[Johnny_5]

What I see as safety theater is what our team witnessed and had to deal with at our regional last year.

There was a team there that had people stationed all over the pits, essentially acting as "hall monitors" or "robot chaperones." When robots were coming down the hallway, they would stop all human traffic and make them wait until robots had finished coming through, all while yelling robot to those who ignored them.

This works great in theory. But there are incidents that can arise in which by halting human traffic would be a major impediment to people. For instance, one of the students on my team was held up in trying to go back to our pit to get a tool to fix an alliance members robot before the match started. Needless to say he did not make it or return in time.

I don't believe they won the safety award, which leads me to believe that maybe the judges disliked it as much as we did.