Wouldn't that still be considered functional? I mean, you're using it to see where you are. And that is it's only intent.

from watching the videos at the UTC scrimmage, it looked like it was extremely hard to see through the bins. It often took 15 or more seconds for a team to break through.

You can see your robot through the bins (sorta), but it's really hard to tell orientation.


Even if a flag is ruled functional (I would), it would still be legal. Remember, parts rules are not nearly as restricted as in previous years

At the UTC Scrimmage, I had to manually knock the boxes down the majority of the time because the autonomous mode on our robot didn't work very well. All I had to go on, with a wall of bins in front of me, were the distant instances in which I saw part of the robot through the small gaps between the totes. Heck, I didn't know 190 "closelined" us until the announcer said it.. the point: get those boxes down in autonomous mode!

our programmers better get to work

yeah, and half the time we ended up crashing into you guys before we got over the ramp. We usually just waited into you guys had gone and knocked the ramp down before we tried to do anything.

As for the extendable antenna idea, if it has a function, it is no longer a decoration, and becomes functional part of the robot. In that case, it is not affected by the rule. I don't really think the judges will mind much if you put one on.

if it is functional isn't it still fine?

The "spring loaded for the bar" part is considered reacting off the bar and is illegal.

http://jive.ilearning.com/thread.jsp...=6261 72#2554

I would disagree.

FIRST has said that creating a mechanical device to hit the bar and lower your light is legal. I see this as being no different. A flag mounted atop a long, flexible wire would be fine.

I have gone back and forth with FIRST on this, in private, a number of times. While my question was never answered to my own satisfaction, they did make it clear to me that their intent was to prevent robots from physically attaching themselves to the midfield barrier such that efforts to detach them could cause damage to the field.

Mechanical devices that react off the bottom of the bar, that exert small amounts of force, and that do not engage the bar in such a way as to make removing it difficult would not be deemed illegal.

Or, at least, that is the final impression I was given. I did get 4 or 5 conflicting answers, so, who knows?

Do you have a source for this? This statement would seem to be in direct contradiction to the quote from the FIRST Forum post I referenced:

"You may not use the bar to force your robot to decrease in height ( i. e. compress springs to make the robot low enough to go under the bar)"

In this thread, posted February 11, FIRST responded to Joe Johnson's questions about the light:

http://jive.ilearning.com/thread.jsp...05&trange=1 5

Since switch trip and mechanical trip are listed as separate items, I assumed that 'mechanical' trip meant something physically reacting against the bar. Further, they go on to allow the compression of springs to be used to lower the light (but make no mention of other similar mechanisms.)

So, that's the thread I've been using as a reference. The way those forums are set up, and given how FIRST has been answering questions, it's impossible to tell if that's really the final word on those rules.

Edit: Maybe the light is just so special that it gets its own set of special rules. That seems a bit silly, though.