[eugenebrooks]

Perhaps I am being more concerned about safety than is reasonable, but breaking the plane of the wall in front of the operators station seems like a suitable stopping point for the infracting robot and the stop should be for the rest of the match. Any referee that disables a robot that takes an unsafe action will get cudos from me.

I'll let the refs sort out whether or not a shoving robot should share some of the "penalty liability," but what is unsafe should be responded to without delay. It is only the failure to disable a robot that breaks the plane of the wall in front of the operator station, or breaks the plane of the edge of the field by swinging its arm where people could be, that is of concern to me, and this concern is not for fairness reasons...


In reality, there should be some sort of barrier in place and contact with this barrier should be cause for stopping a robot "for safety reasons."
Similarly, there have been close calls at the loader stations. Designing a barrier here, similar to the barrier used around the "10 point balls" last year, would have been in order. With such a barrier a robot that swings its outside of the edge of the field would contact the barrier before it hit a students head, and should be disabled when it does so.

When it comes to safety, I think that we need to step back from the issues of what the penalities should be and whether or not "the unsafe operation of a robot is over." The robot that is being operated in an unsafe manner should be shut down. Students will get it, and will be more careful in the next match. This is as it should be...