[meaubry]

I would have to agree that this is "the" topic this year. I am certain that every team will abide by whatever rule the refs decide to call. Yes, some will re-think, re-design, and re-build part of their robot to better avoid getting unwanted penalties.
And many will argue and take the same attitudes that have been observed as part of this thread. Whenever a human being is asked to determine if a rule is being broken (no matter how obvious it is) someone will have a different perspective as to whether or not the rule was broken.
In this case, Jason makes some good points. The baseball analogy is somewhat questionable as the opposing team must challenge in a speciifc way that a player missed touching a base. A different baseball example that might occur this year is the "phantom tag" at second while executing a double play. Umpires use judgement to determine touching / tagging out a runner all of the time, even the best make mistakes and sometimes arguements occur.
Why put someone in that position when it could be avoided? It's hard enough to get people to volunteer to be a ref, it won't be any easier when they are told that matches may be determined by a spilt second decision.
What is "blatently obvious to one person is not to another" - I challenge anyone to determine if a robot moving towards the loading station touches a tetra a split second before or a split second after it touches the hdpe triangle loading zone. It's pretty darn hard to watch 2 things that are not right next to each other at the same time, no matter how far away you are.
Oh yeah, one otherthing - Do ties go to the runner?