Your tall opaque robot is now illegal

[dodar]

Team A builds a boulder blocker.

Team B, "hey their blocker blocks our camera."

GDC, "Team B don't move your camera, Team A shall just have to redesign their entire robot to not block Team B's camera."

Yeah, makes total sense.

[cad321]

Has anyone submitted a Q&A asking the other half of the original question? Something along the lines of,

If I have a mechanism on my robot with the sole intent to block boulders being shot into the high goal, but it unintentionally interferes with an oponents vision system, would this be in violation of R9-c?

Get final clarification once and for all on this matter?

I'd ask it myself but I don't have access to my teams Q&A account at the moment.

[hardcopi]

So basically they are saying that it is illegal to use anything to stop the robot from functioning as it was intended to. Ok... then defense is illegal beause my robot was designed to shoot. The low bar should be illegal because we are a tall robot, etc...

They will rethink this I am pretty sure.

[Anthony Galea]

If this is going to be the ruling, saying that you cannot block shooters, I will be very upset as that was one of the large factors in us becoming a tall robot, we would have been a low bar bot if we knew that your shots are not allowed to be blocked. I sincerely hope the GDC reconsiders, as it feels like the game is being changed fundamentally mid-season.

[Lil' Lavery]

Chief Delphi's Greatest Hits vol. 47: Overreactions to Q&A responses

[JesseK]

If my robot intentionally turns another robot which has a camera, is the drive train now considered a device which intends to interfere with the vision of another robot?

[dodar]

Originally Posted by JesseK

If my robot intentionally turns another robot which has a camera, is the drive train now considered a device which intends to interfere with the vision of another robot?

Technically this is correct. You could very easily make an argument that your drivetrain is a device intended to interfere with another robot's sensing capabilities.

[D.Allred]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Part of the difficulty here is the way the question itself was worded. The answer itself isn't as bad as an overly broad interpretation of the answer. The question and the answer specifically deal with "a piece of plastic installed to prevent a camera from seeing the reflective tape on the goals ", not all tall pieces of plastic or tall robots. My primary concern is if this Q&A is interpreted so broadly as to say blocking views of cameras is illegal.

Keep in mind this is an inspection issue, not a game match issue, so it's not actually illegal to play defense on a robot with a camera regardless of your design...

I don't understand your point. You can't play the defense if you don't pass inspection. Could you clarify?

Bottom line, no matter how the question was worded the answer does not make sense.

David

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

This is stupid. Any robots with cameras mounted low should have had countermeasures in place to deal with tall blockers. Can't every low robot now put a camera on their robot just so people can't block. In my opinion this is going to drastically change the game.

[AllenGregoryIV]

This is just getting crazy. Has common sense gone out the window. The Q948 answer isn't any better about suction cups on the field and attaching to the driver station shelf.

How is anyone expected to know if a team is intending to block vision instead of just blocking shots? Also wasn't that part of the design challenge did any low camera mounted teams not expect to have robots in front of them blocking their vision?

[Woolly]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Also wasn't that part of the design challenge did any low camera mounted teams not expect to have robots in front of them blocking their vision?

Well, that's the entire reason we have our camera mounted on our claw that extends to 40". I guess we can move it down to our drive base if we notice the LRI is disallowing opaque 4'6" blockers.

[Jean Tenca]

So... goodbye noodle blockers?

I find this to be a strange decision by the GDC. However, to be safe we'll be adding a camera on each side of our robot a̶s̶ ̶d̶e̶f̶e̶n̶s̶e̶ ̶d̶e̶t̶e̶r̶r̶e̶n̶t̶ for target tracking.

[waialua359]

You can still manually aim your robot to the castle high goal, with your camera blocked. Just takes a little longer....🙂
But if it's true, it will definitely change the dynamics of the game in the upcoming weeks.

[mwmac]

Let me get this straight, if my opponents have no vision targeting capability that uses a camera, but instead rely upon a photon cannon to confirm goal alignment, my screen that blocks the photon cannon beam is legal? Next match, my robot is illegal if one of the opponents does have a camera-based targeting system in place.

Clear as mud...

[notmattlythgoe]