Is this legal

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by Derek Bessette

<R29> 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.

Key word = bring. They obviously didn't bring this with them, since they got it from the weight room. - MY thought remains, it's still legal.

edit: This is not applicable within this rule anyways, as Nuttyman points out below, it's definitely a COTS item. Thanks for totally ruining my argument Nuttyman. Nonetheless, as for the Spare parts rule in general, my following original thought does apply, just not in this specific case..

Team A brings 25 pounds of Spares, replacements, and then before finals, They ask Team B for a (say 5 pounds for argument's sake) spare part at the event site that they forgot to bring, or just didn't plan ahead for. Are you gonna DQ the team from competing because they were short on supplies, and asked a team who graciously gave them what they needed yet went over the 25 pound mark? Are you going to DQ the other team for assisted rule breaking??? I don't think so.

Stop beating this horse to death. It was accepted by the inspectors, and every one else at this event, and I would accept this at my event if I were an inspector as well.

At all FIRST events there is a lot of harmony, but at other times things happen differently. You can't harmonize all these events no matter how much you want to, or how much you try. It's just not gonna happen. Things happen differently from Regional 1, to Regional 2, to Regional 3, etc. etc..
Just accept it and move on.

[Nuttyman54]

<R28> Teams may acquire and bring an unlimited amount of COTS items to the competitions to be used to repair and/or upgrade their robot at the competition site.

Since the barbell weight is obviously a COTS item, it would not break the 25 lbs of custom parts rule. I agree with everyone that unless it was intended to be able to be removed and swapped out for their shooter, it's legal.

[Tristan Lall]

Time to jump in here and offer the officials' perspective on the matter.¹ I was the lead inspector at Waterloo, and personally approved the modification.

The modification involved removing the shooter mechanism, and substituting a large, heavy object, in order to restore the lost weight. This was done in order to reduce the height of the centre of gravity, to permit the robot to perform better in a defensive capacity. It was performed just prior to the elimination rounds, and was appropriately re-inspected.

As for the rules, first of all, the 25 pound rule (<R29>) applies to fabricated parts only; by contrast, the large weight (the vises were removed in the final configuration) are COTS items, and therefore do not violate <R29>.

Teams are allowed and expected to make modifications at the competition site—this much is unquestionable. <R09> requires that the components that constitute all configurations of the robot be weighed together. It was decided that since the weight and vise were not brought to the competition site as robot parts, it could not have been reasonably determined that they represented additional robot configurations at the time of the original inspection.² In order to continue to satisfy <R09>, the (removed) shooter must cease to be a possible alternate configuration (or be brought under the weight limit by some other means)—this was accomplished by informing the team that they could not put the shooter back on at this event.

Basically, it's just like Cory and Derek explained. 1281's modification was legal at Waterloo.

There's also an additional complexity to the problem. The team is now unquestionably aware of the added-weight strategy, and has configured their robot to accept these parts. Since I believe that the team intends to replace the shooter at the competition (and remove the weights), they will have to choose between one or the other, next Thursday, when they are once again inspected. The configurations which they choose to abandon will become illegal for further use (but note that if subsets of both devices are used, they may still be legal after re-inspection). Confusingly, the rules don't necessarily preclude them from finding another 40 pounds of dead weight, and doing the same thing with new parts. It will fall upon the GTR lead inspector to make the determination of the team's intentions—and this isn't easy, given the fact that while plausible deniability is very much reduced the second time around, a second such modification could, in theory, be the result of honest improvisation. We (meaning a representative from 1281, Doug Hink—the lead inspector at GTR, and I) should probably discuss this next Thursday....

Also, as a historical note, I permitted 1241 (i.e. distinct from 1281) to make a similar modification last year (with a single COTS bench vise), on similar grounds. I'm quite sure that 1281 and their alliance were aware of this past ruling when they made the decision to add the weights.

¹ This post is not to be construed as an official ruling.

² It's not reasonable for an inspection to cover every possible item that a team could manage to attach to their robot (when we're talking dead weight, anything's possible). As a practical matter, the must inspectors attempt to decide whether a team intended to keep these extra parts on hand in order to configure their robot differently, or if it was just an impromptu change.

[IndySam]

Thanks for the clarification Tristan. Good job.

[Joe Ross]

I'd think it would look funny on their BOM.

"1 barbell $50"

;-)