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Originally Posted by Pat Major
Four referees woud do. We do not need them at the human players side because of the human players mats.
A referee under the current system has to watch to see if the robot is in the loading station, he would be watching the same thing.
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The HP can still place a tetra on a robot that is not "in" the LZ by jumping off his mat prematurely. He'll just get a penalty. So either way, the team has to know when they're "in" the LZ. Sure if we just wanted it for auto side, then yeah 4.
I suppose a ref would need to be relatively focused on a robot swooping through the auto side, since being "in" and then out can happen quickly. But, it could
potentially make the ref focus on just that robot for longer periods of time than he normally would need to, if a team can't get their robot in the zone 1st, 2nd, try, they will expect the ref to give them an immediate signal as soon as they do get in- which means he has to be focused on them. It may even require the ref to get down on his knees to look, which is why i don't like the "purely touching" rule because it may not always be "obvious", like the other statement made.
I still think it's not the responsibility of the ref to do us a favor in letting us know that we're "in" the zone. The ref has a ton of other responsibilities as it is. But hay - if the refs wanted to do it and FIRST allowed it, cool. But I wouldn't want to have to rely on them to do so, simply because I don't think it's fair to the refs. There
could also be inconsistency between refs in doing this - even though there
shouldn't be, but on the same token, there could also be inconsistency in the way they make any call. I would think it could be lessened by a clearer defined rule.
What woulda been cool is if there were sensor pads (like mentioned by someone else) associated with a red light that everyone could see, so they knew if the robot was in or out. That may be similar to a ref raising his hand, but instead takes burden off the ref. That would help eliminate arguments over the "interference rule" if other teams couldn't see they were in, as well as any other arguments of being in or out. Oh well.
Maybe FIRST will take into consideration some of the reasonable/feasible suggestions put forth, which don't seem to change the intent of the rule, or make things unfair for certain teams.