[Jon Stratis]

For a ball stuck in a robot...

If the robot is still functional and driving around, then I think it's really just too bad for the alliance. Yes, it sucks and you might lose the match because of it, but it was the alliance's decision to use that robot as part of the cycle. There's no way for the refs to be able to tell if a ball is permanently stuck, or if the robot will manage to eject it later in the game. Personally, I really don't want to force the refs to make a judgement call in this situation. If it does come down to a judgement call, there will be plenty of times where the team's judgement is different from the refs and people won't be happy. Can't you see the complaining now? "Why didn't you declare the ball dead 30 seconds earlier? We would have won the match!" "Why did you declare the ball dead? We just weren't quite lined up perfectly to shoot yet!"

If a robot is e-stopped with a ball, then it's easy for the ref's to call the ball dead. We don't want to encourage teams to perform full-speed ramming actions on a dead robot in order to try to eject the ball! A dead robot is probably dead for a reason, and that type of abuse won't help. I think the e-stop solution is the best one. It gives the alliance the option (in the case of a momentary loss of connection, like a cRIO reboot or a radio reset) to keep the ball in play or lose the robot for the rest of the match to get a new ball.