Important Q/A forum responses

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by Peter Matteson

... The wording in that was poorly thought out but the intent is clear. They don't want you to use the old batteries in a way that may allow for them to get in the robot for competition. Don't lawyer like I did above and don't do something stupid like showing up to the field with an old battery on your robot or cart, and you'll probably be fine.

Pete

Thanks for cutting to the chase, Pete. As you point out, the intent is clear. And competition officials will be looking for incorrect batteries in and around robots that are near the field. Inspectors will be looking at teams' pneumatics charging procedures in the pits.

[Kevin Kolodziej]

Originally Posted by Billfred

Here's one that's going to get a lot of people, if it's not publicized...

Here's where this rule gets hairy, in my opinion. Its good practice to come back from a match and run through all your functions to make sure everything is in working order. In doing so, positions will be reset to competition ready. Are they saying that this post-match assessment needs to be done with the competition battery? These actions are not the same as debugging.

While we won't be charging the pneumatic system at that time, its likely that the "pit" battery will remain in the robot during pit maintenance and it just makes sense to charge the system, using that battery, while still in the pit, then swapping in the new battery, then heading to the match. Not all teams can charge their system in the pit for a variety of reasons, and I realize it would be rediculous to say if you charge in the pit, you can use a different battery...but this rule just doesn't seem add any fairness or take away any advantage or anything like that. The two things it does is limit the number of non-competition batteries that make it to the field (a very good thing) and suggest that teams purchase more and more new batteries (not such a good thing for all teams).

Kev