Ramming and Hitting

[KenWittlief]

Dave and Mike,

normally teams will have several auton routines that they can select at the start of a match. For this reason you would normally have no way of knowing where your opponents robots will be during auton mode, therefore you could not intentionally 'program' your robot to ram someone elses bot with the intention of causing damage (normally).

as a result you will see bot collisions - possibly full speed collisions as a result of bots trying to get into a particular field position. As long as contact is limited to the bumper zones (a robot does not pull out a javalin!) there should be no foul or penalty.

as for someone designing a robot to seek and destroy during auton mode, that is definately an exception - I think it would be obvious if a robot tracks other bots in every match and repeatedly backs up and rams them. In that case, definately DQ them for the entire event. But I got $100 here that says you will not see a FIRST team design a robot for that purpose.

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

therefore you could not intentionally 'program' your robot to ram someone elses bot with the intention of causing damage (normally).

Sure you can, and it has been done before. In 2003 there were a few teams who had autonomous programs that shot under the bar with hopes of ramming a slow or non-moving robot from the opposing alliance. I won't speculate as to whether damage was intended but the ramming certainly was. This year you could program your robot to drive straight across the field at full speed with hopes of running into an opponent that did not have autonomous (and therefore would be sitting still on the other end of the field).

Of course there's the possibility of accidental collisions (possibly violent) because you don't know where the other guy is going, and this should not be penalized. However, if it is apparent that a robot's autonomous was designed with the intention of running into another robot then the rule should apply (and that was what was communicated in the past). A robot that drives around aimlessly on the field at high speed with no intention of scoring might be an example of this.