Quote:
Originally Posted by StevenB
I was scorekeeper in Arkansas, and disabled a handful of robots for bumper issues over the course of the weekend.
The problem is that this rule hurts the teams that need the most help. I and my two siblings (all of us volunteers) spent several hours with a team on Thursday night helping them build legal bumpers so they could pass inspection and play on Friday. Unfortunately, their blue bumper covers weren't stuck on very well, and came part way off at some point, causing them to be disabled. The bumpers were still functionally intact, and there was no practical reason - safety, damage, or otherwise - to disable them.
The rule as I understand it is to penalize robots who lose a whole bumper segment, preventing them from leaving a large item on the field and continuing to mix it up with other robots. I see no reason to disable a robot because their cloth sags a little bit, and I hope this rule will change next year to reflect that. Making the penalties stricter will not help teams do better (G40, anyone?), it just punishes those who are already struggling.
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I understand how if a part of cloth is under the 2 inches then it shouldn't be disabled, and I'm pretty sure that by Worlds that was the general consensus. But some events didn't seem to share the same idea, and didn't disable robots who were missing or dragging bumpers, batteries, or other parts that weren't supposed to be dragged around. I also understand that it's hard to make a rule against this that couldn't be misinterpreted.
Hopefully next year any rule like this will be much more clarified and less "open to interpretation" as this one was.
Also, a quick question. If a robot's bumper fell off, and the opposing team questioned why the robot wasn't disabled, is the referee allowed to say "It's my call and I didn't see any risks", even if the missing bumper made it terrifying to even go near the bot?