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Originally Posted by Richard
Dave, the suggestion is not that teams be required to be inspected before practicing. (Although that requirement can be imposed at the discretion of the lead robot inspector: see <R112> on p. 29 of the 2007 FRC Manual.)
The suggestion was that teams be required to be inspected before entering the Fill Line as described in Option 3 above. |
I understood your suggestion the first time, and my response stands. Incidentally, I believe you have misrepresented R112. R112, as I read it, says that
IF a robot is inspected and fails,
THEN the lead inspector, at his or her discretion, can allow/disallow the robot from practicing (presumably with a reason such as safety, not just because they felt like it). It does not say that the lead inspector can dictate that teams must be inspected before practicing. In fact, there is another rule (3.5.2) stating the opposite: "Teams may practice on the first day of the event without completing the inspection process, however, if field personnel deem a robot unsafe, it will not be allowed to practice until the unsafe condition is fixed." So, an un-inspected robot can be prohibited from practicing if the field personnel consider it unsafe, which makes sense of course. Neither of these two rules give the lead inspector the right to impose a general rule require that teams be inspected before practicing (again, this is as I read it).
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Originally Posted by Mike Betts
Likewise, I have no hard evidence but wonder why "few, if any, teams are inspected"? IMHO, many teams would be able to go through inspection early on Thursday and do not because there is no incentive to do so.
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I assumed someone would ask this. I know few teams are inspected early on Thursday, but I haven't necessarily noticed many teams who are actually ready for inspection. What I usually see is that just about everyone is working on, tweaking, etc. their robots, and that the vast majority of teams just aren't ready for inspection. Is there anything wrong with that? Personally, I don't think so - there's no rule saying you must arrive at an event prepared to be inspected.
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If we can convince teams to complete inspection early, it will help the inspectors to identify teams in trouble and render assistance.
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Mike, I know that getting teams inspected early is a hot topic among inspectors. However, I don't see why we need to add additional punishment to teams who are not. There are many reasons that a team may not be ready to be inspected early in the day, including:
- Practice matches are the first chance to test out on a real field, revealing what they need to change
- Known to be overweight
- Still working out the bugs in the <fill in robot appendage here>
- Had to disassemble part of the robot to fit in the crate, and now it needs to be put back together
- Repairing damage that occurred during shipping
- Repairing damage that occurred at a previous competition
All of these things are legitimate (and legal) activities for practice day. For several of the reasons above, giving a team a chance at an earlier practice (via fill-in) may actually get them ready for inspection sooner. Are teams taking a risk by being inspected late? Absolutely: there's already a rule in place stating that a team must be inspected before competing in qualification matches. It seems, to me, that saying "You can't fill in a spot in practice match #1 because you're not inspected" is an attempt to change the nature of practice day. To me, a rule like this is saying "You need to show up ready to inspect, and if you don't then you'll be punished by not being allowed to fill in." I guess my point is that a team which has a status of "un-inspected" on practice day, while greatly hated by the inspectors, is not in any way a rules violation, so this seems like an effort to change that.
Theoretically, if every team showed up at a competition and was ready to be inspected (and had to be inspected before being a fill-in team), what would happen? I highly doubt even the most experienced inspecting crew would be able to get them all checked off before practice rounds began.