Quote:
Originally Posted by bobbysq
They could have put in the game manual "No hook and loop material is allowed", although that would seemingly exclude mechanisms using a loop on their rope and a hook on their robot to grab it. I'm guessing if they wanted it banned, they would have done it already since there's no way a test team didn't think of it.
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FIRST is learning from the past.
There are enough fuzzy-ish, non-"velcro" or "hook-and-loop" type materials out there that it would have created another arms race like Can Grabbers or MiniBots. Velcro-style rope climbers are one of the easiest and simplest solutions, and the top teams would dedicate lots of resources to finding the right legal alternative. FIRST had the choice of going down the rabbit hole of trying to regulate what is and isn't velcro for the purposes of being a ROPE, or they could make velcro-style ropes legal, let all teams take the easier route and end up with more robots climbing which is good for everyone.
As mentioned above, they don't want to put in the manual "Velcro is legal" because that opens up the door to conflict with the other rope rules (bumper rules are notorious for being hard to dissect because certain separate rules together imply a requirement, and all must be simultaneously met).
For those of you who are complaining that it's not really rope climbing anymore. We are not tasked with climbing a "rope". We are tasked with climbing a ROPE as defined in the manual. The game challenge is an engineering challenge, with specifications. We're being told what ROPE is.