[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Tristan Lall

Couldn't you argue that because the robot is designed to point the laser at the floor from within a shielded enclosure, that the combination of floor and robot serve to completely enclose the laser?

I reject that argument. The laser in that application is designed to shine on something outside the robot (e.g. the floor). Only an exposed laser could do that. As you point out, if the floor isn't where it's supposed to be, the light escapes.

And given that <R02> is a safety rule, is exposure defined in terms of exposure to the surroundings in general, to humans, or to the laser-sensitive parts of humans (eyes, for ordinary lasers)?

Without further detail in the rule, it has to be interpreted as the most general possibility. While one could reasonably assume that eyes won't be underneath or inside a robot during a match, a reflective surface could be anywhere.

Finally, there's the pedantic question of whether the rule is referring to a laser (the device), the aperture of a laser device, a beam of laser light, or some combination of those, when it talks about exposure.

I think the only reasonable answer to that question is the thing which makes a laser distinct from any other component: the laser light itself.

An easy relaxation to the "no lasers" rule would be to permit the equivalent of a cheap laser pointer by limiting the power of any emitted beam to a safe level (i.e. Class 1).