[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Richard

My personal opinion is that pointing intended to assist a competing team is not sportsmanlike, and should be discouraged. I applaud the action Paul took to stop it.

However, my effort to find a rule against it in the 2010 Manual (Game Rules or Tournament Rules) has been unsuccessful so far. A quick CD search turned up this post by Dave last year, which suggests that an explicit rule of this sort did not exist in 2009, but had been used in the past.

Back in 2003, there was an incident at Pittsburgh where a team member was directing his drive team from the second-level balcony of the arena. Instead of testing my memory, I'll just quote myself (from a 2005 thread):

Originally Posted by Tristan Lall

I remember one particular case in 2003 where a team was disqualified for allowing a mentor to use hand signals to indicate their robot's position, as observed from an elevated position in the opposite-side bleachers. The rules-based justification was, I believe, that he was acting as a coach, and was therefore outside of the driving station, was not wearing a badge, and there was already a coach in the driver's station.

Under current rules, that justification would be invalid. (In fact, even under 2003 rules, it was a big stretch that probably shouldn't have been imposed.)

I'm not sure if there was any doubt about the motivation behind the gestures being used at IRI (because it was just out-of-frame in the webcast), but at least in the case of the Pittsburgh incident, it was very clear what was going on: in 2003, it was one person (who I believe was identifiable as a member of a team in the current match), standing alone at the edge of the balcony, aligned with the centreline of the field, gesturing calmly in a manner that correlated to the motion of one robot.

Specifically prohibiting strategic communications originating outside the arena would prevent good-faith mistakes (among teams that read the rules), while still giving the officials the option to penalize blatant actions, when observed. Realistically, it wouldn't even be important to actively detect violators, because teams would be crazy to try it, knowing that it's an offence that could get them penalized or disqualified. Even if not enforceable in borderline cases, it's still a net benefit.

Now on the other hand, it's not specifically against the current rules. Should we care when people direct their alliance from outside the arena? You hear stories about baseball teams stealing signs using strategically-placed observers (or cameras) and signalling devices—it's sometimes considered objectionable, and sometimes considered brilliant, but isn't against the rules. By choosing not to rule against it, FIRST could steer us in that direction, if desired. Of course, for every measure, there's a countermeasure—teams might employ distractions (like making noise and waving things at a free-throw shooter in basketball) to confuse opposing drivers. All that stuff already exists as part of other sporting traditions, and it wouldn't be a stretch to see it in FRC.

We in the FIRST community can say what we think about these strategies, but relying on peer pressure to govern behaviour isn't going to settle the issue. With a new rulebook every year, FIRST has ample opportunity to address this as they see fit, and thereby shape the community's norms.

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

I hope this concludes any conversation about this topic.