[Bharat Nain]

I was thinking of a situation. Lets suppose that Team X has a bot and their arm mechanism which weighs a lot goes haywire and keeps breaking on the field. Lets say in match 123 they finally hang successfully and they're all happy about it. When they try to get their robot off the bar it breaks and falls on one of the kids/referees/someone around and breaks their head. I feel in a situation as such the teams should be allowed to work on their robot in the hotels or so because more than anything else this means safety. We are not at a corporate level thing as yet, and shouldn't fear penalties for such things. Since we are high school kids I think we should be allowed for situations like above.

However, to level the playing field, I don't think its ok to work on the robot after the ship date. For a penalty I would suggest not letting them participate in a few rounds rather than just stop them from going to a regional. I say this because maybe not all the kids on the team were for it and the other half of the team were filled with junk heads and evil minds who could only care about winning a competition(If you just wanted to play, enjoy and learn then I am sure you wouldn't go crazy and build past the 6 weeks). And then, I think the embarrassment that they've violated a rule is by itself a punishment. I also think they should be punished or such only if the rules state so clearly.

If you have the resources, then its good to practice and experiment making new parts. And if its something good, you can use it on the robot(of course re-make it at the competition, but now since you have it drawn and stuff and you know how to make it it should not be a hard to make it). By making new parts and experimenting with parts kids on the team learn more and in turn inspires them more, which is the goal of FIRST.