Quote:
Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz
3. Game rules this year put your entire alliance at risk for inspection issues. Every team you played with should have asked the question either of you or one of the Leads.
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Al,
I am not sure if the this was the intended reaction to <T03> (red cards entire alliance if one bot didn't pass inspection) and/or <G30> (penalty for violating robot rules), but I severely doubt that qualification alliance partners are inspecting their partners this closely. Better scouting teams probably have a picture from Thurs (likely pre inspection) and advance game capability scouting (speed of minibot, # of tubes hung). Others teams may not have any info on their partners. Our comp team asks early Friday partners if they have passed inspection (if they were not on the Thursday pass list) but once you see the sticker, no further questions. I doubt that many teams are even aware of <T03>. I guess it is possible while waiting in the queue or after they use the illegal feature for one partner to notice, but that is not something I expect to be the norm. Once you find out your partner passed inspection, <T03> red cards are out of your mind.
While inspecting at a later week regional (Philly), I have found subtly illegal bumpers (still gave them a competitive advantage) on robots that have competed in an earlier regional (including elims). Needless to say, the teams were not very happy to hear it and I was not happy to have to break the news. The earlier the violations can be found, the better it is for everyone involved, volunteers and teams.
Unfortunately, this violation was not caught until it was too late, and cause a terrible situation for a team. This is not
a new rule (concave bumpers have been illegal for 3 years, probably will never be legal again) and just moving the definition of Frame Perimeter to a different section should not cause this much confusion (perhaps there should be a blue box that just says "Concave bumpers are not legal"). Veteran teams should know this rule well by now. Inspectors need to know this rule (I know it is hard for rookie inspectors without FIRST experience but it is still a huge mistake the inspector to miss). More than 1 inspector probably saw your robot during weight & size and this is something they all should immediately question (what good is weighing illegal bumpers?). Ref should also know bumper rules and the 84in cylinder rule well since those are the biggest causes of the <G30> penalty (thankfully it is no longer requires a red card). I don't expect refs to know all the robot rules well (such as identifying a illegal motor like an RS555).
Inspectors, like all volunteers, are human and are going to make mistakes. This does not exempt them from their share of the blame, but we need to be prepared to deal with the mistakes. In order to help catch oversights by inspectors, I suggest that all inspection teams have an experienced inspector watching most of the matches on Friday and looking at robots in the queue. Friday is a quieter time for inspectors after all the robots finish initial inspection, and there should be an inspector (other than the LRI) that you can assign to this job. In Philly, we started doing this a several years ago to look for illegal batteries (the old Exide ones, you don't see them anymore), I don't know how many other regionals have an inspector present on the field. Obviously this inspector will not be able to see anything covered by panels, but they will be able to see bumpers, mechanisms in action and notice changes made by the teams (possibly without getting reinspected). They can see who pops tubes & gets <G30> penalties, then try to prevent these in the future. They are really just extra pairs of eyes to find problems.