Competing in a Regional Soon ? - Watch out

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

I'll ditto the call for some intervention here. Velcro will keep a laptop from getting thrown to the ground, but it's entirely possible for a robot to hit the DS wall hard enough that it's equivalent to dropping the laptop on the ground. It seems like G24 (no strategies aimed at damage/disablement) should apply to repeat offenders. If your robot is slamming into the DS wall every match, it should be assumed your strategy is to disable your opponents' robots by damaging or dislodging their operator consoles.

In 2009 our autonomous strategy was to bang into the wall...

..to be fair, there was not really a good autonomous strategy that year.

At the New Jersey Regional we hit the wall (and the new and very fragile and constantly faulting control system) multiple times throughout the event. Eventually someone (might have been us) hit the wall hard enough during an elims match that it knocked out the entire alliance wall power for our opponents. They deservedly earned a replay because a robot caused a field fault and that alliance went on to win the regional (it was the first regional win ever for all three teams and I specifically remember one team's crazy drive coach totally freaking out over it! She's still on that team (: ).

Long story short, I think that in the past robots ramming the opposing alliance station..err..."CASTLE WALL"...has resulted in those robots being penalized and I think that if you have an autonomous mode that is putting the integrity of human bodies and valuable and irreplacable electronics in danger you should be flagged down for it. Sure, you should watch your Operator Console and slap some velcro on the other side, but that's not supposed to enable teams to be overtly reckless for 15 seconds of autonomous control when the recklessness is heavily regulated for the rest of the match.