[EricH]

Originally Posted by Hagar Topeka 1

Here's a question: What if you designed the gripper(s) on your "god-bot" to include a rotating mechanism such that the robot was capable of swinging itself on the tower? Is that use of an "active mechanism" if you intentionally use it to provide momentum to the falling balls?

Technically... the contacting part is not in motion relative to the robot, so it wouldn't be illegal.

Practically... Your entire robot is intentionally an active mechanism, so if I was your friendly neighborhood ref, I'd call it. Not to mention calling you for field damage if the tower went over.

Will you be penalized if your robot, attempting to climb, initiates some accidental falling action, its erratic swinging then shooting a ball and scoring you a point?

You're going up, slip/swing, and somehow hit a ball into a goal. Not intentional, so no penalty. Now, if you did that every single match, I'd start calling it intentional. At that point, the penalty would depend on exactly how you did it whether it was a penalty or a card.

In addition, no one has commented on an earlier post which questioned the appropriate definition of "above the bumper zone," posing the question, "what if you flip your robot and have a mechanism on the bottom?"

If you flip your robot and have your standard kicker mechanism do the hitting, I'd start calling it. Below the bumper zone? Yes, before the match. If the bumper zone is defined from the active bottom of the robot on a flat surface, that's definitely out; if it's defined in initial configuration and remains the same way the entire match, it depends. That's a Q&A one, but I think you'd get the same result as if a soccer player began running on his hands and using his feet to hold the ball above his head.