Team Update 14 (2016)

[GeeTwo]

Bag and Tag actually simulates real world situations fairly well. You've got to get the main piece on a barge or slow ship across the ocean a couple of weeks before installation/use on the other side of the world, but the techs and engineers can bring a limited amount of stuff in excess baggage. COTS stuff can be procured at the install site, or shipped directly there from the manufacturer. This very closely resembles the situation of my department's data collection branch.

As a simple way to prevent further proliferation of things which look like a robot but aren't, and to avoid incredibly long, complex rules, how about these:

• The bagged robot (and spare parts) must weigh no more than 160 pounds (or pick another number) total for all bags. This applies both for initial bag-and-tag and rebagging after any demo, open-bag period, or event. Bags will be weighed by inspectors before teams may un-bag. Any overage is deducted from the weight allowed under the withholding allowance.
• At check-in to an event, each team is issued a "robot button" (e.g. 2 inches in diameter backed with velcro loops) bearing the team number. The robot must have this button affixed in order to enter the practice field or the match queue.

This would allow duplicates of assemblies, but in order to have duplicate robots, they would have to be considerably underweight or have a lot of quickly removable COTS parts.