I guess I would look at the e-stop/robot disabled from a slightly different point of view - If I were a team starting to play defence in the alliance zone with 3 robots and I did not want to get a penalty for having more than 2 operable robots on defence at any given time I would do my best to insure I took an action whereby the Head Ref would not have to ask him/her self "Are they Disabled?" and the answer should have been an immediate YES!
Now, what action could that be?
1. Hope the ref knows that since my robot is not upright it must be
disabled - right?
2. Have my robot catch on fire/emit copious amounts of smoke and shutting down the match (used a couple of times at GLR) thereby avoiding a penalty
or
3. Use the e-stop for my robot (not the alliance member on the right) and give a clear concise signal that my robot is disabled
I would vote for #3 - #3 my lord (
oops sorry have Shrek on my mind).
When taking this action the corresponding light over the team station starts to blink which among other things means that the robot is disabled.
A riskier path to take is for the driver to assume that since the robot is not upright that must mean to the Head Ref that the robot is disabled.
At GLR I saw a robot that was tipped over during auto and was the 3'rd robot when on defence. I gave the alliance a grace period to see if they would disable the robot and luckily for the alliance one of the running robots went to the other side of the field to wait.
I said luckily because I did not know for sure if the robot was really disabled because when offense for this alliance was ran the robot righted itself and continued to play the game. If the team did not send a running robot over to the other side of the field I would have awarded offside points and would have been correct to do so especially when the robot joined in when offence was ran and thru it's actions was clearly
NOT disabled.
-Per last nights head ref discussion. If the team playing defence had not sent a running robot over to the other side of the field during defence and given that the "tipped over" was righted whe it was their turn for offfence they could have been awarded a 40 point offside penalty.
Choose wisely grasshopper