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Originally Posted by Dave Flowerday
That's an interesting problem with this rule. If FIRST indicates that a robot which "falls" to a 38x60 base then gets the 38x60 base to touch the loading zone with, how is that any different from a robot which "folds out" to have a similar size base, as I assume Chris' robot does? I find the two concepts to be pretty much the same thing, so based on their current ruling I'd say that the next logical answer is that robots which fall over cannot use their 38x60 base to touch, making it almost impossible to be "in" the loading zone. Now, common sense should take over here and say that that's ridiculous and pretty much dooms teams who went with that design. But if you allow teams to increase their loading zone contact by falling over at the start but not teams who deploy outriggers, isn't that a bit unfair?
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Dave,
You hit the nail on the head on this one. I was just coming here to post this, but you beat me to it. By the FIRST interpretation, many past robots would be useless. To further complicate the problem, the fact that you have to reach very high with a heavy object may have lead a lot of teams to do the fall-over thing in order to increase their footprint so they are less tippy. What do they do? It would have been nice to know this interpretation at the beginning of the design period, not after the robots have been built.
The short answer as to why we don't retract our wheelie bars to load: it's becuase they don't retract - they're one-time deploy devices that lock in place once down. We'd add an actuator but that would put us overweight. We would have saved weight elsewhere, but it's a little late now.
Lavery et. al. every year says that we should look at the intent of the rule, use common sense, and not be lawyers. That's what we did. The intent of the rule is twofold: 1) safety, 2) to prevent a robot from dropping an anchor on the triangle and then driving around the rest of the field with the protection of being "in the loading zone". Our design DOES NOT violate the "common sense" intent of this rule. They are simple wheelie bars that move with to robot wherever we go. They don't cause a safety issue and they don't stay behind in the loading zone on a tether while we drive around the field.
Furthermore, rule <G12> states that devices that touch the loading zone must not be against the "spirit of the rule". I argue that our wheelie bars are well withing the spirit of the rule. Rule <G12> then states that these devices will then be ordered to be removed before playing in any match. So, does that mean since our wheelie bars are not within the 28x38 footprint and may touch the loading zone, we must remove them before we can play? That must be true since the "spirit of the rule" has now been interpreted to mean 28x38 footprint.
In case anyone didn't catch it, that last paragraph was a bit facetious. My point is that this is getting ridiculous. I think the interpretation would be much better as:
"Any device made solely to extend your reach toward the loading zone is against the spirit of rule <G12> . Any device that is ONLY used to reach out and touch the loading zone is against the spirit of rule <G12>. Any device that is part of the drivetrain, or extended stability mechanisms is okay, providing that the stability mechanisms are not only used at the loading station."