Should this have been allowed?

[jvriezen]

Originally Posted by superbotman

The robot was trying to score the square, at the very edge of the scoring pegs and therefore was right next to the human player. The robot turned and the tube ended up between the thrower and the middle of the field, where he was aiming.

If the robot's tube was between the human and midfield, it sounds like the possessed tube was over the lane, which is a lane violation-- perhaps that should have warranted a penalty. Sounds like the robot put the tube in the thrower's throwing path. But I didn't see it, I'm just going by what's described here and the thrower's statement that he had no intent to interfere.

John Vriezen
Team 2530 "Inconceivable"
Mentor, Drive Coach, Inspector

[martin417]

Using a thrown tube as a defensive object to interfere with the opponent attempting to score is allowed within the rules, as is using a robot as a defensive object, within limits. Is it a good strategy? that is debatable. Is it ungracious? I don't think so. As I have stated, this is a competition, you are supposed to COMPETE. If is allowed in the rules, it is OK to do, and therefore cannot be ungracious.

In my opinion, it is dangerous (at Peachtree, on two occasions, teams received red cards for trying this strategy and de-scoring tubes). It was attempted several times on our team, and we just welcomed the tubes and scored them (except the one that deflated after a particularly hard throw at our bot). Here is a video of a HP trying it. Watch at about 38 seconds in.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Duke461

Speaking of which: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I52nJ5bJYkU


But i mean like so many that it would take them a while to get all the tube out of the way

If nothing else poor human player plays have upgraded the comedic potential of the event. Especially on the dry hours of an early Friday afternoon.

[Kims Robot]

Interestingly enough, our Human Player was Yellow Carded at FLR for throwing a tube that hit an opponent robot that was in its zone. If I remember right, the robot didn't even have a tube.

I believe <T06> was what it was sited under, although that's a very general all encompassing... refs can make decisions needed type rule... Being that it was a week 1 event, my guess is that it just wasn't clear whether it was legal and within the spirit of the rules or not.

Im glad to see an actual ruling (at least by the Q&A).

[ghandler94]

Originally Posted by Timz3082

Hello, I am the team leader of team 3082, and I have a question about a situation that occurred during a semifinals match causing our team to loose. During the last 40 seconds of the match, we had completed on logo and put up two of the three tubes needed for the logo on our left side, all we needed was the square. We had that tube and were attempting to place it and while we were releasing it, a tube thrown by the human player knocked it out of the claw and away from the peg making us unable to score the piece in the final amount of time and still deploy the minibot, so we were unable to complete the logo. After the match we talked with the head ref who said "It was inadvertent" which is why they did not call the team on it and issue a red card. But aren't all penalties and red cards inadvertent? The strange thing here is that this directly caused us to looses the tiebreaker match and not make it to finals. This was heartbreaking for us, and we were wondering if this ruling was correct or should have been looked over differently. It is apparent that first by all means wants to prevent human actions on the field from preventing scoring as shown by tubes which land on the tower. Is there anything first can do for us? This was very sad for the team to be the alliance captain of the 3rd alliance, yet not win any awards. I know this might not make total sense, but I was wondering what everyone else thought the ruling should be on such a devastating move.

I talked to a judge in D.C. about this. It is not illegal UNLESS it disobeys the rule of entanglement. So, essentially, unless the tube gets stuck on the robot, it is LEGAL.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by ghandler94

I talked to a judge in D.C. about this. It is not illegal UNLESS it disobeys the rule of entanglement. So, essentially, unless the tube gets stuck on the robot, it is LEGAL.

I'm doubting that entanglement reasoning. That should only apply to a robot and robot actions. The point there is to keep robots from getting entangled with each other. I know it doesn't apply this year, but in 2007 it was perfectly legal to throw tubes on robots with the expectation they'd get caught. The gdc expected teams to design robots that weren't vulnerable to this.