Free Kittens/Tetra Grabber

[Steve W]

Originally Posted by Cory

I'm going to use team 254/22 as an example.

Team 22 breaks their arm, they know 254 has a spare, they go get it, slap it on the robot, and they're good to go.

This is legal, because it's an identical spare.

Whichever team chose to use 188's grabber clearly would not be replacing their own with an identical spare, so it would be considered an upgrade (not made by the team during build, fix it window, or competition, not from a vendor, and not a COTS part) therefore making it illegal.

If they get it from another team they did not make it therefore it is not legal?

If a team comes to an event with an extra legal arm and sees a team without one, can they give it to them to improve the other team? Or if a team has a prebuilt Dewalt with , say a globe motor ready to go, can they give it to another team?

[Kevin Sevcik]

So I've changed my mind. The part is illegal, and collaboration is illegal. To quote the part use flowchart (presumably definitive in legality):

Is the part or material off-the-shelf or is it custom made by the team after the start of the 2005 Kickoff? (See Robot Section)

"The" team implies the team using the part must build the part if it's not COTS. Other teams surely aren't Suppliers, so..... You could still get around the rule for collaboration by saying another team is just being contracted to fabricate things for you, I suppose, and say this this part is illegal because it's being delivered outside of the fix-it and build windows, I suppose.

[Mr. Lim]

Thank God it's just a Rumour!

But in all seriousness, I appreciate all the comments thus far, and am looking forward to all the future ones.

I'm curious to see what resolution(s) there are in terms of legality - especially since this exchange seems very similar to collaboration.

I'm even more curious to people's interpretation of the "spirit" behind this kind of an exchange. Is it one team trying to help another? Should this be discouraged? Or is it one team gaining a blatantly unfair advantage?

I don't know the answers to any of these, but experience tells me the CD community is more than capable of providing adequte insight.

-SlimBoJones...

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Steve W

If they get it from another team they did not make it therefore it is not legal?

If a team comes to an event with an extra legal arm and sees a team without one, can they give it to them to improve the other team? Or if a team has a prebuilt Dewalt with , say a globe motor ready to go, can they give it to another team?

Sure they can, if it's an exact spare of what the receiving team currently has on the bot.

[Steve W]

So now you are saying that collaboration is illegal because the team did not make the part and it is not readily available to all teams within the proper time frames.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Cory

I'm going to use team 254/22 as an example.

Team 22 breaks their arm, they know 254 has a spare, they go get it, slap it on the robot, and they're good to go.

This is legal, because it's an identical spare.

Whichever team chose to use 188's grabber clearly would not be replacing their own with an identical spare, so it would be considered an upgrade (not made by the team during build, fix it window, or competition, not from a vendor, and not a COTS part) therefore making it illegal.

That raises all SORTS of legality questions. If 22 brought spares themselves and their spares and the arm weighed more than 24 lbs, then this would be illegal if you considered it a spare. I'm not even sure you can consider it a spare if another team brought it. I don't think it's really related at all, though.

[Steve W]

Originally Posted by Cory

Sure they can, if it's an exact spare of what the receiving team currently has on the bot.

What if the part was not on the bot and it is not an exact spare. Maybe not on the robot to start with. Be carefull there has been examples this year.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

That raises all SORTS of legality questions. If 22 brought spares themselves and their spares and the arm weighed more than 24 lbs, then this would be illegal if you considered it a spare. I'm not even sure you can consider it a spare if another team brought it. I don't think it's really related at all, though.

Ok, so my wording was a little off.

Let's say 254 and 22 both had their identical arms made by a 3rd party shop that they listed as a sponsor.

Let's also assume the arm is less than 24 lbs.

So 22 happened to leave their spare at home. 254 has spares in their lab, all identical, all less than 24 lbs, all built inside the 6 week build window. 22 comes to 254's lab, picks up a spare, and walks into competition.

I think this falls within the rules.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Dave Lavery used this logic in a different thread , and I think it applies here. What you bring to an event is what counts as your spares. If you bring a whole robot, even if you don't bring it in, it's all a spare and all illegal. If you don't bring anything to the event, then you don't have any spares. If you say 254 brought it for 22, then 254 should never be able to use it and it shouldn't even be in their pit tempting them.

EDIT: I think the real problem is the lack of guidance from FIRST on the legality of collaborating and teams trading parts at regionals.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Dave Lavery used this logic in a different thread , and I think it applies here. What you bring to an event is what counts as your spares. If you bring a whole robot, even if you don't bring it in, it's all a spare and all illegal. If you don't bring anything to the event, then you don't have any spares. If you say 254 brought it for 22, then 254 should never be able to use it and it shouldn't even be in their pit tempting them.

EDIT: I think the real problem is the lack of guidance from FIRST on the legality of collaborating and teams trading parts at regionals.

<R24> Teams may bring a maximum of 25 pounds of custom FABRICATED ITEMS (SPARE PARTS, REPLACEMENT PARTS, and/or UPGRADE PARTS) to each competition event to be used to repair and/or upgrade their robot at the competition site. All other FABRICATED ITEMS to be used on the robot during the competition must arrive at the competition venue packed in the shipping crate with the robot.

Following that definition, I still see the situation I posed as being legal. Team 22 would have brought them to competition, following every limitation per R24

[Shankar M]

If you were to assume that this were illegal, could GREAT stories like this exist. Granted this teams is not attending the Championship, they are still only trying to help out another team here. They are not after recognition, they simply happen to have an extra grabber lying around somewhere that they are not going to use. They hope that it will find a better home with someone else at Championships. Surely I don't think it would be FIRST's intention to stop things like this from happening.

[activemx]

Originally Posted by Steve W

If they get it from another team they did not make it therefore it is not legal?

If a team comes to an event with an extra legal arm and sees a team without one, can they give it to them to improve the other team? Or if a team has a prebuilt Dewalt with , say a globe motor ready to go, can they give it to another team?

Correct its illegal. The spare part rule is that you have can have identiacal parts and as the rule stated it has to be same as the part on the robot. But you can brig raw material and build a part from sratch at the competition which can be catogarized as an upgrade which is what the unknown team wants to do. It will give this entire assembeled part to a team which will be an upgrade. Which is illegal. What the team could do is give the drawings for the part and the team can build it at the compeition. This has been in effect for the past couple of years now. Its nothing new.

Originally Posted by Shankar M

If you were to assume that this were illegal, could GREAT stories like this exist. Granted this teams is not attending the Championship, they are still only trying to help out another team here. They are not after recognition, they simply happen to have an extra grabber lying around somewhere that they are not going to use. They hope that it will find a better home with someone else at Championships. Surely I don't think it would be FIRST's intention to stop things like this from happening.

What team 33 did was GP and its a different circumstance. Technically it is illegal for a team to give a functional component/system to another team. Basically what how you could interpret that is "oh my teams robot broke and wont work for the rest of the competition, maybe i can as 254 and i can use their spare robot for the rest of the comp." I am just saying, I'm not going to say if 33 did the right thing or not, of course its gracious and we should help out each other. The question is whether its the right thing to do.

[KarenH]

Originally Posted by SlimBoJones

I'm even more curious to people's interpretation of the "spirit" behind this kind of an exchange. Is it one team trying to help another? Should this be discouraged? Or is it one team gaining a blatantly unfair advantage?

At first reading, it seems that a team simply wants to be generous. Thinking about it further: if I were on the donor team, I might be thinking how wonderful it would be if even a piece of our robot made it to the Championship--sort of a proxy for our team.

But "no recognition"? On the one hand, the "anonymous" donor team might still feel good about their gift for both the above reasons. On the other hand, is this implying a secret, underhanded deal, because of legality questions?

As far as an "unfair advantage," I doubt it. First of all, what is the likelihood of any team being able to fit this arm to their robot, without having collaborated with the donor team during build season? Secondly, is the arm really that good? However generous, or legal/illegal this situation would be, I doubt it would be possible for a team to adapt this arm, and to train their drivers to use it, in the one practice day at competition.

By the way, when do we get our kittens? Wait--scratch that--our cat doesn't want any competition!

[Collmandoman]

I say it's legal... because I can't find anywhere where it's not - maybe I'm not reading close enough~

[Mr. Lim]

Here are a few rules that I think are applicable to an exchange like this. If you find any others, please post them:

<R24> Teams may bring a maximum of 25 pounds of custom FABRICATED ITEMS (SPARE PARTS, REPLACEMENT PARTS, and/or UPGRADE PARTS) to each competition event to be used to repair and/or upgrade their robot at the competition site. All other FABRICATED ITEMS to be used on the robot during the competition must arrive at the competition venue packed in the shipping crate with the robot.

<R15> At the competitions: Teams are allowed to repair, modify or upgrade their competition robots while participating in a competition event. To support this, teams may bring SPARE, REPLACEMENT and UPGRADE PARTS and COTS items to the competitions (within the limits specified in Rules <R23> and <R24>). Work may only be done on-site in the Pits or at any facility made available to all teams at the event (e.g., in a team’s repair trailer or a local team’s shop offered to all teams to use). Fabrication may be done when the Pit area is open for normal operations during the period starting with the opening of the Pit area on Thursday and ending at 4:00PM on Saturday. All work must be completed when the Pit area closes each evening. Parts may not be removed from the competition site and retained overnight after
the Pit area closes.

UPGRADE PARTS - A COMPONENT or MECHANISM intended to provide additional functionality not currently available on the robot. UPGRADE PARTS may be COTS items or custom FABRICATED ITEMS, and may either add to or replace existing functionality.

The grabber in question would probably be classified as a FABRICATED PART - UPGRADE PARTS that weigh under 25 pounds.

-SlimBoJones...