SG4 states: “During contact with the Robot, the Drivers or Coaches may not manipulate or modify the position of any Scoring Objects relative to the Robot’s overall system, either by direct hand contact or indirect contact via the Robot. (i.e. It is acceptable to change the orientation of a Robot that includes Scoring Objects in it as long as the position of the elements relative to the Robot is not changed).”
What I would like to verify is the following: If during the Autonomous Period, a Scoring Object comes to rest (in some position that would not allow a Driver or Coach to return the robot to a legal starting position) in an Alliance Starting Tile (either color Scoring Object on either color Alliance Starting Tile), then, assuming their autonomous mode required human intervention before starting it’s next segment, they would not be able to continue their autonomous? Essentially, it a Scoring Object was in the way for them to get back to a legal starting position, would they be stuck?
As a followup question: If their autonomous just had a time delay before starting its next segment, and they were not able to return the robot to a legal starting position, but did begin to reposition it, then it took off from a “non-legal” starting position, would that be illegal?
Final question would be: If someone were to move the Scoring Object while repositioning their robot, or it restarted from a non-legal starting position, would that fall into the “Violation” segment of the rule and, if it were “match affecting”, would that result in a disqualification?
We just competed in the Wisconsin State tournament this last weekend, and unfortunately didn’t make it to worlds.
We were mostly concerned because the team came up with an autonomous mode that used the concept of using their “flipper” to send a bucky ball across the field and end up in the opponents starting tile. The bucky ball stops in the tile most of the time and seemed to be an “out of the box” strategy, and seemed to work well!
We brought our intentions to the head referee to get his interpretation of the rules and strategy. (In which he came to the same conclusion as you!) We then asked him if he could bring up his interpretation of the rule in the drivers meeting to inform everyone. The intentions of our team weren’t to get anyone disqualified, just to upset their autonomous mode!
Anyway, who knows, maybe someone will see this and feel that it is a viable strategy to use on their way to the world finals!
Thanks again for everything you do for this wonderful sport!
