Can we stand one more thread on entanglement?

[Joe Johnson]

I posted the following message to FIRST.

What do folks think?

Joe J.

Regarding Tethers: 114 Seemed Clear, 321 muddied the waters...

From Msg #114:
...When designing your robot, please consider the
environment on the playing field during a match and use your common
wisdom to evaluate the likelihood of your mechanism getting wrapped
around an axle, caught on a bolt or arm or other robot feature, or
even hung up on part of a goal....

...The ultimate determination of
what presents a risk of entanglement is subjective and will be made by inspectors at each competition event, and by the referees in each
match (in the event that something passes inspection but later becomes a problem during a match).

From Msg #321:

...if you have a tether that you try to make non-entangling (small,
flat, whatever), will the judges automatically disallow it if it is
flat on the playing field? ...

...Yes. See posts 114, 115 and 158 on tethers...

************************************************** *******************

#114 seemed pretty clear. As long as the "tether" was not something that common sense indicated that at a robot could easily get entangled in, it was okay.

#321 makes things less easy to understand. First of all, I cannot find message #158. Second of all message #115 only refers to rule DQ3 & M16 -- little help there. Message #114 I seemed to understand but then the ruling of an "automatic disallow" for tethers on the ground seems to be in conflict with message #114, which stressed common sense and actual entanglement issues like getting caught inside another robot's mechanism.

So... ...I am sure that without further clarification nearly everyone is going to be unhappy when they get to a competition. Either you will disallow a feature on a robot that teams counted on being legal OR you will allow a feature that many other teams will say to themselves, "If only I knew that THAT would be allowed, I would have built that feature too!"

I am begging you, please clarify this issue once and for all.

Suppose a robot divides and has only a thing I will call a "leash" connecting the pieces (I use the word leash because tether is already has a lot of baggage with associated with it, not the least of which is that many questions have been asked about tethering a projectile which has nothing to do with the current situation).

So, by means of this leash, the robots meet the "robots must be designed to stay in one piece rule" but...

... the sixty four thousand dollar question everyone wants to know is: What is(are) the standard(s) by which this leash will be ruled legal or illegal?

If I am asked for a vote, I would say that the text of message #114 defined a very clear standard. But, given that standard, the answer given in message #321 would have to be changed to read something like "See message #114. The judges and inspectors will apply that standard when deciding if your leash is legal"

Please respond quickly as I know of several teams that are basing there entire machine concept on the answer to this question. Strangely enough, some are certain that leashes are illegal while others are equally certain that they are not.

Joe J.