[Jeff Pahl]

Shipping the batteries would probably be my least favorite. The two batteries caused our crate to be overweight this year. The crate was designed to ship and protect a 120 lb robot, and with a 120 lb robot it comes in just below 400 lbs. With the robot, and 30 lbs of batteries plus controls, it comes in at "Please see the Shepard rep before uncrating". I understand the GDC's line of thinking that it will keep teams from forgetting these two important items (yes, some do) when packing, but I think part of the whole learning process is learning how to make a list of things to pack, and making sure things like the batteries are at the top of that list.

My second least favorite rule is the "no tape" rule. I also understand why this rule is necessary, as there would be some robots that would be completely covered in and held together with duct tape. However, the resonable use of narrow tape to attach wiring to the robot would keep many of them from looking like advertisements for zip-ties, and at least the tape wouldn't have sharp ends poking out to scratch everyone. As an engineer, I believe that it is possible to use tape and it still be "good engineering", but as a robot inspector, I also don't want to have to make that judgement call. I do wish the rule wording in <R35> would not specify "double sided sticky foam" but just "double sided tape" as we use some awesome 3M tape at work that I'd love to be able to do some things with on the robot, but it's not "foam", as it's only a couple of mils thick. One of the things we use it for at work is to hold parts down in the CNC mills. It takes heat or a press to get it to release. Every year it seems that we end up attaching something to the robot using sticky back velcro instead of proper double sided tape, and it just doesn't hold as well. That's not good engineering practice, but the rules force us to do it that way.