Teams that do not bag their robots

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

Bag and Tag violations are interesting from an inspectors point of view. There's a judgement call to be made on how much the team benefited from the infraction. In my case, the team didn't benefit from it at all. In other cases, it may not be so clear cut.

The trouble is, there's immense pressure to let them use the robot, firstly because everyone wants them to play (for many reasons), and secondly because proving that deliberate malfeasance took place is complicated and practically impossible (I don't recall an official standard for refusing a robot due to illegal fabrication practices, nor even a consensus to that effect). The infraction form isn't itself a very big deterrent to the teams that understand the way it's typically used.

I think it would be an improvement if teams would securely submit encrypted archives containing high-quality digital images of the bagged, tagged robot (with serial number visible) every time it's locked up. They would then submit the password any time before their next event. It's not immune to forgery, but at least it makes the bagging forms less critical. (In fact, FIRST should also require and publicize tight shots of the sealed tags alone, so that the officials and fellow competitors can verify the numbers during load-in.)