[shamuwong]

As a driver for Team 469, I would like to share the events from my point of view. I appreciate the judges' efforts to keep IRI a fun event for all, and I do not have any hard feelings towards any of them for making that call. However, I had a few problems with some of the judging.

The first incident that got us called for "spearing" was when we went for a 2x ball that was on the platform. There was a capped small goal right in front of our control station, and a robot hanging that was covered in 1" nylon webbing with large gaps in it. In an attempt to gingerly grab the ball, one of our grippers on our arm slipped through the gaps. I can't tell if we clamped down on them, but I saw that we were breaking the surface of their robot, made sure our grippers were open, and told our driver to carefully back up. When the call was made, I was unsure what we did to get the warning, as I did not see anything wrong with our actions.

The final call, which got us disqualified, was also unintended for damage. After dumping balls off at the human player station, we saw 269 go for the hang and attempted to stop them by pushing them down with our arm. The grippers were open, so I closed them on the way to the platform to avoid damage. Unfortunately, they closed as we got there onto 269's arm. Trying to avoid any entaglement, I opened them, and our driver backed off. I was angry with the call as I tried my best to not damage other robots playing defense with a defensive mechanism, yet got called for trying to intentionally damage 269.

What made me a bit more flustered was what seemed like a double standard. Apparently, they did not feel that having a robot fly from halfway across the field straight into us (twice!) repeatedly was not intended to damage us (and I'm sure it wasn't, but we got called on it), but it broke a weld on our frame. Nor was a gripper going straight through our back door system spearing (I believe this was unintentional, but we got called on it also), or a robot intentionally grabbing ours by the frame entaglement.

Those are the events from my point of view. You can agree or disagree, but I'm sure we can both accept that Andy Baker is a great referee, even if he did make some calls against us, as it shows that he cares about teams and not just scores. I commend him for his efforts to keep the amount of repairs low and fun high. I just think there were a couple errors made. I look forward to next year's IRI competition. Anyways, back to the topic. Let's not make this about 469. Andy Baker is the best ref because...