Breaking the plane

[Kevin Sevcik]

I fail to see why playing inside a plastic box would be a problem. Or atleast playing in a station with a ceiling of some sort. It would just mean that FIRST acknowledges that there's a safety issue there that's better solved with some PPE than with telling teams to be really super careful. Battlebots quite obviously fully acknowledges the safety hazards presented by their robots and encases the entire field in a near bulletproof lexan box. FIRST should realize that things can come over that wall and do something about it.

If the red alliance is holding a tetra high about 4 feet from the wall, makes a spin move, and accidentally flings a tetra over the wall, recriminations and more rules and penalties won't get rid of my headache. A net will.

Similarly, it's more effective to tell kids to wear gloves and safety goggles when working on a robot than to exhort them to make a 30 minute safety analysis of their 15 minute job and make them stop if it looks like there's a 2% chance of them getting a scrape.