According to this rule a team can bring an entire assembled robot without a drive train to competition. If you make the drivetrains easily switchable, you basically could have two robots. Wondering if others found anything against this rule.
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Iām not an expert but Iām pretty sure thereās a thirty pound limit for things you intend to later attach to your robot
That rule ended when bag & tag did.
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Trying to skirt around the intent of the rules to find edge cases that arenāt violating the letter of the rules is how we end up with controversies and even more rules (and rules that are even more confusing). The name of the rule is āEnter only 1 ROBOTā and the blue box clearly spells out the intent of what is being prohibited (entering more than one robot such that itās an aid to your team).
Also, the parenthetical citing āmost of its drivebaseā is defining ārobotā vs āROBOTā (which is defined in the glossary).
If you want to build interchangeable super-structures or mechanisms for a single robot, that is allowed - and the rules covering it can be found in Section 9, specifically I103, I104, and I105.
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I think @Lil_Lavery got it right. The spirit of the rule goes against what youāre suggesting, and I wouldnāt try to push those limits.
If I had to try to use the letter of the rule to try and explain the illegality, Iād say that when you affix mechanisms to a drive train, you now have a ROBOT. The rule doesnāt say ā1 robot at a time.ā It says ā1 ROBOT.ā If you had a second ROBOT in the parking lot and swapped it out, that wouldnāt be allowed because, during the course of the event, your team would have entered two ROBOTS. For the same reason, you canāt make a ārobotā a ROBOT and then reverse it.
But the bottom line is that the rule is trying to discourage teams from doing what you describe, but rules are hard to write in ways that arenāt overly burdensome for the rule followers.
I believe the blue boxās intent is to say: I shall not today attempt to further define a ROBOT, but I know it when I see it [mild adult content in reference].
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I canāt find a picture anywhere, but 3467 basically did this last year. They had their main robot and then their second robot with the swerve modules detached and boxed up for use as spares and also some other parts see the edit. Note that they werenāt trying to switch between the two depending on their goals for a match, but rather had it as a back up if the main robot broke.
Edit: I found the thread from last year and they apparently also took off some other parts and Iāve been wrong about this before.
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Weāve brought our practice āNOT-a-robotā to events several times since the rule was introduced in 2020.
Completely legal, mostly pointless.
It was primarily used to talk about and show off the robot in the pit.
Weāve had some trouble with non-lead inspectors but any concerns were immediately dismissed by the LRI.
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I have been the LRI for both the 3467 and 4414 examples. I can say I am not happy with the ālarge piles of spare partsā but I agreed with the conclusion that they are valid. I do appreciate the clarification of the rules, from previous versions. I agree with JJ that it is not worth it mostly. I think it is better than teams instinct to sneak out to the parking lot (or the local shop) and raid the practice bot for spares. Definitely a rule violation that it is hard to monitor.
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While I agree with your interpretation, just to be clear for future readers of this thread, I think this is different from OPās proposal of doing that and then slapping a drivetrain on it and playing with it. While what JJ said is 100% legal, OPās idea might be ruled differently.
It is legal to bring two robots to competition if you register two FRC teams at that event.
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Just to be clear, we werenāt trying to state that you could (or we would) bring two different robots to our competitions, and strategically use it to our advantage based on our matches. Since we had plans to build two identical (ish) robots this season, we were wondering if we could use it as a possible spare in case something catastrophic happened to our main robot. If the robot was never used, it would be primarily a display piece and a chance to show teams our robot and its capabilities in the pit while the robot was off at a match. We just wanted to bring up a hypothetical situation due to the wording of the rules, and its possibility at a competitions. Just something interesting we wanted to point out. I also would agree that this rule might need to be changed due to the abundance of COTS swerve parts, which makes it easy to swap between two identical robots.
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The One ROBOT Rule has been around for a very long time. Back in 2003, in my first event as an LRI, there was a team that brought two robots to the Regional. While one of my inspectors was in their pit working on their inspection, he overheard someone on the team talking about a failure that occurred on āthe other robot.ā It came out that the teamās other robot was being driven in a practice match at the same time.
The event manager (this was before FTAs were in that communication chain) called HQ to see if the team should be disqualified. They werenāt. They were told to put the second robot in their trailer and not touch it again.
Several members of the RPC were very upset by the situation. The team had clearly gained an advantage by violating a rule.
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Your statement isnāt logically consistent. Something without a drivetrain, by FIRSTās definition, is not a robot. Thus, what you are describing is not a second robot.
Unlike some words that FIRST leaves to interpretation and one has to default to Websterās dictionary for answers, this one is defined.
You legally can not bring two robots to an event.
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What about this makes you unhappy?
Thisā¦ isnāt a ROBOT.
It very well may have a hydraulic arms, a drivetrain, and a circuit board, but thisā¦ isnāt a ROBOT.
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I see no issue with op proposals if they correctly follow the inspection rules?
something something ship of Theseus something somethingā¦ keep one bolt the same and its the same robot.
Impossible to draw the line when rules are written this way, can I swap a spare intake roller on? how about a full intake? how about an intake and an elevator? Can i saw a spare swerve module on? how about all 4? how about a spare drive?
Ever since this rule came out in 2020 weāve found it pretty poorly written and we honestly get a kick outta bringing our not-a-robot to events.
First has done a great job at defining some of the smaller systems of a robot such as a mechanism vs major mechanism, I think this set of rules could use the same specific verbiage.
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We will always stand by our Not a Robot.
Over the 2023 season, our torn down practice robot helped keep more teams on the field than our own. I donāt think it ever helped keep 3467ās competition robot moving by providing a spare. On more than one occasion parts from its swerve drive ended up on another teamās robot to keep them in the game.
Always worth it to keep robots moving even if it resulted in more work for us.
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The Midknight Inventors old strategy. Iāve seen people online call it cheating, but I think it makes complete sense for teams with tons of students
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