Answered: SG9 and Incidental (or more) Contact

VEX Robotics Competition Discussion VRC > In The Zone (17/18)
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From SG9: “Note 2: Stacked Cones do not count towards the Possession limit. (i.e. A Robot is allowed to control the movement of a Mobile Goal with Stacked Cones). Robots can interact with Cones that are Stacked on Goals without those Cones counting towards the possession limit.”

I guess I would understand the final sentence above to help everyone understand that you can hold a Mobile Goal and drive it around even when it has a stack on top of it.

From forum discussions, I thought this was already fairly clear. But Karthik had made comments about incidental contact with Stacked Cones at the very least not being against the rules. It was also stated that this would show up in the updated rules. So I expected to see something about it, but this rule seems to be the closest and does not support Karthik’s statements at all.

Why do I say this? The rule remains that if you touch a Cone on a Goal, that Cone and all the Cones above it are no longer Stacked. So this rule does not apply to any Cones the robot touches because this rule only applies to “Cones that are Stacked on Goals.” Therefore, this “interact” is affecting in some way without touching. That would seem to be by moving a Mobil Goal with Cones Stacked on it, without touching any of those Cones.

So is the earlier statement by Karthik about some sort of contact with Stacked Cones being acceptable now negated? Or did I just miss that rule somewhere? Or was this part of SG9 meant to handle that situation and inadvertently misworded? Or was some statement about some sort of legal contact left out?

Thanks!

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The intent of SG9’s clauses and previous Q&A answers have always been to allow contact with Cones that are Stacked on a Goal of the same alliance color as the Robot in question. That is, incidental or intentional contact to help protect a Robot’s own stack should be legal.

The June 15th update, in attempting to clarify this, contained an error in <SG9> that you have correctly identified: currently, contacting your own Stacked Cones is both legal and not legal.

In the August 17th final manual update, <SG9> Note 2 will be modified to clarify that Robots can interact with Cones that are fully nested on upright Goals without those Cones counting towards the possession limit, provided the Cones would otherwise be considered Stacked if the Robot were not contacting them. (more detailed examples of “fully nested” can be found in the definition of Stacked)

While Stacked Cones are being contacted by a Robot, they no longer meet the definition of Stacked, and would therefore no longer count for points at the end of the match. However, remember that points are only assessed at the end of the match - releasing this contact before the clock hits zero would enable these Stacked Cones to be worth points.

Of course, if the contact causes the Cones to no longer meet the definition of Stacked (i.e. no longer fully nested on Cones or a Goal), then this exception no longer applies, and the Robot would be considered to have Possession of multiple Cones.