[EricH]

Originally Posted by Jay O'Donnell

The problem is that it's not really a deadline anymore because teams are working around it. And if we opened up build season then the deadline would be by your competitions basically.

Not saying I agree with opening up build season, just stating those points.

A proposal: All robots MUST bag at the 6 week mark. Teams are expected to enforce a tools-down policy--this includes practice robots and software development.

After 1 week, robots may be unbagged for up to 15 hours a week, in time increments of no less than 1.5 hours and no greater than 3 hours (noted on bag-and-tag form), with the exception of recognized demonstrations which may run for up to 5 hours per unbag per day but count against the total allowed for the week (and appropriate documentation should be provided to inspectors--photo, signature of key FIRST person who was present on the lockup form--keep it mild here, just to show that there was actually something going on as far as demos and it wasn't just a workday). All work is allowed.

The intent is to strike a balance between robot work and the rest of "life"--take a week to catch up, then you get some time to work on the robot.

Or, here's a novel approach: Put the robot in a crate and ship it...


That being said, I like the hard stop.