Quote:
Originally Posted by Abrakadabra
A Yellow card is meant to be a warning - there is no immediate penalty, but it is a strong incentive to not do it again. Giving an "extra strike" as Greying Jay suggests would be difficult to track unless FIRST goes to a 3 card system.
I am of the school that believes no code should be run on the field unless it has been duly checked out on the practice field, and if that can't be done before a match, then you just have to forego the potential auto points until you can. Of course, there are always things that can go wrong due to unforeseen special circumstances (see 3467's whirling dervish can grabbers from last year), but the Yellow card warning would be a strong incentive to figure out why it happened (as we did) and make sure it never happens again.
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This is where I have to interject. To start, my opinion on this issue: If it's a repeated autonomous, the head referee/lead FTA should ask the team to investigate other ways to deal with the situation, possibly even going as far as to make recommendations himself/herself. Additionally, they should also expect, but not require, the team to investigate help with it's autonomous. While I don't believe that teams should run into the wall in autonomous, I don't find it a serious enough issue (especially with velcro on the driver station) to warrant a card.
Now to my point: not every event has a practice field, and not every team has/can afford sensors. For example, there was no practice field at Columbus this past weekend. In this case, teams did not even have a chance to test autonomous modes. Additionally, there were a couple of teams that had autonomous modes that ran into the driver station. These teams were generally rookies. While I'm not saying that all rookies cannot afford sensors, many cannot. As a result, I do not feel like there can be any expectation for teams to not run into the driver station wall in autonomous. The rules cannot change just because a team is a rookie; what is applied to one must be applied to all. Would I like them to test it? Of course, the less violent, the better for everyone. But I don't think it should be required.
Tele-op, however, is rather straightforward; if a team continues to hit the driver station, a red card is completely warranted.