This year's mousebot?

[Gary Dillard]

Any thoughts on what rules we'll be allowed to ignore this year because we "invested considerable engineering effort" into making something illegal work and by that rational should be allowed to use it?

Sorry, I'm still a little peeved about that decision last year. Some day I'll get over it.

[authgeek1218]

Could you clarify for me since I wasn't there last year?

Are you speaking about the tethered smaller bots that 'returned' the bot to the home space for the extra points? That was last year, wasn't it?

[Gary Dillard]

Yeah, all season long (and every year in the past) tethers were specifically ruled as entanglement hazards and would be illegal, but when a couple teams showed up with them, FIRST let them go. Here's their ruling:

Starting with the answer to the question:
Yes, the rules on tethers have been loosened. And, we apologize. Why?
We had to. Please read on.

Is this unfair to teams that correctly and strictly interpreted our
rules updates as posted during the season? Probably. We know it, and
please believe that we don't feel great about the way it went down.
We're sorry.

Now, the details. We loosened up on the tethering rules, as a result
of VCU. Want to know why? We asked a certain Pappalardo Professor of
Engineering at MIT for his guidance. Maybe you've heard of him - Dr.
Woodie Flowers. Dr. Flowers' comments to us at VCU were basically
that if the teams have put time and effort into engineering a tether
or tethered device, let them demonstrate it. We also thought back to
the kickoff and Dean's approval of being able to be in 2 places at
once.

So what the rule has become is that unless it's a piece of string or
flimsy unprotected wire, it can be deployed. With Woodie's estimable
guidance in place, the situation changed. (Please, don't contact
him.) Protected mechanisms (like the segmented, encased successful
objects that we've seen) will usually be allowed.

As a result, we are allowing the less egregious tethers to be used,
because that is what we must do. It is unfair to the teams that
avoided them expecting a strict rule interpretation up until now. But
it is clearly worse to allow the current angst over this issue to
continue.

Know that below the noise level here, we really are disallowing some
mechanisms that clearly would cause entanglement. Also, the lack of
resolution on the webcasts -for the 99% of you without a dedicated
1GB/second web server available - makes some decent tether designs
appear as loose wire, when in fact they are protected, encased,
hinged units.

[sanddrag]

Last year, a lot of teams (like us) put a lot of time and money into building a 20 foot telescoping pole that would never touch the ground. This device was just barely compliant with the original rules. We spent a really long time and a lot of money making it just to follow the rules and in the end we could not use it because it was too heavy. We got beaten by teams who broke the rules with mousebots. And these mousebots were a $30 3 hour job.

I look down upon any team who used a mousebot, tapemeasure (don't even get me started on that), or similar device last year.

Just Follow the Rules Darnet!

I can't really say what this years mousebot will be. I'll have to think about that some more.

[DanLevin247]

rather than have a mousebot, 247 had the infamous extending arm, anybody who went to any of the regionals we went to last year knows what I am talking about. Our arm, started at 5 feet long, and in 9 seconds, extended to over 24 feet in length, and could swivel 360 degrees. You know you loved it.

[p373R L1a0]

Originally posted by sanddrag

I look down upon any team who used a mousebot, tapemeasure (don't even get me started on that), or similar device last year.

i can see mayb why u thought the mousebot was not fair cuz of the tether.. but i personally thought that tape measures were a brilliant idea

[sanddrag]

Originally posted by p373R L1a0
i can see mayb why u thought the mousebot was not fair cuz of the tether.. but i personally thought that tape measures were a brilliant idea

Okay, you started the talk about tape measures not me. They were brilliant from Day 1 but they were totally illegal from Day 1 as well.