Does G14 prohibit using a webcam on the driver station during AUTO?

[T8PineappleSam]

Rule G14 reads: "During AUTO, DRIVE TEAMS may not directly or indirectly interact with ROBOTS or OPERATOR CONSOLES unless for personal safety, OPERATOR CONSOLE safety, or pressing an E-Stop for ROBOT safety."

Does "indirectly" include gesturing/signalling to send input to the driver station through a camera?

[Munchskull]

After the chess game of 2014 I would assume it does.

[alicen]

To be absolutely sure, I would ask Q&A
but, I also believe that signaling to a camera would be directly controlling the robot, even if you're not directly 'touching' the controls.

[MaGiC_PiKaChU]

that's how 254 decided witch goal to score in during aerial assist's autonomous

[James Juncker]

Our team also used a Kinect sensor in 2014 (Aerial Assist) to decide when to release our auton ball into the hot high goal. last year as well as this year we are unable to communicate through vision tracking due to this rule. I would suggest getting a goo vision tracking program up and running

[Michael Hill]

Look at last year's rules. This rule was specifically added so that driver's can't use Cheezy-Vision (and the like) in autonomous. It was specifically called out in the blue box below.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by MaGiC_PiKaChU

that's how 254 decided witch goal to score in during aerial assist's autonomous

Correct, but the rules were different then and the Q&A explicitly allowed this. Specifically, the 2014 rules didn't say anything about "indirectly", so it would be reasonable to infer that this is not allowed this year. The Q&A is the only way to know for sure, but citing past games as precedent isn't valid, especially if the rules changed.

[T8PineappleSam]

G21 from Recycle Rush did have the same 'indirectly' statement: "During AUTO, DRIVE TEAMS must not directly or indirectly interact with ROBOTS or OPERATOR CONSOLES" but it also included a blue box statement "FIRST salutes the creative and innovative ways in which Teams have interacted with their ROBOTS during AUTO in previous seasons, making the AUTO period more of a hybrid period due to indirect interaction with the OPERATOR CONSOLE. The RECYCLE RUSH AUTO Period, however, is meant to be truly autonomous and ROBOT or OPERATOR CONSOLE interaction (such as through webcam or Kinect™) are prohibited." The lack of the explicit statement this year is curious.

Not sure how to ask on the QA.

[Kevin Sevcik]

For heaven's sake. Here, let me channel the GDC:

Will gesturing at your webcam cause a change of state in the operator console program or robot? If yes, then you are interacting with the operator console or robot, which is illegal per G14.

I mean really, there's only two options here. 1. Gesturing at your webcam in AUTO does something on the robot or operator console, in which case your action has caused a reaction on the robot or operator console, which is a pretty basic definition of interaction.
2. Gesturing at your webcam in AUTO doesn't do anything on the robot or operator console. Which complies with G14. I suppose you can write a program to do things with the webcam and then dump the results to the bit bucket, but that seems like a waste of time.

[CryptoStorm]

I believe that 'directly or indirectly' pretty much covers all interaction with the robot.