Rubbin' is Racin'

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by rsegrest

And I have had this happen to my team. An intentional flip that wasn't called during a practice match by a team that was playing highly aggressively. And afterwards they wanted to shake hands and act like it was all in the spirit of the game.

We've knocked over a couple of robots in the past, but never ever intentionally -- once was a straight up pushing match, once involved defense on the ramp in Aim High. (We were also knocked over intentionally our rookie year, and then had our drive-train rammed. The opposing team was not penalized).

If a robot is knocked over from pushing within the bumper zone, it probably *is* a design flaw. Designing for low CG is extremely important! Our 2010 robot would literally bounce back to upright if knocked over violently, like a Weeble (tm), and just in case we had outriggers (that we never ended up using).

This is a physical game, and robots need to be designed accordingly... I imagine a lot of crushed ball intakes this year, just from people fighting over the balls on the floor.

...that said, the rules for contact should be enforced if they exist, and shouldn't exist if they're not enforced -- no matter what they are!