G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

There was a RI3D video that talked about holding the can up a bit, or at an angle to allow humans to noodle a can easily. The recent Q&A posting below suggests to me that your robot can't be touching a can *at all* as a noodle is introduced through the litter chute. This makes making noodled stacks *much harder*. Thoughts?

https://frc-qa.usfirst.org/Question/...-it-is-exiting

Edit - the rule in question is G27

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

I saw the same thing. Gimme a minute or five and a followup question addressing this will be up.

EDIT: FRC3373 thought the same thing. I also have another question, though.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

As long as the robot is not controlling the noodle as it comes out the chute it should be okay. Ask on Q&A though just in case.
That answer means you can't grab the tote from the chute midway.

Re: G27, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

But the text of G27 is "ROBOTS and anything they control, e.g. a TOTE, may not contact anything outside the FIELD."

So if you control (touch?) a can, and you feed a noodle into it, if the noodle touches the lid at all, you violate G27 (in my reading).

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Game - The Game » Game Rules » Human Actions

Q54 Q. Can a human player hold on to litter while it is simultaneously touching the recycle bin ?


A. Yes, there are no rules prohibiting that.


I guess the robot will have to let go of the container first, then have the noodle loaded, and then the robot can re-grab the tote/recycle bin.
Will need to re-ask the GDC about this and be more specfic.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Somebody already asked. Given the speed of response this year, I suspect we'll see something by the end of the day.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

https://frc-qa.usfirst.org/Question/...-held-by-robot

Using a human player to feed litter into the container is legal per Q&A 34.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

But the question is that might change depending on if a robot is controlling said container, according to G27.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

This is a later Q&A, which may or may not supersede Q&A 34.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

The rules state that a a robot control anything coming out of the chute. If it's just holding a can, I fail to see how that's illegal.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

What does it mean for a robot to control something? Does this prohibit totes from the human player chute from sliding onto a waiting robot? :/

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Wow holy contradictions batman! Lets see how this turns out.

G27 seems very specific on this point:

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

This game had some of the most straightforward and easy to understand (and therefore enforce) rules of any FRC game in recent times. This ruling undoes all of that...

1) "Control" is not given a definition in the glossary, so who knows how this will be called in practice...

2) I hope you are planning on floor loading totes, because this effectively outlaws most HP-to-robot transfers that don't involve the tote touching the floor (depending on the definition of "control").

3) If your human player (or partner) accidentally gets a noodle lodged in your robot while poking it through the litter chute, you are disabled. Additionally, if a noodle is "controlled" by a can that is "controlled" by the robot, am I violating G27?

4) The design of the litter chute and tote chute, along with the human player rules (ex. G6 and G6-1) already provide TWO layers of defense against robot-to-human contact. Do we really need a third?

Regardless of how the GDC feels about this issue, further clarification (at the very least, a definition for "controlling" a game piece) is necessary. I hope they will revisit this ruling and provide an exception to controlling objects in the chutes as long as the robot itself does not enter them. This would totally remove subjectivity from the equation and is clearly preferable to having to come up with an arbitrary ontology of allowed interactions with totes and noodles (ex. active rollers vs. passive rollers vs. clamping game objects vs. a sloped piece of lexan...)

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

This seems like overkill as far as safety is concerned, given that pool noodles are basically harmless, and the existence of the tote chute door and associated rule make this redundant.

I predict that there will be almost no litter scored by robots as a result, as this task becomes much harder if a robot must pick up litter off the floor and reorient it rather than grabbing it as it dangles vertically out of the chute.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

How is this enforceable? It seems difficult to prove that the tote never touches the chute and the robot at the same time.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

It depends on where your robot is positioned in regards to the chute...

some teams might want to be very close as to were they basically take the tote from the chute before it hits the floor.

I also agree these contradictory rulings and overkill safety measures are ridiculous. The tote barely fits in the chute as is, plus the door that you can't touch while touching a tote... Who is going to be able to reach in and touch a robot????

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

This ruling makes the game infinitely harder. Imagine 2013 with a rule like this - every chapionship winning robot's main method of taking frisbees would have been illegal.

I hope this rule is updated/clarified/changed.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

That's the problem...it will be completely unenforceable in a consistent manner. As Jared noted, as long as a robot doesn't protrude through the chute there is no reason for this interpretation of the rule to exist.

Now it will be a judgement call that will be different for every ref when it could easily just be determined by "was the robot inside the chute or not?". That would have required no judgment and there would be no issue.

This is going to create a huge problem for the average team that was planning on human loading their robot...it's not clear that a robot can human load, period, without letting the tote fall completely to the floor without touching the robot at all in the process. Plus as written, a noodle cannot be transferred directly to a robot or put into a can that a robot is holding. Surely this is not what the GDC intended?

This opened a huge can of worms that I hope the GDC prematurely responded to without considering all the implications of their response.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Emphasis mine.

I wonder if that was the intention? By the end of 2013, some human players could load a full set of frisbees in a few seconds. By adding all the barriers that slow down human loading, the GDC is adding another tradeoff between picking up from the floor and human loading. If human loading didn't have the gate or the "control" requirement it would clearly be the quicker, easier, more consistent way to load totes. All of the limitations make the choice much less obvious, especially considering how good some of the Ri3D intakes were and how much time teams have to further develop those designs, come up with their own, and train drivers.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

______________________________
Those 2 different questions & answers and G27 surely "seem" to conflict a little bit. (But I'm not the expert!) We'll take it as answered in Q&A 34. And of course in relation to TOTES, as answered in the other Q&A question 83 also.

I'm just glad others will test this in week 1, and we won't be. A litter "soft pool noodle" isn't a real safety risk though touching an RC, that is touching or held by a robot, a Tote surely would be with precious hands on the Tote Chute Door Handle. DISABLED ROBOTS are ABSOLUTELY not any fun! (Neither are ripped off Tote Chutes and Chute doors. EG: Robot grabs onto Tote half way out of the chute, robot lifts tote w/ elevator, Tote Chute is in trouble. As is Human player holding that tote chute door handle methinks!)
________________________
G27 ROBOTS and anything they control, e.g. a TOTE, may not contact anything outside the FIELD.

VIOLATION: Offending ROBOT will be DISABLED.

Blue Box: Please be conscious of REFEREES and FIELD staff working around the ARENA who may be in close proximity to your ROBOT.


"Isn't it always the way in our world that "LITTER causes all the problems?".....Simple wipe out LITTER...Just CHOOSE TO RECYCLE,...and RUSH IT PLEASE!"

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Imagine that!...TNA would have stopped all this......LM_O.:rolleyes:

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Except that scoring noodles in containers was always going to be worth more points than TNA and always would've been the preferred methods of scoring for teams that were capable.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

I'll hold my opinions until Q&A clears this up, which I'd anticipate within a week at most.

Tote loading concerns me a little bit-- but as others have mentioned, I doubt this is the intent of the GDC and think they'll clear this up soon enough.

Noodle loading a bin really doesn't concern me. When we were practicing this in Ri3D, our human player was able to load a bin into an untouched tote in under 5 seconds with little to no practice. Get good at placing those bins and feeding the noodle, and I'd anticipate this can be lowered even more even without a robot holding it. Of course, I'd hope for robots holding bins being fed pool noodles to be legal-- I think this would get teams to second or sub-second times for feeding noodles with a good human player and practiced robot, but ultimately it just changes up the variables a little bit in terms of time optimization.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

The video was quite specific. It showed Enter Tote in Chute...MOVE HANDS AWAY....one hand on chute door handle, lift, Tote slides onto field.

Enter another, release, and it will stack 2...pick up Totes off of floor with Robot after capping RC w/ hand fed Litter...Go stack it....Easy Peasy.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

That would be awesome if the totes actually land right side up but i think i'm averaging about 95% that it ends up on its short side....

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

I was only kidding. I hated the thought of TNA. (Took the fun out of the game).

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Jared said it all. I was really impressed by the clarity of the rules ... until this.

The chute, chute door, and human contacting rules seem to cover safety so why the rule? So a robot can't grab a tote while it is halfway out the chute? that's seems silly to me.

The human will NOT be touching the tote because they have to be holding the door up so what is the harm? I hope they at least explain why.

Paul

PS - This is why I wait for Team Updates and don't really read the Q & A unless I have too. I still remember 2002 ...

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Are you using the real field chute (with the actual as built official field construction materials), or the wooden Team Field elements. Theirs in the vid...(Don't know how many takes it took them though, to call the tote chute video cut "a wrap" either), landed top up in perfect shape and ready to receive tote#2.

Knocking them down from on end, or righting upside down totes, would be a real game killer.:rolleyes:

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

This whole thing seems like ridiculous overkill. Human Loading vs. Floor loading is an important tradeoff this year, and this ruling seems to force the choice of floor loading and ruin some potentially creative designs.

I hope the GDC changes this ruling or clarifies it to allow for creativity in design this year.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Ok, I am going to bite (my search skills are not up to this). What happened in the Q & A in 2002 for those of us who were not around then?

-Travis

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

You got points for part of your robot being on a certain part of the field. Most teams thought that extending a tape measure across the field and into the end zone wasn't legal, until a Q and A response changed things.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3868
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3696

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Nope. Worse than that. The Q & A stated "tape measures are not legal" but the team update never said anything about it.

Week 1 comes and teams had tape measures ... ruled legal. Those of us that read the Q & A took ours off.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

On a tangential note (after reading those threads), I'm personally glad that FRC teams are no longer so supplier restricted.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

So then this part of the kickoff video was illegal gameplay under this rule:
http://youtu.be/hTyCIYZQ_1s?t=1m56s

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

The game animation is known to have illegal robots. Also, this robot looks like it might be defying the laws of physics more than the laws of the game. IT looks like the noodle fully enters the field, hovers there for a fraction of a second, and is then grabbed by the robot.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Back on the original topic, there was a good follow-up Q&A posted by 2122. If the tote gets stuck or jammed in the chute, is a robot or a human player allowed to dislodge it? FRC Hasn't answered yet, but per G6-1, drive team members may not use any object to prop the chute door open. A tote qualifies as an object, therefore the human player must continue to hold the door open to avoid it being "propped" by the stuck tote. G6 specifies that the HP cannot be in contact with both the chute door and the tote simultaneously. The human player cannot legally dislodge the tote in this situation.

Therefore, if a robot is not allowed to contact a tote to dislodge it, this situation must be declared a field fault. I don't know how likely that situation is, but it's easy to prevent if robots are allowed to at least contact objects that are still in contact with the chute.

The question of defining "control" is a very slippery slope, especially with having human players deposit litter in the recycling container. Per G27, if the robot controls a container, and the HP is inserting the litter into the container, at what point does the robot then have "control" of the litter? If this is before the HP releases it, that would make HP loading of litter nearly impossible, which basically means litter will go untouched.

This ruling opens up not only a lot of additional questions, but a very slippery slope in determining what are and are not legal ways to interact with human-inserted game pieces. Given that 30 of the 70 available totes to teams (including the 12 totes available to both teams and 10 upside-down totes), limited interaction with HP loaded totes will be a HUGE hinderance to teams.

We were sooo close to having easy to read rules without massive judgement calls for the refs and everything being self-consistent. It's upsetting to see that undone.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

This QnA response is ridiculous.... It really breaks the game from what was clearly intended.

That being said, FIRST has been pretty reasonable with this stuff recently... I'm confidant they will fix it soon.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

OK so looking at the rule as written, even without the Q&A clarification, these actions are, by the letter of the rule, illegal. Here is the Rule as copied from the manual:


In order to allow for the ROBOT to Can to LITTER contact, they just need to make an exception for LITTER partially through the hole.

In order to allow for the ROBOT to grab the TOTEs once the CHUTE door is open, they need to make an exception for TOTEs in the CHUTE provided no other rules are violated (particularly G6 and G6-1)

The reason I believe the intent was for field personnel safety is the blue box, quoted below:

I am certain the GDC will clarify this and make it perfectly acceptable to grab the TOTE from the chute as long as no other rules are violated.

Paul

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Off-topic, but be careful with that. It seems that they do in fact like to land on their side, even on the official fields.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

After a single day away from CD, I come back to find my team's main strategy technically illegal. GDC pls...

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Heh. My reaction was a version of that too :)

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

So if the walls are part of the field, catching a tote as it slides out of the chute should be OK. The only question is the litter loading - and the way I read it (and I often read it differently than GDC) is that the robot isn't controlling the noodle if the human player is actively inserting it into the bin - the human player is.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

The chute is currently considered to be behind the alliance wall, so it counts as being outside the field.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

This has been posted twice in this thread, but I can't find why teams can't just print this and show it to the inspector or refs.
https://frc-qa.usfirst.org/Question/...-held-by-robot

Can somebody explain why this Q&A is misleading? It seems pretty cut-and-dried to me.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Because the totes are a WAY bigger issue than the litter...plus "held" is not the same as "controlled", which has not been defined by FIRST.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

The only reason I could see having such a rule would be the potential risk of a tote being shot back by a robot and injuring a HP. However, due to the weight of the totes, method of scoring (and what sort of designs would generally be used) and the lack of defense this is beyond unlikely.

IMHO, the risk isn't enough to ruin the game over. Hopefully this is like the 2013 climbing size rule debate where the GDC's original statement was not what the GDC actually intended to convey and was cleared up in under a week.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

I desperately hope it is cleared up in less than a week. It's pretty obvious by this thread that this ruling is holding up many teams' strategies. Without clarification we can't know if arguably the easiest way to acquire totes efficiently is even legal. It puts build teams in limbo because they don't know if mechanisms they've been prototyping will be allowed. If it isn't cleared up within a day or 2 I for one will be frustrated.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

I truly believe we will have our answer tomorrow. I think the GDC knows the huge implications that this can have on the designs of several robots due to the fact that the totes nose dive out of the chute. They do not want this game to be overly complicated.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

When I read the rules, I got the distinct impression that the actual purpose of the tote chute was to make sure that totes were, in fact, dropped awkwardly. In my few years in FRC, its always been most efficient/easy to load the "whatevers" directly by the human player. By creating a rule that disallows robots taking the totes directly from the chute, I just figured it created a little different challenge.... My team took the rules as written and has been designing around that "challenge." Frankly, I kind of like it: Suddenly the importance of righting a flipped tote becomes rather important.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Just saw this thread and haven't read it all, but I can see a concern about and bots touching totes while in the chute. A nice loader sounds good, but think about the bad cases. If the tote is partially in the chute and a bot imparts a force in any direction other than continuing its path out of the chute (up, down, sideways) there is a reasonable risk the chute/door mechanism will be damaged, because totes are much more robust than other games pieces we've used and will transit that force quite well.

Imagine a bot rushing to receive a tote, and the door being opened early, and the bot ramming the tote from the side as the tote is half way out of the door.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

There's a very reasonable interpretation of "control" which would not be in effect for the scenario you described, so I am fairly confident that is not the reason this ruling was made.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

I feel like our team is in purgatory. If a narrow interpretation of G27 stands, we will be forced into engineering hell designing an active mechanism to load totes from the player station. We have studied the tote fall and can meet Narrow G27 but, It requires a nasty complex mechanism. On top of that the ref is going to hell with us. The ref would have to be standing right at the station wall watching very intensely as we drop the totes. Can not take their eyes off of our robot for a second or possibly miss a G27. Our robot will block the view of the tote at the most critical point in the trajectory of the tote. We had to use camera freeze frame to confirm G27 compliance in all tote fall geometries. This would be a totally subjective call by the ref to nail us with a G27. There is always the possibility That in bad driver and human player actions we could incur a visible G27. So what does the ref do to enforce narrow G27 interpretation? If the q+a answer is reversed we may be back on track to tote loading heaven. (not really, It is still complex)

Woah there man we can work this out. Take a breath. Let's not assume the worst. Nobody here is your enemy and were all here to help.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Yep. I really think the GDC is trying to avoid this type of stuff and we will get clarification soon.

Too bad that during FRC season 1 day is like 1 week.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

We kind of assumed that tote loading from the human player would be the default method for less capable teams, and are designing our robot to mainly load from the landfill, since the other two robots on our alliance may need both human loading stations. So, this thing doesn't affect our robot design. But the implications might cause us to rethink this.

I hope they figure it out soon, it sounds like this issue is messing with a lot of teams.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

I disagree I think there are pretty advanced strategies that can use the human loader that require advance manufacturing ability.

A well balanced alliance is going to consist of both hp and floor loading robos.

It wouldn't be beneficial at all for higher level teams to augment lower teams that just doesn't make sense. This game is absolutely about one robots ability to score on its own not a team. The gdc needs to take care with this they might kneecap teams pretty hard.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

I agree with Paul, this rule as currently written is pretty cut and dry. Robots grabbing totes that are still in contact with the chute is illegal.

There's been a lot of discussion here of whether or not this "should" be illegal. I agree with the points some people have brought up about how this current ruling would negatively impact game play. That being said, there are other factors in play that might be more important.

1. This is the rule that has been in play for all teams for the past 9 crucial days of the build season. Many teams may have already finalized designs that would be impacted by this rule change. In general I loathe any sort of design affecting mid season rule change, unless it is precipitated by a safety issue.
2. I'm only guessing when it comes to the intent of this rule, but I think this rule was put into play to prevent a robot from accidentally forcing a tote back up the chute into the face of a Human Player. If a Robot is designed to suck a tote out of the chute with high speed intake wheels, an accidentally reversed wheel could easily lead to tote being shot back out the chute in a dangerous manner.

So, the GDC has a tough decision to make here. Leave the rule as it is, which means game play might not be as exciting as it could be, or make a change that would be both design effecting and potentially unsafe. Not an easy call at all.

In terms of the safety issue, I find it somewhat strange that they would suddenly be worrying about human players getting hit by game pieces, when last year we were allowed to shoot giant heavy balls out of the field, directly at Human Players, volunteers, and spectators. On the other hand, you can never fault anyone for getting serious about safety.

Here are some possible suggestions that might balance some of the competing interests here.

1. Add a back door to the chute and don't let Robots touch a tote until the back door is shut. This back door would prevent totes from being shot back towards the Human Player and would eliminate pretty much any safety concern. It would make human loading slower, but at least robots could still suck the totes out like many people in this thread desire. The problem with this solution is that it would require an engineering change to the fields, something that may or may not be feasible at this point.

2. Let robots touch totes that are still touching the chute, provided that the robot is completely at rest. This would prevent the case where a tote hits a spinning wheel and goes flying backwards. Of course the problem with this is that it becomes something that refs have to watch and enforce.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

I agree. But I was referring to those teams with limited resources, being more likely to depend on only the human loading area to get TOTES. Since two of these robots would take up all the human loading stations, we need to be able to get TOTES from the landfill, if we want to maximize our alliance's score.

I agree! Unfortunately, during qualifying matches, we can't pick which teams we're with...so we need to make our robot so it can score well with the teams we have on our alliance.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

I think the main discussion is the definition of control. Does a tote sliding into a robot control? The GDC just hasn't defined the word and are making rulings off an undefined term.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

My real concern is that we will handle the totes from the feeder station and will comply with a strict G27 interpretation. It will be almost impossible for a human being to judge if we did or did not violate G27 and incur a penalty. We will be able to show compliance in a static inspection. On the field it is next to impossible. This will be a complex engineering challenge and the students and mentors are really going at it. If we pull it off it will be an exciting mechanism. Only to be subjected to the subjective opinion of a ref. Back to last year. Would a definition of passive or active help? Semantic definition of control? This is a problem and it has to be thought out and dealt with soon.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

G27 goes beyond powered devices. The following minimally competitive process also appears illegal.
- Grab tote in a simple claw and drive to human player chute.
- While still holding the tote in your claw, drop another tote on top of the first. (This would be something similar to the BuildBlitz claw attached to the front of a robot with no elevator.)
- Push the stack of two to the platform
The second tote in the chute contacts the tote in control of my claw. You could let go and re-grab the bottom tote to be legal. I’m not seeing a hazard with either process, and I doubt a ref would call a foul.

Attach the simple claw to a tote elevator using the same procedure. In this case, it is possible to lift the bottom tote while the 2nd tote is exiting the chute. What’s the call? Always called a foul because it could happen? Is it a no-call if my robot doesn’t move?

My assumption is holding a tote is control. Having refs judge intent won’t work.

Dropping litter through the wall into the container held by a robot needs a separate ruling from totes.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Some of the follow-up Q&A might answer the question, but another nuance is whether the litter is allowed to touch part of the robot (a passive part, an active part or even accidentally) on the way to the RC.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

I don't think it is that cut and dry.

It is totally reasonable to interpret that the TOTE CHUTE, being part of a "polycarbonate and metal protective wall" is part of the ALLIANCE WALL and therefore part of the FIELD. I suspect this ambiguity is part of why the Q&A question was asked.

Besides the rear door suggestion, I suspect it would be fairly easy to fashion any number of simple one-way mechanisms in the chute to ensure that it is an "exit only". But I think that the injury risk here is actually very low...next to some other things in FRC in recent memory (even human players last year), hilariously low by comparison.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

The ruling has been updated.

https://frc-qa.usfirst.org/Question/...er-while-the-l

So much better now.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Hooray!

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Let me be the first to say...

PHEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: G27, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

I would challenge that it is cut and dry (or at least simple) based on the rule book. The rules do not define well what the FIELD is in the areas that matter most for G27. From the glossary, the FIELD is

Looking at what ALLIANCE WALLS are

The human player chutes are mounted in the wall. What does bounded by mean across the wall? Is it the vertical projection of the intersection at the carpet, or does it contour the wall's surface? There is a hole at the chute (when the door is open), so is it bounded by where the door was or by the aperture at the back of the chute? Maybe I am just being optimistic in wanting this to be true.

I get wanting a shorter rule book, but it seems like it would have been simpler for them to just flat out say you can't control totes that are in the chute and explain what that means up front, rather than relying on us going through long logic paths to try to figure out what they mean. We didn't realize the full possible implications of G27 until Michael Corsetto from 1678 pointed it out to us. If the ruling is as the QA says, this seems like a pretty important concept to be just tucked in there.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Even better they actually apologized, it does't make it perfect but that's all we can ask for. In my opinion the Q&A have been far better this year in terms of actually trying to answer questions and being polite. They got this one wrong but they fixed it and owned their mistake.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Reason prevails in the GDC! This truly is a new era in FRC.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

ugh
so, to be absolutely clear
if your robot is carrying a container and the HP pushes the litter through the litter chute into the container so that the litter touches the container while it is still touching the HP this is a violation of G27.
Is that correctly interpreted?

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Not under the updated rule.

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

The loader is actually very robust. More likely to break the tote than the loader. But the GDC reasoning is far beyond me. :]

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Awesome! And now back to those nose diving totes...

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Let me just say that the latest GDC response to the G27 ambiguity has been on par with their new style of awesomeness.

They clearly indicated what they intended, apologized for it, and were nice about it.

I really like the new GDC style; very customer friendly. Bravo!

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

Called it :D

(Yay GDC for really prompt action).

Re: G28, Q&A 83, and Noodling a Can Without Touching it
 

So now our team just has a hard nasty engineering challenge. Not a ugly, ugly, ugly, nasty, nasty, nasty and ugly challenge. Whew.