Re: Team Update 14 (2016)
 

I actually impounded a spare robot as Lonestar LRI once. A team brought it in on Thursday morning to remove part of it for their competition robot. Since it was well over the withholding allowance, I told them to pull whatever they wanted or thought they needed right away (under withholding limits), then impounded the remainder for the rest of the regional. On account of the examples of it being illegal to keep a collection of spares in the parking lot and bring them in one at a time. They were understandably grumpy that they couldn't just leave it in their trailer instead of me impounding it, but I'd been approached by people concerned that they'd brought an ENTIRE spare robot. So I had to deal with appearances as well as actual rules at that point. I'm pretty sure Norm's forgiven me by now.

All of which is to say that practice robots, spare parts, and withholding allowances make for lots of complications. While the 5.5.2 blue box is a little clumsy, a separate rule would likely be just as awkward to cover cases like bringing a practice robot to practice with but not use for parts. You couldn't possibly cover that case with any other existing rule, but writing up a rule for that specific case would likely miss others that I haven't thought of. The blue box entirely rules out bringing a practice robot to help your team in any fashion, bagged or not, which is just a more general case of the specific case above.

Also, does the 5.5.2 blue box have some sort of unintended, deleterious consequences? It doesn't seem so to me, so it seems like a pretty good update.

Re: Team Update 14 (2016)
 

"Reasonably astute observer" = Whoever's in the HQ hot seat this weekend. You'd better hope they've had their coffee this morning.

Re: Team Update 14 (2016)
 

The biggest problem is that for teams that did bag two things that look like "robots" (not ROBOTs) for the intended purpose of having spare parts they will be in trouble for something that they had no idea was illegal and it's already in the bag(s). Also the current rule does not prevent teams from assembling a 2nd robot at the event, you just can't bring it to the event. You can still build it there from mechanisms that you bring.

Re: Team Update 14 (2016)
 

Will there every be an obvious solution the GDC could implement to dismantle such an impressive myriad of self-constructed problems?

Re: Team Update 14 (2016)
 

I'll grant you that this is a broken update for anyone who's bagged a "robot" for spare parts. Retroactively making things illegal is not cool. Also, I'll admit I hadn't considered that teams could actually bag an entire mostly complete robot as a spare, since that's so far outside my team's experience. In that light, a more targeted ruling to keep teams from swapping in an entire robot as a "repair" for a broken robot would be a better idea. Seeing as philosophers are still arguing about whether someone is the same "person" if you instantly swap all their atoms for identical but different ones, I don't think I want to tackle that rule tonight...

Re: Team Update 14 (2016)
 

Remove bag day?

Re: Team Update 14 (2016)
 

Frank, after some consideration, I have but one thing to say to you:



Seriously though, no hard feelings. We found a loophole and you closed it. This doesn't mean we're giving up. ;)

Re: Team Update 14 (2016)
 

It can't be that simple, can it?

Re: Team Update 14 (2016)
 

I'm pretty sure I saw the annual "remove bag day" thread a week or so ago, but if y'all want to start up another one, it'd be more productive in it's own thread. As opposed to a largely unrelated team update thread.

Re: Team Update 14 (2016)
 

I agree! Glad the wording was changed. I'm pretty sure that's what was always intended, but just wasn't written down properly. Opens the door to some other COTS parts.

It seems like a clear wording to me... and doesn't change the original intent of the rule. I'm not sure what we're supposed to be upset about in this thread. :confused:

Re: Team Update 14 (2016)
 

The day the GDC does that will be the day that these problems can start being fixed.

Re: Team Update 14 (2016)
 

Please do give up at finding loopholes.

The reason rules like these have to exist isn't because bag day or the GDC, it's because teams try to find ways around the rules. For a long time, the culture discouraged "lawyering" the rules instead of following the intent. Teams that try to find the loopholes to gain an advantage rather than following the intent is what causes rules like this to be necessary.

Re: Team Update 14 (2016)
 

This is certainly an old argument, but I continue to disagree with this outlook. Most fundamentally, teams frequently do not, and in many cases effectively cannot know the intent precisely. Every uncertainty begets the concern that another team will more accurately gauge FIRST's intent, and get away with a more rewarding strategy. The nature of competition therefore fundamentally induces teams to seek the limit of what's legal.

Similarly, when officials have to weigh the intent of the rulemakers against the conduct of a team, they find themselves also having to confront this uncertainty. How can an official know how to draw the line between permissible and impermissible conduct if they aren't willing to entertain and compare different interpretations before settling on a definitive answer?

Re: Team Update 14 (2016)
 

Dang it Jim, I'm an Engineer, not a Lawyer!

Re: Team Update 14 (2016)
 

Thank you Cad! Was just about to scour the manual to figure out what those drawings were :D