entanglement
 

I don't know if anybody here has touched on this issue or not but what is entanglement?
I think that the refs in all of these compitions want to avoid controversy by not calling it but what is the point for this rule if NOBODY calls it. In the two regionals events (that i have been to and ones i heard about) there were multiple situations in which entanglement should have been called especially one yesterday in the philadelphia regional. My team 357 was clearly entangled with another robot's tether (which was a scissor kind of tether)and when we couldnt free ourselves during the time of play, and when we went to take it off the field (even when the judges tried it was still very difficult) we knew surley this would be entanglement. But of course entanglement was not called. I guess im frustrated because some teams kept a tether out of their original design because of this rule... What is the point of having this rule if it is not called?!

I agree, many teams worked long hours trying to figure out how to avoid being called on entanglement, and now it seems that some of the tethers are being overlooked. The rules are not defined well enough. As for the future, I am certainley wondering what kind of rulings they will make at Nationals, or at any other regionals in the next few weeks.

i fully agree i was at philly and they "little robots" my be smart, i saw ur robot get intangled and it shoudl be called. It is a pain in the butt when u work so hard to get somewhere and a team breaks a rule and is allowed willingly to do so, and u lose when u shouldn't. Can anyone please clarify this rule to me?

I guess it would depend if you ramed the finger then no i wouldn't call it. I can get a pencil stuck in a wall but i'd have to try. Entanglemnt is just if they purposly try to entangle you or if they have like a cord that could get sucked into a gear. If you ramed them then it would be your fault you got entangled even if that wasen't your objective. Its mainly a judgmental call.

entanglement
 

entanglement
 

I wonder also
 

I wonder the same thing. When I saw the tethers in the competition, I was like "What the heck!?!?" because from my interpretation of the rules they were totally not allowed. In our design faze, we scratched out the idea totally because of there rule. I see the refs are calling a lot of stuff and DQ'ing a lot this season for numerous reasons. I saw a match at Lone Star that I thought surely would have been intanglement but it wasn't. This is seriously angering me because it is not being called at all yet we were really getting DQ threats from the head judge about the way we lifted the goal from the flanges.(our mechanism frequently slipped off the flanges and reacted against the wood). Now I think if they are going to call that, they should call some entanglement. :mad:We asked the judge about that and she said it depends on what the refs call entanglement, she was very friendly about it though I was not satisfied with the response.

Re: I wonder also
 

Which match? Who was in it? I remember 609 being involved in a shoving match with 235, and their goal grabbers catching, but that's the only one I can think of. I only watched about half the matches, though, so I can't say I definately would have seen it anyway.

thats not the way the rule was explained AT ALL, it was said that NO tethered objects would be allowed to go. Teams like 87 found ways to work around that like thier flag pole, only see other teams having little robots, AND IT BEING LEGAL, thats not rite ladies and gentlemen, not rite at all. I say we get together in nationals and really get to the bottom of why this was all allowed.

i agree,

one of teh main entanglement violations was that the tether could not go through a goal. However, the firebirds tether ( i have nothing against thefirebirds. thanks for pickings us and also, their tether is extremely effective and only violated entanglement by chance) went through the goal and they were not DQed. other teams tethers, which were in blatant violation of the rules, like an actual tape measure!! were not DQed. I believe in a kinder, genter FIRST, but not a push-over FIRST

I like the argument that the tether must be entangled on purpose or that it didn't actually get entagled in the match. BUT, that wasn't the way it was described on Yahoo from FRC almost all questions about tethers stated that if it COULD become entagled it wouldn't be allowed. I saw all types of things at GLR that should have been DQ's including a huge piece of carpet being ripped up, robots grabbing hold of the PVC instead of the pipes, tape measures... it goes on and on but no one got DQ'd. And the worst thing is on one match we manuvered our robot to block an advancing tether device, a telescoping one which I feel does meet the rules well and we were actually warned when we made contact with it that we were possibly going to damage it?!! I saw full on hits from robots that is perfectly legal why is blocking a tether from deploying not legal especially if it will change the outcome of the match???

Anyway congrats to all of the great robots at GLR, the coolest tether I saw was the Lake Orion lexan that was soo fast to deploy and actually retract if needed very nice design.

First, I don't remember exactly what was said in the Yahoo Message Board, but on Team Update 6 there's an excerpt of it, and it DOES NOT disallow ANY tether, it just says that something that becomes entangled will be disallowed, and only list devices that COULD become entangled. And, most important of all:

We (Team 122) and NAVY (Team 165) were against them during this match. Thier partner was dead so we set the field basically exactly the way we wanted it. NAVY did a great job of positioning a goal right in front of 433 on purpose so they couldn't deploy their tether. They did anyways and it layed right over the goal. Granted we still won the match so we got another 30 QP, We would've gotten 150 QP (!!!!) if they were DQ'ed, because that was 3 times our score.

~Tom Fairchild~, who only sees this as becoming an even greater problem at Nationals with different divisions and different rulings at each.