While listening to some of the district events today, I heard the announcers in 2 different districts say that teams were getting penalties for launching fuel in the neutral zone while collecting fuel from the floor if they collected too much fuel and overflowed (or if the collector was too powerful and bounced a ball out of their hopper as it came in).
Are they REALLY calling that as a launching penalty? I guess I can see the interpretation of the rule to include that, but I would have never thought a mishandled collection of overfull hopper would result in a launching penalty. Sounds like an overzealous interpretation to me.
How far are they taking it? If someone loads from a hopper and gets more balls than their hopper can hold and then gets hit while crossing the field (or makes a hard turn) causing balls to come out of the hopper and onto the floor, is that a launching penalty?
IMO, if it doesn’t come out the shooter, it’s not launched.
This is a rather stupid ruling. There’s absolutely no way it will be enforced consistently, and it’s not clear where it ends - if I stop suddenly and some fuel bounces around in my hopper, is this a penalty for launching? One could certainly argue that this constitutes “shooting” or “throwing in a forceful way” just as much as the stated example does.
I was rather surprised at this ruling, especially when the “launching” is usually either completely involuntary or too close to call whether or not the balls were leaving the volume of the robot.
If I remember correctly, the 2064-230-4557 alliance was eliminated in quarterfinals at Waterbury in a tiebreaker due to a rather iffy call on this. I honestly think they should only call it if it’s a) intentional or b) obvious and dangerous to people next to the field.
Interesting. I know last year I had asked my head ref whether I should be calling robots who lost control of the boulder in the Neutral Zone, and his thoughts were that it requires a noticable forward or upward velocity, which I feel like bouncing out of a hopper wouldn’t qualify for, year difference aside.
It would be a great concern if contact with another robot that causes fuel to slosh out of a hopper is considered launching. The GDC should have made the original rule something like “no Fuel comes out of your robot in the Neutral Zone” if that is the intent.
This happened once at South Florida. A gear fell back off of a peg, into the robot’s shooter/sequencer thing, and jammed it. They took the yellow card to shoot it out so they could actually do anything offensive for the match. Unfortunate design bug, but a good call in my book.
Indeed. The way the rule is written, I (and I’m sure many others) essentially took it to mean “don’t fire your shooter in the neutral zone,” not “build your robot to make it rigorously impossible for any fuel to come out of it in the neutral zone.”
Just to set the record straight, Team 230 did receive a penalty for launching outside the launch pad. It was an operator error when we failed to turn off the shooter when we were out of fuel so it shot again as we were collecting more fuel. It was a valid call. *And we are fixing this issue in the software so that the operator doesn’t have to remember to turn the shooter off. :rolleyes:*Save
Don’t know about your experience, but fuel was bouncing out of hoppers all over the field at ours and no penalties. Our driver even forgot to turn off our shooter after leaving the boiler to collect more and totally shot fuel not just from the neutral zone but off the field! (oops) No foul. Guess they were generous with the interpretation of “intentional”.
Don’t know about your experience, but fuel was bouncing out of hoppers all over the field at ours and no penalties. Our driver even forgot to turn off our shooter after leaving the boiler to collect more and totally shot fuel not just from the neutral zone but off the field! (oops) No foul. Guess they were generous with the interpretation of “intentional”.
