Accepted Tethers

[Ken Leung]

I know FIRST's rulings are really inconsistent about a tether device. And a lot of the calling ended up judgment calls made by judges at each of the two regional, causing different ruling at each place. This unclear ruling from FIRST really caused a lot of unnecessary trouble for teams, and made it not fair for teams who followed the rules strictly and ended up developing something really complicated, or not using one at all.

So, instead of keep saying how bad this is, I think we got to suggest to FIRST what kind of ruling they SHOULD make a competition.

Here is what I think:

The send home device should be limited by the kit of parts/additional hardware list/small parts rule, so that they are made out of legal material. It should also follow the other rules such as damaging carpets/playing field, the spring rule, no projectile rule, and leaving parts on the playing field detached from the robot... And of course the robot has to fit inside the box and weight within 130 lbs.

Then, as for game violations, it should be limited by the no going under the goals rule, no actual entanglement, and no intentionally damaging other robots' parts rule. Simple as that. And, as long as you are not intentionally violating the rule, such as another team moving the goal on top of your extension, then it should be allowed.

I think this is the easiest way to call it from now on. A lot of teams' efforts were already wasted when they were told they can't use this or that, so, let's make it clear and not waste anymore teams' effort.

A lot of send home devices were results of great creativity and engineering, and teams worked really hard to come up with this to score points inside the game. They probably learned a lot about designing… I would even say that the send home device is as challenging as some other part of the robot. So, I don’t think FIRST should disallowed such devices. After all, isn’t creativity and ingenuity some of the points of this competition?

Call out the obvious illegal devices, and go back to the nice and generous FIRST Dean told us when they were explaining how a robot can score home zone 10 points just by touching the zone's carpet.