I’ve failed to find a specific ruling on the legality of infrared LEDS for this year’s competition. Specifically, a LED emitting infrared light mounted on the forward-face of our bot. Would this be okay, or would it violate R9, since it could potentially mess with another bot’s sensors? I presume it wouldn’t, but better safe than sorry. Thanks.
Item C in the blue box uses the word “specifically intended” to interfere. The other items are mostly safety focused.
I’m not official authority, but my though: As long as your usage is a legitimate sensing purpose, this should be OK.
Perhaps the other way - bright green LED rings are definitely legal (included in KOP). How is infrared different?
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There aren’t any rules for most sensors, and we’ve been using IR LEDs on our robots for a decade. I think the only time we were “warned” about our IR emitters was in FIRST OVERDRIVE, where people used IR remote controls to send info to robots during the match.
However, I must warn you that in our experience the lighting in some venues will significantly interfere with IR emitters that aren’t fully concealed in the robot. Mercury lights in some gymnasiums play hell with it, and in classrooms with specific fluorescent lights or direct sunlight. I’m now gun-shy to use IR LED for anything these days but blocking detection (blocking an IR emitter’s signal to the detector) because of it.
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Infrared LEDs can pose a significant eye-safety hazard. Unlike visible light, infrared doesn’t induce an aversion response (ex. blinking/looking away) that protects the eye. Simple beam break applications or similar won’t be an issue, but as a replacement for the LED rings used for camera illumination I would be concerned (and this becomes an R9 issue for safety).
See IEC 62471.
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