[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

I had no idea that rule violations are so rampant at FIRST events. You have completely changed my mind about this.

Im thinking now that each team should appoint students and mentors to be unofficial final inspectors, to discreetly check out every other robot at the event to make sure that no team is getting away with anything (all three days).

And Im thinking FIRST should hire certified professional engineers to be inspectors. The amateur inspectors clearly are not catching all the violations.

I shutter to think what would happen to this program if a team won the championship, and they had illegal parts on their robot, and the media got wind of it! Massive lawsuits!

My point was more that I wanted to know if they passed inspection, because I was going to say something to them about it. Then the head inspector realized why I was asking and took it upon himself to speak to the teams.

I thought that using motors that were not in the kit and twice the number of a motor in the kit was pretty obvious. I had also heard other people commenting on the problems because they were quite obvious to many people with several years experience. At some point it one of us had to ask the question, did they pass inspection that way?

Both teams made the necessary changes and competed.

I don't want to get the into the crazy lawyering scenarios that this can cause. We all get the same rules and KOP. Why do some teams not read them?

BTW One team quite clearly mixed up parts from a previous year with the new kit and the swap out for the correct motor took 5 min.