Frank Answers Fridays: July 12, 2013: Question about Q&A

[Jon Stratis]

Dealing with rulings from event personel that don't go your way is tough. It's not because the event personel are ignoring the rules - its because interpretations of the rules can differ from one person to another, and because with all of our teams a lot of unanticipated creativity happens each year. One example from this past year: Circular robots.

Given the rules at kickoff, there were a couple of different ways you could interpret a circular frame perimeter. Some people thought through this and said a circle has no corners, and as such does not need bumpers. Then the Q&A clarified it (Q203) and everyone knew it needed bumpers... but not how to handle team numbers. So they needed another clarification (Q272) after the first one.

Now, thinking through this logically, without the Q&A at all, we would have ended up with teams showing up without bumpers and having an issue when the inspector says they need bumpers. With the first update and not the second, they could have had issues with team numbers on their bumpers.

Inspectors and other event personel don't ignore the rules or Q&A. But they don't necessarily interpret it all the same as you might, and the teams out there are all extremely creative, causing situations that the GDC didn't necessarily think about ahead of time. After all, I don't think we saw any circular robots prior to last year... who would anticipate they would suddenly be showing up?

For other examples, think of anything really innovative that wasn't allowed (like a mechanism for holding onto the side of a bridge without grasping, per a cleverly worded Q&A), and ones that were allowed but were "game breakers" (like redirecting soccer balls straight from the return into the goal). Also look at robot designes that influenced rules we have today (like the rule against wedgebots).