[Oromus]

I think that there shouldn't necessarily be a rule against testing in the pit, with or without blocks. If a team is testing their robot unsafely (i.e. running autonomous, drive testing, ect...), someone should be told (i.e. a mentor or safety inspector). However, testing your robot on the floor alone shouldn't be considered unsafe or be against the rules. In some cases, like the mentioned incident of a neighboring team running over a mentor with a robot, teams testing their robot on the pit floor have gone about it unsafely. Some teams, however, make sure to safely test their robot when in the pits. For example, we needed to test our automatic tote stacking button. To do that, we put our robot on the pit floor and ran it. However, we made sure before hand that driving was completely disabled. The worst our robot could do is move it's lift. I think IF a rule should be made/actually enforced about robot operation in the pits, it should be preventing robots from driving on the floor of the pits; that's what seems to be really unsafe.

TL;DR: I think robots being active on the floor of pits are fine; just don't drive or have driving enabled.