Re: [FRC Blog] Orlando Incident
 

Al - this is very good news. I was initially cautious when we started using them in South Florida, but after seeing how it DID keep things more organized, and how willing & helpful the teams were to keep themselves organized, I wholeheartedly endorse this move. It was extremely easy to walk down a line of teams after Qualifying matches and say "No modifications (check), same weight (check) - good to go!" And if there WERE modifications, it made it easy to figure out which ones were 'old' modifications & 'new' modifications. Revision control is nice. ^_^

I think the discussion is more about the transparency in FIRST making these decisions. If the teams in question had done this out of obvious malice, there'd be no argument. If the inspectors had repeatedly warned these teams about making unchecked modifications, there'd be no argument. If there was a clear line where the team in question looked completely different between QF1-1 & QF1-2, there'd be no argument. But given the ambiguity in the inspection timeline & procedure, as Frank said, "I am not able to construct a coherent narrative based on the information I have," I think the consensus is that it's unfair to give a retroactive regional death penalty to an alliance based on basically circumstantial evidence. It's my personal belief that this sort of situation is what warnings are for, and why the Yellow Card was introduced. Both this situation & Silicon Valley could have been resolved with more/better communication between the field crew & the teams involved.

If I were king of FIRST, I would have given a yellow card for each of the times that the robot was in violation of the rules. The end result would have been one win (yellow) and one disqualification, leading to a "clean" 3rd match, at which point there would've been far less disagreement of the outcome. And I thought this at the time as well. I just wonder why this wasn't a considered option at the time...

Re: [FRC Blog] Orlando Incident
 

At Wisconsin, we "looked over" robots in the queuing line. We looked for secured batteries, secured bumpers, and anything that was obvious. In no way can that be considered an "inspection".

There was an official process for reinspection: Team took the bot to be reweighed, and request re-inspection. The new weight was recorded, and the bot was reinspected. If this had happened in Orlando, a comparison of the current weight vs last inspection weight would be evidence of whether a reinspection had or had not occurred. Note: In the reweigh process, a record of what was changed (very short summary) is noted.

If a Team was in the queuing line and asked for reinspection, I would have told them to get out of line, and go get reweighed. If they said it was minor, I would look it over, let them play that match, but WARN them to get an official reinspection right after the match. In the queuing line, I have no idea if adding 1/2 pound of parts would take them over the weight limit.

Regarding if a LRI (or any RI) had passed a robot, and it was later found to be out of compliance: If the robot had not changed, then it has passed inspection. If it was found to be out of compliance (with no changes), then it is still inspected, but could be identified for mandatory reinspection (5.5.2 LRI may determine a robot is unsafe and may prohibit further participation). Once a team is flagged for mandatory reinspection, the robot is deemed uninspected at that point until it passes reinspection. While "looking over" robots in the queuing line, I found some questionable stuff. If it was not a safety issue, I let the robot play the match, and told the team to correct it after the match. If I saw it again, then I would report them, and they would get a mandatory reinspection.