I was watching the week 0 competition, and one of the teams kept flipping the flap of the low bar over the bar that it hangs from so there would be enough room for a boulder to go through. My question is, is that allowed and is there a penalty if a team does that and the human player rolls the ball hard enough that it would go over the ramp and under the low bar?
Not legal.
I would ask that in the q and a. G40-1 doesn’t really answer your question.
But this isn’t holding the flap open. As I understand it, this is a robot causing the flap to get wrapped around the bar after going through it.
I’d think that the flap would be open due to the actions of a robot (whatever those actions may have been).
We too found this during out practice session today and we’re wondering the exact same thing. I don’t feel g40-1 is applicable here as we are not holding it open.
How accurately did the flap match the real version of the low bar flap? If it was built as a team version, instead of the real field version, it probably behaves differently.
This rule appears to be addressing just intentionally holding it open, not unintentionally flipping it. However, that does seem to be the spirit of the rule, if not what is technically written there. I think it would generally be safer just to avoid messing with it.
I saw this happening in almost every Mach I watched of the merrimack off season which is an official first event with official field components.
IMHO, if it happens in normal game play, then no foul. If a robot sat there and wound it, then that is a different story.
If there were quick cycles, and the team used the low bar until it is wound, that is normal game play
If the Refs judge it to be considered a normal, unavoidable condition of the field, then yea the teams might not be held liable.
Not sure if the fabric is pinned to the bar on an official field, but at our week zero event, several teams caused the flip to happen, and the loop of fabric just went around the top bar and the weighted bar spun it so it fell back to the fully down.
It was a loose fabric sleeve around the low bar on the real playing field at the Kickoff in Manchester, so when flipped over it just slipped and hung straight down again.
I agree though I think we’ll ask our human players not to risk it until a precedence has been set. Tech Foul per Boulder is a stiff penalty if a ref has a different interpretation of the rule.
G40 “A ROBOT may not cause a BOULDER to move from the NEUTRAL ZONE into the opponent’s COURTYARD unless:
A. the ROBOT contacts the BOULDER within OUTER WORKS, and
B. the ROBOT completes its CROSSING (e.g. doesn’t completely back out of the OUTER WORKS into the NEUTRAL ZONE)
Violation: TECH FOUL per BOULDER”
Using the human player in that way would clearly be illegal under G40. No precedent, no gray area, it’s illegal.
The bar wont flip over and get tangled because its a bar in sleeve design on the official fields.
G40-1 is not the rule that makes this illegal, it’s an extension of the rule that makes this illegal.
Hopefully that puts a nice bow on this discussion. Good luck folks 
Actually, it doesn’t.
What part of G40 references a Human Player causing the Boulder to move into the opponents’ Courtyard?
Right. It doesn’t. You quoted it yourself. The premise is faulty, and the entire logical argument falls apart.
That being said, we only had one low bar flap get stuck out here, and that one had it’s pipe slide out on the Neutral Zone side.
Correct that the bar shouldn’t get stuck, (We hope as that could mess with some bots’ tight tolerances fitting under it) however rule G40 does not affect the legality of this situation unless the robot was being more involved in the moving the ball from the neutral zone to the courtyard. The human player is not considered A or Part of the “Robot”, and as the human player is the only one in this case making it transfer from the neutral zone to the courtyard G40 would not be called. However I do know that there have been many threads that mention Q & A on this sort of area and I believe that the one that references the intent to disable a defense would possibly be called into question on this, but we can probably bank on the design on this one being such that on the field it just natural spins around the bar and falls back into place (Many in week 0 may have been attached to the bar)
When I was watching the Merrimack replays, I noticed that it would do a flip and end up back in its original position.
Also at week zero, the ball passed through to the opponents courtyard by pure coincidence.
See the near side of the field: