[bobl]

As a mentor and coach of an FRC team, I know the importance of collecting information about possible alliance partners and opposing alliance members. While at the 2012 Championships the team tried to accomplish very basic scouting, i.e how a robot scored, bridge ability, hybrid scoring. We had to give up very quickly because we could not determine what the team numbers were on many robots. The rules state very clearly that the numbers need to be easily read from a distance of 100 feet and be white or outlined in white. Even with this rule many team numbers were almost impossible to determine. Teams used many different fonts, styles and even substituted symbols for numbers. Teams used colors other than white and either did not outline the numbers in white or used a pencil thin line of white which did nothing for the readability. Trying to determine which robot is which was extremely frustrating and next to impossible unless you were right next to the field. We were not that fortunate. We were either up high against the back wall or so far off to one side we could only see about a third of the field.

Perhaps the rules need to state exactly what font, type size, color, stroke weight to help other teams (and spectators) distinguish one robot from another.