What happens if a robot with a ball is E-Stopped?
My reading of the rules says that if other robots can’t get the ball out then your alliance can’t score for the rest of the game, but that seems like a rather harsh penalty for keeping your robot safe.
On a related note, what if your robot is preloaded with a ball for auto but then something goes wrong and you can’t get it to move? Or it loses connectivity with the FMS?
In both of these cases it seems to me like the fair answer is that any balls contained by an E-Stopped robot are out of play and can be refielded by a human player. Or that they are out of play and the cycle restarts. (and that you’re allowed to E-Stop a non-responsive robot even though it isn’t a hazard to itself or other robots)
I was wondering about this as well. Sounded like a question for the official Q&A.
Current rules read to me that it’s game over for the team with a possessed ball.
Such in lies the danger of only one game piece; I sure hope teams are designing a fail safe system where if they lose power it will release the ball.
Alternately, I am really hoping a rule will be put in place that treats emergency stopped robots and their possessions as field debris so a new ball can be brought in to begin a new cycle. No such rule exists now and it seems like a massive oversight of the GDC around the same level as momentum minibots in 2011.
This is a tough problem
I don’t think that just having a ball stuck in a robot at the end of the autonomous will be allowed to be e-stopped unless that robot is somehow disabled in a way that could possibly cause damage to the field or another robot or itself.
The E-stop is a safety measure… if your robot is on fire or running out of control or something of that nature… not to correct a robot malfunction like this.
This is a good question for Q and A
They can certainly decide to allow this if they wish but it would not be something I would expect from them.
If you allow this use of the e-stop what would be wrong with e-stopping to gain some other kind of advantage on the field? If a ball from another team got lodged on your robot? If your own ball got lodged on your robot?
All good questions for Q and A
Sometimes stuff just happens and you have to deal with it.
I’m an alum and will probably stop following FIRST closely when I go back to school in a few days, so it would be good if someone else could do this.
I am curious as well as concerned about this also so I will post a question on the FIRST forum.
I highly doubt that First will promote ‘perfect’ gameplay by not throwing in another ball if an E-stop happens with a holder. If they do, I would contact the rules contacts and tell them to change it, because it is a real possibility of forfeiting a game because of a glitch in a robot.
FRC isn’t about perfection, and it should be expected that some robots, no matter how ‘pro’, are going to have an unexpected issue somewhere, and the rest of the team should have their fair ability to play nonetheless.