Send-Home Devices

[Dodd]

R. Bohannon is spot on. The rules explicitly allow a red robot to grab a blue robot and drag it into the red home zone, and hold it there till the buzzer. There is no reason why a red robot can't block, capture, and carry a blue robot's mouse (or its other tethered send home device) and drag it to the red home zone and hold it there.

In either case, I assume red will try to grab or capture so as to minimize the probability of damage to blue or its mouse, but if blue's tether can't take being "redirected" by virtue of its end unit being hijacked, then it wasn't engineered to survive the game the rules allow. Whatever the zigs and zags in FRC's sorting out rule interpretations on tethers and entanglement, I believe the legality of robot kidnapping was made crystal clear at the beginning, and there is no reason why send home units should expect more favored treatment.

There's more to this game than just blocking the mouse. BTW, if red catches a blue robot AND blue's deployed mouse in the red home zone, is that worth 20 points?

Dodd