[Nuttyman54]

Back on the original topic, there was a good follow-up Q&A posted by 2122. If the tote gets stuck or jammed in the chute, is a robot or a human player allowed to dislodge it? FRC Hasn't answered yet, but per G6-1, drive team members may not use any object to prop the chute door open. A tote qualifies as an object, therefore the human player must continue to hold the door open to avoid it being "propped" by the stuck tote. G6 specifies that the HP cannot be in contact with both the chute door and the tote simultaneously. The human player cannot legally dislodge the tote in this situation.

Therefore, if a robot is not allowed to contact a tote to dislodge it, this situation must be declared a field fault. I don't know how likely that situation is, but it's easy to prevent if robots are allowed to at least contact objects that are still in contact with the chute.

The question of defining "control" is a very slippery slope, especially with having human players deposit litter in the recycling container. Per G27, if the robot controls a container, and the HP is inserting the litter into the container, at what point does the robot then have "control" of the litter? If this is before the HP releases it, that would make HP loading of litter nearly impossible, which basically means litter will go untouched.

This ruling opens up not only a lot of additional questions, but a very slippery slope in determining what are and are not legal ways to interact with human-inserted game pieces. Given that 30 of the 70 available totes to teams (including the 12 totes available to both teams and 10 upside-down totes), limited interaction with HP loaded totes will be a HUGE hinderance to teams.

We were sooo close to having easy to read rules without massive judgement calls for the refs and everything being self-consistent. It's upsetting to see that undone.