[craigbutcher]

At the last regional while talking to kids from various teams it seemed clear to me that more than one or two teams were not following the development rules. It looks like there has been a lot of fabrication, testing, and assembly going on outside of the window. Two kids told me they thought the rules allowed them to fabricate entire new assemblies and bring them in so they could bolt onto the robot and go, another thought it was OK if you disassembled the assemblies and just reassembled them on the practice day. One thought you had to use only store bought parts but you could practice fabricating assemblies and were OK so long as you did all the actual work on Thursday.

Our understanding was you can't even cut a piece of tubing to length for the robot between matches--all you were allowed to do was cut it so it would fit in your car. In fact, you weren't even supposed to work on code. Could you order a custom fabbed part from an external source? Probably not. But it was clear that a number of kids thought lots of things were all right.

Maybe my understanding was too stringent. Am I really upset? I don't think so, really. Even though as a rookie team we certainly could have used the extra time for design and testing and learning, it wasn't the fixit window that kept us from winning a regional! The robots from the experienced teams really were terrific!

The kids I talked to from other teams didn't act as though they thought they were breaking any rules. They were clearly committed to First principles and were in it for the game. And it makes no sense to knowingly cheat anyway. What does it mean to win a tennis match if all your own shots are "in" ?

I am, though, a little disappointed. Could it really be that there is so much confusion about what is allowed?