Servo Legality
 

Hello CD,

Our team is looking into using a servo on the robot this year. Our team has never done this before so we looked into all of the rules regarding their legal use. The two primary rules that we have found that pertain to which servos we are allowed to use are R18 and R19.

We have been looking for servos with a relative high stall torque (>200 oz-in) that are less than 4 watts as calculated by "servo industry standards". We have been verifying our calculations using the spreadsheet provided here.

We were unable to find a standard servo that meets these requirements so we began looking into gearing a servo to get the stall torque desired. We found a geared servo on servocity that would accomplish what we would like to do that also has a rating of less than 4 watts. Here is the link to the servo:

https://www.servocity.com/html/spg54..._rotation.html

The reason we are questioning the legality of this servo is due to how the potentiometer is wired into this servo. The potentiometer is mounted on the output shaft and appears to be wired into the servo.

We think this may violate R19 and we were looking to see what the CD community thought before we posted this to the Q and A.

Thanks

Re: Servo Legality
 

I believe the particular servo linked meets the definition of a COTS servo, so per R18, it should be legal as long as it meets the power rating.

I believe R19 is trying to prevent TEAMs from modifying motors/servos/solenoids to give themselves an advantage. You're not making a modification, you're buying a COTS component. If it meets your need and you have reservations, ask for clarification on Q&A, otherwise, bring documentation to the competitions proving its COTS and meets the power rules in the event someone has a question about it.

Note, if you do end up posting to Q&A, dont ask if that particular model/part is legal. You likely wont get an answer. You need to phrase your question in a way that asks for clarification on the rule.