Quote:
Originally Posted by ollien
I was contemplating this on my ride home today. At NYC, an inspector told me about a robot that was DQd because they ran their fan after they were disabled. This got me thinking. Though the RoboRIO and legal motor controllers will not function when the robot is in a DISABLED state, provided no other control system rules were violated, is it technically legal, regardless of if it's physically possible, to have an actuator move while the robot is DISABLED? I can't find a rule explicitly stating this one way or the other. The best I can find is the definition of DISABLED: "a state in which a ROBOT has been commanded by the Driver Station to deactivate all outputs." Perhaps this would be in violation of G1?
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A fan, as in a cooling fan? Yes, it's possible for those to run when the 'bot is disabled. I've seen Talon fans wired to the Talons' power inputs run while the robot was disabled(this was a practice robot, not competition). As for legality, I'm not sure. I know the head ref makes the decision, but I would say that a team should not be disqualified over a spinning fan unless it poses a fairly significant safety hazard. A warning might be in order, though, since nothing should be moving when disabled. The maybe disqualification if they refuse to fix it(or at least acknowledge it if they can't easily fix it).
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