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Posted by P.J. Baker.

Engineer on team #177, Bobcat Robotics, from South Windsor High School and International Fuel Cells.

Posted on 7/19/99 6:15 AM MST


In Reply to: you make the call... posted by Joe Johnson on 7/16/99 5:43 PM MST:



I was coaching the Bobcat (team 177) during the elimination round matches against 157 and 23 that caused us to get booed. Our strategy was within the rules of the game and in the spirit of FIRST.

Rule V5 states: Strategies aime solely at the destruction, damage, tipping over, or entanglement of opponent's robots are not in the spirit of the FIRST robotics competition and wil not be allowed. Accidental tipping is not considered damaging and will be allowed at the discretion of the referees.

Our strategy was to prevent scoring by holding down the basket of the Aztech. With our arm inside, but not entangled with, their basket, they could not raise their floppies. This left them with little choice but to try to get away from the Bobcat. When they tried to do this in the first match, they were tipped over. If they had stayed put, they would have stayed upright, but stil would have lost the match. I think that the booing occured in the second match, when it became obvious that we were going to use the same strategy. It didn't work this time though, and we lost. We won the third, and moved onto the quarterfinal against 126 and 45.

We used the same strategy in that round, but lost 2-0. In the quarter final round, I think that we were knocked over by 126 at least three times while trying to hold down their basket, much to the delight of the crowd. Holding down a basket put us in just as precarious a position as it did the robot we were holding down. The difference between the our first round win and our second round loss was most likely Colleen, she was just too good for us, again. I thought that all five elimination matches we played were very exciting and a lot of fun to watch. I think that means that they were in the spirit of FIRST.


As far as being close to the line goes, we were but we did not cross it. After the first match against 157/23 they protestes to the refs and the refs came to speak with us. They said it was fine to hold down the basket, but that if they managed to raise their basket we would have to leave them alone unless they were trying to mount the puck. We considered this to be the laying down of the law, and were not going to break it.