pic: Cannot capture if you park under a climbing robot



During the NC State Championship Quarter Finals our alliance partner 5679 Girls On Fire attempted to park on the batter. They got hung up on the shield and ended up parking under our hanging robot instead of parking on their side of the batter. This does NOT count as a capture in case anyone was wondering so do not try this during competition!

This also happened at MSC, Octofinal Match 15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlyVEb948tQ

Edit: I did just realize that you can still get the points for the batter, but NOT for the capture. My lack of understanding of the rules on that one.

The same thing happened in the MSC octofinals. In a last minute attempt at a capture, 3688 parked under our climbing bot. They got the 5 points for parking on the batter, but our alliance did not get the capture.

EDIT: Beaten to it

Thanks for the recognition! We were surprised to know this but it wouldn’t have affected the match unfortunately. :frowning:

Congrats to Bedford and Trisonics for the win!

This is the link to the match :http://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2016nccmp_qf1m1

They kept slipping off the batter and ended up like that in a frenzy. We would have had the match I think if it were not for that. It was an exciting game to watch either way because it was the absolute first match of the eliminations.

I think this was the most competitive match up for my team during the whole tournament. Against that 587/4290 alliance it was bittersweet because we work with 4290 in Charlotte and I was on 587 as a student as well. After most people saw that score come from the number 8 alliance they were terrified because they set the bar really high.

Neat, I never noticed the “unique face” phrasing in the manual. I don’t really get the intent of phrasing the rule that way; it’s a bit of an odd requirement.

From 3.1.4 of the manual:

A TOWER is CAPTURED if, at the conclusion of the MATCH:
A. the TOWER is WEAKENED, and
B. the TOWER is surrounded such that each of the three (3) opponent ROBOTS has SCALED or CHALLENGED a unique face of the TOWER

A ROBOT has SCALED or CHALLENGED a unique face of the TOWER if it is the only ROBOT in contact with the attached RUNG and/or associated third of the BATTER below (i.e. a ROBOT may extend over the divider into the space of another face as long as it is not in contact with the RUNG or BATTER in front of that face).

I bet a lawyer could have fun with this… If you read “BATTER in front of that face” to mean any portion of the batter past the plane of that external face of the tower, then none of the captures seen in competition would have been legal.

I think they did this to prevent robots carrying other robots on the batter, scaling with the help of other robots, or to deter robots from parking under other robots in case of failure. Our robot is also 116 pounds… if we fell from that height their robot would probably suffer some punishment and I certainly would not want our robot responsible for causing damage to another robot.

Fortunately for the teams who executed such captures, the rule outside the parentheses is very clear about what contact it refers to, without any mention of planes and projections. It’s all about the attached RUNGS and the associate third of the BATTER below them.