Team 4000 has just competed at their last regional for the season and will be heading home, no Atlanta for them. Team 5000 is already all set to go to Atlanta with a paid slot and everything. At the last regional team 5000 experiences a total failure of their robot. The whole thing is completely destroyed. Team 4000 doesn’t want to see team 5000 left out of the championship since they already paid for a slot, and team 4000 isn’t going anyways, so they make an agreement to team 5000 to lend them their robot.
Would it currently be legal for team 5000 to take team 4000’s robot with them to Atlanta and use it to compete? Provided they did a few things to it such as repaint it with their team number and name. Or would there be a rule in the rulebook somewhere that prevents this?
No. Team 5000 is only allowed to bring in 25 LBs of finished work. In addition, team 4000s robot would have to be shipped from their last regional to the championship event directly as per the transportation rules.
This is what I mean. Team 5000 actually puts team 4000’s robot in their own crate and ships it, they are both at the same regional so it is just a matter of crating up one or the other.
There have been extenuating circumstances in the past where teams compete with a robot they did not design. A couple of years ago at the championships, one team (don’t remember #) didn’t have their robot Thursday or Friday. They pulled together parts from wherever they could find them and built a semi-functioning bot that was allowed to compete.
However, as a general rule, I do not believe FIRST would state a rule specifically allowing this scenario as it’d leave too much room to be abused. I’m pretty sure this would have to be a case-by-case basis sort of thing.
<R09> Each registered FIRST Robotics Competition team can enter ONE (1) ROBOT into the 2008 FIRST Robotics Competition.
But this is one of those rules where the spirit of the game and intent of the rule can occasionally override the letter of the rule.
For instance it is not unknown (but is, fortunately, uncommon) for a team’s robot to be lost in shipping, or at least delayed in arriving at a regional. In that case it is standard practice for everyone to chip in some parts and help the team build a new robot on Thursday to compete with on Friday. I have seen this happen at GTR and know of it happening at least once at Championships. In the case at GTR, the team’s robot did arrive for Saturday morning and they were able to use it to compete… although they had used a different (and amazingly competent!) robot the previous day.
I believe the case you put forward, however, would not qualify under this compassionate exemption assuming the failure occured as a result of normal or reasonably expectable game play. (If the ceiling of the venue collapsed on top of the robot, or aliens vapourized it with ray guns then that is, perhaps, different.) First of all, it is difficult to comprehend how a robot could suffer irrepairable failure through normal game play. Second of all if a robot does suffer irrepairable damage through normal game play, then that is a failure in design. Finally, even if the ceiling collapsed or aliens melted the robot, the standard set in the case of lost shipping crates is not to have an unused robot take the place of the lost robot, but rather for the team with the lost robot to create a new one with the help of the other teams.
It would be my expectation that team 5000 would make an heroic effort to repair their robot to the best of their abilities, even if that means competing with reduced functionality at the championships.
I know something like that happed due to a shipping error in 2004. 494 was one of the teams who helped that team build a new robot out of raw material (they won CMP J&J Sportsmanship for their efforts). However building a new robot out of raw material on Thursday is completely legal (although it is a last resort) while borrowing a fully fabricated robot is not.
We did not receive our robot until fairly late thursday afternoon at the arizona regional this year.
Team 842 graciously brought their 2007 robot with them to the competition (left it in the trailer outside of the arena)
I asked the FTA if it would be ok for us to run their 2007 robot, at least just for practice rounds so our team could A. have something to do and B. give our drivers some practice on the actual field.
She told me no that would not be allowed as per the rule that a team is only allowed 25 lbs. of spare parts. I tried to reason with her saying it was an extenuating circumstance, but in the end rules are rules, and we sat around all day until our robot came.
if my memory serves me correct. team Element (4). didn’t get their robot until saturday morning of GTR in 2006, because they competed at LA the week before.
they built a robot to compete for friday, and they used their actual robot for one match saturday, before the elimination matches, so that their RWAL robot could compete in the elimination matches.
so it’s certinly possable to pull this off but it would require some bending of the rules… and maybe some disassembleing of team 4000’s robot
wasn’t this te rule that caused 1519 trouble thsi season, side topic
