[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

First, I don't see how using retroreflective tape would do anything special to allow communication. You could blink your light at the tape and see that you did it, but other robots wouldn't notice anything. They'd have to be looking at your light directly.

Line of sight or reflected line of sight.
It's just a bank shot and the focus of the goals is usually where the tape is.
Cooperative targeting.

Even without the retro-reflective tape a laser spot in a predictable spot could send a signal other robots, drivers or driver's stations could collect (speaking practically - not saying the rules allow that).

Second, the existing rules already disallow active robot-to-robot communication:

You mean other than pushing each other out of the way, assisting a partner via contact or tossing a game element cooperatively?
FIRST has a lot of full contact robot to robot communications going on every match.
We have sensors that could detect objects on the field that the robot might interact with and with that information one could determine the proximity of other robots which would communicate position information between robots.
There is no rule I see that says that we can't build a sensor package that locates other robots or react to that information.

If this rule applies then this is a poorly enforced rule.

Also between the robot and the driver's station there's the FIRST supplied RSL light.
That's a visual indicator that can instruct the driver's to change the state of their driver's station.
There have also been several visual examples over the years of teams visually signaling their operators from the robot both to the field (in the form of a spot light) and indicators.

So this is also questionably enforced.

They also prohibit any signalling between operator consoles:

However, <R95> was judged not to apply to waving at cameras, so the blinking light option might still be viable there.

I will look up later where the official Q/A question I asked previously is.
Basically I wanted to put lights in the driver's station window that the robot could visually lock onto to locate itself on the field. It was effectively one time passive communication and these lights could have been seen by all the robots on the field looking at that end.

Obviously visual targets like this are plentiful on the game fields but I liked the idea of simply controlling the target ourselves. This ends up being communication between control systems if 2 or more teams choose to use it. The robots will react and the information to control the robots will come from each driver's station indirectly.

Originally Posted by cgmv123

T22Ei says any special equipment can't connect or attach to the OPERATOR CONSOLE(s). The laptop is part of the operator console, but I'd have a hard time believing cabling that links multiple consoles is.

Perhaps but there have been several boards floating around that could be connected to the driver's station.
Though I have never actually done this so maybe there is a rule against it somewhere?


If someone is really serious about using this they really should propose it and ask in the official Q/A.
By the time that can happen the game will be set, the rules will be there and the consequences will be more clear.