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Unread 21-04-2008, 23:09
casualobserver casualobserver is offline
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Re: Lesson Learned: The Negative

I found that a disappointing aspect of the competition this year was the lack of enforcement of certain rules. In particular, the 80" rule, perhaps the biggest constraint this year in design was rarely enforced throughout the competition. Teams were occasionally penalized when they fell over and ended up being far out of the limit, however some designs were, when functioning normally, outside this limit. The fact that a yellow sticker was placed on the inspection tag, alerting the refs to the fact that the robot was capable of extending past the 80" was not enough. Rules like this, which are designed to specifically create a difficult design constraint (and thus make the game more complex and challenging) should be enforced on the highest order, as they are in essences why we play the game. No one expects to get away with a 140 pound robot that has a 40"X50" base. However, once the match starts, it seems that this concern for playing the game the way it was designed is lost. A team whose robot was ~87" long by diagonal measurement during normal (not fallen-over) game play, was never once penalized during a match. This leads to a more general disappointment in FIRST.

If/when such things happen, teams who are aware of this are put in a strange situation. Is it GP to report a rule violation by another team? Is there a way to do so that is GP, as well as officially acceptable? Can it be done efficiently? How will it affect the other team? Such questions are raised which have no real answer in the FIRST community/competition. An exception, Team 190 (Team 190 Legality Thread). Their robot had a unique hurdling technique which eventually was determined to be illegal after 2 regionals of acceptable play. There was a discussion on CD about their design and legality and it was all handled with care and professionalism. However, this is not usually the case, and a fear often arises that silences teams because they may be 'black-listed', if you will, for reporting these types of things. I feel it is FIRST's responsibility to design a system where a team can raise a legitimate concern about another team's robot without fear of any tarnish on their reputation. Centrally, it calls the question, "Is it alright to not report cheating?" No one wants to be the team that is always telling on other teams, but it is simply not fair to teams who took into consideration all of the rules when designing their robot.
On that note, those are my 2 cents, take them as you will. The season was otherwise great! I look forward to next year's game, and to a time when such situations will be resolved in a gracious and professional manner.
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