Modifying robot at competition?

[buchanan]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

At the point of that reinspection, all mechanisms that are and were a part of that robot are required to be present. If you're sitting right at 120lbs, you can't remove a 30lb shooter in order to add a 10lb blocker - both the shooter and the blocker would be included as part of the overall weight.

I think this is a reasonable interpretation that ought to be explicit in the rules. Once a mechanism has been used in competition, replacing it with another shouldn't allow you to reinspect as though it never existed. What you've really done is added a new interchangeable mechanism to your robot in addition to the previous one.

We noticed this at the WI regional too, but from a different angle. We brought to the competition a robot with significant shot-blocking capability to begin with. When the improvised blockers started appearing, we didn't see anything wrong with it, but they did dilute what was once a competitive advantage for us. Ad-hoc engineering feels right and in the spirit of what the competition is about, but a line needs to exist somewhere, and the interchangeable mechanism weight limit seems a sensible place to have it.