Problems encountered during the actual regionals
 

Hey guys, i was just wondering what are some unexpected problems that you have run into during the competition?

Garrett from team 16, the Baxter Bomb Squad.

At the St. Louis Regional, the biggest problem I noticed was that the Ref's didn't know all the rules. From what I can tell (based on their judgements and actions) they read the original set of rules but did not read any of the updates. I'm not sure if this is what you meant by "problems" at regionals, but I saw it as a huge problem, for obvious reasons.

Yeah I saw it too, the drivers meetings both days were plagued with messed up rules, that weren't correct (or were). It definately made them go back and look at things.

In a similar vein, what were the most commonly questioned rules?

Human player bin placement was a biggy: both orientation and location were issues.

Attaching to the HDPE with suction was almost disallowed.

Just small things, but they got confusing beecause there were so many small things.

Wouldn't attaching to the top with suction become hard later on anyways as the surface gets scuffed?

We were all pretty surprised at how well suction cups worked. FIRST did a pretty good job of cleaning off the HDPE at the end of the day, so it never got too dirty.

Just got back from the first day of competition at the AZ regional, and so far it seems everything is running very smoothly! All the refs are very fair, and seem to REALLY know the rules which makes for some good, clean and fun competition :D