Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan Anderson
What would the judges have to do with it?
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For those that don't understand this (rookie teams/students), there are 4 distinct groups of official competition people that will be evaluating either your team or your robot.
Judges: Blue polo shirts; they evaluate your team/robot for awards.
Safety Judges: Green polo shirts; they evaluate both for safety (and the safety awards).
Neither type of judge can make any call regarding legality. If one does, see the nearest inspector to double-check. (If the inspector says you're legal, and the judge still says you're illegal, call the LRI over.)
Refs: Striped shirts; they see whether you are following the rules on the field. This is one of the groups that could possibly determine that a camera is illegal; however, that call would depend on use in the competition and be confirmed by the inspectors. Refs only call game and tournament rules; some of the game and tournament rules involve passing inspection and showing up with a legal robot.
Inspectors: Standard volunteer shirt (other than the LRI's vest) and armed with clipboards. These guys are the ones that make sure your robot is legal to compete. These guys also love to see you
early on Thursday morning so they can get you passing inspection faster. They make the call on robot rules.
This particular question is going to be an inspector's call, assuming the GDC doesn't weigh in soon (via Q&A--which hasn't been asked yet). (And then... the inspectors get to help enforce the GDC ruling.) Failure to point them to a ruling, whether in your favor or not, is not going to make the inspectors' job easier, or their ruling necessarily correct.
The biggest question, as pointed out earlier, is whether a camera that is not connected to the robot's power system and does not transmit wirelessly is considered to be a computing device, or a non-functional decoration (NFD), or both. If it's an NFD, cost does not apply ([R13]), but power ([R36]) and weight ([R03]) do, barring exceptions that aren't currently clear, obvious, or otherwise spelled out so a reasonably astute observer can find them. If it's a computing device, cost and weight apply, but power does not. It's an interesting question.
As the rules stand right now, barring a Q&A response or Team Update to the contrary, I would call a camera of this type a NFD, which makes it subject to the power rules, and therefore illegal. However, if it is also considered to be a computing device (by the GDC), then it is an NFD computing device, which can utilize its own power source and still be exempted from cost rules, making it legal.
Note: I am not on the GDC, not familiar with their intent, and not official in any way, shape, or form. Hence my calling this both ways--call it playing GDC advocate and PR advocate at the same time.
If I could use precedent here, I'd say legal due to similar setups--but I could just as easily say that it would have to get power from the robot under a different set of conditions. Again, very interesting and challenging question.