[Joe Johnson]

As to how will FIRST verify that we are meeting this rule, I agree that gracious professionalism is going to have to rule the day.

But... ...even so, it is not rocket science to estimate the amount of energy that your robot uses from springs:

(Force Initial - Force Final) * (Length Initial - Length Final) / 2

It is equally easy to estimate the time it takes to release this energy given a stopwatch or a few lines of PBASIC programming.

Power is a simple matter of division.

I think that this is no more burdensome than the accounting calculations teams are having to go through to keep track of the $3500 limit. In fact, I suppose it is several orders of magnitude easier, given reuse of some raw materials, new labor rules, fair market value of donated goods, etc.

Comments?

Joe J.

P.S. Picky folks may point out that Compression springs will require an abs() in the energy calculation. JJ