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I myself think that Truck Town took a bold stance into thinking they may have found a loop hole in the rules. I hope FIRST takes their own bold stance as well- Truck Town is in clear violation of the FIRST rules and must change their design, or face disqualification via DQ1 ("DQ1 An alliance may not gain points by breaking a rule, even accidentally.")
Rules Violations:
GM28 - "Attach themselves to the railings/walls of any field structure."
I believe the wings do attach themselves to the railing.
GM31 - "The outer field barriers are safety features of the playing field and robots should not be designed to react against them. Reacting is grabbing or using the top of the field borders,
the top of the driver stations, the top of the pipes at midfield, and the top of the platform/ramp polycarbonate sides with the intent of supporting a robot or robot part."
The wings on truck town are meant to react against the side of the midfield barrier. I italicized side, because the rule states "top". This is the only gray issue.
You may think this post is a little harsh. In some ways it is, there is a clear infraction of GM28 and possibly even GM31. My concern is if FIRST allows teams to cross into the gray area to much we will have the majority of the teams in the gray zone. My team decided against a design that would interact with the playing field, because we play by the rules. Often we must use our judgment when we enter the gray zone, FIRST likes to call it gracious professionalism. The bottom line is that FIRST will make the final call if this robot is legal. I just hope they make the right call because there will be a lot of pissed of teams who threw away designs just to see the rules allowed to be broken by one courageous team.
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