Banging the driver station

[orangemoore]

Originally Posted by FrankJ

Not reading the rules and updates and understanding the consequences is also an action with consequences.

While the head referee is the final interpreter of the rules, they cannot change them & are supposed to interpret them as written. There are no rules against hitting the field hard enough to dislodge driver stations. A bit of grey area for egregious or intentionally damaging conduct, but that is a high bar to cross.

Having said that, intentionally ramming the field with the intent of dislodging driver station is certainly against Gracious Professionalism.

If you replaced the driver station with the robot would your opinion change? Would you still suggest that it is a team's fault if they sit there and a robot drives into them at full speed? If they didn't move out of "the way "it would make it their fault?

Originally Posted by neshera

Interesting thread.
What would the commenters think about a robot that, either in Auto or Tele-Op, unintentionally repeatedly rammed in to other robots at full speed, hard enough to damage/disable the other robot?
Would a notification that robots should be built to withstand high-speed impacts excuse such behavior?
Would a notification that robots should be built to withstand high-speed impacts absolve the ramming robot of yellow/red cards?
Would we condone a team building/driving such a robot?

My point is, the drivers' station equipment is something teams purchase, program, build, modify - just like our robots. It is not inspiring to see your hard work go down the drain because someone else found a task too daunting/difficult.

Our goal is to inspire students. Telling them it is their fault for not securing their equipment well enough, or that they didn't buy robust (read: expensive) enough equipment, or to just "deal with it" when entire matches or entire regionals are destroyed for them does not seem to me to be the right attitude.

This is pretty much what I am trying to say.