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Unread 25-02-2005, 16:38
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Re: "Load Bearing Surface"

As I haven't posted much this year, I'll make this my long post for the season.

Some thoughts and opinions on this thread:


While a few people are clearly very worked up over this loading zone rules, I think they will be pleasantly surprised that it does not become the big train wreck/debate they fear. Those who have a problem with the rules have some very good and valid points - every year there are some rules which teams interpret differently and which FIRST clarifies. Every year teams ask (beg) FIRST to
#1 try to have everything perfect when unveiled at the kickoff
#2 even though they try hard, if something isn't perfect and is found to be unclear - PLEASE clarify it early and only make any rule changes if it's absolutely necessary

So while people can discuss and debate how the rule "could" be different or better, here are a couple aspects of the rules all teams should be preparing for:

For a robot to interact with and retrieve a tetra from a loading zone without incurring a penalty, it must:

A) Be TOUCHING (not new, this has been the case for 46 days now and before anyone started building a robot) the loading zone triangle
B) Be clearly and visibly touching the loading zone triangle

For those who are taking notes of Law & Order reruns while preparing to argue that their robot is "over" the loading zone with refs at events - save yourself and your team a lot of time. The robot needs to "touch" the zone.

I do hold a different opinion than those who feel they would argue less with referees if they just had to be in the three dimensional place of the triangle instead of actually touching it. Take the baseball analogy - if a runner going from second to home only had to pass OVER third base and not touch it, both coaches would be sprinting out of the dugout on almost every play to argue with the umpire that the player was or wasn't over the corner tip of the base. However, in baseball it is the player’s responsibility to clearly touch the base to be safe. They can touch the center of the base, the side of the base, or just the little bity tip of the base - but they do have to touch it. If the umpire sees the base touched, safe - if he doesn't, out. It’s that simple and leads to very few arguments. FIRST refs will be much more comfortable with their judgment that they visibly saw part of the robot touching than the would be with their judgment that a part of a robot may or may not have been over an inch or two of the tip of the loading zone triangle - especially since they aren't hovering over the interaction looking down from above.

For those who feel teams are going to argue with refs that part of their robot is actually touching the triangle after the ref says it isn't. I offer this suggestion to solve any potential problem:

1. Find an unbiased stranger with no affiliation to your team (we all know almost all in FIRST are unable to consider an issue 100% objectively and with an open mind once you've taken a stance and your robot can be impacted by it in any way).

2. Ask that stranger to stand about 4-8 feet away from the loading zone triangle, about where a ref would be standing. (Forgot about the lawyers: make sure the stranger is standing up, don't ask them to lay on the carpet on their stomach)

3. Have your students drive your robot onto the loading zone triangle to the typical position/distance from the field border that your robot will be to get a tetra (2 inches over the tip of the triangle, or 2 feet into the triangle, whatever your team plans to do).

4. Ask the stranger this question: "Is that robot physically touching the triangle, not just over it?”

5. If they say, without having to squint or contort their body in any way "yeah, right there - that part of the robot is touching the triangle, it's pretty easy to see". Then hooray, you're probably good to go. Go have fun and don't worry about # 6.

6. If the stranger says "no", "I don't think so", or "at least not in a place I can see" - then you're not good to go and need to address the problem, then go have fun.

It's that simple - no need to argue with the refs at all, it's not their problem. If your first instinct is to tell the stranger (or ref) that "you're wrong, it is actually touching, it's just that the part that touches is inside the robot frame and your view is partially covered by X (insert whatever part name you want here - battery, motor, electronics, etc.)" then you are not clearly and visibly touching the triangle and should revisit # 6.

FIRST obviously took this into account when they clarified the touching rule by allowing virtually anything to be touching. Those who feel this is too easy, too simplistic, doesn't require complex engineering - you're probably right, and I'm sure most agree with you - but that's not the issue. FIRST chose not to require teams to use solutions which might require them to use lots of weight or drastically change their designs to meet the touching requirement and provided teams the option of finding a hopefully easy and low resource/cost solution if they so wish. If it's that easy and simplistic to just add some feelers, wire ties, whatever it may be as some have mentioned - then it shouldn't be a heavy burden on teams to do so. All they have to do is make sure they clearly touch the triangle so the ref can visibly see it.

Again, I'm not disagreeing with anyone that with hindsight the loading zone aspect of the game could be done a little better (maybe a different/bigger shape, rules worded a little more clear, etc.). There will be a few instances like this in every game every year. Luckily, these instances have become much fewer and less controversial the past two years.

What I do disagree with is the thought that this is a train wreck about to happen, that the sky is falling, and so on. I think back to the ball corral and goaltending rules last year. People should remember that many posted on here that those rules could ruin the game, that most matches would be decided by penalties and have zero scores, and so on. What happened is that there were a lot of penalties for the ball corral issue in week 1 and on Friday morning of some events. Then the teams adjusted, realized what the drivers and human players needed to do to avoid the penalties, and there were very few and many times no penalties on Saturdays and during the playoffs. I predict this is what will happen this year, teams will realize "wow - we (or they) got a 30 point penalty (ouch) for hitting the a robot while it was in the loading zone. We don't want that to happen again, let's not drive anywhere close to the loading zones of the other alliances whenever they have a robot in that area". I predict most teams will never get penalized for that more than once - if they do, then they really can't blame anyone else, it's there choice to be taking that risk. If some teams get 10 pt penalties for not clearly touching the loading zone, I predict they will address it, fix it, and will not get further penalties.

I think some underestimate our teams, students, and mentors. Is the loading zone issue a nuisance for a number of teams, and does it really seem to bother a few people in particular? Yes, that's clear. But a window bothers a bird in a house also - the difference is that the bird flies into the same window repeatedly and really gets a headache, while the FIRST team member recognizes the window is there, wishes it wasn't, probably curses the people who placed the window there in the first place, and then designs something to prevent them from making the same mistake again so that the window is no longer something they need to waste their time or energy complaining about.

If this is the biggest potential train wreck we experience in the 2005 game, then I think things are looking pretty good. Doesn't mean other issues or controversies won't come up, but so far this seems to be it.

Finally - based on what I sawand heard from many teams last weekend at various events, in my years in FIRST I've never seen such a high percentage of robots functioning so well at this point. I think this speaks volumes for the improved kit of parts and for all the hard work put in by the students and mentors. Congrats to everyone for 6 weeks of hard work, now go out and enjoy the fruits of your labor - good luck and have a blast at your upcoming events!

JM
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Unread 25-02-2005, 20:21
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Re: "Load Bearing Surface"

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason Morrella
For a robot to interact with and retrieve a tetra from a loading zone without incurring a penalty, it must:

A) Be TOUCHING (not new, this has been the case for 46 days now and before anyone started building a robot) the loading zone triangle
B) Be clearly and visibly touching the loading zone triangle

Take the baseball analogy - if a runner going from second to home only had to pass OVER third base and not touch it, both coaches would be sprinting out of the dugout on almost every play to argue with the umpire that the player was or wasn't over the corner tip of the base. FIRST refs will be much more comfortable with their judgment that they visibly saw part of the robot touching than the would be with their judgment that a part of a robot may or may not have been over an inch or two of the tip of the loading zone triangle - especially since they aren't hovering over the interaction looking down from above.

What I do disagree with is the thought that this is a train wreck about to happen, that the sky is falling, and so on. I predict this is what will happen this year, teams will realize "wow - we (or they) got a 30 point penalty (ouch) for hitting the a robot while it was in the loading zone. We don't want that to happen again, let's not drive anywhere close to the loading zones of the other alliances whenever they have a robot in that area".
I'm not taking either side on this issue, because we can work with it either way. I'm cool with the touching requirement. However, I feel like the baseball analogy is slightly different than our case here.

A baseball players legs are fully visible to everyone that has their eyeballs open, and you can see them from all angles. But a FIRST ref standing on the right side of a robot isn't easily going to see what's happen on the left side of the robot when there's a full robot body, side panels, etc on it. Few robots have ever been completely clear and have huge wheels easily viewable.

I think the biggest issue is that having an entire robot straddling and obviously sitting on top of the triangle is not considered in, because the distance between their wheels happens to be bigger than the triangle. I don't know that anyone has wanted to dangle a robot part over the triangle and call it in, as in the baseball analogy. Yes - that would be difficult to call (did he pass over the corner of the base, etc). It's when a robot is on top of a triangle such that the triangle itself is not visible, seems odd that that is not considered in. A stranger could stand 4-8ft away and tell you that it's obviously in, even if something underneath isn't touching. But if he's on the right side of the robot, and my robot is touching such that he could have obviously seen if he was on the left side of the robot, then standing on the right, he may not see that. I would hate to see a ref tripping over himself to rush to the left side to verify.... safety first..

I think it was also frustrating that it was 2/16/05 when the drivebase/drivetrain was defined as being inside the 28x38 dimensions. While I don't know there will be a lot of teams with this issue, it could significantly affect those that do. It went from "touching", to "being obvious", to "a part of the 28x38 base touching". I'd like to think common sense in conjunction with rules will be used when making the "in" calls. But there is inconsistency in common sense also.

I don't think that this will be a train wreck either. I have also said before that I think when you see a robot near it's loading zone, don't even think about going near it, to avoid a huge penalty. I think teams will be able to correct along the way. If you have issues with the autoload side, work the HP side to death... at least you won't get a penalty for accidentally touching the tetra before touching the triangle.

In hindsight, "in" could be defined as "touching the triangle, or obviously straddling/covering/sitting over the triangle (if the intent was to obviously be in a designated load area). But I guess the intent of the rule was to be touching the triangle in a manner that a ref can see from no matter where he's standing, even though that could almost be physically impossible, unless your whole robot is clear. I hope regionals are able to recruit minimum 10 refs/match - that's not even an exxagerated number.

And I thought the bird story was humorous....yet true.
Eh - We'll see how it goes, live and learn.
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Last edited by AmyPrib : 25-02-2005 at 21:21.
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Unread 25-02-2005, 22:24
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Re: "Load Bearing Surface"

I would have to agree that this is "the" topic this year. I am certain that every team will abide by whatever rule the refs decide to call. Yes, some will re-think, re-design, and re-build part of their robot to better avoid getting unwanted penalties.
And many will argue and take the same attitudes that have been observed as part of this thread. Whenever a human being is asked to determine if a rule is being broken (no matter how obvious it is) someone will have a different perspective as to whether or not the rule was broken.
In this case, Jason makes some good points. The baseball analogy is somewhat questionable as the opposing team must challenge in a speciifc way that a player missed touching a base. A different baseball example that might occur this year is the "phantom tag" at second while executing a double play. Umpires use judgement to determine touching / tagging out a runner all of the time, even the best make mistakes and sometimes arguements occur.
Why put someone in that position when it could be avoided? It's hard enough to get people to volunteer to be a ref, it won't be any easier when they are told that matches may be determined by a spilt second decision.
What is "blatently obvious to one person is not to another" - I challenge anyone to determine if a robot moving towards the loading station touches a tetra a split second before or a split second after it touches the hdpe triangle loading zone. It's pretty darn hard to watch 2 things that are not right next to each other at the same time, no matter how far away you are.
Oh yeah, one otherthing - Do ties go to the runner?
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Unread 26-02-2005, 00:46
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Re: "Load Bearing Surface"

Quote:
Originally Posted by meaubry
Umpires use judgement to determine touching / tagging out a runner all of the time, even the best make mistakes and sometimes arguements occur.
Why put someone in that position when it could be avoided? It's hard enough to get people to volunteer to be a ref, it won't be any easier when they are told that matches may be determined by a spilt second decision.
Umpires also get paid for making these split second game altering decisions. .

Quote:
Originally Posted by meaubry
Oh yeah, one other thing - Do ties go to the runner?
This is FIRST - ties always go to the runner

Also repeating the fatal flaw to the baseball analogy: Baseball players aren't wearing full length skirts when they run the bases.
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Unread 26-02-2005, 00:46
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Re: "Load Bearing Surface"

Quote:
Originally Posted by meaubry
I challenge anyone to determine if a robot moving towards the loading station touches a tetra a split second before or a split second after it touches the hdpe triangle loading zone. It's pretty darn hard to watch 2 things that are not right next to each other at the same time, no matter how far away you are.
Precisely why I think there have been many concerns over this issue. While everyone will try to figure out a way to abide by the rule as written, I think it's going to be extremely difficult for anyone to judge this in action, no matter how obvious one might think it is that they're touching, esp if you're not in the right position to see the obviousness. Because the triangles are on the ground, there's likely 3 of 4 directions in which the touching action may be visibly blocked. For the auto zone, if you plan on swooping in and picking up the tetra quickly, you might end up having to slow the process down a bit so the ref can have a chance to see, I don't know. That's kinda unfortunate when time is so precious. Can't wait to check out the first week's regionals. I dont' envy a ref's position as it is sometimes a difficult spot to be in, but overall I think it'll all go well.
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Unread 26-02-2005, 11:51
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Re: "Load Bearing Surface"

I have no problem with the idea that it needs to be obvious that your robot is in or even touching the LZ. That can be done in many ways. The problem I see is when did the 28x38 base come into play. 4 weeks in is waaaaaay tooooooo far to make that kind of change. Many teams are done with their robots by then and others are way too far in to make that kind of change. All along we went with the premise that if we made it obvious that we are in the loading zone & we have some part of our robot make contact with the HDPE we would be considered in the LZ. We have been patient about the rules changes. All of them seem to be for the better of the game. But you cannot expect a team to redesign their robot because the robot base needs STAY 28x38. If your teams robot is designed to tip to create a 38x60 base and you completely and entirely cover the LZ when acquiring scoring objects, should you not be considered in?

Andy,
I know you have been a head referee at many FIRST events. Is this a letter of the law or an interpretation of the law? If it is obvious we are in the loading zone/completely covering the loading zone will you throw a flag? I shouldn't put you on the spot like this so, who among us would throw the flag and who wouldn't?

I just asked because I heard YOU will be the Ref at the Finger Lakes Regional next week here in Rochester. And how you deal with it in the first week sets a precedence for the entire season.

Last edited by rees2001 : 26-02-2005 at 11:53.
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Unread 26-02-2005, 14:54
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Re: "Load Bearing Surface"

After reading & re-reading the Q&A system about this subject I will use one of FIRST's analogies.

They like to use the baseball analogy of touching a base. I agree that a baseball player is not safe just by hovering over a base but what about the baseball player that slides into a base? they are still their original size, just oriented differently. I know no umpire that would rule a player out because he slid.
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Unread 26-02-2005, 15:47
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Re: "Load Bearing Surface"

Guy's,

Give up!! After reading Jason's reply it is obvious that FIRST is not going to change the rule. It's going to stay the same as it was on 11JAN05. You must "touch" the loading zone triangle.

I would also question the integrity of any Ref who would not follow FIRST's instructions on the rules.
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Unread 26-02-2005, 16:25
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Re: "Load Bearing Surface"

Quote:
Originally Posted by Covey41
Guy's,

Give up!! After reading Jason's reply it is obvious that FIRST is not going to change the rule. It's going to stay the same as it was on 11JAN05. You must "touch" the loading zone triangle.

I would also question the integrity of any Ref who would not follow FIRST's instructions on the rules.
I would agree with you if that was the rule on 11jan05 but that is not what the rule said, It said robots must be in the zone never did the word touch come into play until the a few weeks in the build.
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Unread 26-02-2005, 16:38
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Re: "Load Bearing Surface"

Hey Covey,
This website was created many years ago by my team, for the purpose of allowing the FIRST community to share their thoughts and ideas, yes even complaints are welcome (if directed in a non-personal way, with good taste, and abiding by all of our rules).
You are allowed your feelings, let everyone else post theirs too.
Your previous post was clear thet you "don't feel sorry for anyone", which is cool, no problem - but don't take it upon yourself to tell others to "give up" posting their feelings about this really stupid rule.
Yes, I agree that Jason's post makes it pretty clear that FIRST will most likely not change or clarify the rule again, but that doesn't mean that this website or thread should be closed or folks should stop posting their feelings about touching the loading zone.
Perhaps next year, if not this year, rules like this will be addressed in a different (hopefully better) way.
And, I would never question the integrity of a ref, under any circumstances - those folks volunteer their time. They are human and sometimes make mistakes - we all will need to deal with that (even more so, this year).

Last edited by meaubry : 26-02-2005 at 16:43.
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Unread 26-02-2005, 16:44
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Re: "Load Bearing Surface"

Quote:
Originally Posted by nuggetsyl
I would agree with you if that was the rule on 11jan05 but that is not what the rule said, It said robots must be in the zone never did the word touch come into play until the a few weeks in the build.
No, it said touch. Q & A ID:978 answered on 1/11/05
Q: Regarding <G17>: What are the parameters for being "in" a loading zone? (i.e., must some part of the robot be touching the yellow triangle, et cetera)

A: There are no yellow triangles in the loading zones. The robot base and / or drive train must be touching the loading zone. The intent of this rule is that you must be in the loading zone. By making it blatantly obvious that you are in the loading zone, you will draw far less attention from the referees.


The Q & A take precedence over the manual.
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Unread 26-02-2005, 17:29
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Re: "Load Bearing Surface"

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ogre
No, it said touch. Q & A ID:978 answered on 1/11/05
Q: Regarding <G17>: What are the parameters for being "in" a loading zone? (i.e., must some part of the robot be touching the yellow triangle, et cetera)

A: There are no yellow triangles in the loading zones. The robot base and / or drive train must be touching the loading zone. The intent of this rule is that you must be in the loading zone. By making it blatantly obvious that you are in the loading zone, you will draw far less attention from the referees.


The Q & A take precedence over the manual.
Again, they confused us a little bit by saying "The intent of this rule is that you must be in the loading zone" They did not say it should be in the original 28x38 dimensions. if they had the word "touching" italicized or bolded or something it would've been much more clear to us that we had to build something that had to be TOUCHING. When they said it should be in the 28x30 box and touching, many many many many teams must have spent hours or days figuring out how to modify their drive train to fit that. I know we did.
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Unread 26-02-2005, 17:34
meaubry meaubry is offline
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Re: "Load Bearing Surface"

Ogre, True - but it wasn't until few weeks later that the answer to my question finally defined the part about the robot base. I asked the question because of the words "robot base AND/OR drive train".
Drive train was clear and understandable, but robot base was NOT. Base when we start? Base when we fall over? What part of the base? What is a robot base? And, "blatently obvious will draw far less attention", left me to wonder if that meant the ref's wouldn't be so quick to throw a flag in marginal conditions.
By then, we had already committed to a design with wheels spread 26" apart, and a secondary drive which rotates out in front of the 28" x 38" base, pivoting about our primary drive system axle. Once the match starts we intended on rotating the front bumper/secondary drive and play the match that way.
So, now we will change our strategy a little, and drive with the bumper up so the ref's can clearly see that the load bearing parts that we have on our 28" x 38" base are indeed touching before we collect a tetra.
We have practiced alot and I can tell you that we approach the loading zone quickly, grab the tetra and go, very very quickly. If the ref is watching the wheels for a load bearing violation they may miss us picking the tetra and if they are watching the tetra for a touching violation they will miss seeing our wheels. All in all, I really don't want to have to tell the students to go really really slow so the refs can see that we are blatently obviously bearing a load on the hdpe triangle - time is really important in order to put up a lot of tetras.
But, as Jason said earlier, We will adapt in order to not burden our alliance partners with unwanted and unnecessary penalties.

Last edited by meaubry : 26-02-2005 at 17:44.
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Unread 02-03-2005, 07:58
Natchez Natchez is offline
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Re: "Load Bearing Surface"

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason Morrella
While a few people are clearly very worked up over this loading zone rules, I think they will be pleasantly surprised that it does not become the big train wreck/debate they fear.
As the proud introducer of "train wreck" to this discussion, I now believe that you are 100% right, this will not be a big issue this year; not because the refs will get the calls right more than 80% of the time, but because the flags will be staying in their pockets on 95% of the violations.

NOTE: I have been very impressed with the above-the-belt discussion that this thread has maintained. Likewise, please do not misconstrue my passion on this subject as a personal attack on Jason. I have a HUGE amount of respect for Jason and he has given so much to FIRST that I would never dismiss his comments ... just respectfully disagree. Since I feel that FIRST is philosophically going in the wrong direction concerning rules, I present the following in an effort to encourage change.

The reason that I believe that we will be pleasantly surprised in '05 is that the refs will introduce an "in the neighborhood" policy for being in the loading zones similar to how we train our FLL refs, "Enforce the rules but give the teams the benefit of the doubt." Furthermore, I predict that only the blatant offenders will ever be called for loading zone violations. This will make the offending teams happy because they did not get a flag; and the opposing alliance will never know the difference because they will not have been paying attention to the other alliance and even if they did see a violation, they would be chastised for not being gracious professionals if they appealed the no-call.

Concerning being "worked up", I'm not "worked up" about this rule nor about us losing a few matches if my prediction becomes reality nor about the disadvantage that we are now at because we chopped off our arms then wire ties were allowed; I'M WORKED UP BECAUSE WE ARE SENDING THE WRONG MESSAGE TO A FUTURE GENERATION. If my prediction becomes reality, we are sending a message to our youth that, "you don't have to follow the rules, just adjust to what is being enforced." If you are looking to refute my prediction, you don't have to look too far back when the Championship came along with, "Mom, I know that I chewed up and buckled the carpet ... you didn't punish me 6 weeks ago when I did it so why are you going to punish me now?"

Concerning the future that has little to do with this year's game, I am striving (begging if I thought it would change the world) to get back to a society where rules are not to be broken irregardless of who is watching. Please remember, that all of the FIRST high school participants have grown up in a heavily lawyerized world where justifying rules violations is the norm instead of the exception. It will literally take generations to turn this ship around but I've always thought that there are a few organizations (Scouting, Religions, FIRST, Ultimate Players Association, etc.) that are making significant strides in the right direction. Trust me, the stones that I cast are VERY small ones (pea gravel at best) because, Lord knows, I stay in the "gray" zone far too often.

Concerning "you don't have to follow the rules, just adjust to the enforcement", I contend that when people are on the losing end of this philosophy which results in the loss of food and shelter for their family, they really get why this is wrong. It happens thousands of times each day in America, the "shrewd" businessman finds the loophole that steals work from the honest guy ... even to the point of putting him out of business.

Example #1
You told me that the sand was $3 per yard ... your bill says it is $10.50 per yard. Yes m'am, the sand is only $3 per yard but you never asked about the delivery charge which was $7.50 per yard. I could have bought it from Billy for $6.00 per yard!

Example #2
I'm glad to hear that we won the contract to build the next Mississippi River Bridge for $2 billion dollars. By the way, would the government like to upgrade to standard sized lanes or go with the 6 foot lanes in our bid? It will only cost another billion dollars. WHAT DO YOU MEAN, UPGRADE? Oh, did you not know that you only requested 4 lanes in your Request for Bid and not 4 DOT Standard Lanes. In 1924, it was specified in an official Mississippi government document that automobile lanes shall be 6 feet wide so our bid included 6 foot wide lanes. YOU *@#&&@#^&%^$(@. Sir, again, we'd like to thank you for the $2 billion dollar ... hmmmmm ... $3 billion dollar contract.

Granted, as a society, we have to meet in the middle on this. The rules makers (congressmen, homeowner associations, school boards, etc.) must get better about writing reasonable rules while we must get better about following rules.

Enough of my "I'd like to save the world" & "I'd like to teach the world to sing" talk ... a few quick thoughts about Jason's response.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason Morrella
Be TOUCHING (not new, this has been the case for 46 days now and before anyone started building a robot) the loading zone triangle
If you leave the word "triangle" out then you are exactly correct that this rule has been around for 46 days but "TOUCHING the loading zone" is different than "TOUCHING the loading zone triangle"


Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason Morrella
The robot needs to "touch" the zone.
See, it is very easy to leave off the word "triangle". Don't forget that traditionally in sports, "zone" refers to a surface that is projected across a distance. For example, the end zone in football is a 10x55 yd rectangle projected to infinity or the strike zone in baseball is the plate projected from the knees to the letters.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason Morrella
Take the baseball analogy - if a runner going from second to home only had to pass OVER third base and not touch it, both coaches would be sprinting out of the dugout on almost every play to argue with the umpire that the player was or wasn't over the corner tip of the base. However, in baseball it is the player’s responsibility to clearly touch the base to be safe. They can touch the center of the base, the side of the base, or just the little bity tip of the base - but they do have to touch it. ... It’s that simple and leads to very few arguments.
EXACTLY!!! But what about the unwritten rule that the short-stop or second-baseman only needs to be "in the neighborhood" of second base when turning a double play? Even though there are many violations, there doesn't seem to be a lot of "coaches would be sprinting out of the dugout on almost every play to argue with the umpire." The rule says that the short-stop/second-baseman must tag the base while having control of the ball for the runner from first to be out. Rarely is this violation "called" unless it is blatant. This scenario of being "in the neighborhood" is exactly what I think will happen this year ... lots of violations with very few of them called.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason Morrella
For those who feel teams are going to argue with refs that part of their robot is actually touching the triangle after the ref says it isn't.
They will not be arguing because, in general, only the unarguable violations will be called. Likewise, the teams that would like to argue the no-calls on the other side of the field know better because their alliance got a couple "breaks" and it would not be in the Spirit of FIRST to argue. BUT, if this was going to take food and shelter from their family, you bet there would be a lot of arguing ... it's not the case so this point is moot.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason Morrella
What I do disagree with is the thought that this is a train wreck about to happen, that the sky is falling, and so on. I think back to the ball corral and goaltending rules last year.
I think back to sticks protruding outside of the arena going 15 feet per second, which violated the safety rules in my opinion, and FIRST making "back room" agreements (outside of the Q&A system) that made it legal. We ended up ditching all of our autonomy work because there was no way we could get to the middle of the field before "sticky" got there and resulted in us implementing a not-too-sophisticated "meet our sticky neighbor" algorithm.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason Morrella
I think some underestimate our teams, students, and mentors.
NOT ME! I just underestimated FIRST this year ... Put down your tools; No software development; .......

Rules are NOT to be broken ... not the letter nor spirit,
Lucien

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Unread 02-03-2005, 08:29
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Re: "Load Bearing Surface"

It's official we have this year's "infield fly rule".

For those of you who missed this last year see the link below:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ht=infield+fly

Pete
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