Volunteers and non team members should NEVER change the state of a teams robot post match or otherwise

FIRST General Forum
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First let me explain what I mean by change state.
dumping pneumatics
powering the robot off
disabling (hitting spacebar or unplugging tether)
I have had ALL of the above done by volunteers and/or non team affiliated individuals without warning.

Depending on robot design, being disabled, dumping pneumatics, or powering the robot off can allow violent and unpredictable changes or movements to robot mechanisms due to loss of brake mode or when a spring loaded mechanisms retracts once pneumatic pressure is lost.

Examples
In 2022 one of my students had our robot dropped on his foot from the mid bar when a volunteer turned the robot off while he was getting into position to lift it off the bar as once power is lost it can no longer hold position.

In 2023 once the charge station is tilted, volunteers would sometimes turn bots off. i had to catch several that started rolling because the individuals were not expecting the loss of break mode.

Again in 2020 we had a robot dropped almost on a student from the hanging bar because a volunteer turned the robot off.

In 2018 i had an issue that required retraining of how to work on robots as what my students were doing was unacceptable while i was out of the pit. They had enabled the robot and raised our elevator to its highest position. one of my students proceed to hang over the bot with his head in between the uprights of the first stage below the elevator and work on it. This is obviously unacceptable and led to a very long safety discussion of how to handle yourself around enabled robots. I walked up as an unknown individual walked over and screamed at my kids to disable. The elevator did not have break mode in disable. one of our students hit the disable key as the programer tried to stop him knowing what would happen thankfully he had his hand on the hot key and instantly re enabled. I thought i was about to witness my student get his head split open. This led to a very thorough overhaul of our safety procedures. But the actions of the unknown individual almost caused the injury he was trying to prevent.

2014 and 2010 had lost of bots that once power or pneumatics where removed the kickers could unpredictably release.

2021 offseason we had permission to download code from the HR immediately as we are in line to load onto the field. volunteer turned our robot off corrupting or rio

Theses are just a few I remember. Knee jerk reactions can lead to outcomes that are significantly worse. Those not involved in the design and manufacture of the robot HAVE NO IDEA what the consequence might be to the action they take. I implore everyone when they come across a situation that may believe to be “unsafe” they think through and make sure they understand the consequences of the action they take.

Over the past 15ish years of doing this I have seen it time and time again. I have written NMIRS, I have spoken to the UL safety advisors I have asked FTA’s. i have spoken to event coordinators. I have pretty much begged anyone who will listen, and I REPEATEDLY see it happen EVERY YEAR. many times the event narrowly avoids involving bodily injury. FIRST headquarters needs to make it a part of volunteer and team training that this is not acceptable. I fear at some point instead of a NMIR i will be filling a medical incident report due to this.

Thank you for reading,
A concerned Member of the community

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Wow, thank you for bringing this to the attention of the community.

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I agree that non-team members should not turn off the robot or disable unless authorized to do so as part of the competition (refs can disable a dangerous bot). In my 14 years in FIRST I’ve never had anyone do this to my team, likely because we don’t make complex robots, so take what follows with a grain or salt…

Many of your examples seem to hint at repeatedly making design choices that produce the same sort of potentially unsafe situation when the robot loses power. Again, your team should be allowed to move the robot in a safe manner without others sticking their hands in it. But, once bitten twice shy, right?

In 2018 we did an elevator (first and only time) that was part of our climber. We added a pneumatically actuated latch to “lock” the elevator in the lowered position, that way as the robot tried to fall it was mechanically restrained by the latch. If we lost power and air pressure, the elevator would not extend and the robot would stay in the climbed position because of this latch. It took the kids practicing and having the robot fall a couple of times to decide they needed this restraint built in. It made things more complicated, and we’ve never done something like that again.

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Not at all as serious, but I’ve also seen people (CSAs, but also many other roles) mess with robots that have had some kind of issue in the match, before students are allowed onto the field. This is a natural things to do, and for some roles it might even be considered part of the job.

But, this means teams don’t get to see any evidence of loose connections that have been reseated, or to participate in the investigation. It also violates the principal that it is the team’s robot, and no one should touch it without their permission – unless there is a legitimate safety reason. At this point, the robots are disabled, so this exception should be very narrow. The teams know their robots the best, and if there is something that someone like a CSA might spot that needs to be checked on the field, it’s good to do this collaboratively. This is a learning opportunity.

Most of this sort of investigation should happen off the field in any case. Personally, I try never to touch a team’s robot without permission, and with students around, as directed by the team. I also try to tell the students what I am planning to do, before I do it. I’d like to see this addressed in any training as well. The team knows how much time they have, and the last thing you want to do is start something that there is no time to complete, even if it’s only pulling out wires testing for loose connections when there is no time to fix these.

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I think the only case above where I agree with you is the 2014/2010 kickers and launchers. Stored energy of any sort should still be predictable. Creating situations with unpredictable behavior can definitely be unsafe.

However, the rest of the cases above are definitely not anything I’ve experienced in FRC, and should be addressed locally. Nobody but the team should be touching their main breaker or dump valves when loading/unloading a bot, especially without warning or permission from the team.

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Seems like a lack of volunteer training so you should keep complaining. For volunteer training in FiM we were explicitly told multiple times to never touch team equipment without permission.

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So going into this thread I was like 100% agreed but not for the reasons you listed which are way more important then the reason we hate this.

Sometimes things go wrong with the bot during a match and we want to debug what happened in the pits, our rule is to never change the state of the robot after a match until we’ve confirmed back in the pit that there is nothing we need to look into. We often have staff try to force us to turn the bot off before handling it, while I get it, it’s been problematic for us :frowning:

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Wanna add in here in the Midwest we have the same “rules”. I genuinely thought it was pretty universal across most of FRC and honestly any kind of competition.

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I generally agree with you. But turning off a disabled robot aside from loosing brake mode on the motor controllers should not result in any robot movement especially in the pneumatics.

On the field rather than turning off a robot it is better to instruct the team to turn off the robot. It is considered best practice not to move powered on robots. (Unless the event is running behind and they tell you to power in the robots prior to placing them on the field)

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Given that your team is in the Peachtree district, I would recommend focusing on talking to their staff/lead key volunteers about this issue, as they should be directing the on-site volunteer training. Most UL safety advisors, event coordinators (Volunteer coordinator? Site host?), FTAs and FIRST HQ aren’t involved with most on-site volunteer training.

For worlds expect the training of volunteers there to vary WILDLY, as such I would advise having an adult or strong willed student with your team in the queue so they can interact with the volunteers. Also expect your robot to be turned off at the end of match.

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PCH core volunteers and management is actually pretty great about this. I have talked to them and they acknowledge the risks. it’s generally pretty rare but happens enough with a new volunteers and members of teams with different approaches to safety that I believe we could improve education about risks across the board.

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Build rules are pretty open in FRC, there is no guarantee of safety with a change in robot state. The easiest dangerous situation to explain quickly to someone is dumping air. But if you have more time for detail then all these stories are great to drive the point home.

This is totally a “talk to the FTA” moment. They are in control of the field.

Fwiw I don’t think I have run into any of these issues in my 13 years in FRC, but that doesn’t mean that issues don’t happen. Especially considering many volunteers are FRC alum and know how to turn of an FRC robot and may generalize because some robots are safe to turn off/dump all robots are safe. Just talk to the FTA at an event and I would hope that it is no longer an issue.

There is maybe a bigger related conversation to have around best design practices and robot safety around state changes, but that would be a different thread.

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But this should be something the team does no? Unless the robot is on fire or something, where not turning the robot off could lead to even more damage, it should be the team’s responsibility, duty, and right to be the ones handling their robot on and off the field. Especially on the field elements like the hanger/charge station where changing the robot’s state could either be dangerous, or just make it harder for the team to actually get their bot off of the element itself.

just my general 2 cents, not directed toward anyone

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Oh I agree it’s the team responsibly, but FIRST isn’t clear when the robot needs to be off after the match ends. Volunteers from different areas of FRC might have different expectations of when that breaker needs to be switched off (before disengaging from the field, before being picked up, after removal from the field, in the pits, etc…) as such if your robot takes a couple of minutes or a specific sequence to turn off you may run into a volunteer who expects you to abide by an unwritten safety rule to only handle the robot powered off. Whereas a districts with a specific volunteer base, like Peachtree, is likely to have their own cultural standard on if it’s safe to leave robots on when leaving the field of play.

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Does anyone here believe an unpowered bot is safer than a powered bot? Can you explain why? Can you explain why the risk of passing through the transitory state is worth it?

EDIT: I should rephrase. can you quantify the risk in this scenario. i do believe general repair work and what not should occur on a bot powered off. i just want risk quantified. i think the transitory state is far bigger issue let the team determine when to turn it off.

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Those 2 absolutely, a volunteer should never do that, unless there is an extreme level of danger, such as a fire or visible pneumatic tank damage with potential for explosion.

This one I less agree with. Disabling the robot needs to be able to happen at any time, without warning. You can’t always control this one. Nobody should be near a robot while it is enabled, so it should be impossible for this to ever create a dangerous condition. If it does, you’re not being safe enough around an enabled robot. And generally, 99.9% of the time the first thing to do in an unsafe situation is disable the robot. Those mechanisms are there for a reason.

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As said above, teams may use break mode or pneumatic breaks, etc to lock down mechanisms in certain positions after the match. Example 2022 arms. If someone suddenly shuts off the robot, releasing it from that break mode or brake, it can cause the robot to unexpectedly move and could cause injuries. When you are removing robots from dangerous locations, it is, for many, easier to remove the robot in its known state from that dangerous location first then take it off.

For example, in 2022 we always took the robot down from the traversal bar before powering it off.

Should teams turn their bot off? Of course! But they should decide when after their match.

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I agree with everything you said. Your absolutely correct. I should have clarified that when disabling a robot unless danger is imminent (a runaway robot or something similar) take a second to consider the consequences.

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Sometimes you don’t have a second. A disabled robot generally only has gravity as an issue, whereas an enabled robot can have multiple kW of power accidentally applied. A robot enabled in a pit with students inside of it is imminent danger. I’ve seen incidents before of someone slipping and accidentally hitting controller inputs. You can just never know. So 10 out of 10 times I’d tell a team to disable a robot, to avoid the largest dangers first.

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I disagree with this. While I agree the robot should be turned off at the end of the match, I would prefer to be able to it myself or someone I trust from our team. It really feels like the volunteers are not respecting the robot as the teams and the teams responsibility should they turn it off.

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