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When I was inspecting last year, I had several ways of making sure the battery was "real". Generally I just had the team turn on the robot to check that the light operated correctly and the other controler settings were correct. Then we'd run over to the scale and weigh the robot, without removing the battery.
Sometimes this was not possible, like during a partial inspection. We would often go through the control system and pnuematics before a team was ready to weigh or while they were working on dumb things like numbers.
If the control system had already been inspected, we'd weigh the robot and then take the battery out and weigh it seperately. There was some variation between batteries, but it should be pretty obvious if a battery was tampered with in a major way. As I recall they varied between 13.5 and 14lbs. Anything outside that range would definitely arouse my curiosity.
There are many ways to "fudge" the rules. But messing with the battery won't help, it will just get you caught. Because the inspectors are looking for it.
If anyone has reliable information about a team that did cheat this way last year, and got away with it. I'd like to hear about it. Especially if it happened at Sacramento, LA, or the Championship.
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Christopher H Husmann, PE
"Who is John Galt?"
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