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Originally Posted by DeepWater
It is pretty simple. If there are parts inside or outside of the 28" x 38" starting foot print of the robot that are between the floor and 8.5" up that are not within 10 degrees of vertical and can touch another robot it is in violation of the wedge rule <R04>. Flop down doors that can come in contact with another bot are illegal unless they are somehow shielded so that other bots can't contact the non-vertical part of the door/ramp. There is no stipulation in the rules about the "wedges" orientation. Inverted angles not within 10 degrees of vertical are still wedges.
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The nice folks at FIRST need to read their own rules because that's simply not what they say. The original rule is simply chock full of really important conditional statements that they're ignoring, so I'd expect for them to change their answers to those questions or to strike out and rewrite rule R04 in the next team update. I've changed our design somewhat to ensure that the leading face of the robot is vertical or, at worst, inaccessible to other machines. Our ball dumping ramp is horizontal at 8.5" above the floor which is a bit absurd with respect to its function, but a necessary evil.
In any case, that still does not prove Team1591's assertion that ball manipulation devices deployed outside the starting footprint are illegal. Not all ball manipulation devices are wedge shaped and rule R04 is wholly separate from rules regarding the use and location of a ball manipulation device as a shooting mechanism.
I'm starting to get curious about when FIRST needed to start shoving gracious professionalism down our throats in the form of rules -- it seems to be a bit contrary to all that they've ever said about how things work.