At a recent tournament, our robot had what we believe to be electrostatic discharge IME problems during three matches that caused our autonomous program to drive endlessly into the field perimeter, stalling our drive motors in one match. These autonomous malfunctions were solved by power cycling the Cortex, without redownloading any code.
Rule <SG4> states that Drivers and Coaches may not interact with the robot while it is not touching their own Alliance Starting Tile.
Would turning off the joystick to end the robot’s autonomous motion constitute illegal interaction with the robot, even though it is not physical? If so, can you suggest an acceptable way to deal with a malfunctioning autonomous routine? As much as we hope that our problems will disappear at events with anti-static spray, we’d like to have an alternative solution, if possible.
Yes, this would be legal, as you are not interacting with the robot. However, simply turning off the Joystick most likely not stop the fault condition created by static discharge affecting the IMEs.