Rent-A-Bot

[dtengineering]

There is a rule that prohibits it, specifically:

<R09> Each registered FIRST Robotics Competition team can enter ONE (1) ROBOT into the 2008 FIRST Robotics Competition.

But this is one of those rules where the spirit of the game and intent of the rule can occasionally override the letter of the rule.

For instance it is not unknown (but is, fortunately, uncommon) for a team's robot to be lost in shipping, or at least delayed in arriving at a regional. In that case it is standard practice for everyone to chip in some parts and help the team build a new robot on Thursday to compete with on Friday. I have seen this happen at GTR and know of it happening at least once at Championships. In the case at GTR, the team's robot did arrive for Saturday morning and they were able to use it to compete... although they had used a different (and amazingly competent!) robot the previous day.

I believe the case you put forward, however, would not qualify under this compassionate exemption assuming the failure occured as a result of normal or reasonably expectable game play. (If the ceiling of the venue collapsed on top of the robot, or aliens vapourized it with ray guns then that is, perhaps, different.) First of all, it is difficult to comprehend how a robot could suffer irrepairable failure through normal game play. Second of all if a robot does suffer irrepairable damage through normal game play, then that is a failure in design. Finally, even if the ceiling collapsed or aliens melted the robot, the standard set in the case of lost shipping crates is not to have an unused robot take the place of the lost robot, but rather for the team with the lost robot to create a new one with the help of the other teams.

It would be my expectation that team 5000 would make an heroic effort to repair their robot to the best of their abilities, even if that means competing with reduced functionality at the championships.

Jason