Practice Fields Question

FIRST General Forum
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Hey everyone! I have a question…

Our team is not competing until week 5 in the Arizona regional… As such we have been building a second robot to practice with in the meantime. We would very much like to try driving on the regolith surface, however we do not have any of the floor tiles and do not know of any teams near by that have more than one or two tiles.

It just so happens that next weekend a few of our team members are going to San Diego to watch the regional there (just watching, not competing). We were contemplating bringing our practice bot with us, which brings me to my question:

If we brought our robot with us would we be able to use the practice field at the competition? (Obviously as long as none of the teams actually competing are using it, we don’t want to take any time away from competitors)

So what’s your input on this? Is it legal? Are there rules against it? Venue rules that prohibit it? Would you consider it rude or look upon it negatively if we tried to use the field?

We are just considering our options! We don’t want to force our way into using something we really shouldn’t be!

Thanks for any input! :slight_smile:

  • Austin
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My advice would be don’t waste your effort bringing it there. There will constantly be teams lined up to use the practice field. I doubt the event staff would let you, anyways.

Have you checked with other local teams to see if they have a practice field you can use?

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I don’t think any other robot is allowed in the arena other then those competing.

I say this b/c It’s going to be the one and only robot NOT inspected / weighed which means if something happens (even if your the only ones in the area) FIRST and the Arena House would end up being held accountable for not only letting in an unathorized bot but and un inspected one as well.

In short…

HUGE SAFETY VIOLATION and MORE OVER AN UN-CALLED FOR LIABILTY that FIRST probabaly doesn’t want. I’m sure there is a rule about it… could always ask the GDC who make the rules on their forum though. The only thing that can happen is they give you a NO for an answer.

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