"Spare Parts" Rules Are Broken

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by Aidan F. Browne

Please don't dilute this thread with a discussion of 6 weeks or no 6 weeks -- there are other threads that address that.

The focus of this thread is the 2004 Spare Parts rules as they are written.

Thanks,

Aidan

Aiden,

Someone else porposed a rule change for next year to help alleviate the problem. I was simply doing the same. What is the point of having this thread if not to come up with solutions to the problem for future years?

As long as you have rules of this nature, some teams are going to cheat. It's that simple. Formula 1 racing used to have the same problem with electronic aids - they couldn't effectively police them so they decided that the best thing to do was to just make it legal so that all teams could do it (and not have to worry about rule interpretation, ethics, etc.). I'm proposing a similar measure for FIRST. It's pretty obvious that it can't be stopped and that some teams are doing it. Therefore, I propose that we let all teams do it.

[KenWittlief]

by the same logic you could say that as long as you have rules, people are going to cheat

therefore eliminate all the rules?!

isnt that like throwing up your hands and giving up?

Since FIRST is suppose to be an emulation of a real engineering program - maybe we need to factor that into the spare parts rulings

maybe raise the robot materials limit to $4k, but include the cost of spare parts in that?

in the real world, if you sold a car with a 3year warrenty, and you had to give the owner a new free engine every 6 months your company would be out of business in a year or two

we need to find a way to inject that reality into FIRST.

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

by the same logic you could say that as long as you have rules, people are going to cheat

therefore eliminate all the rules?!

isnt that like throwing up your hands and giving up?

Where you are concerned, I AM thinking about throwing up my hands and giving up... (just kidding).


I think the point is being missed. Plenty of rules are very easy to enforce. Others are impossible. I'm just saying that we should consider getting rid of of rules that can't be enforced.


For instance, rules that are easy to enforce:

- robots must weigh <= 130 lbs.
- robots must fit in 30" x 36" x 60" box
- only kit motors can be used
- robot must be wired a certain way
- no materials from the exotic material list
- robots may not break the plane of the HP chute
- etc.


Rules that are difficult (if not impossible) to enforce:

- disassemled parts must be made before 2/26/2004
- You must do your own machining, or you must account for the time (unless students were involved).
- Cost of manufacturing (if students weren't involved).
- Certain material costs.
- You may not have a backup robot (this is not a current rule, but if it were ever implemented, it would be nearly impossible to enforce).
- etc.

[MikeDubreuil]

FIRST is in a real bad situation.

They intentionally make the rules vague so they can bend them at any time. They claim the rules should be followed with common sense rather than a judicial sense.
Gracious professionalism keeps us all looking the other way if a team breaks the rules. To the point where we'll allow a team to break a rule and then compete agaisnt them knowing they broke a rule. Why don't we tell anyone? Because you're supposed to be GP. If you were to tell, who would you tell? There should be a FIRST police officer, but there's not.
FIRST has been designed from the ground up without a set of checks and balances. There are no consequences for breaking the rules. FIRST just hopes people will be honest, a blind faith if you ask me.

Teams will continue bending and breaking the rules, gracious professional teams will continue looking the other way.

[Don Wright]

Actually...it's called life. Some people follow the rules, others bend them. Hopefully FIRST is mostly comprised of people that follow them so that the students that they are involved with will learn to follow them too.

Listen. The rules are what they are. I am not going sit around and spend time trying to make sure other teams are following them to the letter. I'd rather spend the time with my students helping them build the best robot they can within our understanding of the rules. If we get beat by a team that broke the rules and cheated, that's fine. We did the best we could do without cheating and I will never feel bad for that. If we break the rules, it is an accident and I hope that someone lets us know so we stop.

Let's police ourselves and stop asking FIRST to babysit us. If you see a team that you think is breaking a rule, just mention it to them in a polite way. Hopefully it will lead to a good discussion IRL like this one here and everyone will come out better than if you just bottle it up and create a new thread the day after the tournament is over.

It's all about communication. If we all communicate half as well in real life as we do here on CD, instead if a 60 message thread about breaking the rule, we could have a 60 thread message thread about how great a tournament or match was.

Don

[Gabriel]

I think I agree with Chris on this one, you can weigh a robot and then make a team lighten up or not compete, but how do you check whether a team has worked past the six weeks? The only way to know is through allegations and that leads to all sorts of misunderstandings and misinterpretations. 130lbs is a solid figure, you're either under it or not and there is absolutely indisputable evidence. So much of Gracious Professionalism relies on trust and if FIRST, or the teams all spying on each other to make sure we're following the rules than the whole competition will fall apart. Thats why the background check thing was so infuriating - FIRST wouldn't trust teams and mentors and that leads to all sorts of nasty things happening.

[ngreen]

Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil

FIRST is in a real bad situation.

They intentionally make the rules vague so they can bend them at any time. They claim the rules should be followed with common sense rather than a judicial sense.
Gracious professionalism keeps us all looking the other way if a team breaks the rules. To the point where we'll allow a team to break a rule and then compete agaisnt them knowing they broke a rule. Why don't we tell anyone? Because you're supposed to be GP. If you were to tell, who would you tell? There should be a FIRST police officer, but there's not.
FIRST has been designed from the ground up without a set of checks and balances. There are no consequences for breaking the rules. FIRST just hopes people will be honest, a blind faith if you ask me.

Teams will continue bending and breaking the rules, gracious professional teams will continue looking the other way.

Engineering is built on ethics. There will always be people who have problems with being ethical and will make FIRST look bad. FIRST can keep innovation and give us so much freedom in our design and tighten down the rules for those that can't follow them too. We all know when someone is breaking a rule. You have several options:

1. Approach them, they may not know the rule or there may be a misunderstanding. FIRST has a lot of updates and like has been said before everyone gets tired by the last week and may have missed that update. A lot of teams will be glad to change to be within the rules if they know they have broken them. I know this can be hard but will generally be the best way.

2. If they blow you off you can approach a FIRST official. They are your police. They are there to make sure things go as smoothly and fairly as possible. They will look into it and make a judgement, whether it is correct in your thoughts they hold the final judgement like the refs do. At least here you can get it off your chest and feel better that you did all you could to create a fair playing environment.

3. Ignore it. Rules are enacted for certain purposes. Sometimes there are exceptions to the rules. On that note I want to say how much I appreciate the sportsmanship of 498, 696, and 80. Allowing someone compete even outside the rules is awesome. This also came up when a team from BAE regional took a part offsite to drill one hole (they didn't know they were breaking a rule). Sometimes people get over-penalized if they are held to the rules. It takes real Gracious Professionalism to let these rules slide in these exceptions.

4. There are many cases in what someone is doing isn't illegal but just wrong in a ethical standpoint. Collusions were an example of this. To counter this the best measure is to post opinions here on CD and get a general consensus on what the group feels and what actions need to be taken. You may have groups that don't agree and still have problems with it afterwards but you must take steps to convince people that even some things that aren't "illegal" are wrong.

There may be other options, including the FIRST forum and by making decisions to not associate, but these are the main ones. I beg you to be both gracious and professional when you approach teams and people about this. The whole if you accidentally did something illegal, I'm sure a lot of you have, and someone else approaches you. So be nice.

And for all of you thinking about bending rules out there. Your reputation lies on how you do things. This professionalism part definitely applies here.

Play by the rules and be nice and we'll all have a lot of fun.

[Ken Patton]

We brought our mostly-assembled practice robot to GLR. It sat in my truck. On multiple occasions we went out to the truck and "harvested" parts from the spare robot. In every single instance the parts we used were (1)fabricated before the ship date or were off-the-shelf components, and (2)used only after they were fully disassembled down to individual pieces.

In one match, we blew a tire innertube. We took a complete wheel/tire assembly from the spare robot, fully disassembled it down to individual parts, and used the tube and tire tread on the competition robot. Even though the wheel/tire was identical to that on our competition robot, and it had been built up before the ship date, I stood there and watched our students tear it down to the individual parts.

I think in doing this we followed the letter and intent of the rules. Was there a bunch of non-value-added-assembly-and-disassembly? Yes.

I don't think there should be a problem with bringing a fully assembled spare robot to the comp, as long as the parts are disassembled for use.

Ken

[Matt Adams]

Team Update 15
http://www2.usfirst.org/2004comp/tmup15.pdf

Don't bring the robot in the facility with you.

[edit]If you're going to be entering a grey area... ask someone at FIRST. Don't risk your team and hard work by reading too far into this update.[/edit]

Matt

[Don Wright]

Yep. If you are reading this message and haven't read Update 15, go and read it before posting. It's pretty clear cut.

[KenWittlief]

hey if Im reading TU15 right, if someone brings a machine shop trailer, or if someone opens their machine shop up to all teams

then you can work on parts from 8am thursday until the pits close of saturday

in otherwords, a local team could host a 72 hr machine shop marathon at their facilites

THATS pretty cool - in the past I believe we were not allowed to take parts out of the building an work on them overnight in the hotel - does TU15 indicate a change to that policy now?

(they close up one can of worms and open another one! :^)

[Don Wright]

Yes, I think by wording it the way they did, it's a can of worms. I don't think they meant you can take parts out and work on them if a machine shop opens it's doors for 72 hours. It would be cool, but I don't think it's what they meant.

I'll be doing all my work in the pits...

[KenWittlief]

I just search all the manual for:
hotel
remove
overnight

and I cant find anyplace that says you are not allowed to take parts from your bot out of the facilities overnight and work on them - was this another one of those rules from previous years that has been dropped?

[Don Wright]

Hmmm....good point... I don't know.

[KenWittlief]

Personally I think it would be a great idea - what a super way for teams to work together if they are able to goto a teams local facilities and make mods or repairs after the pits close at night

seriously, this is chairmans award material!