Quote:
Originally Posted by squirrel
Yes...playing by the rules that have been there since the beginning.
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As an engineer, I work to engineering specs. If I meet those specs, I expect to be paid. You can imagine that I might be a wee bit upset if I were to design a product that meets the customer's specs, deliver that product, and be told "I'm not paying you because the product didn't do what I expected it to do". If your specs are not written clearly enough, that is your fault, not mine.
In FIRST, the manuals and rules are the specs. Your argument that the 4N force was not in the rules is not valid. The peg heights are not in the rules either. The entirety of the game documentation is the specification document to which all teams work. Our minibot cannot hit the bolt heads, and I can guarantee that it imparts far more than 4N of force. Therefore, by any definition, it meets the specs. If we get to competition this weekend, and our minibot doesn't trigger the tower, am I supposed to just accept that and go on? Is that proffessional? In the real world, it would not be tolerated.
More importantly, this is supposed to be a race. The tower trigger is just a means of scoring that race. Imagine an Olympic sprinter that happens to be too short to reach the tape. If he crosses the finish line first, but runs under the tape, does that mean he didn't win the race? I think this whole argument is silly. The first minibot to reach the top should be declared the winner. All this argument about how to decide that winner is a side note. FIRST should come up with a foolproof method of determining the winer.