We're really not that mean.

[archiver]

Posted by Tom Wible, Coach on team #131, chaos, from central high school manchester and osram-sylvania.

Posted on 4/30/99 5:56 PM MST


In Reply to: Re: I disagree - Robots with arms unite! posted by Andrew Trax on 4/30/99 2:56 PM MST:



I am quoting the rules here, 'intentional tipping is not in the spirit of FIRST'. If you design a robust arm which can tip and destroy other people's baskets, then you are not in alignment with the spirit of FIRST. Think about it, how would you draw the line on a mechanism? We were contemplating putting a 'stabilizer' on our robot which would retract. It might also get under another teams robot and tip it over when we lifted it back up.
My interpretation of the intent of the rules was that if a robot fell over as another team was trying to climb the puck then OK. But if a team used its' arm to intentionally tip over another robot then that's not OK. I think we need some clarification form FIRST on this. It seems that at some regionals the refs were DQing teams which flipped other robots, well they didn't in Florida, why?
Let me pose this question: how many teams did you see with an arm which could be used to tip over another robot? Most teams probably thought that a robust arm would be useless for floppy raising, and obviously a robust arm would have another intended purpose. (Floppies aren't that heavy). Let's get real if you had a robust arm, and you pushed on another robots' high point, you are intentionally tipping it. As was explained, if you were battling for the puck, and one of the robots fell as a result, that would be OK.
I take that to mean that if you tip over another robot to get on the puck you violate the tipping rule. My girlfriend who is relatively unaware of the fine points of the contest, could not believe that the robots were being pulled over and ripped apart at the nationals. In one match that we were in, the opposing alliance reached out with its' floppy picker and pulled our partners' robot off the puck by its' basket. Then kept pulling until the entire assembly was mangled. I have a photo of the aftermath if anyone is interested.


2 cents

Tom Wible