No, they don’t. Words do not have metadata that imbue them with meaning. They mean things precisely to the extent that we (people taking part in an interaction involving them) agree/infer/believe that they do.
This is pretty elementary semiotics/philosophy of language.
They kind of do, though. It’s true that words only have meaning in the extremely specific context of human society, but these rules are being written in that same context.
And for all practical purposes, everyone agrees that words do indeed mean things.
If I’m writing the FRC rulebook and I want to prohibit robots taller than 5 feet tall, I can’t just write a rule saying “no green robots” and expect to have the robot inspectors ban tall robots because of my “intent”.
Obviously that’s a bit of a hyperbolic example, but if the FRC rulemakers want to prohibit certain specifications or actions, they have to use words with meanings that convey that; teams can’t just read their minds.
But we’re in a situation where the reading of the rules is disputed; since parties plainly do not agree on the meaning of the rule as worded, we can’t appeal to shared understanding in an unqualified way.
This situation is unavoidable because reality is way more complex than what you can write down in a few paragraphs of written human language.
Interpreting rules when meaning is ambiguous or disputed involves ascribing intent to the language in some way.
The reading of the rules is not “in dispute”. We followed the rules to the letter, and FIRST HQ has agreed (with multiple interactions between HQ and the event LRI) that the rules as written are the rules, and that what we brought to the tournament is 1 robot. FIRST is fundamentally an engineering challenge, with an award specifically for creativity which states"
The Creativity Award celebrates creativity that enhances strategy of play and was intentionally designed and not discovered." If FIRST has an award for being creative with how you play the game, why is it a problem?
I’m in agreement with you here. If you asked FRC and then said this is okay, more power to you.
I am just very surprised that FRC approved this as it seems to me the intent of this rule is to prevent teams from building two robots that they can compete with. And in my mind, anything that can be turned into a robot by just attaching a few parts (swerve modules), should probably count as a robot.
But since you got approval, I guess FRC thinks otherwise.
The critical detail is weighing in within the 150lb total configurable material limit, which they did.
Most teams are so far away from that limit that they don’t realize it’s a rule, and most inspectors don’t formally go over it because teams are so easily and obviously in compliance.
This is frickin cool and I want to try to pull it off some other year.
(We used to do complete superstructure replacements inside the old 30lb withholding allowance, feels similar… we were just bolting on a WCD skateboard to it instead of swerve modules…)
If a team is able to build not one, but two competitive robot mechanisms under the 150-pound limit, I say let them cook.
More or less my feeling. I think the rule could be reworded to make this intent clearer, especially given past wordings of the same rule.
Ultimately, though, if FIRST explicitly approved this there’s no argument to be had.
Oh man, that thing is cute! I hope you get to use it in Windsor!
Yeah a lot of people here are overlooking what an incredibly hard engineering challenge it is to actually follow the rules and have 2 configs like this.
The fact that they pulled it off at all is amazing to me. Kudos to the creativity!
That is kinda awesome ngl. The amount of skill and effort to build two bots in one season (and one under 50lbs) is insane, mad props to the team!
THANK YOU! As an FRC team member for the past 5 years, it makes me sad to see teams exploiting rule loopholes that blatantly violate the rule’s intention. Clearly the culture of winning in FIRST has gone too far.
I will say I’m wrong on this example. They reached out to FIRST and got approval so this team has done nothing wrong.
You make a good point- FIRST green lighting this does mean it should be respected in some sense. But, I still believe that the intention of finding a loophole that disregards the clear intention of a rule is still in bad faith to the core value of Gracious professionalism.
At the Ontario District Championship, we had the opportunity to run our alternate configuration in Finals 2 of the Science division. While the match did not go as we had hoped, we were still able to prove our concept, completing the swap between configurations in 15 minutes, and being able to play a mach. Now we look forwards to Worlds, which both configurations will be attending.
That was literally the day I first met the team, so I don’t have the details of what the team planned to do leading up to Hartford, but the 2024 swervebot was only 5 days from its first movement at that point and, as you mentioned, was critically broken on Saturday during an early match and our team is not flush with spares. We had the 2023 base in the trunk of a car and got the OK from the LRI to use it “as a source of spare parts”, resulting in us being perhaps the only team to switch from swerve to tank drive during qualifiers. 
They did make us take the swerve modules off the 2024 bot prior to completing the 2023 bot. In the overall picture, that was a good compromise to come close to the letter of G209 and didn’t really delay us as we had to move and rewire the electronics anyway from '24 to '23. (I would agree with anyone who challenged us not meeting the letter of G209; we didn’t. I think the LRI made the right call.)
The resulting thrash was a heck of an intro to FRC and the team.
There was discussion among LRIs about possible new definitions of what is and what is not a “robot” for next year. Right now, “actually drivable” is basically the differentiator. As long as both robot-like-things total under 150 pounds you can do this as one thing is just a “mechanism”.
That’s a pretty great memory for the team, both on the technical and “management” side. Turned what could have been a real bummer into an opportunity. Sounds like a good bit of work was involved to bring-up the second system - probably was a bit of “if you are really sure you want to try that, I’m not going to stop you” thought process going on as well.
First time stumbling across this thread, missed it during the season. I have not read the whole thing.
As a concept I hate this (kudos for trying it though). It’s not the swapable mechanisms, it’s the fact that the wheels is all it could take to not be a seperate robot.
Bookmarking to get a rules clarification in The Q/A next season if it isn’t already addressed in the manual…