We were at a competition last weekend and a couple of my team-mates weren’t able to show up, resulting in only three of us on the team being there but one “team member” was an adult mentor that just graduated last year. My question is: would that adult mentor be allowed to stand in the driver zone with the other two team-mates as long as he didn’t make any contact with the robot or field elements as the game manual implies regarding adult mentors? I’m asking this because the game manual doesn’t really address this in black and white(at least I haven’t found it) and the referees at our competition decided to say he wasn’t allowed to be there with us like we hoped resulting in us not having a coach all day. Thanks in advance for any answers
EDIT: it was out of curiosity from this thread in which Karthik said adults aren’t allowed to be drive team members, implying that they can’t interact with field elements or the robot(I think :P) but I wasn’t sure if this also implies that they can’t be in the driver zone at all and just act as a coach or not.
Sorry about this, but the definition of a student clarifies that an adult is anyone not meeting the definition of a student… If he is not born after April 22nd, 1998, then he is not a student that is able to compete.
Next, an adult is not allowed to be a drive team member, which is listed in the “Drive Team Member” definition:
Sorry, but he is not eligible to be a drive team member if he is an adult…
I believe that the adult drive team member is allowed to be on the drive team, however they cannot make contact with the robot, controller, field, and elements.
If you read the thread to which you linked including the question, you will see that it is quite clear that no adults are allowed to be on the drive team at all. It is NOT just an issue of interacting with the robot, controllers, and game and field elements.
Here is the question that was asked:
"Hey Karthik,
I was talking with our RECF intern today about Drive Team Members. I brought up that it says that Adults are not allowed to be Drive Team Members as put in the definition of Drive Team Members. He then showed me G4 which pertains to adult Drive Team Members and how they are not allowed to touch the robots.
The question is, Are adults allowed to be Drive Team Members but not allowed to touch the robot, or Are Adults not allowed to be Drive Team Members at all?"
Here was his answer:
“Adults are not permitted to be Drive Team Members.”
It seems as though what happened in that the reference to adult team members was accidently left over from prior years. Karthik’s answer supercede anything and everything else.
By the way, in which competition were you competing this past weekend? We missed having your team at our tournament.
This is precisely correct. The definition of “Drive Team Member” clearly states that “Adults are not allowed to be Drive Team Members.”, however the wording in <G4> that states “Adult Drive Team Members are not permitted to touch the controls or interact with the robot or Scoring Objects” makes one think “hey, why are they mentioning adults. Maybe they’re still allowed to be at the field”.
