Can teams damage their own defenses?

[rich2202]

What is presumed in the rule is: Only the last defense contacted by the Robot is considered.

The "Courtyard" part of the rule is to have a bright line to determine how far the robot has to go in order to be considered traversed.

Assuming that your interpretation is correct, you could partially traverse multiple defenses (red and blue), and then once in the courtyard, you get scored on all the defenses.

Note: In the Definition section, the wording is a little better:

CROSS an act performed by a ROBOT, such that it starts free of contact with an opponent DEFENSE ... traverses the DEFENSE ...

The first use of DEFENSE is qualified by "opponent", and the second use is reasonably interpreted as the DEFENSE previously mentioned in the same sentence.