I recently found out that all v5 motors have built in PID and the brain accounts for battery voltage. In the past, only some teams had the ability to, for example, program PID, but now this ‘identifier’ of a high quality team is lost, and I predict that driver ability will play a bigger role in determining the winning teams. Thoughts?
Driver ability has always been one of the biggest features in setting apart the winning teams, partly because 87.5% of the match is spent with drivers controlling the robots…
As for built-in PID, I doubt it matters. Teams could always go copy paste some PID code before if they were inclined, and at any rate you still need to understand what PID is doing to get the most out of it.
I really dont think it will affect much.
What are the “components” of a top vex team (and btw, I always believe in top teams, and not top robots) ?
- mechanical design and quality of build
- programming
- strategy/gameplay
- driver skills
and i am very tempted to include - “the ability to work with alliances” as well.
A top notch vex team will be more than just about programming. In fact, you will need to be good in all areas.
And as for programming, it is a lot more than just PID. In fact, there are many instances that you don’t even need to make use of PID. And it takes experience and time to learn about all the constants in the PID.
1 Like
Here let me help 
- ability to work with alliances
at the top.
While I agree with the replies, I think the OP does have a bit of a point. With the built-in PID, OkapiLib, and everything else coming out for v5 it does make programming to get a consistent autonomous run close to the levels of Scratch. From what I’ve seen in competitions, auton is a HUGE decider in the victor of the match. While I feel that in the end the top teams will shine bright enough to be seen, for a while people may be mislead by a team who simply has v5 without the same level of skill as a top level team.
I don’t think good or bad teams will become any harder to identify, but I think there will be some aspects of the challenge will be more important.
Obviously a sloppily engineered robot isn’t going to win. But because of the massive boost to team’s available power without any addition to the size limit or the size of the field, steering the robot precisely at high speeds will be an even more important factor. Think how much more a good driver was an asset in 393 years than in 269 years.
I also think we’re gonna see a huge increase in the importance of build quality. It’s a lot easier for parts to bend or snap when they’re being pushed with a v5 base. Not only because the base has more torque, but because it’s faster and thus the initial ram has more inertia. A robot slapped together is going to be under a lot more defensive duress than it would have been in a v4 year, meaning a really solidly built robot is going to have an even larger advantage.
And lastly, I think we’re going to see an even more disproportionate percentage of drivers be male. Guys
(on average, no sexism intended) play more video games and tend to be more assertive/ pushy, which already means most drivers are male. But the new controller is physically so large that it’s harder for people with small hands to hold comfortably.
As usual, an experienced team with a lot of resources is going to have an easier time. It’ll be easier for them to build their robot sturdily, program it consistently, find the time to practice driving, and they’ll probably have better design ideas in the first place. But I think the importance of a well built and well driven robot will increase tremendously with v5.
And as a bad driver with relatively small hands, I may need to find a dedicated driver 
Just because you say “no sexism intended” doesn’t make your statement less sexist.
Cortex is V2 https://vexforum.com/t/wierd-guy-on-youtube/13961/1 and https://vexforum.com/t/vex-coding-studio-brain-problem/49670/1
RobotC supports some type of PID:
#pragma config(Motor, port7, LowerArmMotor, tmotorVex393_MC29, PIDControl, encoderPort, dgtl1)
#pragma platform(VEX2) // soon we forget -edit
moveMotorTarget(LowerArmMotor,40,100,0);
while (getMotorTargetCompleted(LowerArmMotor) == false) {}
moveMotorTarget(LowerArmMotor,-20,100,0);
I’m not sure facts are sexist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games
but designing a controller that favors larger hands maybe not so girl powered friendly
So far if you are a good V2 team you can have a better robot than a V5 team b/c you’ve had more time to understand V2’s abilities and use them and more time to build and test for TP. I think that we should see that change in December.
Overall I doubt V5 will make it harder to identify the best teams, with maybe the exception of the few best teams that decide to stick with the cortex. Instead, I think V5 will ramp up everyone’s game, giving lower level teams a boost during autonomous with constant battery voltage while giving higher level teams the vision sensor as well as more time to drive due to less time tuning PID. I also think the extra enthusiasm from the new control system will help get people more into VEX, leading to more teams going from lower level to higher level (that is if VEX can actually get it shipped).
That said, there probably are a few cases where teams will jump in level due to V5, my team probably being one of those cases. Before V5, my school had tons of broken V2 motors, motor controllers, even cortexes, about half of which weren’t identified, meaning drive testing was a nightmare, you spent more time identifying broken parts instead of actually testing. We often didn’t even test mechanisms unless we thought they had a really good chance of working. Furthermore, we didn’t have the money to buy a whole new slew of electronics. But then, when V5 came out, we were able to convince some people to give us money for the new electronic system, and when we finally got it we had a whole new set of motors, wires, and a new brain and controller. This allowed us to spend much more time drive testing, and in the two weeks we’ve gotten V5 we’ve made almost as much progress as we made for the entire season before we got it.
I’d forgotten about the new sensors, and agree that the best teams will be able to maintain their edge through the smart implementation of the Vision Sensor and/or Ultrasonic.