Autonomous Set Up

Hello,
I just wanted some quick clarification on the autonomous set up at the beggining of the match. Mt team has been using pre-cut zip ties from the vex kit to meausre out the distance our robot must be set up from the wall. I was reviewing the rules about this yet I’m still a bit confused. According to the manual:

<G2> At the beginning of a match, each robot must be smaller than a volume of 18 inches wide by 18
inches long by 18 inches tall. An offending robot will be removed from the match at the Head Referee’s
discretion.
a. Alignment devices (templates, tape measures, lasers, etc.) that are not part of the robot may
NOT be used to assist with the positioning of the robot.

Since the zip ties are technically part of the robot, I’m not breaking any rules, am I?

Are/Is the zip-tie(s) attached to the robot? If so yes, they are part of the robot and therefore would be legal as long as they can be tucked away and/or stay inside the 18"x18"x18" size restrictions.

~Jordan

Yes, they are attached. Thank you. I had been getting conflicting opinions on this by more senior members and even mentors, so I wanted to make sure.

No problem. :slight_smile:

~Jordan

make sure you ask in the official Q+A
jordans answer is NO WAY official :wink:
i also agree with him though :rolleyes:

Haha, yes you still should ask in the Q&A for an official answer. As I’m not sure this has come up as a question before. My statement is what I truly believe to be correct but I personally would always check/post to the Q&A for an official ruling.

~Jordan

Thank you.

once you get an official answer, its good to have a printed version of it in your engineers notebook and take that to competitions in case you get asked by refs
(we had to do that a few times)

Always a good idea. Also good to have a print-out binder of the game manual and rules, we do this as well.

~Jordan

Thanks guys. This was actaully really helpful considering my mentor basically dodged my question on this a couple of times.

It’s entirely possible that your mentor was more interested in encouraging you to solve your own problem rather than answer yet another question from a student who would rather have things handed to them than learn how to use available resources (other than the mentor).

Sorry. I meant no offense. In other unrelated news, I would also like to say that our mentor inspired us with the idea for an efficient way to line up to the goals in autonomous. This starategy has proven very effective, since as of today we were able to score 26 pts in autonomous, and possibly 39 by tomorrow.