[Kevin Kolodziej]

I fully understand the safety guidelines that the "rule" is based on. That having been said, this is why I have a problem with the ruling that was being made at Midwest:

Robots were being disabled for breaking the plane, not being in an unsafe position. Some may ask what the difference is. I have a perfect example. In our last qualifying match, we were attempting to score on our home center goal (we were in position 2, so the goal and robot was right in front of us). The way we score is we lift and rotate, then score. We don't lift or rotate until we come up to the goal for stability reasons. When we got to the goal, an opponent came in and started to pin us...then backed off. We couldn't get out enough to lift and rotate without swinging the corner of the tetra over our heads (just the corner). The way our grabber works is that it hooks in two places at the bottom of the tetra - if the tetra were to get knocked off, it falls onto one of the hooks. No matter how we would have been hit, there would have been no way for the tetra to fall over the glass onto our heads. Regardless, I figured we would be disabled if we did so, so I told our driver to not lift and rotate unless the robot could be moved away from the wall. We could not push the opponent out of the way or lift...so we weren't getting pinned, but we couldn't go up without being called on a safety violation that didn't exist. Afterwards I confirmed with a referee that my thoughts on the matter were correct.

That was a very frustrating situation to be in because of a rule that doesn't actually exist.

Just my two cents...take them or leave them.

Kev