What I think about the future of servos in FTC

Compared to a lot of people here, I might not be the most qualified to talk about stuff like this. My teams never made worlds or even to our state competition (at least while ive been on it), but I can say that Ive grown to love ftc and am incredibly dedicated to it. Ive spent too much lots of time on my work on the rev port project in an attempt to better ftc in the ways that i can, so heres my 2 cents on the.. Current situation (see what i did there?)

Its a little cliche but to be perfectly honest what made me really realize that i loved ftc was kookybotzs powerplay swerve bot, which was a bot that made heavy use of axon servos to make it possible. It was mechanically complex and super cool to me, i can still remember the awe i was in while watching the insane autos that they had that year. The swerve dt that they had in that bot was something that i was especially interested at the time. I now know that its not worth the time to build a dt like that but i love that its possible. Thats what i love about ftc, insane, over the top robots are possible and can (and have) compete at high levels.

I know that servos don’t make or break bots with cool mechanisms but high power servos have never been a huge advantage, anyways, they just help to enable cool stuff. I, nor any other person ive talked to have seen these servos as a huge competitive advantage either.

Now, nearly 2 years after the Axon servos have launched, many teams have invested in them. Why not? Axon took the power that teams needed to spend, in some cases, 200$ on and made it a very accessible 80$ servo. In my league even teams use only axon servos because of their superior durability and their power compared to other servos, and do cool things with them too. The thing though is that if first didn’t want high performance servos in ftc this “problem” (quotes because i fail to find any real problem with them) should have been solved way before now. Not now when many, many teams have heavily invested into them.

While axons may be affordable in comparison to what teams used before, I do understand how they are expensive in comparison to the offerings of REV or GoBuilda. But, as with all popular products, people want to improve on them. I know there are several products in the works that intend to bring the price of similar performance down to below 70$ at a minimum and possibly even lower. That would bring the cost even closer to what other servos commonly used by teams are.

Instead of letting all of this happen though, first intends to lower the maximum limits and make all of these servos that have been purchased not competition legal, throwing away collectively thousands of dollars of investments from teams and effectively making competition viable swerve robots (the very thing that made me fall in love with ftc) impossible (i know what a lot of ftc alums and students might say about this, but lets be real, cool robots are cool. Whether or not theyre good ideas)

And to be honest, explicitly mentioning Axon servos in the competition manual this year with the intent to later lower the servo power limits, but not mentioning that in the CM leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Imagine if teams saw that, saw no warnings, and bought new servos. That would suckkk. If there is a product specifically marked as legal, i know id assume that that would be something safe to use in the future unless it is marked otherwise.

I would like to say though that i dont completely disagree or not understand where first is coming from. I do think that especially recently the power war that has sparked is not good, especially with products like the melonbotics magnum (5.5a! As a “servo”) are too far. i think that the current power limit is a good idea and will be a net good for ftc. However, lowering it further doesnt serve a purpose. The line has been drawn and prevents a power war.

So, if someone with any influence in the decision making process is reading this, please reconsider. Keep the stuff that makes ftc so cool alive.