paper: Spanking the Children

[Christopher149]

I don't know if it's just me being annoyed, or if it's an actual problem, but:

At Escanaba this weekend, we were up one game in quarterfinals. However, our alliance was assessed a G28 tech foul for entering the frame perimeter, costing us the match 101-102. We then lost the third match for a variety of reasons. So, if the foul were anything less, we would have moved to semifinals. Also, about 50% of the other alliance's score was that one tech foul.

I know we don't want undue contact, but given the game, this will happen fairly frequently. I know, we even have quite a few scratches on the inside of our robot. But we have the vast majority of the robot hiding behind the bumpers, so there is very little to damage without really getting into the bot.

The loss was unfortunate, but it is what it is. However, the penalty value seems out-of-whack with the real severity of the problem. Also, the assessment of "intent" for G28 seems potentially arbitrary.

</rant over>