"Load Bearing Surface"

[Peter Matteson]

I will tell you FIRST enforced this rule vigorously at the UTC scrimmage (the usual official field shakedown event). We where getting penalized early on because the officials could not see our wheels through CLEAR lexan.

The intent of this rule has become murky to me. It does not do anything to better warn a field worker if the robot is straddling the triangle with its wheels rather than touching it directly. The fact that they waited to week four to create this and came up with this because of people who wanted to use mouse bots or dangle strings over the zone is ridiculous. This was a more significant change to the rules than they realized.

I hope to see some modification of the rule this week. The intent of this rule appeared to be protection of field attendents. However if you have wheels on either side of the zone the attendent should see you coming and you are still following the spirit of the rule.

Back to my point this rule will probably be enforced and the penalties involved will be significant in the the outcome of the matches.