Quote:
Originally Posted by Libby K
You have four people on the drive team that are a part of the robot's transport out to the queue - one's pushing the cart, another holding the controls. That leaves you two, and you can use at least one of them to help clear the pathway.
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This is plausible in the ideal case where other teams aren't crowded around their own pits. At Champs and most Regionals I've been to, the all-sides entourage works most of the time. Yet even shouting robot doesn't work when people in the pits aren't paying attention because they're focused on their own pit.
In Pittsburgh, even with team 48 shouting 'robot' for everyone, and me saying excuse me while leading the cart, there were still people with their backs to the aisle who would jump out into the aisle without looking. We got some nasty looks, as if to say "why aren't you shouting robot?". In my head my gut reaction was 'Natural Selection suggests we shouldn't blindly sprint in the pits' (bad, I know...) but I after a minute I simply understood why many teams feel compelled to shout it. The kid who jumped tripped on the cart and caught himself. It could have been much more catastrophic had he been a second later, jumping on the robot and hurting himself and/or causing the robot to fall off the other side of the cart. We could fault someone for not paying attention to the 'robot' shouting, or fault 48 for causing people to tune out the 'robot' shouting, or fault me for saying excuse me rather than shouting it, or ... whatever.
Point is, I don't know if there's a catch-all for this.