[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

In light of the Q&A, a robot wired with aluminum will almost certainly be judged as breaking rule <S01> due to unsafe design.

I agree with Alan that a robot wired with aluminum would be unsafe and would therefore violate <S01>. However, as written, <S01> is enforceable by the head referee, not the robot inspectors. Some head referees may choose to delegate that authority. To address Mike DuBreiul's question: if you were on my inspection team in St. Louis, I'd ask you to let me know if you see a robot with aluminum wiring, and to tell the team it is unsafe. And I'd let the head referee know about the safety risk.

Every head referee I have worked with has given safety on the field very high priority. In one case (2005 STL finals) the head referee called for an on-field inspection of a robot drivetrain unit that appeared to have become unsafe. Based on the inspector's recommendation, he required the team to disable the suspect motor before proceeding with the next round.

We all need to thank Mike Betts for the fine summary on aluminum wiring that he provided above in this thread.

Back to Alan's point: aluminum wiring is just one example of how a "catch-all" safety rule helps put some common sense about good engineering practice into our design thinking.