On behalf of the FIRST® Robotics Competition game design team, I’m writing to share a change coming to the robot rules for the 2024 season. We are sharing this now to help teams and vendors make better informed decisions as they prepare for Kickoff.
For the 2024 season, teams will be limited to four motors that enable the robot to move around the field, which we are calling propulsion motors. This rule will not apply to motors that generate small amounts of thrust as a secondary or incidental feature, which include but are not limited to:
- Motors that alter the alignment of a wheel in contact with the field surface (such as a swerve steering motor),
- Motors that run game piece intake wheels that happen to contact the carpet, and
- Motors that change the speed of the drive wheels using a shifting mechanism without significantly contributing to propulsion.
We felt this change was necessary for a few reasons:
- Robot to robot impacts from very fast robots can often lead to a variety of what we call “feels bad” moments, such as robots getting tipped or breaking from quick interactions that have little driver influence. This is a problem both for teams affected by the impact and volunteer referees having to make tough calls that may decide the outcome of the match.
- The potential for field damage from very fast robots is problematic for keeping the field running both during an event, and at future events where the field will be used. High energy impacts can also cause field elements to move or the field carpet to stretch, which makes it difficult to maintain consistent playing field dimensions.
- We think this change is another step to give teams a more equal opportunity when faced with financial or supply chain constraints.
This is not a decision that the game design team takes lightly because we aspire to keep the robot design space as open as possible. While many 2023 robots would have been unaffected by this rule change, we anticipate that the frequency and severity of the high impact collisions described above would increase as more designs transition to using more than four propulsion motors.
This solution is one of many discussed; both among the game design team, and among a team of experienced community members. We invited the team of community members to work on recommendations in parallel, and their work converged in this direction too.
The exact wording of this rule will be released at Kickoff. We wanted to share the core function of this rule change as soon as possible, while still giving ourselves time to work through details and exact phrasing.
We recognize that this rule change will not always solve the challenges addressed above, and we will continue to evaluate this solution and other potential solutions for 2025 and beyond. We look forward to seeing what you bring to the field in 2024!