YMTC: Bluabot sits on Redabot

[Greg Ross]

Originally Posted by mtaman02

Great minds think alike I see.

Yep. And I agree with Ken Wittlief's analysis.

Red is obviously NOT hanging, because it is touching the platform.

Blue is NOT hanging, because, if Red is SUPPORTING enough of Blue's weight that it can't raise itself off of the platform, then the chin-up bar is NOT supporting Blue.

[Collin Fultz]

Originally Posted by gwross

Yep. And I agree with Ken Wittlief's analysis.

Red is obviously NOT hanging, because it is touching the platform.

Blue is NOT hanging, because, if Red is SUPPORTING enough of Blue's weight that it can't raise itself off of the platform, then the chin-up bar is NOT supporting Blue.

it would, however, be a ref's call. they would attempt to remove the red bot without disturbing the blue bot. after red's removal, it would be up to the refs to decide if blue was hanging or not. everyway I have ever heard a head ref explain it (at two driver meetings) is "If everything else were removed, would the robot be hanging." I think the answer is "yes" (at least in the picture in my head). unless for some reason blue's hooking aparatus is longer than 9 feet and after red is removed they touch the platform...then they aren't hanging. however, more than likely (again still using picture in my head) blue hangs +50. i guess we kind of agree...i must only have half a great mind...now to figure out which half it is...

[Astronouth7303]

My idea (which probably throws away a few rules) is this:

• Penalize bluabot for forcing redabot down (poor sportsmanship if nothing else)
• DON'T give bluabot 50 points (penelty)
• Give redabot 50 points (w/o bluabot, who was penalized, redabot would hang)

[Kevin Sevcik]

I suppose I'll toss my pennies into the argument now..

For the record, this exact situation occurred at LSR, which is where I assume Lucien got the idea from. The call as made was that Blue WAS hanging and Red was NOT. I didn't discuss with the refs, but I assume the logic was as mentioned earlier. Red was touching, when red was removed, Blue was still hanging. There were no other penalties given, as Blue lowered itself very slowly.

I'll just comment real (not) quick:

Red is obviously not hanging, as it is touching the ground, so supported this and removing that is immaterial. if it couldn't lift in the first place because a robot was above it, but enough energy was stored to lift it when the offending robot was removed, it would seem very, very odd to suddenly give it 50 points. How Red has ended up touching is, I think, immaterial. Bringing that into the argument would so horribly complicate rulings that it is infeasible.

Blue obviously IS hanging, if it is still above the platform when Red is removed. The definition of supported clearly states that an object is supported, for FIRST scoring purposes, is the robot is no longer hanging when the supporting object is removed. Thus, by FIRST definition, red cannot be supporting Blue, despite common sense and physics and all that.

Pinning doesn't seem to be an issue here, unless Blue is resting so heavily on Red that Red is completely incapable of moving on the platform. If Red can move to the side, out from under Blue, then it is not pinned. This entire lowering episode is akin to a robot pushing another around on the field. If Team A pushes Team B around in the open field, it is not considered pinning. Atleast, I think it's patently silly to penalize A for pinning when B has the freedom to move away from A. In fact, I have never seen pinning called for such an action. The rule states that pinning is inhibiting a robot's motion. As I see it, this can be interpreted in only two ways: Totally inhibiting, so that a robot may not move at all in any meaningful sense; or partially inhibiting, ie. preventing a robot from moving in any particular direction. If the latter was the correct interpretation, any team could be penalized for pinning simply for getting in the way of another team for several seconds. So, I see dropping onto a robot as simply the vertical equivalent of pushing someone around.

Ahem. that was slightly longer than I'd intended, but I like to be thorough. For the record, my team was the dropping robot, and it won us the match, so I might be biased. I can also state that it was one of the most exciting matches outside of the elims at LSR, and the crowd had no complaints at all about the drama of one robot attempting to dehang another.

[Ali Ahmed]

Yeah thats quite a situation. My guess is that Blue is pinning red and therefore it will be penalized. After that i would that blue and red should be awarded the 50 points.