Controversy at the SCRRF Scrimmage -- opinions needed!

[ahecht]

Today at the SCRRF scrimmage, we ran into an interesting rule issue, and I wanted to get some opinions on it. Our robot has a long lexan “carpet,” which connects our robot to our goal grabber (which anchors itself in place, preventing the goal from being moved). It is made of 1/16” inch lexan squares (3” X 6”), and when deployed lies completely flat against the floor and is inflexible enough that it cannot get wrapped around anything. In the last match of the finals today, we were winning by a large margin with 15 seconds remaining, and had our grabber anchoring a goal in our goal zone, and the “carpet” running to our robot, which was in our home zone. One of the losing teams, in a deliberate attempt to get us DQ’ed, repeatedly tried to entangle itself on our “carpet” (which itself was at rest) by running back and forth over it and doing 360s. In the end, it was not able to get itself caught on our carpet, and the match ended with the robot straddling (but not actually touching) our “carpet.” However, the student judges ruled that our “carpet” was an entanglement risk (although no robot, even ones that tried, ever got caught up on it). When the judges asked us to clear the field, the other robot was able to drive off without a hitch, so it was not stuck on our “carpet.” My question is twofold:

1) If a robot intentionally tries to entangle itself on part of another robot, is the entangling robot still at fault? If so, it would seem that any arm, grabber, appendage, or even robot body would pose the risk of entanglement, as a robot could always be made or driven to get caught up on them. Even the telescoping boom, which FRCTech2002 specifically OK’d, could entangle a robot with enough ground clearance or malicious intent. The rule about entangling goals requires there to be the intent to run the tether under the goal on the part of the tethered robot -- another robot pushing a goal onto a tether doesn’t count -- so it seems the same would apply here (see TU #6). It would also seem that deliberately trying to get entangled in order to DQ another robot is strictly against the spirit of gracious professionalism, and not in the spirit of the competition itself.

2) Does a device actually have to get caught up on another robot (or have the potential to get caught up) in order to count as an entanglement risk, or is simply being able to be driven over enough?

I do want to add that I have no hard feelings against the judges, who did the best job they could, and I know that the result of the scrimmage doesn’t matter, but I want to get opinions on how such a situation might play out at the regionals. I will post pictures here of the actual “entanglement” as soon as they are developed.