About being overweight and exceeding your size requirements – the need for reinspecti

[Godzilla!]

Background:
At both GLR & Detroit this year all robots plus the top 4 standby robots that were to compete in the eliminations were re-inspected for both weight and size.

I was approached by the Head Robot inspector and asked to come to the inspection station Saturday during lunch. Upon arriving, I found that all teams except one had passed inspection. The team that failed exceeded both the size and weight requirements.

This team was given a “Conditional Pass” late Friday morning so they could compete. They did not meet the requirements for size but told the inspectors they would make the required adjustments before competing and based on this were given an inspection sticker.

They did meet the weight requirements Friday morning time.

During the Saturday inspection it was determined that not only did the team not make the required adjustment for size but they actually increased their size. When the robot (without bumpers) was weighed it was found to have exceeded the weight requirements by 13 lbs!

I instructed the inspector to pull the inspection sticker and to tell the team they would not be able to compete unless they got a new inspection sticker.

After a short time period the team reweighed the robot and miraculously now met the weight requirements! As to what they removed I had no idea – could have been weights or the shooter mechanism.

It did take the team a number of tries before they met the size requirements.

When the team finally passed the inspection I asked for the team captain and found he was also the 8’th seed Alliance captain.

During our discussion I informed him that he was to inform the Alliance partners of the teams actions and if they made it to the finals they were to inform all competitors of the inspection results.

I also believe that the additional weight gave the team an illegal performance enhancement and could have been a direct reason why they were the 8’th seed thereby tainting all the teams wins. Given this, I suggested to him that the team should remove themselves from the afternoon competition and replace their robot with a more qualified standby robot.

Results:

The team competed in the eliminations and was eliminated in the first round.

To the best of my knowledge, the inspection results were not passed to the other teams

There was no remorse shown for the inspection results. I believe that the only concern shown by the team was that they got caught.


Conclusion:
Gracious Professionalism?
Concerns?
Rules? There are no rules allowing for retroactive disqualification if a team has been found to violate the robot requirements and I did not do so. There are no rules other than a valid inspection sticker to have kept the team out of the elimination rounds.

What Would You Do?

I would be interested to know opinions of the actions taken by this team and was this appropriately handled.

Sorry for the placement of this thread but I had tried to place this in a moderated area and I guess it didn’t work as I haven’t seen it and I believe that this is an important topic.

Ron Webb
Head Ref
GLR & Detroit

[Pavan Dave]

Weight does give an advantage and I would hope that team would have fessed up. I also think that them being eliminated in the first round proves that weight can make you or break you in this years game*.

Thank you for telling everybody about this problem as this is a very important topic and it is not fair to the teams that play by the rules.

Pavan


*to a certain extent.

[Jason Kixmiller]

Definitely a hard topic...

I believe that one of the toughest challenges of the FIRST competition is the size/weight requirements. I believe that a rule is a rule and if a team doesn't follow this rule, they shouldn't be allowed to compete at all. It certainly isn't a happy scenario - the team worked hard to create their robot, etc. - but providing leniency toward one team creates an unfair advantage and sidesteps a challenge of the game. I don't think this team should have played past practice rounds until the inspection was fully passed.

[Kevin Sevcik]

The obvious difficulty with making a retroactive rule is that you don't know when the weight showed up. They could've added it after their last match. If you're dealing with a team that's already abusing the honor system, they're not going to tell you they added the weight after their first match.

At any rate, FIRST has to work on the honor system. There's little to prevent teams from pulling any number of similar stunts to get a little more performance by skirting the rules. Obviously they should be ashamed of themselves, but I'm unsure what we can do about things if they're not. Possibly we'll have to start being mean and naming names so other teams will know about them. And, of course, bring a heck of a lot more peer pressure into play to reinforce their moral fiber.

[EStokely]

Wow.

Nice light topic for the afternoon.

I guess we learn from this and try to make the appropriate changes for next year. There was a time that a team could anonymously "turn in" another team for re inspection. In an effort to prevent this very problem.

But as you stated there are no mechanisms to deal with the scenario you presented. And I would guess most of us would feel that there should be a way for this type of behavior to be addressed. All you could do was make suggestions. Obviously GP was not being considered by the team as presented here.

I guess I am most concerned with a robot being allowed to compete that didn't pass inspection. Some of this problem could have been addressed if they had not been allowed on the field until they initially met inspection.

So in an effort to turn this into a positive allow me to make a few suggestions for next year, or even future matches this year.
1) No robot competes unless it is within the rules.
2) Weigh before each match, or immediately after each match, at the field (I know logistically this could be a problem but of the size/weight concerns here weight is the bigger problem I suspect)
3) Do random inspections during Friday and sat
4) Have published penalties for breaking the rules. A robot found to be over weight should lose the matches they competed in, even if its retroactive (IMHO) As to which matches I think a case could be made for any "Suspected matches" i.e. any matches between weigh ins.
Harsh? yep. but it is the teams responsibility to keep their weight in spec. If you alter the machine you need to reweigh. That's pretty straight forward.

If these problems are not addressed then what are rules in the future worth? Are they guidelines or are they rules?

[TubaMorg]

Wow what a story! It is my view that they could/should have been disqualified when reinspection showed them to fail both size and weight restrictions.

On my team the kids are CONSTANTLY trying to figure out ways to "lawyer" the rules, but their intent is clear %99 of the time. There may not be a SPECIFIC rule addressing this SPECIFIC violation, because there is no concievable way that the FIRST game designers can account for every single possible scenario that might arise. Even if they tried we would end up with a rule book 10 inches thick. They have done a very good job at describing INTENT so that teams that attempt to circumvent the rules to gain an unfair advantage can be stopped. If there were a rule addressing this issue, then you (as Head Ref.) would be forced to DQ teams that probably shouldn't be DQ'd. I think it is reasonable to except that a team may accidently exceed weight limits by a small amount as a result of emergency repairs in the heat of competition. In this case you would want to give them a chance to rectify the situation.

12 lbs. over weight is clearly a deliberate middle finger at the rules and other teams. I am betting that their pneumatic system is involved, based on the size change and weight change. Our team had to redesign without a air system and that was just about the weight we saved(compressor + storage + cylinders). And the components are ez to take off and put back on. Either that or a couple of drive motors. Either way it makes no difference, because they added weight (and presumably functionality) to their robot that gave them an advantage in the competition. I 100% agree with your assesment and analysis of the violation, but wish you would have DQ'd them on the spot and told them to try again next year with a robot that complies with the rules. Who knows? One of the teams that were on standby may have been seeded much higher if the other team hadn't cheated, right?

So the rules don't specify any actual punishments/penalties to be assesed for this violation, but clearly they violated several rules:
Weight
Size
Didn't get reinspected after making a change to robot design after initial inspection
Not to mention WAY anti-GP

The rules only say each team must pass initial inspection before competing (which this team did) and gives the officials leeway to reinspect before or after matches. In this case, you felt compelled (against your gut intinct) to allow the team to continue. I doubt, however, there are many teams out there that would have objected to having that team removed from the competition. I am sure we could open a different thread asking people to dream up of ways violate the rules without getting DQ'd. There are many (much more subtle) ways to gain an unfair advantage in this competition and NOT get caught. Many aspects are governed by the honor system. When teams begin snubbing the rules we establish a slippery slope, where other teams must respond in kind (violating rules) just to remain competitive. So, again, the more I think about it the more I am in favor of DQing this team in this case.

Perhaps as a remedial solution, they should be placed on probation, should they choose to compete next year. The should be informed they will be receiving a disportionately large number of "random" inspections. Or the brainiac mentor who allowed this should be removed from the team. Something.

[Alex Cormier]

I see it as follows. If your robot is over weight or outside of the requirement size. It should not compete until otherwise legal. giving the team a special way out is unacceptable and should not have been done at all or even thought of. Let's look at it like this. If you get pulled over for doing 85mph (i don't know the conversion for our Canadian friends up north ) in a 55mph zone in a old rusty Buick. Does the cop believe that his measuring device is wrong because it's a old rusty Buick and let's the driver off with a warning? no. The officer gives the driver a ticket no matter what because their measuring device said that the old rusty Buick was going over 55 mph.

So, the robot should not have been allowed to play any matches at all unless under weight and in the 'box'. If once passed they should have been inspected on a few occasions to see if they stayed legal. the best bet would be to have them measured directly after a match before they even go to their pit area. If they are illegal they should be DQ from their previous match and get no QP. It's just like the speed testing this year but should be normal for all robots that were illegal coming into the event.

I hope this has to never be discussed again on how the robot got away with what it has done and will not happen to any other teams at any other competitions. it's just not right.

[kawelch]

I agree that the honor system needs to be used by teams and not try to skirt the intent of rules. I also agree that no team should participate in a qualifying or elimination match that has not passed inspections. I also agree it is the TEAMS responsibility to get reinspected after any modification. But I draw the line at practice matches. A team that barely finished their Robot in time to ship has many things to finish besides the building of the robot. The driver needs practice time, the programmers need to debug, etc. In between matches the team can fix the weight/size problem. It also doesn't help other teams practice if the robots from other alliences don't show up.
It would be nice if our culture allowed for people to "play by the rules" rather than "play to win or get caught whichever comes first"

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by EStokely

4) Have published penalties for breaking the rules. A robot found to be over weight should lose the matches they competed in, even if its retroactive (IMHO) As to which matches I think a case could be made for any "Suspected matches" i.e. any matches between weigh ins.
Harsh? yep. but it is the teams responsibility to keep their weight in spec. If you alter the machine you need to reweigh. That's pretty straight forward.

This is the problem you run in to. If you just say "suspected matches" and leave it for someone to determine, then you're putting a lot of gray area in there. If you're saying since they were last weighed... Well a team is likely to be weighed once at inspection and maybe once at your random inspection. And if you're an ounce over weight and lose half of your matches cause someone left a wrench on the robot.... Well that's not fun.

As for reweighing after every robot change... That'd keep inspection hopping the entire weekend. Not to mention teams missing matches cause they're in line to get re-weighed after a simple change.

Plus, this ignores other re-inspection issues like swapping 40 amp breakers for 50, or any of a hundred other nefarious changes an ill-intentioned team can pull.

Basically, I think any hard and fast rules about this are much more likely to horribly punish teams that mean well and accidentally end up a pound over after a weekend of wrestling with a robot. They're not likely to deter the theoretical (and likely few) teams that intetionally go out there and break the rules for an advantage.

[jacob07]

I cant believe that a team would want to cheat in this lovely sport. This sport is all about following the rules. Thats why I love it so much. Its not about winning or about being the best. Its about having a good time. Thats what my team thirves in and its hard for me to see why a team would feel it necessary to make it more then that. It confuses me but not everyone in this world playsl by the rules as they showed all of us. Thanks Ron for sharing

[Swan217]

Retroactively DQ the team for every match that they were overweight. If they do not give a time that they added the weight, or cannot otherwise prove that they were at one time running matches at 120 lbs, then they are DQed for every match. In the case where alliances have already been decided, the 1st replacement bot is used.

[BRosser314]

At GLR this year a certain team in the finals called out the whole other alliance and made them all recheck there speeds or there shooter. All of these teams passed and went on to win the regional, could some of these decisions that people make be guided towards being a bad sport. This sportt is all about being a gracious proffesional and having good sportsmanship.

I remember back to my freshmen year, 3 years ago the game was Stack Attack. We had a lartge sweeper arm that we could use to knock down the whole stack. When we would take our sweeper off for finals matches we would add weight but always make sure we didnt go over because we ha pre-made weights that just had to be bolt on. Do you think this is wrong? We have yet done it since then but would teams be offended by this or look down on teams that did do this?

At the end of saturday at GLR we made some modifications to our robot making sure we cut off pieces if we added pieces. Without weighing our robot we went to Midwest and weighed in we were almost 13 pounds overweight. Without thinking we left the battery on our bot. When we took it off we were back down to that nice and light 119.6lbs. Could that team that was 13lbs overweight in all weigh-ins, have weighed ther bot with battery. If so it was an honest mistake to a veteran team that was thinking back to a few years ago.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Godzilla!

...When the robot (without bumpers) was weighed it was found to have exceeded the weight requirements by 13 lbs!

I instructed the inspector to pull the inspection sticker and to tell the team they would not be able to compete unless they got a new inspection sticker.

After a short time period the team reweighed the robot and miraculously now met the weight requirements! As to what they removed I had no idea – could have been weights or the shooter mechanism.

Or it could just have been the battery. That would match a "miraculous" 13 pound difference. It's possible it was merely accidentally included during the first weighing.

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by BRosser314

Could that team that was 13lbs overweight in all weigh-ins, have weighed ther bot with battery. If so it was an honest mistake to a veteran team that was thinking back to a few years ago.

It could be.

Personally, I'm wondering just how bad it'd be if teams had to weigh in before each match. Just drop your robot on the scale, make weight, and pick it back up to go onto the field. Probably would take a second scale, though.

[ChuckDickerson]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

Or it could just have been the battery. That would match a "miraculous" 13 pound difference. It's possible it was merely accidentally included during the first weighing.

Isn't the reason we now weigh in without the battery because the batteries can vary a pound or more from one to the other and teams were picking their lightest battery to weigh in with? Is there any truth to the rumor I heard that years ago (before my time FIRST) one or more teams were caught weighing in with "modified" (read hollowed out) batteries?