Competition Manual – Electronics, Servos, and Software

If you have not had a chance to read it yet, the new Competition Manual Preview (formerly Game Manual 1) was released last week, and contains information about the new format of the document mentioned in and earlier blog post as well as event rules, and robot rules.

Our robot component rules have changed significantly, instead of enumerating all the things you are allowed to do we instead focused on stating specifically the things that are required, and then defining limited guardrails around what is disallowed.  In today’s blog we will be addressing three areas of such change: Legal Electronics, Servo Power Limits, and Software Minimum Versions. 

Thank you to our amazing community for all the constructive feedback you provide every year, and we appreciate your patience as we work to implement these new and exciting changes. 

More Accessibility to Legal Electronic Parts 

This season FIRST Tech Challenge has worked hard to include more vendors’ products in the legal parts list to help provide increased access for all the regions we serve, provide more part options for teams, and give teams more choice in a balanced way. We have made it possible for more vendors to create starter kits that include most of the electrical components they need to create a basic robot, allowing teams to get more of what they need from their vendor of choice. This includes new batteries, motors, and other devices from vendors newer to our electrical ecosystem such as Studica and goBILDA, as well as established FIRST Tech Challenge vendors AndyMark and REV - with more still to come!  

FIRST Tech Challenge also understands that not all teams have the same resources, including manufacturing resources, technical mentor resources, or financial resources, and teams often must balance those resources to compete each season. In the same way that commercial off the shelf (COTS) odometry solutions have made odometry more available to teams with limited manufacturing capabilities, teams with limited technical mentorship can invest in tools that can help accelerate their use of vision through vision devices that will soon be supported natively in the Robot Controller Apps.  

Servos, Maximum power limits 

This season we are implementing new servo rules to put some guardrails on the types and maximum power of servos in FIRST Tech Challenge. Over the course of the past couple of years, we have seen an explosion in the availability of increasingly powerful servos that put both a strain on our robot electrical system as well as the designed intent of actuators in FIRST Tech Challenge. The rule in the competition manual defines these limitations, and additionally we will have a list of commonly used pre–verified legal servos in the legal and illegal parts list – this list hopefully removes the requirement for most teams from providing servo documentation. However, teams using servos not on that list will need to provide necessary documentation. This list will be released shortly after kickoff. 

Minimum Software Versions  

Minimum software requirements for robots have also been reevaluated for this season. FIRST Tech Challenge genuinely wants all teams to update to the latest and greatest software versions available but will no longer be a requirement.  

Updated software includes all competition-specific upgrades and feature enhancements, bug fixes, increased device support, and performance improvements. The Competition Manual includes links to guides to help teams update software within their competition devices and team code. FTAs, CSAs, and other event support staff will be better able to help teams who are at least upgraded to the recommended software versions listed in the Competition Manual. However, we recognize that updating software at events is the worst time to find backward compatibility or other issues inherent with updating software, and this new policy is aimed at eliminating that hassle for teams at events. 

More to come… 

We will continue to address common FIRST Tech Challenge Community questions about the new rules in future blog posts. “Subscribe” to the FIRST Tech Challenge Blog to get notified for future blog posts.