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Originally Posted by Jon Stratis
Let me remind everyone of the wording of R18:
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At an Event, Teams may have access to a static set of FABRICATED ITEMS that shall not exceed 30 lbs to be used to repair and/or upgrade their ROBOT. Items made at an Event do not count towards this weight limit.
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(Per the blog, 30 is now 45, but that has not been reflected in a team update yet, so the rule I copied still says 30. I expect this will be rectified in the next team update)
To me, this implies that an actual robot is bagged and brought in. Combine that with R1:
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Each registered FRC team may enter only one (1) ROBOT into the 2014 FRC.
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These two would seem to imply that, while you can bring in plenty of fabricated parts, you can't bring in a whole robot outside of the bag. And for that, I would use the "impartial observer" rule - if your grandmother was standing there looking at it and says "what a nice robot you built!" then it's a robot. |
This seems like very specious reasoning to me. A ROBOT is a FABRICATED ITEM that consists of many FABRICATED ITEMS. R1 prevents a team from bringing 2 ROBOTs in bags, or 1 ROBOT in a bag and 1 ROBOT outside a bag. How does it keep someone from bringing 1 ROBOT outside a bag and no ROBOT inside a bag?
There's no requirement that a ROBOT be in the bag, and many teams do not have a ROBOT in the bag. Many teams withhold their cRIO, so they can continue programming. If there isn't a cRIO in the bag, there is no control, and therefore whatever else is in the bag is not a ROBOT. The bag and tag rules say "robot" and not "ROBOT".
A better argument is from R15.
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Teams must stay “hands-off” their ROBOT during the following time periods:
from Stop Build Day until their first event,
during the period(s) between their events, and
outside of Pit hours while attending events.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon Stratis
There was a similar issue a few years ago (2010) when it was bumped up to 65 lbs - some teams simply didn't bag anything because their entire robot was under 65 lbs. We really don't want to see teams walking in with a robot unbagged and some fabricated parts they want to attach to the robot bagged.
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Is this a personal opinion, or has this been discussed by the LRIs and/or GDC? If the later, today's team update should have clarification. Otherwise, you will see this situation, and I'd hate for a team to be told they can't compete because the rules were not explicit.