a few weird restrictions that didn’t go away until the dawn of VRC like an outright ban on pneumatic components, even when VEX released them.
Hanging-A-Round and Quad Quandary, the last VEX based FTC game, were both dynamite games, which both spawned fantastic, creative robots that still inspire me to this day. I wish that the VRC community would look further to the past for inspiration, as well as the speedy but almost monotone designs of recent years. There are some real gems there.
Quad Quandary was my first robotics game ever and quite frankly it still ranks up there in terms of my favorite games.
I really think with the modern equipment, a VEX/FTC Retro series would be awesome to implement again. Playing some of the old games would be fun. I’d love to play Quad Quandary, and Half-Pipe Hustle.
I think now that we have better parts, maybe the FRC 2004 game could be replicated in VEX Format…
Thanks for the trip down memory lane! Here’s another pic of that first pilot:
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The early games (the April 2005 Pilot, Half-Pipe-hustle in late 2005, Hangin’ Around, and Quad Quandary) were good games for their time, but with the “efficiency bots” of today, the game objects would most likely all be scored long before time expired. In those days, de-scoring wasn’t as significant, because few teams could reach “saturation”, and de-scoring generally took far more time than scoring.
I agree that there was a much greater variety of designs, but the I don’t think the primary reason was the games. While Vex was under the auspices of FIRST, teams tended to build more independently for a number of reasons:
- Fewer teams posted pictures and especially videos. Remember that YouTube was barely hitting its stride by 2005.
- Due to higher registration ($275/team) and event costs ($200-300/event) there were fewer teams from each school. You never had a single school with 6 clones or semi-clones of the same bot.
- The season was shorter (1 month for the pilot). In later seasons, the challenge was released in October, and the first events took place in December - March. Many teams participated in only one event, and a team could not receive awards or advancement at its 3rd or later event. For most FVC/FTC teams “robotics season” was 4 months if you didn’t advance to Worlds. Advancing teams were capped at 100, because the stage was shared with FRC and FLL.
There are things I liked about the old format, including a significant “off” season. With the challenge released later and season ending in February when we didn’t advance, it allowed students to participate in other activities, as well as having more Saturdays open for important tests (SAT reasoning and subject, ACT). This year, my team took a year off from robotics because they realized that they couldn’t do any other activities while still having a “reasonably competitive” robot. The 3 core members made the decision that they would do band, orchestra, and speech this year, and quit these activities the following year to do robotics. But having taken a year off, they’re having second thoughts and the team is in danger of not re-convening as planned. In the “old days”, I had roboteers who managed to interweave robotics with music, sports, speech, other science competitions, and community service clubs, but my current students are realizing that in today’s more competitive climate, this isn’t as practical.
I don’t think Vex could ever go back to the old format (nor would it want to). The early release and year-round nature of the competition is beneficial to international teams on different academic calendars. And the longer season allows for more iterations and re-iterations, as well as more driving practice. This is especially beneficial for those who want to “go deep” in robotics, but tends to leave those who invest more modest amounts of time out of the game.
And you guys thought the large balls in Toss Up were big! FTC World Championship in 2007
Bet the ol’ side rollers would have a bit of trouble with that one…wow!
I saw a 15" VEXU Toss Up robot pick up a 2’ diameter FRC Aerial assist ball of about the same size as those from Hangin’ Around. The side rollers did quite well, but if they tried to accelerate they would drop the ball. I also don’t seem to remember their catapult working too well with it…
It doubled your ball score.:eek: