Quote:
Originally Posted by PHFTC
This year's game is so full of penalties, Teams would do well to know the rules. But there are still lots of gray areas...
Clearly blocking access to the rolling goals is also a penalty. If we lift a tube and they hit us causing it to fall - that should be their penalty right? And we would be awarded a full tube.
On a related note, we have seen sooo many robots with telephone cables which are way underspec (26-28AWG)- and we spent some effort working around this problem - what's the proper way to point that out to inspectors?
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The game is full of penalties, agreed. A big defensive move that I have seen this year is when it comes to the center goal. At least in Arizona, teams have not been called for doing this. They(Teams) allow the robot to go up to the center goal and start raising, as they go to score, the oppoising alliance hits the back corner of the scoring robot, misaligning the scoring robot. The refs would allow it, as it was not blocking access to the center goal. The teams would allow the robot to get to the center goal, but then become an annoyance when it came to the scoring. (All within the 5 second rule, since its from the side, and not the back of the robot, allowing the scoring to robot to still move back and forth...)
In regards to lifting a ball tube. Its sorta an iffy area. If your running the risk of lifting a ball tube up, it should be designed with a defensive bot in mind. (I only say this, because one of my teams does lift the rolling goal enough to put onto the ramp, and they have created a lock to account for a defensive bot running into it. Most of the goal is inside of the robot. (Again its a little iffy/gray area.
On the topic of the wiring (just to derail for a minute...). At least for me, I would not call a team out through the inspectors for it. Usually a wiring issue will kill a teams chance to compete for the rest of the day, due to the fact that they cant fix the said wiring... Now saying that, it depends on where the wiring problem is. If its say the low gauge wire coming out of the battery... then that's a bit of a hazard, but when it comes to a telephone wire for a servo.. I myself would let it slide. (I have seen it. My teams all have the correct sizes... we went through the whole thing of trying to find the right wiring as well, I know how you feel.) I side track a little now, because I have called out teams in the past and this year in fact. At least for this year, there was a team that showed up, passed inspection and had about 2 hours before qualifiers started. This team was using the am-2256(?) Andymark HiGrip Wheels. When it came to these wheels, I felt that this was making the playing field un-even. I went around to some other mentors of other teams that we are very good friends with, and asked the same thing. They all agreed. We proceeded to ask the team to change the wheels out, while still notifying the inspectors, with the picture in inspection binder, that the said wheels were illegal. Something like wheels are a lot easier to replace than wiring. I say that again with looking at both sides, it really matters where the wiring problem is located.
In short, I probably would have gone over to the team, or one of the mentors for the team, and pointed out that the said wire was technically illegal, and they should change it for future competitions, higher competitions, i.e. Super Regionals and Worlds, so they wouldn't be called on it, and have to either remove or scramble to fix it.