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Originally Posted by Pat Major
Speaking of baseball how about this curve ball, why not have the referees signal by raising an arm that a robot is in the loading station and it is safe for the team to remove a tetra. That way the team can keep trying to position themselves in the zone until the referee signals. No arguments over whether you were in or not, no red flags, you may not touch the tetra until his hand is raised. Assumes that we have a referee at each of the four referee loading stations
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You would need 8 refs just to signal in or out. That's a lot of refs, and they aren't watching the overall match. The only issue I would see is that a ref's attention can be pulled away for a potentially "long" amount of time if he has to stare at your robot waiting for it to get "in" the loading zone properly. Even if that ref is assigned to watch that robot, I still think it could be an issue with watching other overall activities. And I personally wouldn't expect a ref to be my "in/out" identifier throughout an entire match. It compromises his safety if he's not watching what else is going on, and then the team gets frustrated with the ref because he's not signaling immediately if the robot is "in".
It's not the ref's responsibility to direct you "into" the loading zone, it's the team's responsibility. Though, it would take away the penalties for "retrieving a tetra while not in the zone" (not that I'm opposed to that!). But while it is the team's responsibility to follow the rules, this particular rule should be defined differently so that it will be clear to ALL people when you are in/out of the zone.
I like the suggestion for making the "in" zone to be
touching with robot base or being in the
3d space 6" above the triangle. We are all logical enough to know what is 6" above the triangle to avoid argument calls - 6" allows for your drive base to be "hovering" inside the zone. But it prevents robots from reaching their long arm into the higher 3d space from 10ft away, that's not really "safe". I think touching and allowing 3d space of 6" height be to considered "in"
seems to encompass the intent of the original rule.
It was a very good point about "straddling" the triangle - where you can use pneumatics to be in and out, without ever moving the robot. To me, that doesn't seem like that was the intent of the rule. But if they were tricky and thought that would be an innovative design to get around having to physically move, then...i guess ok.. But it seems like all the interpretations to the unclear rule have been such that you had to touch the triangle, or be "obviously" in the triangle. The ideas above seem like it would encompass that pretty easily, without being unfair to those who designed their robot to the original, unclear rule. Having zip ties and skirts to touch if you're straddling, just seems silly to require because it does risk safety of refs and allows for arguments over penalty calls.