[DougHogg]

I would like to congratulate all the teams at the Silicon Valley Regional. This is Team 980's first year competing at this event, and I have to say that it is a truly great regional. The singing and dancing made it feel like a huge, wonderful party. The integrity and gracious professionalism of the teams made me feel that I had found many new friends.

I would particularly like to acknowledge Teams 1097, 852, and 368 for their gracious professionalism after their apparent win over our alliance in the first match of the finals turned out to be a loss because of a 30 point penalty. You played your heart out in that match and showed great spirit, beating our alliance 47 to 30 without the penalty. I intend to watch our videos of that match, because I think that it sets a very high standard of excellence in strategy and play. You had a great alliance. Who knows what would have happened had there been a third match. We changed our strategy after the first match, and I am sure that you would have made changes in your strategy after the 2nd. But my main point is that even with the disappointment of losing, your teams displayed the highest level of gracious professionalism. (Team 368, you proved that you truly deserved your Chairman's Award.) Our team would be honored if we could partner with each of your teams in the future.

As for the referee ruling, I think that it is important for us to keep in mind the overall importance of safety and the fact that referees are entrusted with the responsibility of keeping the contestants, field handlers and spectators safe. It is a very important job, because quite honestly, we wouldn't have a FIRST competition for very long at all if the referees didn't do that job and do it extremely well.

This year, FIRST has made a point of stating the Safety must be the highest priority. I am quite sure that this was stated with very good reason. We must all be very safety conscious if we wish our competition to continue. According to the head referee's post in another Silicon Valley Regional thread, the referees felt that an unsafe condition occurred in that first finals match and so they awarded a 30 point penalty to the #1 alliance. On the other hand, I am totally sure that no team in the Silicon Valley Regional intended to create an unsafe situation, but it happened anyway. So at this point, I think that all teams can learn an extremely important lesson from this match. As we go on to other events this year and in years to come, we have to keep safety firmly in mind at all times.

Those who remember our 13 foot-long arm swinging out over the referees heads at the Chatsworth scrimmage (and the valid disqualifications for same) in 2003 may get a chuckle that a member of our team has the nerve to post about safety. But we took that to heart and made many safety improvements that made our robot safe. We also pointed out areas where our arm would go if all our safety features failed which they never did again in competition. (While practicing at our shop, that very same arm one day rose up but didn't swing. As the arm's designer approached to find the problem, it suddenly swung and hit him right between the eyes, so even the creators aren't immune to the effects of their creations.)

Getting back to the first finals match at this year's Silicon Valley Regional, I imagine that the referees had the following rules in mind in addition to any other considerations:

<S01> If at any time the ROBOT operation is deemed unsafe, by the determination of the referees, the ROBOT will be disabled for the remainder of the match.

S05> A ROBOT may not impede the placement of TETRAS on the loading structures or the hand-off of a TETRA by a HUMAN PLAYER to a ROBOT. No HUMAN PLAYER or field attendant may be accosted by a ROBOT while placing TETRAS. Violations will result immediate disabling of the offending ROBOT, and disqualification of the alliance.

Would it be valid to disable a blue team if that blue team accidentally accosted a field attendant in the blue loading zone? I would say, "Absolutely" because that action would endanger that attendant and the whole future of the FIRST Robotics Competition. Although it had not occurred to me before, the same can be said for the action that took place in the first SVR finals match (pushing an opponent into a partner who is in the loading zone), even though it was totally unintentional. The fact is that unless we all want to participate in a video-version of FIRST, we have to recognize that we have something special that requires constant alertness to safety on our part so that we get to keep competing with machines interacting with people.

Here's to future generations being able to experience the same joy that we have from the FIRST Robotics Competition, because we (meaning all of us participating in FIRST) kept it safe.

Thanks again to all our partners and opponents at the Silicon Valley Regional. All of you have our highest admiration and respect!

Lastly, thanks to the Silicon Valley Referees for doing a great job and for helping to make sure that all of us got to go home after the event and not to a hospital -- I hate having to go to those places. :-)