G28- During the final twenty (20) seconds of TELEOP, ROBOTS in their COURTYARD may not contact an opponent ROBOT.
Violation: The contacted ROBOT is considered to have SCALED an open side of the TOWER at the end of the MATCH.
Blue box: Teams are encouraged to consider rule G11 when developing their
strategies, such as attempting to draw violations of this rule.
G11 Strategies aimed solely at forcing the opposing ALLIANCE to violate a rule are not in the spirit of FIRST Robotics Competition and not allowed. Rule violations forced in this manner will not result in an assignment of a penalty to the targeted ALLIANCE.
Violation: FOUL. If egregious or repeated, YELLOW CARD
As currently written, what’s to prevent me from blocking a capture/challenge/scaling by parking sideways in front of a segment of my BATTEN with my hands off the sticks? If you hit me, you’re trying to draw a G28, and you get a foul instead. I’m guessing they’ll need to re-write G28 to, unfortunately, add some causality in there. Or maybe add impeding BATTEN access in the last 20 seconds to the impeding match flow rule. Unless they want to go meta and declare the blocking team broke G11 by trying to draw a G11 of G28. Which seems like too much interpretation to put on a ref in the last 20 of a match.
We’ll have to see if this comes up in Q&A or in ref training. But until then, this is my opinion.
The defending robot (in it’s own COURTYARD) cannot contact a robot from the other alliance. But there is nothing that says the attacking robot cannot initiate contact. So if you are not driving your robot in your COURTYARD, the other robot can attempt to push you out of the way. I would not interpret that to be attempting to draw a foul.
The intent of the rule seems to be to keep the situation above from happening. Basically, when that 20 second mark hits, you need to be doing everything you can to be getting away from the opponents in your courtyard.
And at any rate, why are you not headed to the BATTEN on the other side of the field?
No reason to head there if the tower is not weakened.
I think you are being too generous with the term contact. Remember it is a one way verb. If my robot is not allowed to contact yours, that doesn’t mean I will get a foul if your robot contacts mine.
That’s not how I read G28. The defending robots cannot prevent the attacking robots from reaching the tower.
In order to not be in a position where you might violate G28 all you have to do is exit your own courtyard before the last 20 seconds. Which is when you should be trying to scale the castle at the other end anyway.
Nope. If RED is minding its business in the RED courtyard in the last 20 (for whatever reason), and BLUE drives into RED, BLUE should get a G11, because it’s trying to create a G28 foul that otherwise wouldn’t have occurred.
Gary’s interpretation is one possible fix, but I’d want it spelled out in the rule or a Q&A, because right now G28 only specifies contact, with no clear mention whatsoever of who initiates it. Yes, you can read “contact” as being an intentional action, but you can also read it more like “comes in contact with” something that happens with no respect to intention.
Example: If I poke you with my finger, I contact you with my finger. But you also contact me through my finger.
So I think it’s something to bring up in Q&A and have clarified and addressed.
There are two reasons to head to the TOWER even if it is still standing! From 3.3.1, there are 5 points for a CHALLENGE and 15 points for a SCALE! Now, there won’t be any CAPTURE points, though.
My google definition says contact it is a noun, with the definition reading as “the state or condition of physical touching”.
If I’m understanding this correctly - at this point there’s nothing to prevent a red bot in the red courtyard in the last 20 seconds, running into a bunch of blue robots and give them all G11 violations? Seems like a tough call to make - figuring out whether Red is fishing for G11 or Blue is fishing for G28.
Your situation would be pretty obviously g28 on red, since blue doesn’t sound like it’s forcing red to get a g28. G11 pretty clearly requires intent to force a foul on blue’s part for g11 to trigger. G11 would be if blue goes out of its way to run into a fleeing red robot. The grey area is if red is stationary but clearly in blue’s way.
Also I can see lots of reasons for doing this. Skeptically if you’re not going to get capture or scaling points even with the defending bot, then preventing a scale or capture is a net gain.
This is a valid point. I think you guys might have some experience arguing valid points with refs without q&a backup, though.
Certainly the “correct” answer here is either no foul or foul on the parked defending robot. I’d just like the gdc to agree with this interpretation on the record.
If I hit you on my way to getting to the Castle, and I did not go out of my way to hit you, then it is not a G11 violation. The purpose of the action is to push you out of the way so that I can get to the castle. The purpose of the action is not to cause a G28 violation.
I think the possibility of the “Running around to intentionally cause other robots to get penalties” is explicitly banned in the rules. So no, two or three red robot’s in blue’s courtyard wouldn’t be able to run around intentionally bopping the defender in the last 20 seconds for points.
That being said…the parking strategy is interesting.
From my opinion, the spirit of the rule is (you have to let your opponents have unfettered access to attempt to capture your castle. So if you see an opposing robot coming at you, and you know that contact will give you a penalty, you have to move. This could be clarified, but to me the intent seems clear.
I’m not seeing the issue here - this reads, to me, like the GDC saying “don’t plan on running into a defending robot during the last 20 seconds for the purpose of drawing a penalty per G28, as doing such is a violation of G11.”
However, it says/implies nothing at all about contact with a defending robot* in pursuit of a legitimate game objective.* From the way I’ve seen these rules called before, there’s no way doing that would be ruled a violation of G11 - if anything, the defending robot would likely still receive a G28 as, even without explicit action, their positioning forces robot-robot contact with any robot attempting to challenge or scale.
Yes, this is a judgment call by the refs, but I don’t think it’s a difficult one to make and am not worried at all about it.