I got my first glimpse at the robot that the TRC is building for this year’s FIRST competiton here. The base and arm look virtually identical to last year’s, except the arm is double jointed. Hopefully the arm will be easy to control, I imagine that controlling a double jointed arm could be very difficult. I noticed that the wheels are on the outside like they were last year. Unfortunately the external wheels make the robot hard to control in a pushing match. If a robot pushes us from the side, the wheels will bind up and we lose mobility. With 6 robots on the field, it is very likely that robots will be pushing from the side. Oh well. I predict that the driver controlled part of the game this year will be somewhat pointless, almost all the points will be scored during autonomous mode. It will be an interesting game, hopefully it will work out all right for the TRC.