Illegal human player bin placement

[Mike Soukup]

This topic was mentioned by David Lantz in the St Louis thread (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...5#post14 4825), but it needs to be highlighted in its own thread.

Wildstang did not compete at the St Louis regional, but a bunch of us traveled down to watch the competition and scout the teams.

Human players started the trend by placing bins in front of other robots, which is perfectly legal - we'll probably do the same thing if we think our opponent can be knocked off path by a well placed bin. Then a few human players put bins half in the scoring zone and half in the grey zone (illegal). Since it worked, more tried it. I even saw a few times where a human player wedged a bin between the ramp and the robot so the bin was touching both(very illegal).

If you were near us in the stands, you probably heard me boo and quietly yell 'illegal' each time a human player put a bin in an illegal position.

FIRST needs to come out with a strong and official ruling in a team update against this practice. If FIRST wants dead reckoning autonomous robots to stand a chance of being successful (and in turn an exciting competition), they need to stop human players from wedging bins between the robot and ramp.

Mike