[Kims Robot]

I believe it is legal to steal tetras as long as you don't harm the other robot in the process. We had five of the Finger Lakes Regional Judges at our scrimmage and they watched a match where XCats plucked a tetra off the top of East High's robot without ever touching or harming the robot. They never discussed any penalties regarding that.

I would think that this is something teams wouldnt want to do in qualification, since your score depends on the losing team, so you want them to score... but I can see it happening more often in the actual elimination rounds.

I would say the team has to use their judgement as to how easy it would be to take the tetra without harming the other robot. For example, East's robot had the tetra just stacked on top of a flipper (that flipped the tetras on the goals), so when Xcats grabbed it, it just came right off the top of the robot, without ever interacting with that robot. If they were to try to steal it from a robot that speared or grasped tetras, it might be a different story.