2010 Pittsburgh Regional

[Madison]

Originally Posted by Karthik

I would like to thank all the teams who so "graciously" pointed out our perceived ball lifting to the refs and inspectors. It's too bad that these teams did not approach us directly, as we could have demonstrated our system to them and showed them how we keep the ball on the ground; as we did to all the teams who the common courtesy to talk to us directly.

Our entire roller system is sprung towards the ground, which keeps the ball in contact with the ground during normal gameplay, including quick forward/reverse motions. Multiple inspectors and referees at the event scrutinized our robot both on the field and in the pit and saw no violations. (Despite the supposed "clear loss of contact" described by others who never bothered to take a close look...)

In cases where we are being pushed and our robot lifts off ground by more than 3/4", the ball does come off ground as seen in the video. But, this is not a penalty since the contact was initiated by another team.

I could go on a rant about all those who felt the need to call us cheaters and even go so far to ask for our removal from the competition, but it's really not worth my time. Thankfully, these negative attitudes from a small minority were overwhelmed by the great displays and actions of the large majority of Pittsburgh Regional participants.

Karthik,

In order to make the best determination I can of the legality of your ball handling mechanism, I'm going to require exhaustive photos of the finished robot and full engineering drawings. I can PM you an address to provide these to.