I was a ref at the NE WPI event, and one of the “highlights” was in Q24 when Team 88 managed to knock the Head Ref tablet INTO the field. I had worked on putting together a GIF of the official feed for Joe’s contest, but somebody with a better view than the official feed already posted it:
And the answer to that question, of course, is that it was a S05 violation and the robot was quickly disabled. I bet there are more “robots contacting outside the field” penalties this year than we’ve had in quite some time.
Since I did in fact bother extracting a .gif from the official feed, here it is. 88 is in the rear center, after placing a cube on the scale.
The FTA is the one who quickly sprang into action to bring the tablet back onto the field (reaching from the base, so as not to actually reach into the field). If I understood him correctly, he was worried because if one loses the head referee tablet, the system can’t submit the scores for the match and we would likely have to play the match over. (There is a spare tablet packed with the field if worst comes to worst, but one can’t add it into the FMS mid-match.)