Suggestions for resolving stuck balls

[themccannman]

Originally Posted by jee7s

That's potentially problematic. Say this scenario occurs and the new ball is introduced. But, at a later time the ball on the truss then experiences an outside force (another ball, a vibration, a strong breeze) and ceases to be at rest. Then the ball falls onto the floor and there are two balls of that color in play. How do you know which is the legal ball?

I'd say a nice beveled or round plastic cover for the truss that prevents the ball from being at rest on it is a safer bet. It removes the possibility of the second ball being introduced, it's cheap, and it's easy to design.

IMHO, any scenario that results in a second ball being introduced to the field without the existing ball being removed or obviously non-functional (deflated, etc) places too much of a burden on the field personnel and alliance members for tracking which ball is live.

I like this idea for the truss issue.

My suggestion for stalled/disabled/non-functional robots:

If there is a disabled robot on the field that controls their alliance's only ball that team may attempt to reconnect to their robot or dislodge the ball for a certain amount of time (e.g. 10-20 seconds). If the time expires and the robot is still non-funcitonal the refs will hit the e-stop on that robot and declare the ball as field debris at which point a new ball may be entered in to play.

If the ball later becomes dislodged from the robot I would just restart the game at that point. I doubt it would be a very common occurrence that a robot would get disabled with an alliance ball in possession, their teammates were unable to dislodge the ball, and then they later drop the ball during the match.