Perhaps we need more transparency in regards to what constitutes every team's ROBOT and WITHHOLDING ALLOWANCE. We could achieve this by having a website available to all teams with pictures of all robots with all configuration parts (like they are at weigh in) and possibly the withholding allowance as well.
A short anecdote: At an early competition, this year a team started installing using their own can burglar arms late in competition (prior to that they had kept them off so they wouldn't get in the way). Many people approached me (an RI) and the rest of the inspection crew about the that team changing their robot without getting reinspected. We told them that yes they did get weighed with those arms and it wasn't really a problem. However, now I think about those countless people that noticed the change but didn't ask a RI for clarification. Are they suspicious that the team was breaking the rules? In absence of any simple tools to gather better info, are they saying things that damage that team's reputation behind their back when that team followed proper procedure? They probably have similar questions about the RIs.
There are already tools in place to manage all these pictures. If you went to events in MAR, California, or North Carolina, you may have seen volunteers using the
GMS (Game Management System) Android app to manage inspection, queuing, judging, etc... In MAR inspections, the basic procedure is to take a picture of the robot at weigh in. This picture is accessible to other volunteers in the Team Notes. It would not be hard to extend this functionality to designate a Current Robot Pic to for public sharing on the website that GMS already runs. For those events not ready to deploy a broad solution like GMS, simply take pictures and upload them automatically or at the end of the day to a photo sharing site.
The withholding allowance is a little more difficult since pretty much the only requirements under R17 is it is under 30lbs and loaded in initially. It is a set of items in different places (in or out of bag, attached to a robot or held off until necessary). A change in the inspection process would be needed. Perhaps by the end of the first qualification day, teams should collect all off robot FABRICATED ITEMS (whether they came from the bag, withholding allowance, or fabricated from COTS at the event) for inspection and picture.
An additional benefit of public pictures of robots is that teams will not have to devote resources to taking pictures of robots during pit scouting and teams without these resources will get the info for free. This can improve traffic flow in the pits since getting a good picture in the crowded pits can cause traffic jams.
This game is ending, but there will be future games where multiple configurations to fit different strategies will be very beneficial. Teams will continue to reconfigure their robot and their partners. With rulings like this
Q&A 440, the incentives for reconfiguration are even greater. Consider the possibility of a team building 2 nearly full weight configurations that complement each other strategically. They move their control system between the 2 configs to fit qualifying match pairings, getting reinspected each time. For the playoffs they pick a configuration for their robot and have a partner plug their control system into the other config. If we are going to allow this level of reconfiguration, at the very least, the public should be informed at every step of the process.